Water forms and Cloud dough

Madeline's interest in geography has picked back up in the last few weeks.  She's recently been learning about landforms and bodies of water and flying through her workbook again.  She'll do extra pages for the fun of it during her rest time.  She also skipped ahead and correctly completed the Review pages, even though we are only halfway through this section.

Today we were hands on with making our own water forms.  We used a few large rocks in a small tub partly filled with blue water.  I originally intended to use a small bag of river rock, but we would have had to dump out too much of the water in order to cover all of the small rocks.  Travis ended up using them in his tub of cloud dough instead. We'll be doing this activity again after we collect a few larger rocks.   It was a bit more of a challenge for Madeline than I anticipated it would be and she did ask for help in configuring some of the water forms.  Overall, I think she appreciated the challenge.

I originally saw this idea on another blog, but seem to have deleted the bookmark somehow.  I apologize for not giving credit where credit is due.

 Lake

Isthmus

Strait

Archipelago
(She also made an island, but it looked very similar to this.)

Cape

Bay

Silly Girl

Gulf

Peninsula

 

Eventually, Travis came over to check out what his big sister was up to.  It was interesting to see the oil from the cloud dough on his hands mix with the water.  This lead to some discussion on oil spills.

Switching activities.

Travis loved dropping the rocks into the bin to watch the splash.

 Both kids had a good time with the rock and cloud dough mixture. If you've never tried cloud dough before and you have little kids around, I really recommend it!   It just takes 4 cups of flour mixed with 1/2 cup baby oil or canola oil.  I've made it both way and prefer the baby oil.  This is a really messy activity and it is best to take it outside, especially because kids like to throw it.  At least my kids do.  Also, you will need to spray off the mess with the hose when they (or you) are finished playing or it will harden in the sunshine, making it more difficult to clean later.  If you use it inside and there is a gigantic mess on the floor, take it from me and do NOT vacuum it up.  You will clog your machine.

Don't let the above precautions prevent you from making this for the kids.  This stuff is so much fun and can be played with in so many ways.

You're welcome.

Snake in the bush

I never thought I'd say this.... but I really sort-of like the snake that lives in the bush out front.  I'm usually not a fan of snakes at all, but this guy makes my kids really happy, and he is outside.  NOT inside. And he is harmless.  So I like him.  He unknowingly entertains the kids and can stop a tantrum or argument in the blink of an eye.  All Jake or I have to say is, "Is the snake in the bush?"  Both kids immediately stop what they are doing and run to look out the window.  They will stare for a few minutes inspecting for any sign of a moving branch if the snake is not nestled in his little nest.  My mother-in-law made me feel a bit better about having him around by saying that he is here because there is some sort of food source and that we'd rather have the snake than the food source.  She is right.  

Now, even though I've somewhat admitted to liking this snake, I've still handed the bush trimming duties over to Jake.  I only like to look at the snake through the window, not potentially chopping it in half with trimming shears.  Good thing my husband is not freaked out by them so he can show the kids a thing or two.

Digestive stuff

Today Maddie told me that she'd like to do more science stuff, so more science stuff we'll do.  We're still working on the human body and the focus at the moment is the digestive system.  We read a couple books from the library and did the experiments that were in the books.

Since digestion begins in the mouth as you break up food with your teeth, our first experiment involved chewing food and spitting it out to examine it.  Madeline first chewed a bite of carrot 10 times, then spit it out.  The next piece of carrot was chewed up around 30 times... it was hard to count since she was giggling so much.  Lovely photo though, no?  Even though this was supposed to show that the longer you chew food, the smaller the pieces will be,  we didn't really notice a whole big difference.  Could be that the first carrot stick was cut in half and the next was a whole one.  Who knows.


The next thing we did was collect little bits of food that could typically be eaten for lunch or as a snack.  We grabbed the leftover crust from a pb+honey sandwich, some noodles from last nights dinner, a piece of watermelon, cantaloupe, and two cherry tomatoes. We also needed a little bit of milk to wash it all down.  Madeline added all of the ingredients into a ziploc bag and then squeezed it all together to symbolize the stomach mashing up food to turn it into a liquid mixture.  She really liked this and also thought it was a little bit gross.

Here she is adding the ingredients:

..... and mashing it all up.

These are the books we read.  I really like the Paul Showers books and we usually end up doing the experiments that they suggest.

Tomorrow we will add some digestive materials to our skeleton and do the labs included in RSO.

