Kooks turned two this week. We had our safari party last weekend so on Thursday we just had a small family celebration. Our homeschool was very low key this week but it was a lot of fun.
Literacy and Language Arts:
We learned Jack Sprat and started talking about rhyming. I’ve been pointing out rhyming words whenever we come across them. We also played this cute Noisy Letter Jump Phonics Game from The Imagination Tree. I wrote chalk letters on the deck and the girls said their sounds as they jumped on them or I would say the letter sound and they would find the letter to jump on.
Cognitive Skills and Math:
Kooks received these number puzzles for her birthday and Boo and I borrowed them during her nap for school. Boo loved punching out all the shapes and numbers and matching them up again. We got in a lot of counting.
We then used the number puzzles to trace shapes into our counting book. The counting book is a free download from Living Montessori Now and is part of the Small Hands Creating Hope project by Mama Smiles to raise funds for the American Cancer Society.
Science and Nature Studies:
We tried the dissolving egg shell and bouncing egg experiment from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas. We placed an egg in a glass of water and another egg in a glass of vinegar and observed what happened over the week. The vinegar ate away at the egg shell and the egg enlarged and became jelly like. We took the eggs outside to see if they would bounce. Kooks had the egg that was in the water and Boo had the egg that was in the vinegar. It really looked like it would bounce and I think it might have except that Boo was set on showing us how hard she can throw. Even though we didn’t see the egg bounce it was really cool to hold an egg without a shell and see the yolk moving around inside it.
Boo and Saliyapa (our housekeeper) built this cozy little home for a grasshopper. Unfortunately the grasshopper decided not to move in.
Play:
This week we dyed pasta and made colorful necklaces.
We built a car and went on a road trip.
And we spent a lot of time building with Kooks’s new blocks.
Saliyapa got married this weekend and the girls both enjoyed dancing at the wedding – even when it wasn’t time to dance!
Thoughts:
I can’t believe we’ve completed two months of homeschooling. We are having so much fun with it and I’m amazed at how much the girls are learning. I thought it would be difficult to find enough activities to keep us busy but something new seems to present itself each week. I’m feeling very lucky to share this special time with my girls.
I love your girls’ dresses from the wedding! And how exciting to see that they made the counting book!!!
Wonderful activities, Jody! And thanks so much for linking to my post with the counting book printable! It’s so much fun to see how you used the printable … great idea to use the number puzzle to trace shapes! I added your post link to my counting book printable post and featured your post at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/LivingMontessoriNow.
Cool activities! I’ve done something similar in class with jumping on letters (big flash cards) and its also nice to match plastic animals to letters (or pics of animals/things). You certainly have lots of resources-I must certainly check out that Montessori site.
So fun to read about and see pictures of all of the homeschooling activities you are doing with your kids! Very impressive! Thank you for sharing.
I love the girls’ dresses at the wedding! And the cute grasshopper house!:)