Week 4 - Space

We had a BLAST this week!  It was space week here and we were not at all short on crafts and activities.  It was a pretty crazy week, but overall Big Boy did well with his lessons, and Little Man has discovered some wonderful new (to him) developmental toys.

Originally, the plan was for this week's unit to be apples... but on Sunday night while I was trying to get ahead with my preparations I introduced to Big Boy the materials I had put together for the space unit.  We had such a great time with the match game I made that we decided to go ahead and do the space week now.

Monday

Monday was great!  Daddy had a day off of work, and once Little Man was napping he was able to join in on Big Boy's lesson.  

We started with a letter "S" craft.

"S" is for STAR.

For this activity you will need to print images to copy, black paper, colored chalk, glue, glitter, stars (stickers, or in our case sequin shapes)

I put together a mini flip book for him featuring three different images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.  After looking at the pictures together we created our own versions of them.  He got as far as the Sagittarius Star Cloud and Orion Nebula.  When we got to the interacting galaxies picture he was done with the activity... I was not.  It was way to fun making these pretty space pictures!  So the art on the blue construction paper is all me... aren't I talented?

 

    

After spending the afternoon out and about, the boys napped in the car in the driveway... so Big Boy's bedtime got pushed back a bit.  Just long enough for a science experiment with daddy.

This  very simple activity was a huge hit.  Daddy has been wanting to get more involved so I picked up a book of physics experiments from the dollar aisle in Target for him to be in charge of.  The explanations for the experiments are too advanced for Big Boy, but the activities themselves are all so fun and simple.

Plastic bottles, water, food coloring, vegetable oil.

We added glitter (space dust) and stars to fit our unit theme for the week.

Tuesday

I knew right away Tuesday would be a challenging day.  You just cannot count on the attention span or mood of a two year old!

He HATED the activity I had for the phases of the moon.  It was a picture matching activity (I admit... a little difficult) with numbers drawn on the moons to encourage counting and numeral recognition.  It was a bust.  It was beyond him, BUT I think in the future he may have more success with it.  

The activity ended up going somewhere very different.  

I sang "Hey Diddle Diddle" to him, using a nursery rhyme book to follow along.  Then we got a toy cow to jump over one of the moons from the matching activity.  

That got old fast, so we found other things that could jump over the moon.  The book became a ramp we used to launch trucks and trains over the moon.  I got a few giggles out of him for that.

He let me tell him about stars in the sky that form shapes called "Constellations" while he laced through some images I printed, cut, laminated and hole punched.

He enjoyed making himself into an astronaut.  I was preparing this craft for Wednesday, but when he saw me cutting out the suit, boots, and helmet he insisted on doing it.  A good thing too, because we got NOTHING done on Wednesday! Ugh what a bad day Wednesday turned out to be!

Big Boy had his first session of speech therapy on Tuesday.  His therapist, E, used Mr. Potato Head to get him to say "please".  It worked great.  He went from "dee" to "pee" in just a few tries.  And from needing a prompt to say it to saying it on his own in just a few more tries.  (side note- Daddy and Big Boy came back from running errands at Walmart tonight with a Mr. Potato Head... good job Daddy!).

They played more games together, and I got a lot out of watching her interact with him.  I used a few of her techniques at home this week and have been pretty happy with them.  Big Boy got his first homework assignment (I guess we both did, going into this I knew that the success of therapy rested on my own involvement and dedication to it).

Thursday

Big Boy went to his school skills class at Gymboree.  He loves his teacher (and so do I)!

After lunch we worked on some of his words that E assigned him.  His inability to focus had me seriously doubting wether I could do this homeschool thing.  But then I picture him being forced to sit still... oh dear.  That would be torture for him.  He definitely needs to incorporate movement into his learning.  And while I went in to home learning thinking I wouldn't force anything on him, I am beginning to think that I may need to be just slightly more rigid in getting him to focus on one thing at a time.  At this age anyway, I see the importance of providing more structure and limitations.  Then again... we have just had an off the walls kind of week.

We made some Alien Art while Little Man napped.

I cut shapes from my Cricut and gave him crayons, stickers, pom poms, pipe cleaners and googley eyes to create his own alien.  Of course he insisted I do one also.

He let me read I Like Stars by Margaret Wise Brown to him, but he didn't stick around for the very simple activity that went along with it.  His Mega Bloks were calling him.  So I did it by myself.  I thought maybe he would join me once he observed what I was doing (which is what happens a lot of the time), plus... I have fun with the artsy stuff, why shouldn't I play too?

