Some real Ss lessons

Wow, I had a little more "get up and go" this week and we really did get some quite a bit accomplished. My mornings are still shot most of the time, but we do lesson time after dinner. In the morning, it takes me forever to eat breakfast and then after I finish it takes me a while to feel human. Gotta get girls dressed and hair done. Sometimes I am guilty of wanting to check my email or some blogs. Ooops. We do get some books read in the morning and sometimes our Raffi CD gets turned on for some "dancing." At times, I will let them watch an educational DVD. I also end up finishing up craft/project preparations in the morning. So, after nap the girls wake up, we have supper, daddy leaves for work and then we have our lesson time. Word cards, putting pictures on the poster, sign language, and crafts I have prepared, workbook and Montessori activities.

Here are a couple of pictures of the suns we made last week that I posted about here.

Amelia's: Tabitha's:

I had several ideas for crafts this week. I have seen posts about string painting and decided to try it. I did not get any pictures of the actual string painting process because I figured I should have my focus fully on the painting, I mean mess. Let's put it this way, the girls went straight upstairs for a bath and I don't think we will try string painting again until they are older. We were attempting to make spider webs, and they sort of look like what they were supposed to:

We attached spiders with thread and tape:

Then they glued on flies for the hungry spider:

We also made a sky book, different ways the sky might look at any given time. I came up with the words and layout before going to bed the one night. I spread this project out over a few days so the girls wouldn't be overwhelmed. I also thought it would be cool if they glued on the word "sky" on each page that needed it.

And here is the finished book:

We read some different S books this week, in addition to the ones from last week. We read "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" by Iza Trapani. This was a favorite of mine when the older kids were younger. This spider not only climbs up the water spout, but also up such things as the kitchen wall and the rocking chair. Very persistent spider actually, because even though she keeps getting knocked down, she keeps starting over to reach her goal. We also have a book on the sense of smell called "The Five Senses: Smell" by Rius, Parramon and Puig. (I found it at the thrift shop and I sure wish the books on the other senses had been with it). We played a game, once again a spur of the moment idea, incorporating the sense of smell. I took old baby juice bottles (that have been being used as sound/shake canisters) and saturated cotton balls with different scents.

I made a chart of sorts, and even as I was making it I wasn't sure how the game would be played. I now know I need to print out some new ones to "laminate" and design some sort of marker pieces so we don't have to throw them out after one time.

In the game, we took turns opening a bottle, identifying the scent, marking it on the chart and replacing the bottle, then mixing them up again. The object is to be the first person to mark all 5 scents before filling up a column of one scent which would disqualify you. We each have our own chart. I wanted to make some markers that were shaped like a nose, but as I couldn't figure out how to draw a nose, or find a decent one online we just marked it with x's. The scents I used were: lemon, peppermint, garlic, coffee and beef. The beef was made from broth and didn't work out really well after all, too faint and now it just smells nasty. So, I am looking for an alternative scent.

We also planted our green pepper seeds. I figure that went well with the book "The Carrot Seed" by Ruth Krauss that I found on our shelf.

Here are the seedlings from last year, though they never did amount to anything:

And the full view of our indoor garden:

Tabitha has always enjoyed planting. Last year was the first year we attempted a real garden (notice I said "attempted"). The year before that she helped plant seeds in tubs on the porch and in the tire by the fence. Here, I found some pictures:

She was 16 months old.

And here she is working in Steven's "circle garden":

Okay, enough tangents. Sorry.

One more S project to show you. Last night we "made" spaghetti for the S books:

The girls glued on the "bowls" and then I put a nice big glob of white glue on the bowl for the girls to glue the yarn spaghetti to:

Then they painted red sauce onto the spaghetti:

To see what others are doing with their preschoolers and toddlers, head on over to Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1.