U is for Us

A bit behind on blogging for school!

It has been several weeks now since we did "U is for Us," and we didn't actually do much that unit that was unique or creative.  We were trying to fit in the basics and combine a few days to fit in more before my parents visited us here in Nepal for the first time!

One thing that came up that I just love happened when we were doing our "badge" for the week.  Every unit for My Father's World has instructions to make a "badge" with the big idea words written on it.  I decided, instead of actual badges to wear, to make a big mural in our hallway to add to each unit.  It's working really well, and Isaiah really likes adding to it and seeing it all there together.

This unit we were supposed to make a cut-out of a person because our key words were "God made us wonderful."  When I asked Isaiah what color paper he wanted to use, he wanted brown.  Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but growing up where I did with only "white" faces around, I feel like the default would have been white.  Granted, white paper is a color that no one actually is, and there are limited options for paper.  But, then he decided he actually wanted to put two people on because he wanted to use the cut-out that he was tracing (which was on white cardstock).  I thought he was going for a mix, but he said he needed to color it first.  Even with his whopper pack of 96 Crayola colors, what did he choose for the second person?  Brown. :)  

I love that that just seems totally natural and obvious to him!  I am so thankful for the richness of colors and kinds of people that are a part of his world!

I Spy Books

In the midst of studying the five senses, my good friend had the idea to make an I Spy book on the day we were talking about the sense of sight.  So, of course, I consulted Pinterest! :)
Delia Creates had a great post that I found on DIY I Spy Books.  Our neighbor girls didn't have school that week because of transportation strikes here (not your typical idea of a strike but that is a tangent; point is, they were home from school).  So, it seemed like a fun project to have the kids all do together.
My oldest son is an arranger.  He has, from a very young age, loved to just set up toys and arrange them in scenes, but he has a VERY specific way he likes to do it, so I was glad I actually had arranged several areas the kids could work at because this was a project, he really thrived working on his own.
We set out a few big pieces of poster board, and then the kids arranged groups of toys, and I took a picture.  Then, as Delia Creates suggested, I pulled out a few toys from each scene while they were occupied with something else and took a picture of those.
I am not great at putting together documents, and my friend's looked much cuter in format than our does, but the kids really enjoyed it.  My youngest (2 1/2) has actually been the one to look at it the most, but the neighbor girls carried theirs around with them for a couple days.
Now, it was a fun process making it, but it also was a bit of time and effort, so I thought I would go ahead and share the one we made, and if you'd just like to use ours, feel free to print it and enjoy!

Here is our I Spy book!  It's far from professional, but if you'd enjoy it with your kids, feel free to use it!

(One of the train scenes my little and I created for the book)

(If you print it, you could print more than one page per sheet, but if you do that, I would recommend printing the cover separately because the "Can You Find?" page should be on the same page as the scene in which you are trying to locate the items.  I printed one page per sheet and then laminated them with page 1 on the back of the cover, page 3 on the page of page 2, etc., so the theme pages are facing each other when you open the book.)

N is for Nest

I have gotten quite behind on posting anything for school lately, and I can't say that we did anything terribly original for our nest unit.

Our neighbor girls did join us for some, and that was fun, including them all building a giant nest out of blankets and pretending to feed each other plastic worms and bugs!

We tried to make our own little nests.  They were mostly mess piles, but Isaiah got really into it.  He really wanted a bird to use his nest.  Um, no, we don't have any tropical birds around here--those bright things are craft feathers.  I don't really let the kids pick up real feathers at our place since the only ones we tend to find are from dirty pigeons.  Bleck.

Of course, Zeke had to get a dump truck in on the nest-building action.

There was a "nest" snack suggested in our curriculum, but it involved chow mein noodles, which we can't buy here.  We ended up using these local snacks.  I had actually never tried them, but they looked like they might work, so we broke them apart into "twigs."

Then we added some shredded coconut (which wasn't in the original recipe but seemed like it might work to seem like grass) and some melted chocolate and peanut butter.  We stirred them together, made a pile for each kid, and then we tucked two little mini marshmallows (imported) to be eggs.

Isaiah was really pleased with his work and excited to eat his yummy treat!

