School Time Week 36: The Conclusion of R: Rice and Rockets

This week we continued our letter R activities, when we had a chance that is.  The outdoors has been calling and we have had a hard time ignoring it.

Of course we started with our R muffin tin

We were able to make our rainbow rice, which I have wanted to do for a while and I figured this week would be perfect.
I actually followed the instructions I have for making colored noodles.  We dyed the noodles back in January of 2010. Here are the girls all ready to get to work.

We used the rice from our sensory tub.

It was very simple.  We placed 1 cup of rice in each bowl.

And added 1 tsp of rubbing alcohol and 5-7 drops of food coloring.  I have seen elsewhere that people of questioned the use of rubbing alcohol.  So, of course I had to experiment.  I tried coloring one bowlful with out the alcohol and it didn't mix in properly.  I have also seen a variation where people have used vinegar in the place of the rubbing alcohol. I actually experimented with that last January and found that the alcohol helped the color penetrate the noodles more fully for a brighter color and left them less brittle.  I shared about this in the above linked post, but here is the picture of the noodles so you can compare

                                 

Anyway, then the girls stirred the color in.  I actually found it coated better if I combined the alcohol with the food coloring and then poured it in the rice.  And you have to stir quite vigorously to get a decent coating too.

We then left it outside in the nice hot sun to dry thoroughly.  

Definitely looks better after drying.

It wasn't until a couple of days later that we got to use the rice.

We made our "tactile" r's.

Then we dumped the colored rice into the sensory bin.

I even let Hannah play in it.  She has been playing it the sensory rice tub with out permission for a while.  She loves to hear the rice as she spills it onto the floor.

On this day she enjoyed transferring it to the container and then...the floor (sigh).

Should have gotten a shot of the floor. Oh well.

Then I found the instructions for making a rocket in the book Big Book of Phonics For Whole Language.

While Amelia traced the letters USA and decorated her rocket body...

Tabitha cut out her "exhaust flames" and then got creative.

Then Tabitha decorated her rocket

While Amelia cut out her strips.

I really am happy with Amelia's progress with cutting on the line.

 I stapled the rocket into a cylindrical shape and also stapled on the paper exhaust strips.

Boy was it tricky getting the cones to stick to the top.

We are going to work on some rhyming activities (that I found in the Phonics activities book I mentioned above) next week.  I have not planned anything for our next letter because we have VBS over at the church where we meet for Play Group all this next week.  

This week's Bible verses were:

Our R verse:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Exodus 20:8

Our verse from the Interlock curriculum

And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. Genesis 1:3

This week we focused on light compared to darkness.  We talked about how when God made light it chased away the darkness, because with light there is no darkness.  Even at night there is light from the moon and the stars.  We went in our downstairs bathroom (the one with no outside window) and after seeing how dark it was I lit a candle, then blew the candle out and turned on a flashlight.  We talked about people years ago not having electricity and needing to use candles or oil lamps and such to see.  Then we turned on our electric lights.

We also spoke a bit about opposites.

Tiny Tot Time:

She loves finding paper and writing utensils to scribble with.

She decided it would be fun to hang on the table

She loves playing with the legos, though she really can't build with them yet.

I just thought it was so cute the way they all gathered together.

Amelia's constructions

Tabitha's staircase

A bit of a better shot of the stairs.

Hannah was having a blast putting the baby doll in the stroller and pulling it along with her.  She took it to the kitchen and started taking food out of the cupboard.  I said she was shopping.

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School Time Week 35: The Start of Rr

Well, this week didn't go entirely as planned.  The girls were not interested in the new curriculum at all.  We did have our muffin tin on Monday of course.  I went with a patriotic tin:

The girls also colored their R pictures.  This week's words are:

rabbit, Rosie the Robot, rat, radish, raccoon and rocket.  I realize you can't really see the R pictures in the following shot.  I actually wanted to share how much Amelia's cutting skills have improved.  She cut this out all by herself.  

I did cut them a little smaller so they would fit on the R though.  Unfortunately I only have a picture of Tabitha's:

The girls spent a lot of time coloring this week.  Mommy spent a lot of time rethinking her plan, trying to decide if the curriculum is going to "work."  All in all there were a lot of distractions this week, so I have at least decided to give it another try.  The girls really did enjoy it last week.  

