With Thanksgiving and such, we didn't do as much as I'd hoped. We did talk about Thanksgiving and what it means, but they weren't into the lapbook concept at this point, so we didn't do that. One of the books we read today, Snowflake Bentley is a VERY cool book! It's a true story about a man in the 1800's (I think, there was additional biographical information in the margins that I want to go back & read, but that wouldn't have kept the kids' interest) who was determined to figure out and photograph snowflakes, and eventually did. It was a cool story, and I think one that will capture the kids' interest on different levels each winter as they get older.
They continue to ask for multiple stories from the Bible we're using for our devotions.
Our nature table this unit is a "water" theme. We used a variety of shades of blue & white play silks (and some other cloths as well, like the dark blue clothes that we made potato prints of the moon phases on last unit) to look like water, and started out with just putting some shells on it. Then this week, I had some little stuffed sea creatures that I got last summer at Ikea when they were on clearance (& I knew we had the water unit coming up), so I've been slowly, and randomly adding them to the nature table. The girls are having great fun watching to see when/if a new one will appear, and while they're fairly certain that I'm putting them there, they haven't "caught" me yet, and I haven't confirmed or denied it, so it's abit of a fun mystery going on :) After the first one or two appeared, they also got more into 'decorating' this nature table then they had before, and went through their toys & puppets finding frogs and such to add in as well. And L pulled all the pieces out of a sea creature puzzle they have and they're all on the table as well.
I was going through the files in my "homeschool" folder on my hard drive (mostly stuff that I've found & downloaded for future use) and I discovered that I have a homeschool planning calendar that I hadn't looked at too closely since it's for the entire school year, but upon closer inspection, each page holds 6 weeks, which works out perfect since we do 6 week units w/ this curriculum. So, I've started using that to be able to see the whole unit on one page instead of just broken out into the 6 weeks like I've been using.
We didn't have Kindermusik this week because of the holiday.
Our plan was to put the Christmas tree up & decorate it today, but when I went to get it from the basement, somehow, I think we ended up getting part of teh tree switched w/ someone else's. Which is very baffling to me. VBS this summer borrowed/used a BUNCH of Christmas trees, and I know I said we'd be willing to loan ours, but neither dh or I remember actually loaning it. And the fact that the easel we DID loan them is still sitting in the garage because neither dh or I have bothered to carry it back to the basement, makes it seem unlikely that we'd have bothered to carry the Christmas tree to the basement, but not the easel. On the other hand, loaning it to VBS or similar seems like the logical explanation of how we'd end up with 1/2 of one tree & half of a different one. . . so I don't know. It's also minutely possible that we used our tree for Sabbath School the first quarter of 2007 (which was the last one before my kids moved on) and somehow it got mixed up when I brought it home from that. I just don't know . . . My friend, Angie is both the VBS director and was the SS leader who would have borrowed the tree if anyone did. She's working crazy hours this weekend, but next week I'm going to see if she has any recollection of using our tree and if so, who/how it might have gotten switched. In the meantime, mom had already said they weren't going to put a tree up this year, so we can borrow theirs for this year and if we haven't figured out what happened to ours by the time Christmas rolls around we can get one on clearance or off freecycle after Christmas this year. But it's sure baffling. And A, especially, was quite upset about not getting to decorate it today. She handled it well at the time, but had a rather major meltdown later in the afternoon that I think was indirectly caused by the stress of the tree plans being postponed till we can get the tree from my parents. Didn't help that she was tired (got up way too early this morning) and apparently hungry, since right after the meltdown, L said she was hungry so we came down for a snack and A ended up eating all of a big banana (I was fully expecting to eat at least half of it after she decided she was done, instead she ate the whole thing) and 2 good sized bowlfuls of the homemade applesauce grandma brought us yesterday (yum!). And then at supper she ate almost a full quesadilla plus part of my burrito, and then some crackers after that. . . so apparently the poor child was starving to death today LOL.
I think that's at least the highlights of homeschooling this week. Oh, we did the aluminum foil sculpture. L enjoyed it, A found it too imprecise a medium for her liking LOL. But she did eventually sculpt a fish she was happy with (I believe it is currently residing on the nature table as well, unless she moved it again).
With the cold weather, I've been drinking various herbal teas daily, but I never think to see if they want to watch the water change colors as it steeps until the tea kettle is whistling, and they're always involved in something else at that point, so we still haven't done that, despite being simple & quick LOL.
No comments:
Post a Comment