My little Nepali guy, Zeke, was really upset that I had covered his snacks in chocolate (what?!) and just wanted to eat the rest of the local snacks that we hadn't mixed in!  Ha.

A is for Apple

Continuing our fall fun, Isaiah's unit for MFW was A for Apples.

I had this tree trunk with contact paper up from a thankfulness tree (yes, from last Thanksgiving!), so I decided to (finally) clear it and use the idea I had seen for a Toddler Apple Tree Activity.  I cut out leaves from construction paper instead of using real leaves and cut up some pipe cleaners and put out a variety of red pom poms.

One of the activities in our curriculum was to gather several varieties of apples and graph how many of each kind you have.  Since most of the varieties here are basically red (green ones are sometimes available but quite expensive), we had to use descriptors other than color to sort the types.  I also decided to use dot markers instead of pieces of paper to mark the graph.

The big quantity of apples for the activity was too tempting to resist for building.  Once older brother built a fortress for his guy, it was inevitable that little one would need to try to follow suit.

 I got the idea to do an Apple Observation recording sheet from Mrs. Lee's Kinder Kids, but hers wasn't available to download, so I made one of my own with a few changes.  We measured how many cubes tall our apples were.

 We also used the simple balance we brought back from the States this summer to see how many cubes would weigh the same as our apples.  They were pretty big apples, so we actually barely fit enough cubes in the container to balance it!

Here is Isaiah's completed Apple Observation Sheet.  

Making printables is not my strength, and I'm still learning a lot with basic formatting and sharing, so I had trouble sharing the file here.  It's nothing fancy, but if you happen to want a copy, I'd be happy to email it to you!

The boys got REALLY into helping make applesauce.  I only let them use table knives, so it was a bit challenging, but they worked really hard at cutting up the peeled apples.  And, they LOVED the applesauce.  I hadn't really thought about it because it isn't really available to buy here, but it was actually pretty simple to make, and they really enjoyed it, so we'll have to make some more soon!

Apple Sensory Bin

 I have to admit I got really excited about this one!  We've been  having a lot of fun with fall stuff around here, and Isaiah's curriculum hit a unit on apples.  I had seen some great apple sensory bins online, and I pulled some inspiration from those, gathered some things that we had here, and put this one together.

I used quick oats for the base and then added in quite a few cinnamon sticks.  Cinnamon here doesn't really come in those neatly rolled little sticks that you find in the States, but I kind of like that it looks a bit more "rustic" or something. :)  Then I had saved some random log pieces and a couple little straw bins from some play set, and we actually were able to buy a Playmobile set from some expats who were leaving here awhile ago, which is where the plastic trees, bucket, shovel, and trough thing (oh, and the little squirrel) came from.  I filled the little basket with red plastic beads, put a bunch of small red pom poms throughout, and put several red felted balls in the trough.  

I set out a couple of cups and tongs with the bin.

Thankfully, Zeke was (almost) as excited as I was about this one and pulled it out to play with every day during the week we made it.

Being perfectly honest, sometimes it is a little hard for me to see things I put together getting "messed up" and played with differently than I expect!  But, he had so much fun with it, and the whole reason I put these together is for exploration and fun and play and open-ended experiences for the senses!  Still learning to let go sometimes and let that actually happen! :)

L is for Leaves

I LOVE fall!  It's my favorite season, so when I saw that L for leaves and A for Apples would hit right now for our curriculum in the midst of fall, I was pretty excited.  The thing is that we currently live in a place that doesn't really have the same change in weather (though we have had a stretch of nice, coolish, sweater-wearing days) and looks for fall as where I grew up.  And, even before living here in Nepal, we were in Southern California for over a decade where you can barely even distinguish seasons!  So, I think I tend to even go a bit overboard with my autumn enthusiasm and plans for projects to feed my nostalgia.  

We've already made two large pumpkins worth of puree (can't buy canned pumpkin here) and have been baking a lot of goodies.  

But, we rolled into our school theme with leaves...

We actually have a kindergarten co-op that we are a part of every other Friday, and it was my turn to teach, so we launched into our leaf theme with them.

(I'm not posting pics with the other kids in them since I don't have permission from their parents.)

