March 11-17, 2013

This week, we hosted Early Learning Circle at our house. We had circle time in my living room, our lesson in the school room and played outside afterwords.

Rainbow Girl thought it was pretty neat to have all of those friends over at our house- and to have a lesson taught by someone else in our school room. 

Have I mentioned how excited I am for the growing season to begin? We love gardening around here. It is always magical to plant seeds, care for them, watch them grow, and eat the results. For the plants that need to be started early, we plant them together and put them in my mom's greenhouse. When planting in the ground time comes, my mom has a garden, and I have a large garden at my house. 

We did not do too much for St. Patrick's day this year. Of course, we read a book by Gail Gibbons. St. Patrick's Day is a lovely educational book. As I've said before, Gibbons is a wonderful author for this age, and likely for the age range of 5-10 year olds. 

I did, however, have a set of printables that I had laminated last St. Patrick's Day for us to use. There is prewriting practice, puzzles, matching, shadow matching, and vocabulary. The kid's had a lof of fun doing the activities a few times this week.

We are enjoying the warmer weather! My babes thrive outside, as I'm sure most children do, and they are so much happier just running around under the sun. They are looking forward to water/mud play. That is a few weeks/months off likely...but you never know with the weather around here.

Rainbow Girl loves our morning verse. (From Oak Meadow First Grade) We do not do it as often as I'd like, but when we do, we light our candles and it is lovely and it really sets the tone for our lesson. 

Upon the Earth, I stand upright.

I reach my arms up to the light.

My feet, Earthbound remain.

Hands and feet, together again.

The sky above, the Earth below, 

and here in the center, am I.

We do a series of stretching up to the sky and then reaching down to our toes while reciting.

Our favorite movement poem is Little Miss Muffet. We recite the poem together while pretending to do all of the lines. After one or two poems, we recite our closing verse (Also from Oak Meadow First Grade), also with movement.

I can turn myself and turn myself, 

or curl up when I will.

I can stand on tip-toe high,

or hold myself quite still.

Then we blow out the candle and have our lesson.

Rainbow Girl has been very interested in learning about cardinal directions. She is always reading the signs on the road and letting me know which direction we are going. "Will we go north or south on the highway today?"

I decided to take that interest a step further, and I purchased her a compass. We talked about the directions, and how they change based on where you face. She was assuming that they stayed the same. That left was west, right was east, and so on. She was intrigued with this new fact and walked around the house, inside and out, telling me the direction we were heading. 

When we were doing our lesson inside, she sat herself at the table so that when drawing her compass, it would be facing the proper direction. She has very much enjoyed using the block crayons used in early learning circle, and chose to use them for this lesson. She made a frame around her paper, just like in early learning circle, and instructed me to do the same on the chalkboard. I drew my compass, she did the same, then we colored in each section of the compass a different color. 

We had lunch, and I decided to reference my Oak Meadow First Grade book, which, to be honest, has taken a backseat to just going with the flow. I read a few weeks of lessons, and they were all things that we had done to some extent or another! Even learning the cardinal signs. It did give me an idea of things to do next though. One of the lessons stuck out to me as something I knew Rainbow Girl would enjoy, and she really did. 

Learning the three main types of clouds. 

Once again, I wrote out the words on the board and she did her own at the table. We chose to use pencils and chalk for this project.

While we talked clouds, Sugar Bear was working on math with the Unifix cubes.

Rainbow Girl's completed cloud page.

Sugar Bear experimenting with gravity.

The rest of the day consisted of only ideas from Rainbow Girl. First, she chose to draw the compass on the board.

She then decided that we should do a cloud craft together. I helped by cutting out different clouds to be glued down on their sky papers.

Aaaaaaaagain with the blocks. :)

Rainbow Girl then wanted to dance like a cloud in the sky. Sometimes she held a few of the cut out clouds. What a beautiful cloud dance it was. 

Once again.

Then my dad came over for a brief visit.

This day was one of those wonderful days that makes the homeschooling mama remember why she chose this path. A day of peace, love, and learning. It was wonderful. Don't get me wrong, we have wonderful, inspiring moments frequently, but this day in particular- it was ALL day! 

I'd like to introduce you to Robert the squirrel. Rainbow Girl named him, and Sugar Bear loves him. Robert is a smart (ass) squirrel who won't take crap from anyone. He wants the bird seed. He knows there is glass between him and I, and therefore is not afraid when I try to scare him off. However, he is cute, fluffy, and lets me take pictures of him. He is kind, and does not take more than a small bit of seed at a time, and leaves to give the birds a turn. Ok Robert, you win.

The day before St. Patrick's day, we took a trip to the mountains to visit one of our favorite wineries. The kids love the big rocks there and love to climb them. Don't let Sugar Bear's face fool you, he was having a super time, he just did not want his picture taken.

Rainbow Girl taking a closer look at a lady bug- counting it's spots and trying to identify it. 

It was a good week.