Hi sis,
This morning grandpa Carmin, Evelyn, and I went to the doctors office for my twenty-week ultrasound. Nate sadly couldn’t join us, as he had to go to Toledo to work on the plant there.
The results are in! A baby boy will be joining our family in late January, or maybe February if he is like his sister and doesn’t want to come out. hehehe
Love,
Jamiegoof
Dear Sis,
Today’s fiction selection is, Bee: A Peek-Through Picture Book by Britta Teckentrup. This book is a wonderfully illustrated journey through the day in a life of a foraging worker bee. It even talks about how bees communicate with other colony members, using the waggle dance, to guide other bees to the location of plentiful flowers.
Today’s non-fiction selection is, The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner. This book covers the life cycle, tasks and hive life, pollination and honey making, body structure, and threats to bee populations. It will need some paraphrasing, but it has plenty of information on the pages your child finds extra interesting:) William wanted to know everything on the body structure and pollination pages!
We printed the Honey Bee Life Cycle Printable, from Preschool Powol Packets, on card stock. We placed the chart in a page protector and cut out and laminated the two part cards for durability.
I was shocked with how well William retained Life Cycle information from our reading earlier that morning. We worked through this process in only a few minutes!
Love,
b
Hi Sis,
This weekend Carmin arrived. The official move out of Pennsylvania has begun for him. His household items are loaded into our barn and the property is for sale. He is living on the road in his handmade mobile home… we seriously need to do a blog post on its awesomeness!
Carmin needed a ride to Pennsylvania so he could pick up his old truck. We figured we would make a day out of the trip, and do some visiting. Off to Pennsylvania to visit Dad!
Upon arrival, Grandpa Jeff opened his huge jar of goldfish crackers. An Evelyn snacking frenzy followed.
Then, the two grandpas got busy hauling wood onto the garage addition Dad is working on. They worked… mostly talked, lol… for a few hours.
Evelyn did her best to be patient, while waiting for her two grandpas to come play with her. She ate several times, ran all around the yard, played in grease and tools in the garage, checked out new plants, played with the tractor, got a tractor ride from mom, and added another scrapped knee to her collection of scratches.
Finally, it was time to eat. Steak, salad, and Evelyn’s favorite… ice cream!
It was a long a tiring day. But, Evelyn got a tractor ride from Grandpa Jeff right before we left! Grandpa is way more fun than mom, he drives faster.
Love,
Jamiegoof
Dear Sis,
When I repacked all the basement clothing boxes, William found his favorite lion sweatshirt from last year. Needless to say, it was much too small, but he wore it most of the afternoon anyway! I suggested that we make him a lion costume for Halloween. He liked that idea, so we went online to see if we could find a pattern. Sadly, the only lion pattern we found was out of print, but in our quest we found what he calls “Sneaky Fox.”
We rounded up the pattern and materials at the end of July for about $20.00. Of course we used sales and coupons to our advantage:) We finally got around to cutting it out Wednesday evening and have been stealing away some time each day since to assemble it.
The appliqué was a bit cruel. The black appliqué is felt, so it didn’t stretch, but the white appliqué is fleece stitched to fleece. It was a night mare. It would have been sooooo much easier to used felt for the white appliqué as well! Also, the sizing runs big. William just transitioned to 3T in his everyday wardrobe, but we made this in a size 2.
William is very impressed with the tail!
He also tested it on all fours, like a proper fox.
His is currently wearing his fox costume instead of his clothes. I wonder how long that will last?! Hopefully we won’t wear it out before Halloween:)
Love,
b
Dear Sis,
Today fiction selection, Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, is about a boy who is about to squish an ant. The boy and ant enter in conversation and each argue their cases. In the end, the ants fate is up to the reader. Usually William lets the ant live; today he was less generous:)
Today’s non-fiction section, The Life and Times of the Ant by Charles Micucci, introduces the ant in prehistoric times, discusses how colonies form, work together, and communicate, depicts the body structures of the ant and how they function, and more! There is so much content, it may be more than the attention of a, 3 or 4-year-old allows, but the writing style makes it easy to pick and choose what content to read and what to skip over, based upon the child’s interest.
The Ants go Marching lyric printable is available on Teach Children ESL.com. We sang the song once and moved on to our counting activity.
Our yard is slopped, so our honey ran. In hind site, a flat spot would have been more ideal. Also, we only put rocks in two corners, instead of four. After sitting a few hours in the grass, our page was folded in on itself a bit too much to facilitate observation. We moved our sheet to the front step to solve this problem, but in so doing, disturbed the ants. Consequently, our ants were on the run instead of feeding and interacting. Lessons learned! We’ll do it better next year:)
Love,
b
Dear Sis,
Today we juggled our homeschooling with a midwife visit and some shopping. Luckily, I had a freezer meal thawed for Daddy to throw in the oven for lunch!
Today’s fiction selection, Animal Airways by Andrea Patric and Sally Hopgood, is a great count along book to practice 1-10. It also covers some geography as the plane makes it’s way around the globe.
Today’s non-fiction selection, Airplanes Take Off and Land by Patrick T. McBriarty, covers the entire process of flying an airplane, in detail. William loves it, but it might not hold the interest of a less patient, or less aviation crazed, toddler:)
written by Leanne Guenther
Color and Black and White Printing Options on dltk-kids.com
We used the free Transportation Pattern Card Printable by Life Over C’s, printed on card stock and laminated for durability.
We found a foam glider at Dollar Tree, a few months ago and saved it for this lesson. A balsa wood glider, would also work nicely.
Love,
b
Dear Sis,
Today’s fiction selection was There’s an Alligator Under My Bed by Mercer Mayer and the non-fiction selection was Who Lives in an Alligator Hole? by Anne Rockwell.
We melted some Green Candy Melts and dipped a half dozen Nutter Butter cookies. While the candy coating set, we did our letter craft.
Melt a few White Candy Melts and have a grown up help you pipe eyes and teeth onto your alligator cookies.
Who lives in an Alligator Hole? by Ann Rockwell, described how Alligators find a naturally occurring mucky place in their wetland environment and thrash around to create a gator hole. Then, other creatures: insects, fish, birds, plants, etc. move in to. Creatures that are necessary to the lives of various other creatures are keystone species! If a keystone animal’s population suffers, so do the connected animal populations. We referenced our book to have this discussion before and after making our gator hole.
William enjoyed playing in his gator hole for a while before we cleaned it up to move onto the next activity:)
Melt a few Milk Chocolate Candy melts and have a grown up help you pipe the centers of the eyes and nostrils onto your alligator cookies.
Traditional Crocodile Dentist game play passes from player to player, one tooth pressed down at a time, until someone gets chomped! We renamed it to “Alligator Dentist” for the day and counted aloud as each tooth was pressed, until someone got chomped!
After our game, we ate lunch, so we could sample the much anticipated Alligator Cookies:)
Love,
b
Dear Sis,
Today was our much anticipated, FIRST DAY of PRESCHOOL! We started our lesson with Calendar Time. Mellissa and Doug sell a great magnetic calendar, we chose for our home school routine.
I tried to find an age appropriate piece of fiction and non-fiction for each lesson. Today’s books were Ten Apples Up On Top! by Theo. LeSieg and How Do Apples Grow? by Jill McDonald.
Whilst the Apple Pie Bites were baking, we did our final activity.
William really enjoyed his first day of school! I hope the rest of the week is just as successful:)
Love,
b