Since we don't actually have fall foliage around here, I thought it would be fun to make some of our own.  Boy Mama had a post about creating fall leaves.  I used her idea, but since coffee filters are not to be found here, I decided to try them with paper towels.  I didn't really make templates; I was pretty loose with cutting the leaf shapes since I was cutting them for 5 kids to make.  I just sort of freehand cut some shapes out of a stack of paper towels at a time.  I have a bunch of these plastic trays that I found at a local shop, so each kid got one of those and then chose some paper towel leaf shapes.  I mixed a few drops of food coloring into small cups of water, and they used their eye droppers to drop color onto the leaves.  They really had fun with it.

I think the paper towel took notably longer to dry than the coffee filters would have.  We did these first, and they still weren't dry about 2 hours later at the end of our co-op time.  But, once they did dry, I think they turned out really nice!  One funny thing is that you can see the design on the paper towel through them, but you take what you can get here!

Next, we played the Roll, Add, and Color using the sheet from the leaf printable from The Moffatt Girls' Fall Math Pack Freebie.  Instead of just using regular dice, though, I decided it would be fun to use our big photo cubes with fall clip art in the them from a few of the free printable packs we had found.  They were excited to use the dot markers to mark their leaves.  It was actually a bit slow, as it was a bit advanced for several of the kids, so we decided to all mark everyone's answers on our sheets, and it also diffused some potential frustrations of winning/losing.

In spite of not being able to find coffee filters here, I saw this science experiment from several sources to see which color different leaves would change in the fall, or really even to explore why they change colors, and I was determined to make it work somehow!  My friend happened to have a few coffee filters that she graciously sacrificed for the good of science. :)  Yay!   

Ezekiel preempted the tearing a bit!

We also had to use hand sanitizer, as our quest for rubbing/isopropyl alcohol was also shockingly challenging, so there were definitely several factors that weren't really an ideal set-up, but I pressed through!

As I mentioned, we don't really get a lot of leaves changing colors here, so there wasn't a lot of variety in the results, but it was still pretty cool to explain to the kids (in a pretty simplified version) about the other pigments that are "hiding" in the leaves but are able to be seen once the chlorophyll starts to break down with the cooler weather and shorter days.  Most of our strips were pretty faint and just showed a bit of a strip of light green or yellow, but all were really enthusiastic about the process!

Moving on from our co-op time, I put together a sensory bin for Ezekiel.  There are so many great ideas for fall sensory materials out there.  Rice is really plentiful here, but it is also considered the most staple food, so sometimes it is hard to justify using up a batch of it, but a few weeks ago, I bought a big bag from the shop, and when I got it home and opened it, it had bugs in it.  Honestly, I sort of got a little excited because I felt like it was a good excuse to dry it out and use it for sensory play!  So, I made orange pumpkin spice sensory rice.  I don't have pumpkin pie spice, so I just used cinnamon and cloves and a bit of nutmeg.  I got impatient with the stirring, so I just used my hands to mix it all in together and ended up with orange hands!  One note, at least when I did it, is that I couldn't really smell the spice on the rice that strongly, so I kept adding more, and when it dried, it smelled really, really strong (I added a LOT), so maybe the smell gets masked a smidge while wet.

It kind of surprised me, but Ezekiel actually insisted on taking all of the other stuff OUT of his bin and just playing with the rice.

Isaiah's tray originally just had the rice, and we were using our fingers to practice some letter writing, but when he saw other stuff in Ezekiel's bin, he really wanted to have some time playing with things in his, so I went and pulled out some more to put in his bin.

One of my favorite activities that we did this week was something I modified from two ideas I saw for making an alphabet tree.  No Time for Flashcards had a Letter Sorting Tree and a Peel & Pick Alphabet Apple Tree.  I decided to use some of the contact paper I had brought with me to make a peel and stick tree.  I cut out very basic leaf shapes in fall colors and wrote the capital letters of the alphabet on them.

Then, I made use of our sensory bins from the week to try to have each of the boys engage the tree in a way closer to their abilities.  In Isaiah's bin, I hid lowercase letter magnets for the first half of the alphabet letters, and in Ezekiel's bin, I hid capital letter magnets for the second half of the alphabet letters.  When they dug out their letters, they went and found and collected the matching letter from the tree.  In Isaiah's case, it was a good review for lowercase and capital letter matching, and for Ezekiel, it was good practice to just match the capital letters and say their names.

