Our M lessons continue

Since the last time I posted we have continued our M lessons. We did more measuring. This time we measured dry beans with the measuring cups. I tried to show them how we needed to fill the 1/2 cup 2 times to fill the 1 cup and so forth. Not sure if anything stuck with them or not, but the foundation will be there. We do talk about measurements and fractions while we bake too. So there was plenty of that going on right before Christmas. Here are some pictures of them playing in the beans:

We also read "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown. I took an idea out of the Dec/Jan issue of The Mailbox magazine that I borrowed from the library. It is actually a scaled down version as the magazine instructions required a full size cupcake paper for the moon and I only had mini ones. So I cut the paper in half. We used star stickers instead of glitter for the stars. One, it wasn't as messy, two, we have no glitter. I haven't had glitter in the house for years. The girls both did a great job gluing the window frame in place. My one addition to make this unique was to add curtains. I just happened to have old scraps of material in my craft tub, sooooo...

Staying on the moon theme, and once again trying to get some science in, we made "Phases of the Moon" books. I found templates at the DLTK website, the same website I get my letter templates from. I didn't use their idea to paint the moon as I didn't want a mess. After I cut out the moon phases (cutting two each for each girl so they could do the waxing and waning of the moon) I let them color them with yellow and gray crayons to give the moon a look of texture. We also used a black circle for the new moon. Then we glued them to black paper (I cut the construction paper in half) and I stapled them together after making sure I had the phases in the correct order.

On the way to church for our Christmas Eve Candle Light service, Tabitha was looking out the car window and told us she saw the crescent moon. Granted it was closer to the first quarter, but I thought that was pretty good. I hope to be able to take the girls outside when the weather is warmer and continue our lesson on the moon. Figure we can take pictures of each phase or glue little squares of paper, with the moon phases drawn on them, on the calendar.

Another idea I got out of The Mailbox magazine was for "If You Give a Moose a Muffin." We had been reading this book and I decided the craft for in their M alphabet book could be this muffin idea I saw in the magazine. They had a pattern for the muffin, which I had to draw free hand anyhow because the size of their muffin wouldn't fit in our book. Then I had to cut out blue dots for blueberries as we had no blue paint to make the blueberry swirl ones that were in the magazine. I used a brown lunch bag to cut the muffin out of because I can not find brown construction paper anywhere. (Hey, if anyone knows where to find some could you please share, none of the packs I see have brown in them, which makes no sense to me as brown is a needed color.)