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 :)

the best season of all days 12,13,14 and 15

Busy days, fun with friends, awesome field trip, some crafts, learning about nature...

We talked some more about nature and made a bird feeder. We are still waiting for little guests to arrive, it's really warm outside so they aren't so hungry I guess, even a squirrel haven't visited for a few days.

We read "Who's Been Here" by Fran Hodgkins- a lovely book about our animal neighbors




We have a tradition- 10 days before Christmas we have little elves coming to our house, if children are especially kind to each other, they get small gifts from elves. D. made a special sock for little C. so elves can put some gifts for her. He already tried his hand in needle felting the other day when we made ornaments for the tree, this time it was his big project, he enjoyed it very much.

We read "The Twelve Days of Christmas" illustrated by Jan Brett



Yesterday was the most fun field trip with our co-op to The Little Shop of Physics in Fort Collins. D. had a great time trying all the experiments. They are having  an open house event in the end of February.

Today D. and I went for another roller skating lesson at Skate City, D. looooves these lessons.

We made a little pine cone elf to guard our tree and bookshelves. It was a bit challenging because pine cones that we found have tiny spikes on them, but it's a fun project. Inspired by this craft.

We read  Tiger's Adventures by Nick Butterworth- another favorite for my kids, especially little C. who's very much into tigers these days :)





My mom was in charge of yummies these past few days, tomorrow it's back to the oven I go, kids are begging for more cookies :)


We watched
While You Were Sleeping 

  

Science Sunday-The Planets

Last week we started to learn about Space. The first lesson- The Sun went quite well and D. were impatient to learn more.
Throughout the week we talked about what we already know and finally today we sat down and talked about different planets.
The Planets by Gail Gibbons was a great help. We read about half of it and decided to return to planets beyond Earth next week :)

We made felted model of Solar System mobile (something I was dying to do for a while now and,boy, was it a pain to put together as a mobile :D). There is this great tutorial, I, however, totally forgot to even look for a solar system kit, so we had to improvise. :D Initially it was planned as a wet-felted solar system, but since we have never wet-felted before it did not go quite as planned.
We used wool stuffing as a core for all planets (except for the smallest ones) and put colorful wool on top. D. wet-felted it all into balls in the sink and I added some needle felting after planets were semi-dry (we really wanted to hang the whole thing today :D). We attached it with some wire to a wicker wreath (no easy task I tell you) and voila! It's not to scale of course and Jupiter is almost upon the Earth now :D

Some extra stuff on topic of planets study :
Solar System at NASA
Solar System at Kids astronomy
Solar System 101 video

Solar System coloring book via A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling's great page with many links

Science Sunday- The Star named Sun + field trip

As much as I love doing science with kiddos, I must confess it is not my usual favorite subject to plan  (being a liberal arts major all my life (and being told by "kind" teachers that science is not my thing all my life)). However this year I'm thoroughly enjoying it. September and October were dedicated to animals in general, and Colorado animals in particular. The November and December are going to be all about Space.
We had a great start learning about the Sun and having most amazing field trip to the Fiske Planetarium and Sommers-Bausch Observatory in Boulder.
The trip was organized by our amazing co-op -we saw the show about Sun's influence on the Earth at the Planetarium and got an incredibly interesting observatory tour. It was a lot of information for us to process afterwards, but D. was absolutely charmed by being given a chance to look at the sun and two stars (all that is visible in the daylight) through the huge telescopes.

looking for Venus

I had no idea that there is such a great place not so far away from us and now I believe we will visit both planetarium and the observatory  quite often. The observatory has open house events which allow general public to do some stargazing every Friday during semester.

Before going to the planetarium we read about our Sun and talked about its importance to all that is alive.

Our reading material this week included our favorite encyclopedia- Universe from DK publishing ( as I have written before the latest editions come with handy posters that look great on our wall)

This book is always fun for little ones :

Another source of information is a book that we found on NASA webpage (some info is still beyond D.'s comprehension, but he got a good idea of what sun does)
Super Star meets the plucky planet storybook

The teacher's guide on NASA webpage is most helpful as well:
NASA'a teacher resources about Earth and Sun connection .pdf

The Sun images gallery is this way .
Great video about Sun:

The answer to the question how big is the sun and earth was provided by this image and video:

Our craft was quite simple- D. simply cut out a shape of sun and colored it with oil pastels- now it warms up our art display

Another great thing? Why, the Sun songs of course :)

 

Checking in

This week is rather rough. My parents have left and now safely arrived to Motherland. I realized how used I got to having help at home and that getting back to being on my own with kids all days and most nights is not quite smooth, but manageable.
Our main activity this week is adjustment, however we managed to talk about weather a little bit, D. watched Eyewitness Weather DVD  , I'm planning a visit to National Center for Atmospheric Research sometimes soon.
We did go to our favorite zoo and got a little ambush surprise on the way there- crazy Coloradan weather being crazy. D. was fascinated, it was a nice guessing game will we freeze to death what would it be like when we finally reach our destination (we were dressed in summer clothes too), but it turned out to be a gorgeous day with some sneaky drizzles:)

I need to get our new old routine established (no more sleep ins for me, woe) , get meals planned, figure out our new budget...and it's almost time to plan for next year's homeschooling (books are loaned by our co-op and I have to make my selection soon enough)...

Somewhat lazy Monday

Not working too hard today for sure.
We even changed our regular routine. Granted D. is a kindergartner so there's not too much pressure to keep up with "schoolwork".
We are skipping writing practice worksheets because D. just acquired some pen pals (kids of my friends from a message board)   for both languages and he was busy composing some notes. He managed pretty fine for his age and level I think. And he packed letters in envelopes before I was able to get a camera in my hands.
I didn't expect his English writing be this good, he really made progress. I think this game helped a lot

he's been crazy about it lately and it sure pays off.
***
We also learned a little bit about senses today, especially sense of touch. We did a simple experiment:
I hid some toys with different textures in a sack and D. had to touch them and guess what they were. Then he had to try and do it again this time with gloves on his hands.

The second part of this experiment was to cover his eyes with thick scarf and guide him around the house. I made him touch different things- banister (metal), couch (leather), cat (warm fur), stuffed animal (man made fur), dishwasher (cool plastic), sink (ceramic), dinner table (wood)- he had the most fun with this one I think :) We had to repeat it and this time he had to guess which toy he was handled and whose hand he touched (baby C.- tiny soft hands, mom- big coarser hands).

We had another decent snowfall yesterday and it's a magic winter realm outside.

We even had a visit from a little neighbor:)

Su-ah-nday

Our day was a little erratic as my dad is on the mad quest for a good yet ridiculously cheap car, and we had to come too and take a look. I hope he succeeds soon, I am a bit tired of checking out vehicles of various stages of decomposition. :)
 It is a good chance for us to look around the city though - we don't know the metro area that well, despite living here for 3 years.

The sky is frowning after a week of blissful warmth, so the free day at the Museum of Nature and Science tomorrow looks especially good. Last visit awoke D.'s interest for the asteroids and even inspired this masterpiece :)
It's so amazing how he spent a good hour at the "space" section of the museum, just looking around, trying things, fascinated. Then we looked at the pictures at home, spent a few evenings stargazing... I'm so glad he's old enough now so we can share these amazing moments of learning together. NASA website has a great kids section, and we can look at the Universe Photo journal forever, these pictures are breathtakingly beautiful.