Isaiah tends to develop his own systems for things.  I did not ask the boys to do any particular thing with the letter pairs once they had collected them, but it was really important to Isaiah that he carefully lay out each leaf he collected with the letter magnet on top.

We actually nearly had a fight at one point because they were both so into collecting their leaves, and Ezekiel (as always) gets particularly excited about seeing the letter "E"--"for Ezekiel."  So, he took it even though it was in Isaiah's half of the alphabet (bit of a lack of foresight on my part!).  Thankfully, we worked out a trade for another letter!

I got the idea for these sugar cookies from Pinterest, though I have to admit, I didn't actually follow the link, and I now realize it only leads to a photo.  Isaiah had seen them in one of my boards and asked if we could make them.  He helped me mix up my usual sugar cookie recipe, and then we divided the dough into a few balls and added different colors of food coloring to each one and worked it through the dough.  Then we put them next to each other as we rolled them out and cut them.  I love the way they look!  Even the neighbor girls joined us for the rolling and cutting (and eating). :)

We had intended early on in the unit to make a leaf man or leaf creature after reading Lois Ehlert's book Leaf Man, but it rained a few of the days, so leaves were wet for collecting.  We finally did it toward the end of the unit.  Around our neighborhood, we don't have a huge variety in the shape of leaves, so Isaiah chose to use a foam one from his sensory bin and two of his paper towel ones he made to go with a few leaves he collected.

Our book for special book time this unit was Caps for Sale.  The boys both really enjoyed acting it out with caps and stuffed monkeys and all!

Linking up this week with the Tot School Gathering over at 1+1+1=1.

M is for Moon

I haven't posted for awhile for a few reasons.  One reason is that I very often am only gathering ideas from other brilliant people and not adding much to them myself.  The main reason, though, is that we've had some ups and downs with the start of our homeschooling year.  We've had a lot of fun, and we've had some notable struggles to work through, and I keep feeling like I'm not really representing our journey well to just post pics of the cute and fun moments.  It takes notably more thought and energy to post on some of our struggles, so I decided to go ahead and post a few things as I formulate a post about more of our honest journey with it in this season.  So, that will come, and for now, here are a few of our highlights.

We are using My Father's World kindergarten this year for Isaiah, and Zeke joins in many of the activities as well.  The second unit was M for Moon.  We did one of their suggested activities to drop some rocks into a tray of flour to simulate moon craters.  Zeke could hardly believe the privilege of  throwing rocks!

Isaiah, as usual, had a very specific idea about how the craters should be arranged.

So thankful to have some dot markers, which aren't available here, because the boys really do enjoy them.  I pulled one out for Zeke this unit, and Isaiah really wanted to do one as well.

Our Oreo phases of the moon really involved more of me making them, and then Isaiah matched them up on the sheet.  We got the great printable for 123 Homeschool 4 Me.

We used random parts and pieces to assemble our space shuttle.  I just gave Isaiah a few big chunks of styrofoam we had around and a tray of pipe cleaners, bottle tops, and random bits of things I had found.

He was very focused and enthusiastic about his creations!

Ezekiel got in on the action as well but requested markers and wanted to draw on his styrofoam.

I love how much this little kiddos makes us all laugh!

When they were inside the space shuttle, we played the audio from the first moon launch, and they took preparation and liftoff very seriously.

Well, most of it was serious! :)

We made a tray of "moon dust" for the boys to write in.  They seemed to think it was pretty cool, but they actually lost interest in it fairly quickly.

One of their favorite activities was actually making moon cake.  It was a recipe in our curriculum, and you actually mix it right in the pan, and you make a few craters in the dry ingredients to pour things in (one being baking soda and then vinegar, which was the obvious favorite).  Sometimes, it is hard for me to let go of control or precision or order when we're trying to do kitchen things together, but I really did let them do this by themselves with only giving them the directions, and they loved it!  Neither of them actually even likes to eat cake, so we ended up giving most of it to friends!