One of THE best school days so far this year!

Today was my kind of school day.  It flowed nicely, I watched for cues that the kiddos were done with an activity, and we did music...LOTS of music which is always a great thing for us. 

Shadow shapes for definite success since they both know their shapes

 "The b's on the bus go b-b-b, b-b-b, b-b-b..." - This was my favorite random mommy-made-up-school-thing-in-the-car-one-day and now they ask for the song all the time!  We sang it and they found the bottle cap letter as we sang and put them back in their plastic baggie:).

 The girls LOVE candy corn so we did a roll and remove game with candy corn!!!  

 Then the whiteboard came out and I introduced them to the alligator that eats bigger numbers for meals!  They LOVED it!  They wanted to give him a body and legs too:).

Finally Dancin' Diva started singing Freshbeat Band songs so I out the CD in and we had a music/dance concert for an hour!!!

They were absolutely ADORABLE today and I had a blast chomping numbers and dancing withe my girls:)

Chill School Day

 So my intention is not to do school on Wednesdays because we visit with Grandmom.  However, we still hadn't read our library books from Friday.  So we had some school today, but because it wasn't planned everyone stayed calm and happy (something I'm trying to replicate so maybe I should stop planning???).

We read LOTS of books and the girls were too cute!  

So my kids love dry erase boards so I decided to bring it out and see what would happen.  I decided to have them erase letters, shapes, words, and numbers and they thought it was SO cool!

When they had their own time on the board DD decided to do some addition.  All on her own, by the way.  So we talked about the addition sign and equal sign.  However, I have to say I actually like her underlining method:).  She stated the problem out loud and then counted to get to the answer.  I left it alone after that since this was their free time.

This was just an adorable bonus picture after dinner.  From left to right it's Lil' Diva, Little Red Riding Hood, and a bad dinosaur turned good dinosaur that is now friends with Red.  I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried!

Erika

School with some new concepts

Today we brought out some fun educational toys my sister-in-law handed down to us.  The names escape me at the moment, but they were pretty cool!   

 This one was perfect for SD to work with colors, sorting, and shape review

 DD got a kick out of replicating the movements of this directional puzzle.  It gave us plenty of opportunity to talk about directions throughout the rest of the day:).

 One of their favorites...Handwriting Without Tears!  They love this because of three things...the wood pieces, chalk and a wet paper towel...ha!  Often the wood pieces turn into drum sticks, wands, and whatever else they can think of and my kids have an obsession for wet paper towels.  I'm serious they could play with a wet paper towel for hours!  As for the chalk...what kid doesn't like playing with chalk?

This was one of my favorites of the day.  Count the House!  We would have gone all over the house, but Granddad came by to help look at our leaking ceiling:(.  So we kept it in the school room.  

 I am really into the living math with my girls instead of pushing them too soon into other math concepts.  I am hoping this will really give them a true foundation of what the numbers really are and what they mean instead

of just saying they can count to 100 by Kindergarten.  DD loved sticking the corresponding stickers in her notebook.  I also got a little addition in there when we miscounted and needed to add another sticker.  So instead of telling her I asked how many we needed to add to get the right amount and she was on top of it!  In that moment I was living my dream of how I would like education to happen in our home:).    

So although SD didn't really get into the sticker part she had a great time running around the room counting the different parts of the house/room.  For a moment I was preoccupied with her doing the stickers, but luckily I've been at this enough that I let it go:).  She was counting perfectly, playing with dolls in between, but would still count the next thing when I asked.  So I would say we had success for the day.

It was a fun school day and then we all headed off to dance class that afternoon.  Tomorrow we will be making an igloo on my bed and reading our library books from Friday.  I'm WAY excited!

Erika

The Olympics!!!

The kids LOVED our Olympic games!!!  Enjoy the pics:)

Olympic symbol painting

Track Field - Hurdles

Gymnastics - Balance Beam (Thanks Granddad!)

 Cute pic of the baby:)

Our gold medalists:)

 Love!!!

Colored Rice

I love this stuff!  The colors make me happy and I know two little preschoolers who enjoy it too:).  I'm working on filling their general sensory bin so I'm making several batches over the summer.

Things you need:

Rubbing alcohol

Food coloring

Plastic bags

Instructions:

Divide rice into bags

Pour in some alcohol (I just do two pours)

Mix colors as you wish

Seal and shake each bag

SN:  The longer you let the rice sit in the bags the brighter the colors

 Pour onto paper plates or newspaper (something you don't care about) and let dry

When the rice is dry pour into a plastic container for some sensory fun!

