A Lesson on Fire Building

This is why I love homeschooling.  They kids are home when Andrew is home and they are able to peruse their interests no matter how strange.  Andrew is able to join in and be apart of their learning and enjoy it with them.  

Well this week Hannah and Ethan "needed" to learn how to build a fire.  Andrew was happy to oblige (perhaps even encouraged their curiosity).  I love love love this kind of learning.

Learning about kindling.

Giving the hatchet a try.

Setting up the kindling.

Andrew giving some tips on how to arrange the little pieces of wood.

Ethan was a little nervous to try lighting the match.

Getting it started.

All lit and starting to roar.

Of course then we had to roast something.

After the fire was good and burning Hannah and Ethan pulled their little chairs up to enjoy the fire.  Hannah turned to Andrew and I and said, "I really like this experience" ( although it might been experiment, it was hard to tell), but we agree it was a good experience.

3rd Annual Pumpkin Patch Visit

Today was our 3rd Annual Rios/Demoline Pumpkin Patch trip.  It was a fantastic day to go too.  It was sunny, warm, and dry (no mud).  

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

 This year we went to the Laity Pumpkin Patch and it was amazing.

Posing for Mama

Moses and Hannah deciding which pumpkin was the best.

Ethan looking at the goats.

They had an entire area full of wooden animals, people, and vehicles.  You could (and Hannah did) milk a pretend cow. :D

 

Going for a ride.

Going for a wagon ride.

They had a Tee Pee set up.  Hannah told me once we were inside that it was for Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus.

Why walk through the corn maze when you can run at lightening speed.

 

The tunnel out.

Picking the best pumpkins.  Hahahahaha Only we didn't actually bring a pumpkin home with us since we already have one given to us from Gama Gama.

 

Finally, we made it to the pumpkin patch and the kids ran wild.

The beautiful mountains.

One last posed shot for mama!

Preschool Week 8

Preschool Week 8

Week 8 was a thin week.  Nevertheless here is a look at what we did:

Bible: We read the story of Abraham and Issac from Gen 22 in our Jesus Storybook Bible called "The Present". We talked a bit about sacrifices and how God asks his people to do hard things.  Hannah showed remarkable understanding for a 4 year old.  For a craft Hannah and Ethan made their own rams complete with fuzzy white cotton balls.

I found the printout of the ram here.

Adding cotton balls for the rams fluffy coat.

Ethan's finished ram.

(Jesus Storybook Bible )

Reading:  We read LOTS during the week and none of it was Sonlight related.  Hannah and Ethan were in the mood to reminisce with some of there "old" favorites.
(Sonlight P3/4)   

Language Arts and Handwriting:  Learning about he letter G.  

They had some difficulty at first putting their G's together.  With a little help they worked it out.  You can see them trace the letter G with their finger.  Apparently (I'm no expert) this is very good for imprinting the letter into their brains.

Writing with chalk.

I love watching their grip improve over the weeks.

Searching for "g" words.

This is a AAR pre-1 worksheet that I thought was really helpful for Hannah and Ethan.  The point is to circle all the G's.  What made it useful was the use of different fonts, G's can look very different depending on the font used.  It was fun to watch them look for all the strange looking g's.
 (AAR pre-1)

 (HWT)

Math:  We practiced counting and recognizing groups on bears.

Here Hannah is counting out 5 bears to match the number she flipped.  Hannah and Ethan are able to recognize sets of 0 to 4 without counting individual parts.

To take it a step farther with Hannah, she practiced breaking numbers into smaller sets.  For example a set of four can also be 2 sets of 2, or one set of 1 and one set of 3.

She thought this was lots of fun and worked away for awhile.  Ethan was......well Ethan.

They finished up by counting out sets of stickers for the numbers 1 through 6.

Later in the week we worked on understanding the value of 11, 12, and 13.

We used number cards and cuisenaire rods to work it out.  You can see in the pictures that I was trying to explain that 11 is ten and one, 12 is ten and two.

They gave it a good effort but I am not sure how much they actually got.  I will try again in a bit and see how it goes.

Hannah not impressed with our lesson decided to revamp and create her own lesson.  She counted out pom pom magnets and then wrote the answers on the chalk board for me to check. :D

(Compare Bears Maths)
(Montessori at Home(Math Section)