The Mitten

This weeks story was The Mitten, told by Jan Brett. Jan Brett is one of my favorite authors to use with children. Her illustrations are beautiful, and she hides clues in the borders of her pages as to what is coming next and what just happened in the story- great for teaching predictions and sequencing. Anyway, we had a fun week with this story. The kids each made their own mitten and a set of animals to go inside. The Mitten is a Ukranian folktale- so the real author is not known. At the end of the week, I had the girls tell the story as if they were the authors- it was so fun! So here is "The Mitten" as told by Breanna and Abigail Raven.

Our First Week Back. . . a review

Story of the Week: Stone Soup
I love this story, and the kids did too! The first day we read the story, did our story map, and then made stone soup! While I cut up all the ingredients for the soup, Peter and the kids went outside to find stones. I boiled the stones in one pot, and made the soup in the other (using the stone after boiling it probably would have been fine, but, oh well). Each child got to put in or "share" their ingredient (ie potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.) It was so fun and so yummy! Especially for a warm lunch on a cold winter day!
For the rest of the week, we had fun acting out the story and retelling it with the felt board figures. We even made up a song! We sang the song all week and just had a blast with this story!

Lyrics:
We're makin' Stone Soup, We're makin' Stone Soup,
Ya mix it up, ya mix it up, and stir it around,
We're makin' Stone Soup, We're makin' Stone Soup,
Ya mix it up, ya mix it up, and stir it aroud,

You grab some carrots and some onions too,
You chop them up, you know what to do,
Get the potatoe, and the celery,
Put em in the pot, you know what we've got,

We're makin' Stone Soup, We're makin' Stone Soup,
Ya mix it up, ya mix it up, and stir it around. . . .


Mirror, Mirror
What do I see?
Beautiful, wonderful, fabulous. . . ME!


Tracing ourselves on paper!






Our Finished Product. . .


Other topics of the week. . .
Polar Bears (did you know that polar bears eat mainly seals? there is some fun video of baby polar bears on the national geographic kids website- so cute!)

Snowmen (we talked about shapes, then cut out shapes to make our own snowmen. . . we finished the morning with a lunch of snowmen bagals, yum!)

Our New Schoolroom

Calendar Time. . .


Bin Work. . .

School is Back in Session!

After a long and unexpected break (due to a sick, pregnant mama and an across town move. . .) WE ARE BACK!

The past couple of days have been so fun! We are back to our couple hours each morning of learning together and I am so happy! Pictures and more activities will follow, but for now, just know that we are glad to be back in session!

Playdough Recipe

Here's the recipe. . .
1 cup flour
1 cup water
1 Tblsp oil
1/2 cup salt
1 tsp cream of tarter
Koolaide packets (you pick the color)

Cook over medium heat until mixture pulls away from sides of pan and is like play dough in consistency. Knead in a baggie with Koolaide for coloring until cool. Keep for 3 months in airtight container. Do not store in fridge.

Have fun!

Playing with Playdough!

We made our own playdough today! So fun! We used Kool Aide for the coloring. . . the children loved squishing it in the baggies and it actually smelled good! It was a good day.




Our creations. . . Mom and Abigail made witches, Breanna made pumpkins. . .

And Tyler made this. ..

2 Middle Names

Every teacher has 2 middle names. . . monitor and adjust. So what are we doing right now? We are monitoring and adjusting.
Raven baby #4 is on the way. Along with all the joy and excitement of adding another member to our family comes a lot of sickness, time in bed, and time just trying to breath on my part. Thus the monitoring and adjusting.

So it is down to the basics. The most important stuff.
Devotional. We still spend time every day studying the Book of Mormon, learning primary songs, scripture stories, etc. It is the most refreshing part of our day.

Reading time. We still read a chapter book each day and do part of our Language arts using the tradebooks.

Abigail's math and reading. While Tyler and Breanna nap, Abigail and I work on reading and math. We are LOVING Saxon math. Abigail is making excellent progress in reading. Just a little bit every day makes a big difference.

Piano. Abigail and Breanna are having a lot of fun learning to play piano. They insist on this part of the day, almost every day.

And so, that is that. Those are our priorities, and anything else that happens is a bonus.

Now. . . remember that I am not holding any of my children out of a regular school this year to homeschool. Abigail just missed the K deadline. Soooo. . . to those moms out there who homeschool and do have a schedule to stick too regardless of anything life brings. . . I applaud you more than you can know.