Sweetness and Light

Apples, Art & Carmel Apple Tea!!

We've been having kind of an Apple-y week, rather impromptu I might add, but nonetheless fun for all!! 

Here are some highlights:

At the beginning of the week we/ watched a lovely video of Scholastics Johnny Appleseed by Weston Woods Productions, it's based on the poem by Reeve Lindbergh and paintings by Kathy Jakobsen.

We learned about the Lifecycle of the Apple (these are FREE, check 'em out)

Apple Stamping Art, tons of fun and OH THE MESS!!  We didn't do the lovely bags this year, but we're keeping them in mind for next year, thanks Dawn!!

Sean-Paul gingerly doing his stamping...(Okay, I KNOW the paint smock is still a TAD too large, but it's SO cute on him, even crammed in his high chair for paint control measures...allrighty back to the pictures)!

Matthias busy at work (hmm, what's with the hat on indoors? don't ask...)

Seamus having fun with his stamping!  And his beautiful apple tree painting below was inspired by the above mentioned video :)

And the best part our Carmel Apple Tea!!

First you start with two bags of carmel! Let the unwrapping begin...

And then you have this delectable treat!!!

It WAS yummy, let Sean-Paul give you the best part:

Just a little bit of the Sweetness for you!!! Blessings, and please keep all those affected by the Southern California fires in your prayers, they need us deeply right now!! St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle...Pray for us!

Baskets of Discovery!

There are many ways to *Rabbit Trail* with a Montessori Education and I have decided to call our learning in various areas Baskets of Discovery.  For our picture books I have already made a new side bar labeled Baskets of Sweetness because for us, that's what reading lovely picture books is all about, sweetly snuggling in for a good time of listening and enjoyment. 

Right now I have four Baskets of Discovery set up for the children to explore at their leisure.  Some may call this Strewing, and indeed it is certainly in that vain that I wanted to set up these baskets so my sweeties could make their choices based on their interests of the day or week! 

Today I presented our Dinosaur Basket of Discovery (pictured above) and at the same time introduced the Time Line of Life!  Everyone worked at their own level and picked an activity based on their desired interest level.  We all listened a great audio book called Brontosaurus and everyone chose to draw a picture (or a few).  Violet used our Time Line of Life Research Guide to delve deeper into discovering the Anatosaurus and wrote a beautiful narration based on her findings! (And this is from a little girl who has never wanted anything to do with dinosaurs :)  Here is her picture of Anatosaurus and Deinonychus:

Seamus worked with the Dinosaur Stamp and Sticker Kit  and then drew his picture of Ankylosaurus and labeled it by copying the Nomenclature label, he's very proud of his work and I am too :)

Matthias enjoyed looking at and reading our Mammoth Book of Dinosaurs and The Colossal Book of Dinosaurs which happens to have a *killer* dictionary in the back which we will be using extensively for expanding our Nomenclature and Definitions!! After much exploration of the books he chose to draw a picture of Triceratops!

While the older three were busily working I had some wonderful one-on-one time with Sean-Paul.  He wanted to read Dinosaurs Dinosaurs our favorite Byron Barton board book, then he worked on his Triple Stacking Shapes, then he asked for the Folding Activity.  Here is he is marveling at his marble shoot he built all by himself :)   He then asked me if he could go outside and play!!  You betcha!!

We had the best morning learning and discovering together, I really think they are going to enjoy our Baskets of Discovery, it's all part of the Sweetness for sure!

Please stay tuned for our other Baskets of Discovery which will include: 

• Butterflies,
• Rainforest
• and Shells!

Bunnies, Ducks, Eggs and Books!

 

Our Easter Basket is brimming over with great picture books all about Eggs, Bunnies, & Ducks.  This is in NO WAY an exhaustive list as it could take us a century to read ALL of the wonderful picture books dedicated to these topics, but here is a smattering that we'll be working through from now until the end of April.