Ideas for play:  

Pouring

Seek and find

Rice art (you know...like the sand art kits)

Enjoy!

One-on-One Time

Dancin' Diva and I have one-on-one time while the other girls are sleeping on school days.  When we have school together things are great, but there's nothing like on-on-one time with each girl.  It gives me time to really see where each girl is in her development and it allows each of us to really linger in the excitement when the "light bulb" comes on:).  The "light bulb" moment for DD on this particular day was word families.  We were doing our graphing activity when she starting forming words and wanting to continue.  So we quickly wrapped up graphing and I took a piece of paper and wrote "at."  We then proceeded to add consonants and she LOVED it!  She thought it was hilarious every time we made the consonant sound, added the family sound, then got faster and faster (insert giggle from me as I type...hehe).  I absolutely loved seeing her realize that she was making the words!  Now my next planning task is trying to figure out when I will get in some time with the Singin'Diva.

 She decided that putting "M" in the graph was a good idea and then "MY."  :)

I even got in on this action:).  It was pretty fun!

Homeschool: Fourth of July

So I have a problem.  I plan, and plan, and plan but have a hard time actually preparing the awesome crafts/activities I find and think of doing so that I can actually do them with my kids without the headache that comes with procrastination.  So tomorrow's holiday gave me a reason to complete one of my units I have had in the planning stage for a week or so.  Ahead of time, I got everything ready for the Fourth of July unit and was ready for today...yay me!!!

SN:  I know tomorrow is the holiday, but we will be playing all day with friends so I did our lesson today.

Grandmom let us invade her house so that we could still come visit and get things done.  It was so much fun and I know she enjoyed "seeing" school.  I've got SO much planned for next school year and this makes me giddy:).  

We hope you enjoy you 4th of July!!!

The books we read and the crafts supplies...ready to go!

 Mini red, white, and blue sensory bins

 Wind socks (favorite)

 Gluing our American flags

 Chalk drawing, sprinkle fireworks, popsicles, and bikes

 Straw fireworks (my favorite activity of the day next to the windsocks)

 Star lunch

Bonus...

We listened and colored to the music of a string quartet at the Benjamin Branch library on Monday.  THIS was so much fun!!!  The best part was when DD says to me,"Mommy, look at this sound!"  She totally understood the concept behind coloring to the mood/tempo of the music.  The library is truly a magical place...love it!

Water Play!!!

So I found some really cute ideas for some water play and the kids loved it!  The stuff we already had was the water table, pool, and spray bottles.  I was so tired of water guns being so hard for the kids to re-load and then squirting one time, then empty...ugh!  I do not have the site reference (oops!), but I found where someone made an aquarium out of Tupperware and an under-bed storage container, colored ice cubes, and ribbon frozen into a bowl of water!  The idea here was to "paint" with the ice cubes and watch the big block melt and get the ribbons:).  We invited some friends over and it was a great day!

"HOLMESchool Happenings/Summer Fun

I'm too excited about about all of the things we are doing/going to do this summer!  We have already gone to different parks, libraries, and taken several trips to the sprayground.  Summer is SO fun!

Here are some things we've been up to in the pre-school department...

 Sensory Play/Coloring pasta

Filling our sensory buckets a little more

 Making igloos

 Fixing/finishing Singin' Diva's Spidey blanket and pillow

I made this matching activity to go with "Wocket in my Pocket" by Dr. Seuss.  I have been doing so much research on homeschool and been inspired by the creativity of the moms and dads I read about.  So I decided it was time for me to put my creative mind to work!  Each girl has their own "wocket" (no judgement people...he's REAL homemade...ha!) and matching fabric rectangles to match to the pockets.  I LOVE it and I know they will:).

...and painting!

If I'm being honest, I have been anti-painting at home.  When I think of the mess I cringe, BUT no more!  Dancin' Diva painted "brilliant" (her words) paintings for at least 45 minutes and painted again today while Daddy slept.  You see the sticker-filled easel above?  It's now a lovely shade of grey because of Daddy's little nap...ha! 

Next on our summer bucket list:

1.  Colored ice cube painting

2.  Spray bottle water play

3.  Chuck E. Cheese

4.  Bounce U (thank you summer reading program for the free passes!)

We hope you're having a fun-filled summer too!

P.S.  Lil' Bit just decided to walk across the room last night, but she hasn't done it since:(.  We'll keep practicing.