Last week of March

After a long winter, the spring finally came, we had the most crazy weather with hot sun and snow storm in the same week, now it is warm again, we'll see if it lasts...But first leaves appeared almost overnight, such a delight!

What have we been up to this last week of March? Let's see...

Monday: We repeated what we know about Italy, D. read a Magic Tree House book on the subject
We also learned about one point perspective using this helpful lesson from smArt class blog.

Tuesday: D. is currently raising shrimp for his science class at co-op and he's very excited to see how they will turn out. Kids received a microscope as a present from my sister and of course attempted to look at shrimp- alas, too small to see properly still, we did compare leaves and algae meant for shrimp food though, successfully. Kids were fascinated by the difference in texture.

Wednesday: The nature is waking up, we decided to repeat what we knew about plants' life cycle (new info for C. since she's old enough now to understand these things better). We read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and planted a couple of seeds in egg cartons. Will they grow?

Thursday:We read up on endangered animals and watched Chipanzee movie from Disneynature. The movie was very sweet and interesting too. We did "finish the picture" art journal page, inspired by art projects for kids.

We also did a little Japanese language lesson (last two years' studies inspired us both to try and master it), which D. absolutely loved, he studies hiragana using workbook found here.

Friday was more or less uneventful, D. practiced his piano, he's preparing for a small recital and his special challenge is to play ensemble with his friend for the first time.

Saturday: We went to Barnes and Noble for the egg hunt, when we get home we decided to keep it artsy and made a decoration for our table. Russian Easter is still pretty far away  so we might do something else as it approaches.
Our first project was to paint blown-out eggs, inspired by a lovely post here. So we blew out three eggs, got our acrylic paints out and set to work. We had lots of fun, D. stuck to "Starry night" theme, C. painted pink and orange background and I messed around with putting spots in warm colors. The outcome seems to be pleasant enough.

C. also did some stamping with white acrylic paint over green construction paper to create a meadow for origami bunnies that we made. Instructions for these bunnies are extremely simple,  D. had lots of  fun folding.

We hung our eggs on some branches we cut off of the tree in front of our house.

Sunday: Today was calm, kids played a lot by themselves, read some, hanged out with grandparents...Taking a deep breath for a new week


Our reading highlights of the month are up at Our Bookshelf Blog, please stop by and check it out :)

Our May at a glance

We had and incredibly busy May, finishing 1st grade, sorting various troubles at home etc. Nevertheless we had fun too. Here are our activities at a glance: We made candles using kit by Shure. Nice, calming activity, although there was some struggle for who gets to hold the blow dryer to warm the wax:

We learned about Japan

We visited giraffes:

Created pinball machine for marbles (Thanks to my amazing friend for hosting this activity)

We started our Ancient Greece unit, D. is absolutely mad for myths and heroes. His passion may be best seen in his M.O.C. -Minotaurs'  labyrinth:

We read a lot, check out our May round up post for reading at my book blog.

We made another summer-y window display

We planted a container garden, our caterpillars from Insect Lore have arrived and now we are eagerly awaiting their transformation.


Looking forward for fun June!

Creative writing- games that help.

D. is now fully comfortable with putting his ideas on paper. However, sometimes it's hard to find something to write about. I usually ask him to write 3-5 sentences per day. I ask that sentences are connected to each other. We correct grammar and syntax mistakes after he is done. Now that his handwriting is much improved, I emphasize the importance of respecting the reader, be it his teacher, his little sister or even just himself. Mistakes are fine, sloppiness is not. Format of his writing doesn't matter -it can be a  list (his favorite one is to write a silly recipe for a cake), a letter, a story or a journal entry. There are a few games that we use when there is a writing block problem . First game is the simplest of all. It is called Silly Sentences and is made by one of my favorite publishing houses- DK Publishing.

 This is a very fun game and D. enjoys it very much. The puzzle that completes the sentence is self-correcting so this game is very useful for building grammar skills. The cards have to punched out before the first game which leaves us with a template frame to create own adjectives, nouns and so forth.

I was able to find this game for around $5 in my local TJ maxx, however there is a no-cost alternative (found here) that is great and can make a fun party game too.

Rory's story cubes I can never praise enough.

It is a fun game with endless possibilities. D. loves to roll the dice and connect pieces of the story one by one. There are 9 cubes and usually we roll 3 or 4 for one sentence. D.'s stories became rich with adjectives because adjective means rolling an extra dice :) Once again it is a great family game.

