Moments to Remember From the Week of June 3, 2012

School has been just about non-existent as I try to clean and get organized for next year. However, this week I wanted to share a little about Ants and Gardens.

We got the girls an Ant Farm for Christmas and finally got around to ordering the ants. Daddy was as excited or more excited than the girls to get this set up yesterday.

Adding the sand in the channel.

Sitting in the window to allow the sun to help evaporate the water that was added to dampen and harden the sand. The red sticks are tunnel starters.

 Adding water to the sand on the top "island."

 Adding the ants.

 Another thing we finally got around to was getting the garden ready for planting. 

My spoons are now the girls' trowels. Grrr.

One/Orange

Monday we focused on the number one.  As I wanted to do something with insects, we started ants.  I am hoping to find some anthills, though the heavy rain yesterday may make that an impossible task.  We made a picnic ant craft to go with the book I am hoping to get out of the library.

(I cut a piece of green construction paper in half for the grass,

and the girls snipped a fringe,

and a 4x4 piece of copy paper.  I marked off 1 inch lines

 and drew circles where they were to glue on the 1 inch squares)

Only one ant came to the picnic because we are focusing on the number 1.

We added one egg to our egg carton poster.

The girls had a themed lunch.  Ants on a stick (peanut butter toast with raisins) and one beet and one slice of cheese.

They were told if they wanted more they could ask for it, one piece at a time.  I only had one taker on this offer.  Amelia did have more of everything.  Then for dessert I found a recipe at Step BY Step Childcare site after I Googled ant crafts.  The girls made Ants in the Sand for dessert.  I gave them 1 graham cracker which they placed in a plastic zippy bag, after breaking it up.  Then they crushed it by alternating between pressing with their hands and  a rolling pin on the plastic bag.

We poured the crumbs into cups and added mini chocolate chips.

They ate it with a spoon, yummy!

We also made our Number 1 book (similar to the zero book).  The difference was, we were able to have extra pages on which we glued one picture.  I focused on things that naturally come in the quantity of "one." (sun, moon, mouth, nose)

Today we played a game.  I stood in the living room and told the girls they needed to follow my directions.  I asked them to bring me certain objects, one at a time.  I said, "Tabitha, please bring mommy one block.  Amelia please bring me one doll."  Then when they brought me the requested object I asked for another from each of them.  We laid them out on the couch and took a picture.  Made a great activity for listening and following directions and learning the quantity of  "one."

The girls colored the pictures for their orange collage, but we will finish the collages next week as we are continuing to focus on orange next week.

Just a reminder: my linky is still open for Words of Wisdom Wednesday.  To see the description follow this link (it is at the bottom of the post).  The question asked was: How do we get dressed?  If you received an answer from your child, post about it and then I invite you to link up at this Wednesday's post.  

This weeks Words of Wisdom Wednesday question for you to pose to your little ones is:

How do you think we drive?

I am looking forward to seeing your children's answers.

(this is the question that we will be answering in next week's post)

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

Surprising nature discovery

I have mentioned how I enjoy checking out nature with the girls.  There is just something so awesome about God's creation that seems to fascinate me, even though bugs still gross me out.  At times I get so excited, and I really can't explain it, when I discover something new, or see something start to grow.  It just stirs something up in me and I need to share it with the girls and the rest of the family.  That is one reason I enjoy trying to grow a garden.  The joy and awe when I see the evidence of new life sprouting from the earth from what seemed to be a dead seed is such a witness of God's amazing creativeness and power.

Today's discovery was just as awesome and quite unexpected.

If you are not sure what this is, here is hint: What critters dig complex networks of tunnels underground, carrying the dirt up to the top and make hills.  If you said ants you are correct.  These ant hills were discovered in a surprising place by my son this afternoon.  

He moved the basketball hoop and they were underneath!

It had been sitting in the same spot for over a year.  We were shocked to see the paths the ants had made on the surface of the ground. 

The ants didn't appreciate being disturbed.

We took the girls out to see the ant world when they woke up

We used a stick to try to cut the hill in half.  There were no ants in the two mounds themselves, but we were able to view a few ants scurrying around as we poked and prodded.  Poor ants...

Oh, why didn't we notice this when we were doing U lessons.  Oh well, it was still really interesting and now we are tempted to get an ant farm.

(Cool, I just noticed I can click on the pictures and they are able to be viewed larger.  I have seen this on other people's blogs, but mine weren't doing that.  If you can click on these pictures you can get a much better look at the details)

The "Aa" Lessons

We did our Aa lessons last week, even Amelia had fun. We are just reviewing right now. We had done letters A-L from January '09 through June '09, but we sort of took a break over the summer. Originally the lessons for each letter were spread out over a one to two week period. We did a lot more than just the art projects. We read books and poems suggested at the letteroftheweek.com website. We made a poster to hang up the letter of the week and printed out 6 pictures per letter. 2 copies each. One of the copies were for the poster (I used velcro to stick everything on), the other were for flashcards. Picture on one side, word on the other. We also tried to incorporate some classical music if a composer was available for the letter/sound. The art projects I came up with were of my own creation, not suggested by the letter of the week website.

Anyway, while we review Aa-Ll we will look over the word cards, read the poem if I had one and do one or two art projects. So, now on to Aa.

The girls are very fascinated by the ant hills we have in our parking spots. So for Aa I cut an ant hill out of brown paper, glued it to green paper (for grass) and used black paint for ants. The girls used their index fingers (with mom's help) to count 3 body parts for each ant. As you will see I like to incorporate counting whenever I can.

While we reviewed our word cards we also learned the signs for each word. Here is the list of words I chose to use for Aa: ant, astronaut, acrobat, alligator, ambulance and apple. I sounded out the word while running my finger under the letters. Then we looked at the picture and made the signs. I layed the cards out on the table picture side up. Then as I silently made the signs Tabitha found the correct card.