Wonder Wednesday

Well, it is Wonder Wednesday again, and that means it is time to give all of you a peek into our homeschool.  For those of you new to Rockin' Granola, we are homeschooling our oldest daughter who is 8 and in second grade.  We also have a 3 and a half year old and a 21 month old, so I try to plan structured play ideas for them as well.

 I can't decide if my chalk drawings are getting better each week ... or worse!

This week I picked Tuesday to share with all of you.  Here is what happened at our house yesterday  ...

• Tuesday March 9th, 2010
• The color of the day is RED
• The weather is CLOUDY
• We sang the C-L-O-U-D-Y weather song (to the tune of B-I-N-G-O) and then colored in today's leaf on our Weather Tree (an idea from the book All Year Round)
• Little Acorn Learning weekly theme: Music and Sounds, Listening
  

Structured Play Time 
(an idea from Jamie Martin's book Steady Days) I had three planned structure play activities for today:  blowing bubbles, coin tossing (this goes along w/ one of Jillian's lessons), and play dough.

Circle Time
Now that Max and Lucy are each about 4 months older than they were when I gave up on Circle Time last fall, I have found that they both not only will participate in, but they seem to enjoy the morning circle.  This means that the rest of us enjoy it, too.

I've been relying more and more on Little Acorn Learning's monthly guides and my copy of Before the Journey from A Little Garden Flower and we've found a rhythm that fits.  I also have Oak Meadow's second grade for Jillian and we're using some ideas from that resource for Circle Time, too.

• I start circle by singing "The More We Get Together"
• Morning Verse (from Oak Meadow)
• Our Calendar and Weather box (see above)
• Movement Verse (Oak Meadow) - this week I picked Simple Simon
• The Story of Echo, told with props (Little Acorn Learning)
• Short Morning Talk (Little Acorn Learning)
• Closing Verse 

"May my hands work with care

my heart work with love

and my mind work with attention."

 

In the "Wonder" Boxes
(note:  this is our adaptation of Sue Patrick's Workbox System)

Living Values - we're using the book Living Values Activities for Children Ages 3-7 We're in the finishing up the unit study on peace.

Language Arts -  Jillian is on a deadline as she writes her story for the PBS Kids Go Young Writers Contest, so today her language arts task was to work on her story.

Handwriting - in this box was a pencil, a copy of her Handwriting Without Tears workbook and a kitchen timer.  I had her set the timer for 15 minutes and work on her handwriting.   Later we also practiced writing giant letters in chalk on the driveway and we walked them together.

Social Studies - (Oak Meadow)

1. told the story The Fish Basket Goddess
2. played a Coin Tossing game with the children (a game played in the story - the kids got to keep any coins that made it into the basket)

Science - today we talked about iridescence.  This was inspired by a post I saw a few weeks ago at Wholesome Baby Food who got the idea from 5 Orange Potatoes.  We did this experiment two ways:  with a bunch of ice cubes in a big bowl and then with 4 individual ice cubes on a plate so we could see them one at a time and they would melt a little faster.

 

This experiment was very cool, but I think we can up the coolness factor next time by a) doing it outdoors on a super sunny day and b) getting some of that neon food coloring that 5 Orange Potatoes mentioned.

And, how was YOUR day?