Back in our groove

After taking it relatively easy for the last 2 weeks, we are back on track and going strong.  It's amazing what a little break time can do.  We started this morning off watching the kids favorite cartoon, My Little Pony, after breakfast while mommy got caffeinated.  Then we headed upstairs to get reading and geography done before meeting up with friends at the park.

Travis was very occupied with his new indoor mini-sandbox.  I've seen these at the Parent-Teacher store and always thought they were pretty cool, but was worried about having sand all over the place. I saw this one at a neighbors yard sale over the weekend and couldn't pass up the $2 price. What's makes it even more awesome is that I also got a slightly larger scrapbook container (the kind with the attatched lid and snaps shut) in which I can store the sandbox and hopefully catch most of the sand spills for only $0.25.  I can already tell that these combined will be the best $2.25 I've ever spent. 

Maddie knew I was taking pictures of Travis playing with the sandbox and wanted me to take her picture of her coloring her geography page.

 The next activity Travis played with was a lacing card.  It's cute to watch him concentrate on his fine motor skills.  I'm actually a little surprised he doesn't have his tongue sticking out!

After finishing a couple subjects in the morning, we met some friends at the park. Travis walk/rode his tricycle to meet up with his friend on her tricycle.   

They sat there and chatted for a few minutes before cruising over to the skate park.  It's always perfect timing to play there right after it rains because no skaters skate then.

Madeline loves her scooter!  She's really improved on it this spring and even scooted the entire time on our 1.5 mile walk the other day. 

Here is their friend, Kennedy, happily jumping in a puddle to make more water footprints on the slope.

Action shot of Miss Maddie jumping over the slope!

We eventually made it over to the park area and encountered the boldest squirrel I have ever seen.  After being chased around by Travis for a little bit, the squirrel decided to come down the tree and right over to Jackson.  He even came right up and touched Jackson's shoe!

It's a blurry shot, but this is the squirrel running away with a graham cracker that he snatched out of our bag on the picnic table.  Reagan  looked pretty stunned as the squirrel was attempting his thievery.  It was pretty amusing and all the kids got a kick out of it.

After the park and 'rest time' for the kids, we were able to finish up with history, math, and spelling.  Maddie is usually pretty concerned with what Travis is doing, so we take a break or go outside and play after each subject or two so she's not sitting in the same spot for long.... but mostly so she can check on him and monitor which toys he's playing with.  Ah, the flexibility!

Happy Mother's Day

While I was sleeping in on Mother's Day morning, Madeline and Travis were busy painting me special pictures.  There is nothing quite like waking up refreshed to handmade cards and paintings delivered from my little people wearing big proud grins.  Here is the card Madeline made me:

She was incredibly pleased with how perfectly she drew the heart.

Then she painted a picture of the 4 of us on a walk.  If I remember correctly, Travis is on the left, then Jake, me, and Madeline riding her scooter.  She painted a heart to represent love and a tree off to the right.

She helped Travis with his painting by outlining a race car and letting him paint a little bit.

Needless to say, these put a perma-grin on my face and I certainly feel like the luckiest mom.  Hope the rest of you had an equally delightful day!

Rapunzel does math

Yesterday was our first day officially working in the school room and it was fantastic!  I still have some more organizing and decorating to do, but at least it is functional.  Travis played happily and Madeline was able to remain more focused and get more things done.  No one asked for cartoons and they were overall pretty excited to be upstairs.  I love that we can all spend time up there without being restricted to a particular someone's room.  They both share both rooms so it's no longer a case of, "I don't want him playing in my room!"  She had to get over that pretty quick.

The kids were really into their new United States poster.  They sat there for about 15 minutes looking at and talking about it.  Madeline kept asking Travis to find things on the map and she showed him her favorite states.  It is way cooler than our old map, obviously!

Although it was never really an issue getting work done when we didn't have a separate room,  it just seems so much easier now!  Yesterday and today have gone by so smoothly.  By looking at the picture below, I have her workboxes set up to the right of the table, so it's very convenient to get the next subject or put away what has already been done. I just need to remember that the ceiling slopes and to watch it when I stand up from that seat.  Ouch. 

Here she is coloring addition to 10 problems to find the hidden picture.  Sorry for the not so great pictures... the flash was acting funny.  Probably needs new batteries like everything else in our house does.

Completed!  It's a turtle.  We'll be reviewing addition numbers to 10 tomorrow, and then we start on subtraction.

 
We were able to catch up on work we didn't get finished last week.  With the one on one instruction, we can get so much done in so little time.

A tea party was definitely needed after all the hard work they were doing.  I love the matchbox cars on the plates with the cake.

After a busy morning, it's time for Rapunzel and her sidekick to dazzle the neighborhood for our walk!