Fall Days

I love fall, fall leaves, and even the cooler weather.  Most of all I like taking pictures of Hannah and Ethan with colored leaves.  Hehehehe  We were out and about as a family on Saturday and I took some pictures and I thought I would share.

This last picture was taken by Ethan.

Creative Explosions

My kids have free reign of art supplies during rest time.  Thing like stickers, paper, glue, scissors, and crayons.  They use them in Hannah's room with the door closed.  Typically, Hannah will make things everyday.  She will hole herself up in her room and create all sorts of things without my involvement or input.  I love this kind of creativity and I encourage it.  However, it does drive me crazy and I often find myself trying to be patient in a explosion of confetti paper scraps, crayon on the wall, or the 3rd time in a week Hannah has used up an entire glue stick.

Ethan has chosen to join in occasionally.  It is fun to see what they come up jointly.  Ethan's favorite thing to do is cut up paper.  

Hannah proudly showing off a handmade envelope.

Messy play is another time I really see Hannah and Ethan develop their creativity.  Outside in the backyard they have come up with all sorts of interesting games and play.  They have access to rocks, sticks, logs, water and sand.  I take joy in watching them play with these natural elements in the backyard despite how messy it does become, especially when dirt/mud is involved.  It's terribly hard work sometimes to quell my fractious nature, I hate the mess but love the results.

They love playing with ice.  

Here they are mixing ice, sand, and water.

Playing in the sandbox.

Making leaf soup.

Children's Festival

This past weekend, my sister and I took the kids to a Children's Festival that was a lot of fun.  It worked out really well that day because it was especially cold and rainy so it was nice to get out and do something fun and remain dry.  I was surprised at the variety of activities they had prepared for the kids and all of free.  You can not beat free.

 Hannah and Ben at the play dough table.

Ethan LOVED the sand and truck station.

Checking out the light table.

Teresa and Ben

Blurry pictures of the bouncy castle.  An absolute favorite for both Hannah and Ethan.

Butterfly face painting on my girl.  She loved the glitter.

Playing the huge xylophone.

Hannah joined another little boy in the otherwise empty hockey station.  The guy manning this area was super friendly and enjoyed giving Hannah some tips on playing hockey.  Making her uncle proud.

Ethan and Ben both refused the hockey and instead played with the balls in the basketball area.

Getting ready to pelt someone.

As we left I took this last picture in front of the police car.  Ben was clearly ready to go home.

Preschool Week 5

Preschool Week 5

Bible: We read the Tower of Babel Story from the Jesus Storybook Bible called "A Giant Staircase to Heaven".  We talked about how the people wanted to build a tower because they thought they could get to heaven by themselves and they thought they didn't need God. Hannah and Ethan though it was pretty obvious that you cannot not build a tower to Heaven.

They did however try and fail at building a tall tower.  Miserably I might add.  The tower was not tall and they seemed far more interested in color coordinating their blocks.

Ben joined in the fun too.
(Jesus Storybook Bible )

Reading:  This week we read more from the Eloise Wilkin Stories (Little Golden Book Treasury), Go Dog Go, as well as some of the stories from Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm.  Of course this wasn't the sum total or our read alouds but what we read from our Sonlight books.
(Sonlight P3/4)   

Language Arts and Handwriting:  The Letter E.

I tricked Hannah and gave her the wrong wooden pieces for building the E but she insisted that she could make it work. (HWT)

E is for Ethan with a goofy face. (HWT)

Doing their E page.  (HWT)

Trying to decide if elbow is an e word. (AAR pre-1)

They did a hidden picture where they colored the letter e's and a shark appeared.

Working hard.
 (AAR pre-1)

Math:  The numeral 10

Our first activity was to build towers of ten until all the blocks were used up.

They made 6 towers with a single block left over and I worked with Hannah to figure out that there were 61 blocks all together. In this picture she is skip counting from 10 to 60 by tens.  I'm not sure how or when she learned this because it wasn't from me.  Perhaps, her Auntie Teresa has been sneaking in some extra math lessons when I not around (she is a highschool math teacher- thankfully-  I will never have to worry about math ever).

Lots of building for fun too.

(Montessori at Home(Math Section)

With our bears we worked on "More, Fewer, and the same".

Ethan comparing the number of bears and chairs (lego blocks).

When he wasn't looking, I removed 2 of the bears and asked him if there were fewer bears or fewer chairs.  This was more difficult than I anticipated but only because I don't typically use the word fewer but instead I prefer less and more.  Once I explained it was easy.

 
Matching and thinking.
(Compare Bears Maths)

Art:  I thought it would be fun to give Waldorf: Wet on Wet Watercolor painting a try.  Check out this link for a very good description of how to do it. It's easy but takes a little instruction.  Most simply it is liquid watercolor painting on wet watercolor paper.

Ethan adding some yellow and orange.

Dripping drops of color.

Hannah's finished creation.

Ethan's work of art.

My pictures do not do this kind of painting and justice.
It is a lot of fun and I did right along side the kids.

Science: We continued playing with shadows.  This time Hannah and Ethan used flashlights and explored inside with them.

Playing flashlight tag.

(PEEP and the Big WideWorld Explorer's Guide)

Wordless Wednesday

I was telling my sister about how Hannah likes to help Ben after a meal.  It is very cute. So this morning I tool a video after breakfast.  If the video isn't immediately apparent open up the link here and you should be able to watch it.