I am planning to make a no-cost addition to this game by gluing some images onto regular playing dice.


Bananagrams

Not so much for creative writing,but a great game that makes spelling exercises fun. We just build one giant crossword puzzle. It is also a great motivator to look new words up in the dictionary. Sometimes we pick a certain theme and create a crossword using words on this topic (for example farm animals or seasons etc.)
The no-cost option can be created out of card-board tiles, wooden squares or craft foam squares stamped with letters and protected with contact paper.

And last is the newest addition to our game chest -Dixit. 

How to play: One player describes a card (beautiful illustrations), other players find a card that can be described with the same sentence and secretly pass it to the active player. Cards are shuffled and everybody has to guess which card was original.

This game really makes you think. First time we played it was quite hard, but after we got a hang of it everyone started to come up with most interesting descriptions.
How we use it for our writing lessons: D. pick a card an composes a story about the illustration. Again the more exciting his story is, the higher the praise from grateful readers (aka his little sister, grandma):)
This game is quite pricey, but it can make a great birthday or Christmas gift.

Before we got it we used art postcards such as those I got from my postcrossing exchange  and those that were brought by grandma from abroad. Any (not well known) illustration found online will do too. (I saved some in my folder on Pinterest). For us I noticed that the less context the image has- the more interesting D.'s story is.


As I said before these games make fantastic holiday gifts that can be enjoyed by whole family for years to come :)

Week in review

Another week has gone by. It seemed to be a long one.
We finished cleaning up after a small renovation project in our home.
Monday: Went to the Museum of Nature and Science - they have fantastic Dinosaur expo now -complete with enormous T.rex skeleton and very realistic moving dino-robots and of course D. enjoyed Space section immensely.

Man on Mars in Space Odyssey expo

Also on Monday - Trick-or-treating  (C.'s first time too:)).

Clay class on Tuesday.
Preparing for D.'s first science fair (through our home option school) next week on Wednesday.
And the final highlight was a special treat yesterday- we saw  amazing "The Lion King" show in the Denver Center for the performing arts. Me and my husband saw this musical 7 years ago and wanted to see it again ever since. For D. it was first major theater experience. The show was absolutely spectacular- music, costumes, performance-there are no words to describe the beauty and excitement.

It was not a budget trip for us, but it was worth every penny.The show is targeted for kids 6 years and up (due to some scary special effects as it is stated in the brochure). C. stayed home with grandpa, which made me feel guilty at first, but later we all agreed it was a wise decision. I think for smaller kids it would be hard to sit through 3 hours of performance (it was hard even for D. and he was pretty tired after the show. The RTD train ride to the city was another special trip for D.- he hadn't been on public transportation since we left San Francisco (he wasn't even two then).
Today was a whole day in our co-op- what an amazing science teacher they have there! We are all very tired and ready to relax a bit during week-end.
Speaking of relaxation, lately I was surprised to find that even home schooled kids sometimes need help unwinding. As I've written before this year, 1st grade, is much harder for us, maybe because we are trying to continue with our pursuits in raising bi-lingual child, maybe because I also need to review my approach to organizing our days. Be as it may, D. is often really tired and wound up. I found this website that have some great advice on how to help a child to relax, I thought I'd share it here in case somebody needs it too.  Tree feet exercise and Turtle Walk were most helpful these past few days.

Summer check-in

Quick check-in, our summer is splendid so far. Lots of time outside, playing with friends, local library has some great programs this summer, so yeah, not much time for me left to blog.
As I've written before, I'm trying to maintain some kind of structure in our studies. I must confess it doesn't work quite as well as I hoped. For instance our "Native Americans" study had to be postponed because D. showed very little interest and just wanted to "rest" all the time. So rest it is. After a school year (even relaxed and easy one that we had) it is well deserved. There are only certain rules that I have in place: read whenever it is possible (don't have to ask twice- mama's boy will read anything he can get his hands on).
Our activities for rainy days  and quiet time are the following:
D. got interested in mazes again( he loves Maze Craze Series by Don Oliver) , as well as hidden pictures (this book is our favorite at the moment). He loves cross word puzzles  and word searches.This website allows you to make your own puzzles, it's just great.
He is really into board games lately: Our absolute favorite is : Enchanted Forest by Ravensburger. Mystery Garden is popular too. Rivers, Roads and Rails requires more patience, but total fun for the whole family.

So far, so good. I got my books for the first grade, gonna start planning soon. :)

Happy summer to friends and visitors!