October 2014

Sensory Bins We had a water bead, just for fun, sensory bin this month, and also a "bone dig" bin. I thought since we were studying bones, this counted right? They were archaeologists and had to pick out the bones from the sand with tweezers and dust them off with a brush. Then they counted how many bones they found in total. Dramatic Play I originally wanted to teach the kids all about when bones break, you have to get a cast. There was a pin about how to make a fake cast and I was all excited and ready to go until I found out I would have to order special stuff to make the fake casts. No time for stuff like that. So instead, we just set up a Dr. office downstairs and used their baby dolls as patients. Richie snapped this one picture of Gwen being the patient. I wish I would have snapped more but this was happening on Halloween and I was busy. They really enjoyed themselves. I think their favorite part was that I put wax paper on the table just like that funky paper they have on the benches at Dr. offices. :) Field Trips I'll try and get some pictures later, but there were 2 field trips this month. Gwen had a joy school field trip to Olive Garden. (Miles was so sad he couldn't tag along on this one.) They got to go into the kitchen, with hair nets, and see how and where they prepare the food. They worked on a sticker sheet and then were treated to breadsticks, noodles and pink lemonade. Gwen thought it was the coolest. Our homeschool field trip this month took us to the pumpkin patch. :) We had a farmer take us around and talk to us. He even took us on a tractor ride. Then we got to feed the animals, pick a pumpkin and play in the corn pit! Math Math was pretty low key this month. Lots of repetition from last month. Lots of one-to-one correspondence, patterns, ordinal position (1st, 2nd etc), and identifying shapes by one or more qualities. They've got that stuff down pretty well, it's time to move on. Reading Our printer ran out of ink this month, so out of necessity we didn't do a lot of worksheets. Worksheet type things make me feel like we're doing something official and I see the benefit of using them. However, it was a good experience to not have any. We did lots more hands on things and they still seemed to get what they needed. Here's some of our word activities from this past month. (Play-doh letters, tracing letters/words in pudding, "writing" our words and letters with yarn on contact paper) Science We are learning all about our bones this month. We'll be working on the human body all year, but I thought learning about skeletons fit nicely with Halloween. We baked bone shaped cookies, made a skeleton out of paper plates, and have learned the names and locations of almost all of the 32 most well known bones. We also did a science experiment where we put chicken bones in a jar of water and a jar of vinegar to see what would happen. The acidic vinegar stripped the bones of all their calcium and minerals, so by the end of 7 days they could bend! Geography This one picture represents it all I guess. :) They like working on this huge, magnetic USA puzzle. We have a small, regular USA puzzle too that they work on. Every morning we sing a patriotic song, say the pledge and sings songs/get quizzed on the states using our giant USA poster we keep on our kitchen table. So far they've learned the southern, eastern and northern states locations and capitals. The funnest thing about geography so far is getting post cards in the mail from all around the country! When we get a post card, we find the state on our map downstairs, hang the postcard next to it, and then check out a book about that state from the library. It's been super fun and the kids get such a kick out of getting mail! Art We've read LOTS of books about fall and Halloween. I only managed to squeeze in one art project that went along with the leaf books we checked out. I have about a million more in my head. Maybe in November? We just melted crayon shavings between wax paper leaves. They seemed to enjoy watching the colors melt together. Reading Party The kids and dad finished reading "The Tale of Despereaux" this month, so we celebrated with a Despereaux party. We ate soup, celery, and cheese and crackers (food from the book), I decorated (kind of) and we watched the movie. (Which wasn't anything like the book!) This lame picture is the only one I snapped. I was grumpy that night. Oh well. :) The kids enjoyed themselves and had fun telling me all the parts about the movie that were "wrong".