Wordless Wednesday

This Quiet Moment

Week 17 Letter O

Week 17- Letter O

This week was ALL about owls.  Hannah and Ethan loved learning about owls and I couldn't agree more with them. Lots of fun for sure.

Math:  

Hannah and Ethan practiced counting and sorting Owls as a math activity. (go here for the pattern)

Hannah played a simple game where she needed to flip over a number and then count out the correct number of owls.

Ethan counted a bit but mostly preferred to sort the owls by color.

Art:  
We made made cute hand print owls. (see here)

Nature:

This was by far the biggest hit of the week.  We learned a little about different kinds of owls (snowy, great horned, and barn owls).

We watched a pair of barn owls through a live web cam feed  (many many times).

Here is Roy and Dale. (You can watch them here).

We made some owl masks, on the backside of the mask I taped half a toilet paper tube to each eye (like binoculars).  This is to simulate moving your head to look at something rather than moving just your eyes, just like an owl. (owl mask here)

Reading/Language Arts:

We worked on the letter O, Hannah and Ethan carefully painted their octopus picture.  Ethan made dots on the octopus tentacles with paint on the tip of pencil eraser.  Hannah painted her octopus completely in pink.

This week we read "Owl Moon".  I love everything about this book, it is lovely.  The kids thought it was pretty amazing too.  It is nice when we all agree.

Here is a fun link to the Author Jane Yolen reading the book.

Faith Foundations: 

Our lesson this week focused on our words and how we use them.  We talked about how our words can be used to encourage someone, to show love, and even pray.  They enjoyed putting words to use by putting on a puppet show for Andrew and I.  

Just for Fun:

Doing an owl puzzle together.

They were pretty excited to finish all by themselves.

Pretend Play

The other day I was in the kitchen making dinner listening to the kids playing in the living room   I could hear them talking and I was doing my best to try and figure what they were doing.  Whatever it was I knew they were enjoying it and they were making lots of rules and plans for there game.

It started out with a lot of bossy directions from Hannah to Ethan and lot of questions from Ethan to Hannah.  But still I had no idea what they were doing.  Then Ethan kept asking Hannah if she had some (??) and Hannah over and over would say "No, not that size, but I've ordered them though."  So I peaked around the corner to finally figure out what they were up to and they had created their own shoe store, later they added coats.

I love their pretend play.  They come up with such complex rules and plans.  They were together to figure things out and problem solve.  Best of all I was able to make dinner uninterrupted.

Wordless Wednesday

Week 16, Letter N

Letter N-Week 16

I'm going to buzz through this very quick.  It's been a very fast week.

Math:  

Hannah and Ethan were happily surprised to have daddy work on this activity with them.  They sorted and counted nuts.  I was out when they did this but Andrew said they had lots of fun.

Nature Study:   

We had a look at nests, we spotted a few the week before on our nature walk.

There are quite large at the park we visit.  Being that it is winter they are also quite easy to spot.  

We read "About Birds: A Guide for Children" by Cathryn Sill.  Which is a fantastic book that introduced many types of birds and nests.  We even inspected dollar store nests because I couldn't come up with a way to get a real one.

Art:  

We made pictures of baby birds poking their heads out the nest.  

We even Got help from Auntie Teresa and Baby Ben. This was my inspiration.

Reading and Language Arts: 

 We worked on the N, which in our house is often confused with he letter m. Hopefully we got closer to figuring it out this week

Gluing on pieces of tinfoil to make tin cans on their Letter N page.

Faith Foundations:  

This week was a continuation from last week.  I don't have a whole lot more to share.  But I did have this picture I thought was cute. Here is Ethan telling what he is most thankful he can do with his legs; Running.

Just For Fun:

Hannah and Ethan played with nuts and bolts.

Nocturnal Animal sort leftover from last year.  Found here.

I LOVE the expression on Hannah's face, she was very disgruntled because I had just told her for the second time that she could NOT help Ethan by doing it for him.

Oldie but a goodie

I took this a couple months ago of Ethan riding Hannah's bike "his" way.  Its makes me laugh every time I watch it.  Thought I would share.

Wordless Wednesday

Week 15 - Letter M

Week 15 - Letter M

Math: 
This week for math we worked on dividing things or groups in half.  

We started off by decorating some cute gingerbread man.  We were going to the cute them in half.  But we just could not bring ourselves to such destruction. 

Instead, we made play dough gingerbread men and cute them in half.



Hannah made and cut a gingerbread man.

I think the funniest part of this whole activity occurred when I put 8 little teddy bears in front of Hannah and asked her to divided the bears in half so that both her and Ethan who have the same number of bears.  Without thinking she immediately grabbed the bears with 2 hands and hands one pile to Ethan and kept one for herself.  After asking if the groups were the same she noticed that Ethan only had 3 and she had 5.  I asked her how she could fix it so that they were the same and she handed me 2 bears and said I could keep them.  Now Ethan had 3 and so did Hannah.  hahahahaha

 Nature Study:  



As I mentioned in a previous post we went on a nature walk for the letter M and looked for M things while were out and about.

Art:  
We did marble painting.  This worked out especially well because of the tray I dug out of the recycling. It was the right size and wasn't awkward at all for Hannah or Ethan to use.


We used marbles as well as these weird spiny balls the kids get every time they get there hair cut.  Ethan wanted paint in each corner and then let loose with the marbles.



Hannah my sweet girl wanted her paint in a ring around the spiny ball.  


She also wanted the "help" the balls and marbles move around.

Reading and Language Arts:  
The activity page this week had coloring some mice and adding some thumbprint ears.  



Our language exploration activity which I usually only do with Hannah because Ethan isn't quite there yet. This week we counted the words in a sentence said aloud.  We used the blocks to represent the words and then Hannah (and Ethan) could easily count the blocks.  This activity is a build up to counting out syllables within a word.



 Our book this week was "Caps for Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina.  This was not my favorite book when I first read it (awhile ago) but I enjoyed it so much more this week.  It's the story about a peddler who is looking to sell his caps when they are stolen by monkeys. 



Here are my two monkeys doing their best to balance hats on their heads. 

Hannah read this book aloud to Ethan and I quickly grabbed the camera and managed to get a good chunk of her telling the story.



Faith Foundation:  
This week we worked on our lesson on being thankful for our legs and feet.  We played lots of games that helped Hannah and Ethan understand what are legs are used for and who we should be thankful for them.  We are winding down to the end of unit on being wonderfully made by God.  

Our verse for this week and next week is Psalm 149:1-3.

Just for Fun:  

Dotted the Letter M for Monster (found here)



Played with Magnets 

     

Hannah made what looks like a magnet necklace.


We made banana chocolate chip muffins.

They were so yummy we have made them again.