I thought they did a nice job working on rainbows this week.  I actually worked on this one with Tabitha:

Tabitha wanted me to draw some fairies, then she tried one.  And for some reason she was making lots of bathrooms for them to use.  

Then a storm came along.

I didn't get any details from Amelia:

One day Tabitha planned the lesson and wanted us "girls" to color a picture.  For the life of me I can't remember if it was supposed to be a church or a castle.

The girls decided to have a box boat race (race conveniently starts with r).  They started in the kitchen and went clear through to the living room.  Of course I didn't get a picture of the actual race and Amelia didn't want to be in the picture.

We spent a lot of time with daddy this week. On Monday we had a cookout over at the park. We got to sit at the new picnic tables.

And daddy came with us to play group:

More fun at the park (we are over there every evening after dinner when it is not raining):

Tabitha sat in the stroller and I set Hannah down on her lap for a short stroll from one swing set to the other.

Then the girls found something to follow:

Can you see the tiny toad?

And they had some fun watering the garden

While we didn't get much school work done, we did get a lot of learning done.  In fact today we went grocery shopping and Tabitha was asking what everything was in the produce section and I was asked to weigh a bunch of fruits and vegetables.

I did read some R books this week too.

Our Sesame Street R book is titled Ernie's Riddle

Ernie asks Bert, who of course is busy reading, if he would like to guess a riddle.  Bert spends time guessing R items while Ernie gives him different clues.  When Bert guesses right he gets a  prize.  He gets to listen to Ernie sing "Row, row, row your boat."

I thought it was appropriate that the next book was also one big riddle.

Round Like a Ball! by Lisa Campbell Ernst. 

In this book we are trying to figure out what is round like a ball, beautiful, both wet and dry, hot and cold, surrounded by air, among many other attributes.  On each page there is a round hole cutout to show increasingly more of the final picture.  The answer is the earth and we are then told how important it is to take care of it.

Which lead us right into our next book

Recycle Every Day! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

In this story Minna is to be working on a poster about recycling for a school poster contest.  The winners' posters will be featured in a calender.  Each day of the week Minna's family learns a different way to recycle and take care of our Earth, from giving used clothes to a community clothing bank to using reusable containers instead of plastic wrap and lots of other ideas in between.  Each day she is asked if she knows what she is going to do for her poster and she replies that she is still thinking.  The reader has to wait to the very end to see if Minna's poster has been chosen for the calendar. We also get to see each of the other winning posters which give even more ideas on how to recycle.

As soon as we were done reading this book Tabitha wanted to make her own calendar.  She started coloring a page for each month and gluing a mini cupcake paper on each page, for some reason.

And then we had the children pick a toy to "recycle" and we took it to the thrift shop.  

Plus we are reading some books from the Sonlight P 3/4 curriculum  I really am enjoying the Harper Collins Treasury Picture Book Classics.

The book list for the P 3/4 has a lot of treasuries on it.  So far this is my favorite because each page in the book is one page from the original book.  If you have never seen some treasuries before you may not realize that some will include multiple pages on one page in order to fit lots of books in the treasury.  I also enjoy that there are activity suggestions after each story.  So far we have read Eric Carle's From Head to Toe several times.  We acted out dogs and cats and then we spent some time online finding out what different animals sound like.  I never knew what rhino's sounded like.  They are really cute.  Youtube is a great place to find animal videos and sounds.  The girls also requested A Baby Sister For Frances by Russell Hoban a couple of times. When Frances feels things are not quite great at home anymore with the new baby she runs away, to under the dining room table.  Pretending Frances can't hear them her parents remind each other of how much Frances means to them. And we read Pete's a Pizza by William Steig today.  When Pete is having  a bad day because he can't play ball because of the rain his dad pretends to make him into a pizza.  

I am looking forward to reading more of these selections.  I am probably going to write a list of all the other books in the other treasuries and just get the books out a few at a time.

Tiny Tot Time

Hannah loves going through the cupboard.  This time she found the plastic knives and started putting them in a empty (clean) juice container.  I believe it was in the recyclables bag.

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