Zoe's "MY FAMILY" project

My mom used to have her Kindergarten classes do this project and I always loved looking at what her students picked out for their family.


I decided to have Zoe make one this year in Kindergarten!


You give them lots of old magazines and let them cut out people for the people in their family.

Here is Zoe with her finished "My Family" project!

Cian's name was written in yellow. It is there, it's just hard to read.

PreK / K Science

When Zoe was in preschool, I had her just listen in to the older two kids Noeo Science Biology I (1st-3rd grade). This year, the oldest two are doing Noeo Chemistry II (4th to 6th grade) and since the first lesson on day one was labeling an atom... I decided I needed to find something a little bit more LITTLE kid-friendly for Zoe (K) and Ellie (Pre-K 3)!

I found this book at a local teacher store and LOVE it!!

How Does It Do What It Does? by Frog Street Press


The first lesson is "I Take Care of My Body." The girls LOVED the egg experiment that teaches about why we need to brush our teeth! They also loved that it had a song to go with it! (Each lesson does!) Here are some pictures from the Egg Experiment:

Before going to bed, the girls put a hard-boiled egg into a glass with water and a glass with coke.

Eggs in and ready to spend the night in water and coke!

Note to self- if doing this in the future, don't do it RIGHT before bed! The girls were so excited hypothesizing about what would happen to their eggs it took them forever to go to bed!

The next morning when they pulled their eggs out they couldn't believe what the coke one looked like!

 Ellie's expression cracks me up! I'm so glad I caught it on camera!

 The point of this lesson was to talk about how we take care of our teeth and why we brush our teeth! We don't want to go to bed and let food and drinks stain our pretty teeth! 

So next, we took some toothpaste on our finger and try to clean our coke egg.

 And it worked! If you look closely, you can see the white spot on Ellie's egg.

 These worksheets were also in the new book to fill out about what they learned. I like that it was a coloring activity since Ellie is just now learning to write letters, but she could color what she saw!

Here is Zoe coloring and Zoe's final experiment paper:

My only complaint about the book is that it only has 10 lessons! I wish there was one for every week! I decided to do a lesson every other week and fill it out with lessons from Pinterest projects I could find.

I have been pinning away on pinterest- my apologies to my pinterest followers who had to scroll through the day I pinned TONS, lol!

Here is what we did for the "I Take Care of My Body" lessons the past two weeks beside the egg experiment and listening to the song 57 million times:

 We exercised and listened and danced to the song from the book 57 million times. Did I mention they asked to listen to the song 57 million times??

We did this worksheet about The Foods We Eat I found on Pinterest.

 Zoe's turned out really pretty!

I liked the idea a lot, but was a little creeped out by feeding the faces, so I made a worksheet that had 2 columns, " Every Day" and "Once in a While." Most of the worksheets called the foods "good" and "bad," and I didn't like that idea at all. I think if you make a food forbidden, it makes it more desirable. So, I called mine fine to eat "every day" and eat "once in a while". I did have a hard time not cracking a guilty smile when they had to put soda on the once in a while side. Pot, kettle, Mommy....

Ellie LOVED glue sticking on her foods!!

 Ellie's:

Zoe's:

For a final project, we made this cute skeleton out of Q-tips!

All of these additional ones we did can be found on my Pinterest page, by clicking here.

More Noeo Science Chemistry II FUN!

We use NOEO Science for our Science Curriculum. I really like that it doesn't use a textbook. It is Charlotte Mason style in that way. Normally, not my style, but I love it for Science! We read books and encyclopedias instead. I also really like the experiments they match up with the reading. I am not a huge "lets try crazy experiments" person, so it works well for me as the parent also. All the experiments are simple to do, use household items, aren't going to blind anyone etc.. yet they match up nicely with the lessons on molecules, atoms, ions, and now states of matter, density etc.. that the kids are learning.

Here are a few from last week and the week prior:

Do Hot Molecules Move Faster Than Cold Molecules

The kids put food coloring into a hot cup and a cold cup of water.

 The food coloring moved much faster in the hot water.

 Even when we were done making our conclusions and I was cleaning up, the cold was still not fully spread!

Is there space between Sugar Crystals?

Adding Sugar to Water

Stirring

Are Gas Molecules Farther Apart Than Liquid Molecules

 

The CO2 in the balloon:

 The kids really liked this one!

 The kids most important question after the experiment was, "can we drink the coke now?" LOL! I told them no! We NEVER eat or drink anything we have used for a science experiment as a standard rule for safety.

I didn't tell them we have FOUR unopened bottles left we didn't use!

I am a Mt. Dew girl though, so I think I will "Share a Coke" with my friend Bethany!

"O" is for Doughnut

So... we just finished our 3rd week of school this year and we managed to have doughnuts EACH week! Not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed by that! Let's just leave it at the kids were EXCITED by that! LOL!

Day 1 - we always have doughnuts as a tradition
Week 2- We were on Letter "D" and I try and have for Ellie's Preschool LOTW, a snack each day that starts with the letter of the week. OF COURSE we had doughnuts for D week.
Week 3- Letter "O" week- I was at a Walmart and saw KRISPY KREME doughnuts!!!!! Please note, they are in fact called Original Glazed Donuts, just sayin'...
What Ellie thought was totally exciting though, was the doughnut was actually an O!

Ellie and her O-shaped doughnut for O week!

The Cut & Paste Queen

Ellie has discovered a new obsession: GLUE STICKS!

She has been cutting (with help) and pasting all morning! She did a couple from her Kumon Sticker and Paste book and I have been searching the web trying to keep up with her desire for more to glue! I found some cute FREE ones on teacherspayteachers, but am wondering what cut & paste resources all my teacher and homeschooling friends use?

ISO books or website ideas to fulfill this cuties desire to glue stick!

Science Fun- Smelling Molecules

Here's some cute pictures from our science experiment today:

We've been studying atoms and molecules since last week.

Simple list of supplies for today's experiment:

 First the kids all smelled the balloon (yuck!):

Then we added vanilla extract and SHOOK the balloon!!!

Zoe was really shaking it!

Observations:
The vanilla spread throughout the balloon:


AND- The vanillin molecules were small enough to pass through the balloon- we could SMELL the vanilla scent of the vanillin molescules on the balloon!

 Experiment reports:

2nd Day of School 2014

So I realized on my 1st day of school blog post (here), I didn't show my older two doing school! 

Here's a glimpse of each kid doing school today: 

Cian working on his journal page and his Singapore Math.

Grace doing a Critical Thinking Company CD game. She is also doing Math on the computer this year! We switched to Teaching Textbooks. I have to mention that I do think it is much easier than the math we did last year, so I just bumped her up a grade to 6th grade math. It has been SO positive for her and I both this year so far. She said she likes seeing them do the problems (visual learner) and I like that she and I aren't dreading doing math together, lol!

Ellie showing off her Letter A magnet work. She was SO excited for school today, she started getting in her workbox bins before I was even awake. Yikes! She was very excited to find magnets!

Zoe's journal page. And yes, she is in her pajamas, lol!

I HAD to include a zoomed in picture of her journal because the little pictures cracked me up! I loved her smile and her goggles in the photos. A BIG change for a girl who wouldn't put her face in the water last year! These say (in inventive spelling- I wouldn't tell her how to spell anything even though she asked me like 10 times! LOL! For journaling, I want her to just sound out words and try to write.): "Jump in to the pool, Swim in the pool, and Swim underwater."

Fionnuala - It's so hard being a baby. ;-)

Zoe insisted I put this picture on the blog. She wanted everyone to see it, lol! She was just playing with Ellie's magnets.