In no particulare order:

The Country Bunny and The Little Golden Shoes
The Egg Book
The Ugly Duckling
I Am A Bunny
Make Way For Ducklings
The Story of Ping
The Runaway Bunny
If You Were My Bunny
Meet Peter Rabbit
The Complete Tales of Peter Rabbit
Rabbits and Raindrops
Daisy and the Egg
Daisy and the Beastie
Come Along Daisy
Go to Sleep Daisy
Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Sleep
Guess How Much I Love You
The Year at Maple Hill Farm
The Velveteen Rabbit

An additional book:  Rabbits, Squirrels and Chipmunks (Take Along Guide)  for Nature Study!!

We are hoping to explore many Rabbit Trails with these books and I will try and post interesting links and information that you might want to enjoy along with us.  For now, happy reading as we rejoice in this beautiful season of the year!

If I've missed one of your favorite must reads, please mention it in my comments below and I'll add it as an update!!  Thanks for visiting and May God Bless you in your day!

It's Been All About Fire Trucks and Rescue In the Preschool Learning Corner!!

We've been having all kinds of Fire and Rescue fun in the Preschool Learning Corner!!  This has been fairly impromptu as Seamus loves ALL kinds of Trucks, but he wanted to read more about Fire Trucks and Rescue Vehicles so we have gathered a nice list together and are doing some Fire and Rescue type activities!!  Come join us in the fun, here's what we've done:

Picture Books:

The Little Fire Engine, by Lois Lenski

Policeman Small, by Lois Lenski

Five Little Firemen, by Margaret Wise Brown

The Fire Cat, by Esther Averill

My First Truck Board Book, DK Publishing

I Love Trucks, by Philemon Sturges

My Big Machine Book, Funfax (DK Publishing)

Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go

Go, Go Trucks, by Price Stearn Sloan

Science and Social Studies:

We're looking at Things People Do (Usborne) and Finding Out About Everyday Things (also Usborne) to learn about a Firefighters role and how an engine works!

Crafts:

Seamus colored and cut out pieces of red and black construction paper to make his own fire truck and glued it on to a construction paper road zooming to a fire!

We'll be making flame and fire blow painting pictures next week and we've been having daily fire drills and learning how to Stop, Drop and Roll!  We're loving the music from Lois Lenski's Songs of Mr. Small, especially the Fireman Small ones! 

We picked out a great pattern at JoAnn fabrics today for a timely Firefighter's Costume for Seamus!  He cant wait for that red vinyl coat and faux boots!!  We'll practice getting into Firefighter clothing with a stop watch, that should be fun as well as entertaining!  I'm pretty sure the big kids will want to get in on that :)

Field Trip:

And last but not least, we'll have a visit to our neighborhood Fire Dept. for a little tour and talk with the Fire Persons available, that will be very exciting I'm sure! 

Thanks for visiting the Preschool Learning Corner and our Fire and Rescue Fun!

"Catch A Tiger By It's Tail"

Seamus's Pre-K Plan this year will include lots of Unit type studies or Rabbit Trails revolving mainly around great Picture Books.  However, we are embarking on a "Live" Rabbit Trail, or shall we say a Tiger Tale!  Tigers happen to be Seamus's current favorite mammal at our local Zoo and we thought Tigers would be a great animal trail to start out his year, so off we go!!

So far we have:

Visited the Zoo and observed the Tigers in their habitat (check)

Read some great Tiger books:

Tiger Rescue, by Dan Bortolotti

Lions and tigers and leopards: The big cats (Books for young explorers), by Jennifer C Urquhart

The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book, by Bob Hartman  Various TIGER tales******Rabbit and Tiger Save the World*****Rabbit and Tiger Go Fishing*****Tiger Gets Stuck*****Tiger and the Storm*****Tiger Eats a Monkey*****Tiger Tries to Cheat*****

Zoobooks Tigers

Planning to do this next week:

Watch a Tiger Photo Slideshow on Mommy's computer of our local Tigers in action (Well I was active anyway!)