It's a very simple book, so a very simple craft will do.  The book is great for learning colors (which is something Big Boy has mastered, but still it's good to reinforce), and it also introduces other concepts like far, quiet, bright, etc.  Big Boy loves to play with stickers.  Just randomly placing them on paper is great fun to him.  He has trouble removing the stickers from their sheets though, so this would have been a good opportunity to practice that  bit of coordination and problem solving (bending the sheet while peeling the sticker); which is something he did do during our Alien craft, so I wasn't going to push this on him.

Friday

Today Big Boy did AWESOME working on his therapy homework!  I modified the activity to suit his learning style and it really paid off.  We must have run through all his words three times!

He played with lots and lots of puzzles.  No more peg puzzles.  Please! He has moved on to jigsaw puzzles.  Yeah... he is so good at them that it scares me!

We read Today is the Birthday of the World by Linda Heller.  I love this book.  So sweet.  We made a birthday card for Daddy and a paper plate Earth to go with this book.

While he glued the pieces of paper down we talked about the Earth being made of water and land, and which color paper represented which.  We talked about life on Earth- I exclaimed that I live on Earth, and asked him who else did... he rattled off names of family members and friends, and then we named different animals that live on Earth too.

Little Man's Week

My baby is 11 months old this week.  He is at the age the Big Boy was when we decided to have another baby.  I can't imagine doing that now.  While Big Boy seemed so old, Little Man is still such a baby!  With that thought I revisited pictures of Big Boy at 11 months and was overwhelmed by guilt.  Big Boy was walking, drinking from a straw, given utensils, playing with more toys...doing lots of things that Little Man isn't.  I know I shouldn't compare the two kids, but I'm comparing the difference in opportunities I have given each one.  Big Boy had all of my attention (and he still takes up most of it!), no sibling knocking him down, free run of the condo we were living in at the time.... things have definitely been different for Little Man.  To give him credit...he has been clapping for MONTHS, which is something his brother had just started doing at 11 months, he can climb stairs like a pro, and he seems more "verbal" than Big Boy was.

With that realization is the realization that Little Man needs to be given his own opportunities to learn and discover.  He just loved these toys I introduced to him.  He even surprised me with his level of interaction with the toys.

There were ups and downs throughout the week, but the week ended on a high note.  Daddy's hard work was recognized by his employer, and we celebrated Daddy's birthday with Spiderman cake!

HAPPY WEEKEND EVERYONE!

Week 3 - The Very Hungry Caterpillar

It seems wrong to only be on week 3, but there was a week of vacation and a week of being sick that kind of sidetracked our schooling.  To be completely honest, I'm pretty upset with myself that already I lost the habit of journaling every night, and that I went into the week without an organized plan of attack.

I did my best to wing it, telling myself that we are really just only starting and that I am learning how to best approach this as we go.  Well... lesson learned: Be Organized! Be Prepared! Be One Step Ahead!

So this week we did some activities centered around The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.  With more time spent preparing we could have done so much more.  It's no wonder this book is such a favorite.  In a few beautiful pages it offers a science lesson (the metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly), counting practice (counting along as he eats his way through the week), color identification (describing the color of each fruit), and reading/language development (the repetition of "he was still hungry" is a great way to get kids to fall into the rhythm of the story, join in and "read" along).

Egg Carton Caterpillars

Lacing Activity

I color copied the pages from the book that had all of the foods lined up.  I cut out each picture, laminated them, cut them again, and hole-punched through each piece.  

Once of the best parts of this book is the holes through all the foods as you turn the pages, so this activity was a fun way to "eat through" the foods along with the caterpillar while working on some fine motor skills.

Big Boy went back to this activity several times during the week.  Lacing like this can be a source of extreme frustration for him (he HATES to fail), but encouraging him to stick with it and celebrating his success is just so wonderful.  I almost cried last night seeing him look so proud of himself for getting it (this of course AFTER he threw down the pieces, stormed away, and came back to try again...all on his own). And he cracked up every time he got a piece on and I cheered for him in an obnoxiously loud way.  

Feeding Time

We fed Little Man's caterpillar toy.  Big Boy got a kick out of this very simple, off-the-top-my-head, game. Everything was named and repeated as it was being fed to the caterpillar.  I asked him to feed the caterpillar "something green," or "something cold," etc.  I thought it was a great way to sneak learning into the afternoon, and get him to work on his speech. 

Caterpillar Counter

Big Boy is just not ready to count with me.  He resists it so hard.  But I figure I can just keep on bombarding him with numbers (same kind of goes for the alphabet) and eventually he will decide when he is ready to count along.  As far as he is concerned this was just a fun collage activity.  

I would like to point out that I didn't correct him when he glued eyes onto the caterpillar (huge progress for me!).  He did the antennae and feet all by himself too, using the book cover for a reference.

Moving on to next week I know that I need to get back into gear and plan, plan, plan!  I plan on being a very busy bee this weekend to get myself on track for our (home) school year.

