Week Four Over.... far from complete

I started this post as the mid week check in, but I can only mark two things off the list. Hormones have made me a mess this week and Capuchin is keeping me exhausted, so as of Wednesday night we hadn't accomplished much. I'm getting miserable enough to start counting days till she will hopefully be here! (63.... btw..... hopefully....)

On the up side I did circle time on Monday!! I'm proud and the girls seemed to enjoy it. I did a few poetry with movement things and we passed the owl around to talk about what we enjoyed learning about last week and if there was anything they wanted to learn about this week. I was right in thinking Tamarin would say bugs! Lemur said she wanted to learn more about being nice ;) that one will be an ongoing lesson.

Ellie asked about Rainbows
 
So we did an experiment and talked about how rainbow is light and light contains all those colors. Then water breaks it up so we can see those colors. We also discussed how the stars and the sun are balls of fire.



While I was looking around for the rainbow stuff I found this really cool experiment (well, it's more of a novelty). We talked about why the pencils didn't make the bag leak. Then I let them pull them out and watch it spill out. Also talked about how the pencils looked broken in the bag. They had a great time. They poked at least a dozen pencils in it and wanted to do it again. They were excited to draw it in their journal too. Very fun.

Tamarin enjoyed talking about the moon and doing the activities. I'm hoping we will start charting the moon tonight and stick to it. "The sun doesn't move?" "Nope. The earth and moon move." "Wow." Mind blown moment :)

We also talked about starvation, poverty and charity this week. Tamarin was asking me what certain phrases meant and she thought "starve to death" was like "knock them dead" so we talked about expressions and what they really mean. Then on to the serious topics about people starving to death and how it happens all over the world. I started to talk about charity and she chimed, "We go to charity!"
"Kind of, we drop off stuff at charities don't we?"
"Yeah! We sell them our stuff."
"No, we don't. We give them to the charity for free so that they can sell them and use that money to help people."
Another 'A ha' moment. In the past we had talked about giving toys to charity for kids that don't have toys, but I had never expanded the concept beyond that.

We talked more about plants and the importance of roots. We had to transplant our cd case sprout. One bean was a dud and I didn't remove it soon enough :( The mold killed the second bean sprout and was starting to go for the third. He's now in a spice jar on the kitchen window, hope he makes it.

We made hand print turkeys and the girls enjoyed the watercolor vs crayon. Tamarin didn't think much of it till I showed her how to make a "secret message" (white crayon on white paper) then it became the coolest thing ever!

This week felt like a failure. We went off topic a lot, but that's the great thing about homeschooling: she still learned things even if they we didn't do the things I planned. It was a mad scramble Thursday and Friday to try and get things done from the list. I am going to sit down this weekend and try to plan out the next 2-3 weeks in detail so I can get back on track. Maybe there are pros to having a daily plan.


Writing:

Continue working on story book

Tamarin - practice writing q and p, b and d,  Lemur- Practice writing C and 3

Math:

Think up at least two gnome math equations

Wormy Apple game. I forget where I found this, but you print a handful of apples on a page and draw holes in each from 1 to whatever. Then you cut pipe cleaners into little green "worms". They have to match the worms to the amount of holes.

Either card math or domino math game for Tamarin (Can't find my dominos or a deck of cards...... seriously??)

HOWLER COUNTED TO TEN THIS WEEK! AHH!! Counting along side her sisters :) It was great!


Science:

Moon - one of the science experiment books (pg6)

Moon craft, one, two

Nature scavenger hunt (with some changes) and then look at it under the microscope.

Bugs!

Music:

Tamarin - Piano. Mandatory this week.

Arts and Crafts:

Sewing

crayon vs watercolor

Season related:

mini jack o lanterns

Just for fun:

painted hand puppets - help the girls improv a play. We've done something similar before, but these hand paintings are adorable and give me a lot of ideas!

Every Week:

Circle Time.

Tamarin - Write day, month, time, sentence, sprout progress, Lemur- encourage her to draw an animal in her book and sprout progress, Howler- draw whatever she wants.

Chart the moon every night.

Read picture books every day as usual till they are bored.

Read chapter book 2 times a week with Tamarin.

Encourage Tamarin to read BOB books.

We did some reading this week, but not enough that I feel I should mark any of these off. I normally spend 5-8 hours a week reading to them. This week..... mmmm... maybe an hour? Hour and a half? Well, more if you count reading the bug book with them. I feel like I need to play catch up on the other things so we'll probably just let these staples slide this week.

Tamarin- Sight word games or crafts twice a week, Lemur - similar game/craft with letters (Lemur didn't want to participate this week, which is okay since I'm just hoping she picks up on some of it)

Write the letter of the week sheet (c)

Write the number of the week sheet (3)