Play with graphs using this book:  Tiger Math,  by Ann Whitehead Nagda, Cindy Bickel

Draw Pictures of Tigers

Discover other animals (mammals) that have stripes and compare them to Tigers

Find out what the stripes are good for??  Why Do Tigers Have Stripes (Usborne Starting Point Science)

Geography - Where do Tigers Live?  The Usborne Book of WILD PLACES:  Mountains, Jungles, & Deserts

LAPBOOK IN PROGRESS!!

Let me know if you have any of your own Tiger Tales!! 

POST UPDATE: I've added three new tiger picture books to my Rabbit Trail side bar, they are not to be missed! The Tiger Who Came to Tea, by Judith Kerr (Big thanks to Kathryn in the UK!) Close Your Eyes, by Kate Banks The Story of Little Babaji, by Helen Bannerman And this wonderfully detailed animal alphabet book: Animalia, by Graeme Base Enjoy!

Love of Books

If someone were to ask me what I love the most about Home Education, I would emphatically tell them, it's the books!  Hands down I (WE) love books!  Virtually everything we do has something to do with a book or several books.  As an example we are currently working on an Arctic Unit Study that is a spin off of a beautiful picture book called Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews.  The pictures are beautiful pointillist illustrations and we are using them as way to discover how different authors/illustrators use certain mediums of art to embelish their story (art study).

Another  example of how we use literature for learning is with what we term "go-along" books to compliment our unit.  In the book we're using, an Inuit girl goes under the ice shelf to walk on the bottom of the sea looking for mussels to collect for her family.  So a go-along book might be something to do with shellfish or crusatcean sea life or a book on tide pools.  Another could be a book as it relates to the moon and it's effect on tides.  The entire study and unit of learning is ALL based on information gained by reading books.  It's very simple and yet incredibly enjoyable as a way of gaining knowledge and information from literature. 

We consider this form of literature "living" and for us is the basis of our home education experience.  Charlotte Mason tells us that "books of a literary or living nature have the terseness and vividness proper to a literary work and we then put our dear children in touch with the mind of the author."

For us, literature fills our days with joy; the joy of learning something new through an adventure written for imaginative eyes to read or ears to hear.  Reading aloud with your children is just as important as their reading good literature themselves.  A good book can be appreciated by any age all at the same time -appreciating all forms of good literature can help a new reader develop into a very discerning advanced reader.  And by hearing good literature, little minds are filled with excellent ideas to grow on and look forward to reading for themselves as they get ready to read.  By hearing stories read aloud, listening skills are wired in. 

Living books can be used is all aspects of home education without the need for the dry textbook learning so common in institutionalized learning environments.  Even for History, Math, and Science we enjoy many living books that are an invaluable part of our knowledge base.  A book should not "talk down" to it's audience, it should merely give a peek at the personality of the author because the book has emotion.  That's usually what makes it living.  Anyone can learn facts from a book, but is it an adventure, does is stir the mind to want to learn more??

Karen Andreola puts it this way:  "Living books stir up the mind, warm-up the imagination and create curiosity in ways other books cannot." (A Charlotte Mason Companion) 

This pretty much sums it up for me, time to grab a book and go read with the kids!   

We're In Polar Bear Country

Since we're having a light week with our "special visitor" here, we thought we'd just do Polar Bears for the week.  Quite fitting since out my window it looks as if the Arctic has settled into our backyard!  We've found some wonderful books and here is a sampling:   They are all superb in their own right and any one of them are wonderful jumping off points for many rabbit trails! 
Also check my Family Read-Alouds in the left side bar for Joanne Ryder's White Bear Ice Bear, it's  out-of-print but worth the search if you can find one, ours is from the library! 

Artists Abound!

We are enjoying the beginning of our Artic/Antarctica unit and we started with a beautiful picture book by Jan Andrews, Very Last First Time (see Family Read-Alouds). The kids decided to draw their renditions of what they thought the bottom of the seabed would look like with the tide out.

From left, Seamus's (3 1/2) watercolor, top, Mathias's (7) & bottom Violet's (9) colored pencil drawings.