And to mark the school year, I took pictures of Big Boy looking so grown and handsome.  Seeing friends post pictures of their little ones off to preschool reminded me that just because we are staying home, we can still share in some of the good ol' back to school traditions that mark this time of year- in this case: the picture outside the house marking the first morning off to school.

Dinosaur Week Recap

Well...so ends dinosaur week.  We had fun making different dinosaur crafts and going on our field trip to the natural history museum to see fossils and dino skeletons.

I can't say whether or not Big Boy was quite as interested in all of the different activities I had planned for this week of home learning as he was last week.  He was willing to do most things, but his attention span was a bit shorter.  On the other hand- he is now fully potty trained and was going pretty often! So maybe he was just distracted this week.

Here is what this week looked like:

Monday - The boys were introduced to their sensory bins.  Little Man has a hard time enjoying his time in the basement with us in the mornings; by the time we finish breakfast, get cleaned, up and get ourselves together to head down, he is ready for a nap.  So I don't know that he cares to much for these sensory bins.  He knows I am using them to keep him occupied and out of my arms.  Later in the week, though, he did spend some good time with during one of Big Boy's now rare afternoon naps. 

 Big Boy on the other hand, was rather fond of his bin.  On the first day with it he insisted I do the dinosaur excavating, so I did.  Modeling is very important.  Sometimes it's annoying because I don't put activities together for me to do, but I have to remind myself he is watching so he can do it later.  I let him watch dig videos on youtube for a while and he was actually pretty focused... not on the archeologists, but on the excavators used at the dig sites (the boy is in love with big trucks).

Big Boy made a dinosaur collage (once again courtesy of my Cricut).

We went to the library.  The boys had me going a little crazy.  We need to work on volume control in the library.  Scratch that.  In general.  I don't know how much more of the shrieking I can take!

The counting worksheet didn't go over well.  Big Boy hates to count.  I asked him to count with me and he hit me.  I took away some cars.  He got mad and wanted nothing to do with me.... until I sat down at the table with a dinosaur puzzle and sang "We are the dinosaurs marching, marching.  We are the dinosaurs, we make the Earth flat!" I marched the pieces around the table and into their correct spot.  Then he came running... and smiling.  And all was right with the world. 

Later that night the daddy got him to count a little bit, using food as a motivator, but hey...you do what works sometimes.  He also showed daddy how to use brushes to excavate dinosaur bones (remember the modeling....there ya go).

Tuesday - 

The very first thing we did was to check our baby dinosaur egg (Big Boy was so excited to find in the sensory bin the day before)!

The egg is cracked!  Very exciting stuff.

There were dinosaur bones that needed discovering... more sensory bin play!  This time the cutie pie was much more independent and used his brush to clean off the bones as he unearthed them.

We read How do Dinosaurs say Happy Birthday, by Jane Yolen, and made a paper birthday cake.  I swear he smiled the entire time!

We had our field trip.  Their was a lot of gasping and pointing.

Wednesday - 

We went to gymboree to start our day.

We game home to check on "Egg Baby" who was making his way out of his shell.  Of course a certain boy had to hatch as well.

Big Boy had no interest in reading with me.

He had very little interest in our big/small worksheet.  He did draw a circle when I asked him to circle a small dinosaur  (which I modeled for him and did some hand over hand circles first).  This was impressive since he usually only draws back and forth strokes.

He had just enough patience to do our "Dd" is for dinosaur craft.  Barely enough.  When he decided he was done he took off like a shot to his train table at the other side of the room.

While I did have his attention for this project, though, he did well repeating the "d" sound over and over.  So it was a good speech development activity to boot.  Also, the night before I had discovered a new way to get him to make different consonant sounds... our own twist on the telephone game.  I would make a sound ( "p, p, p" or "k, k, k") in his ear and tell him "Now go tell Daddy!" And he did.

Thursday - 

 Big Boy went to his School Skills class at Gymboree.  He impressed his teacher by working independently on his crafts (tissue paper art and a watercolor painting).

We read "How do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon"  and used a doctor kit to perform check ups on his sick dinosaur toys.

Big Boy painted with stencils, different style brushes... and eventually his fingers!

Friday - 

Big Boy has discovered dress up.  He used to hate it.  He wanted to like it, but he hated it.  Now he likes it.  Super cute.

We made dinosaur fossils.  So much fun!

Big Boy made canvas art.  I used my Cricut to cut a large dinosaur shape on card stock, taped it onto a canvas, let him have at it with paints, then removed the paper shape.  A reverse silhouette.  He thought that was hilarious.

We played a few rounds of Discovery Toy's "Roll and Play" game.  One of the action cards was to trace your hand.  He thought that was pretty great.

We did quite a bit, huh?  No wonder I am no where near prepared for our trip to the shore.  We leave tomorrow.... well, today... I'm up way too late.