Week 6 Plan, a Few Simple Tricks and a Whole Month??

There's not much of a plan this week. There's some things from Oak Meadow that I'm going to read, work on more writing with Tamarin, more letter recognition with Lemur, nothing new since this is a short week for us. Public schools are taking a fall break next week, I guess we are taking ours this week. Once a year I get to escape for an evening and that evening happens this week! We only have today and tomorrow for school since we spent the day at the museum and the evening at a friend's house (more socialization you know). Thanks to my awesome husband for taking vacation days to do my job :)

Have I really been blogging for a month?? Wow..... thanks for reading and giving me feedback/ideas. I hope someone is getting something out of this.... and even if no one is I think it has helped my brain be a little more organized :) I have mentioned how disorganized I am, haven't I?

Since we're not doing anything new this week I thought I would add a few things from another post I've been accumulating.

Simple Tricks for Teaching Basics:

Air as a substance - A friend of mine posted a facebook that she was confusing her son trying to explain how the wind shut the door. There are a few ways I've discussed this with the girls. One is to put piece of paper on one end of the table and they have to blow it to the other. They blow the paper, the air has force just like if you used your hand to push the paper across the table. We may not be able to see it, but it is still there. Also I've had them hold their breath and then I push on their chest and back squeezing the air out (within reason people, don't let dads do it :p). Tell them to try and hold it as long as possible to resist you pushing. Talk about how they can feel their lungs filling with air, air takes up space in our body.

Germs: Why we use soap -This is something I made my husband do not long after we got married when I noticed he didn't use soap most of the time when washing his hands (He's gonna kill me for saying that on the internet!). Works just as well on kids. Take some raw ground beef, get them to help you form a meatloaf or burgers. Ask them to describe what they feel on their hands (slimy! gross!). Then tell them to wash their hands off with just water, insist they scrub as much as they can. Ask them to feel their hands again, you can still feel the beef residue on your hands. Ask them to wash again, this time with soap. Then describe their clean hands. This is why we use soap, the water can't get everything off our hands. We can't see or feel germs, but they can still be there. The only way to get them all off is to use soap. I don't have any problems with my oldest using soap, my 4 year old sometimes forgets, but is very good about it for a 4 year old!