Schooling the Littles with the Classics

I LOVE books! In fact, one thing you will find in every room of my house is books. I love many different kinds of books, but the classics... ahhhhh you can never go wrong with children's classics. So when I set out with all of my catalogs, and my notebook to figure out a schooling plan for this year, I kept coming back to great books and our love for cuddling up in one room and reading. Wouldn't it be nice for every child to hear and learn with the classics. 

Little B (6 years old) and Bells (2 years old)

Classics are tried and true books that keep people coming back year after year. Books that have been around for decades and probably will be around for many more years to come. Books that you remember from childhood and are still just as good or even better now that you're reading them to your children. Books like Caps for Sale(one of my favorites growing up), Corduroy, and Eloise Wilkin Stories (Little Golden Book Collection).  So to start off sharing what we have planned for the year we are reading through several of Sonlight Core A books and for Bells we got Core P 3/4. We have already finished several of the books and we absolutely loved them. A few favorites so far are Curious George, My Father's Dragon, and The Boxcar Children. 

We are also using Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) - We started rowing and have completed Blueberries for Sal, Goodnight Moon, and Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? I can't say enough great things about FIAR. I have used it for several years, and I don't think you can ever go wrong when you mix classic stories and multisensory learning.   

We are using Explode the Code with Little B for extra phonetic learning, and handwriting skills. 

 

For Math we do a lot of hands on living Math, and include Math in our BFIAR and unit studies. 

  

 All about Reading is AMAZING! We recently added it and it's really been great, I'll be sharing more All About Reading information in the future. For our family I have found that it works best when we have several things to work with. This way it breaks up the day and keeps everybody excited. The kids are happy and momma is happy. 

We really like Signing Time CollectionBooks, Cds, and Dvds. I will be adding to our language learning this year, by using books, games, and fun activities in other languages. I can't wait to show you the great things I've found for language.

Bells will be joining us for everything that she wants to sit in for. Which so far is everything. I have also made up some busy boxes with daily themes for her to explore on her own (I'll share those soon).

A few of the Unit Studies I have planned are Jellyfish which you can see part 1  and part 2 here.
Plants/Planting, Weather, The Little House Series, Anatomy, Animals, and the Frog Life Cycle.

For some it might seem like we have a lot going on, for others it might seem to be a laid back approach. For us it works.  Great books and wonderful educational activities are always around us. I'm a true believer that when I mix Montessori, Charlotte Mason, Reggio Emilia, Unit studies, and Delight directed/Free Range Learning into our life, we don't have to adhere to a strict schedule. Instead we have a lifestyle of learning all of the time.

I am not a teacher,

But an awakener

~ Robert Frost

If you would like to check out what the older boys (8 and 10) will be doing click here. 

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Watermelon Fizzy Sensory Science Play

When I think of summer, I think of the warm sun, the beach, children playing outside, picnics, and of course eating lots of watermelon. I also think it's a time that I need to come up with some extra activities to keep the kids having fun, and learning. On this particular day I had scooped out the middle of the watermelon for a fruit salad, and I knew there was something cool we could do with the rest of it. 

What I came up with was easy and super fun. 

All you need is 2 ingredients.

 Baking soda (I used a 1 lb. box), and Vinegar (as much as you want)

Feel free to add a couple drops of watercolors or food coloring for extra excitement. 

Sit back and let the kids explore, and enjoy some fizzy watermelon science sensory play. 

Summer should be filled with enjoyment.
Make it easy for yourself, yet thrilling for the children.
I hope you enjoyed our watermelon play and get the chance to try it out for yourself.
The children will love the squishy, bubbling fun!!!

Check out some of our other great Sensory play ideas

Orange Scented Natural Play Dough

Under the Sea Jello Sensory Play

or how about an

  Arctic Adventure with Frozen Foam Dough

You can also follow my Sensory Board on Pinterest. It is full of sensory play goodness. 

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This post is part of our 12 Months of Sensory Play

Interested in seeing what my fellow bloggers are doing for their fizzy fun?!?! 

Lemon Lime Adventure~Look! We're Learning!~Glittering Muffins~Still Playing School~ Little Bins for Little Hands~Natural Beach Living~The Eyes of a Boy~Powerful Mothering~ Wildflower Ramblings~I Heart Crafty Things~Delightful Learning~Life of Jennifer Dawn

Feel free to link up any of your sensory play, and click around to see other great ideas.  

   

An InLinkz Link-up

Life Cycle of a Chicken Plus Egg Science

What a wonderful week we have had, learning all about chickens. I would love to actually raise chickens so the kids can see the amazing process in real life. Unfortunately, our neighborhood doesn't allow it, so that will have to wait. I came up with the next best thing for us, a chicken unit study. 

A few of the things I used for our study was the book Where Do Chicks Come From, the Safari Life Cycle of a Chicken figures and Baby Einstein Language Discovery Cards. I also was lucky to have this fun wet felted chicken set from Lavender and Ladybugs . After I had gathered all of the items we were going to use(ahead of time, of course), we were ready to get some learning/fun in.

They all took turns with the flow chart and the life cycle figures. Note to self, make more than one copy when you have four kids working on the same thing ;) 

It worked out though, when the boys were done Bells really got into it. She was able to place all of the figures in the right spot and name them. She was so proud of herself and so was I. YAY!!!  

 If you are interested in the flow chart and the smaller chicken cards they can be found at Learn Create Love. She also colored a chicken coloring page while I was working with the older boys.  

For Little B I added a few Egg language arts activities and they can be found here. 

In this picture it may look like they are just holding eggs, but actually they are squeezing the eggs as hard as they can. Eggs although they seem easily breakable, they aren't at all. 

Using our eggs and the book Where Do Chicks Come From we examined eggs closely. Searching for the different parts, and of course seeing how it felt. We were even lucky enough to find double yolk eggs to explore.   

We finished up our Egg Science with rolling races on the porch. Do they wobble, do they roll straight? What are some of the questions that need answering about eggs? Isn't that one of the best things about Science? Having questions, making educated guesses, and than actually being able to experiment with the object.

Science Rocks!!!

I am sooooooooooo excited about one of our unit studies for this summer, I honestly can barely wait. Make sure you sign up for our emails and Like us on Facebook so you don't miss out.     

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Apple Week Activities

I'm feeling like apples galore lately in my house and all over the internet, and it's a great feeling. I love apples, I love fall and I love when you can mix learning with fun. So lets get to it.  We have enjoyed Science, Sensory, Math, and Practical Life lessons all with different types of apples.  

Hopefully you haven't missed out on our Ten apples up on top activities, Edible toddler sensory play, and making the easiest and yummiest apple dip ever. If you have, no worries; these links will take you right where you need to go. 

The kids and I are setting up for our annual apple tasting. For the Montessori lovers out there, my kids are doing the cutting themselves. Aren't Apple Slicers awesome? Perfect for their little hands.

These are the apples we choose this week. They are all locally grown, however if they weren't I personally would have made a geography lesson out of it too. Mapping out all of the different apples. 

If you would like to incorporate math like we did, make up a few different graphs for them to use (or have them help make some). We did 3 different types of graphs. Unfortunately I don't have any printable graph charts for you, but this took us two minutes to make up. Not to mention you are now teaching your children graphing. Perfect!! 

Taste testers, I think Blakey is unsure of this one. Of course Little Miss Bell got in on it, she is always part of our daily learning. We used a chart to graph all of the different types of apples, yes it's our math for the day. I love living math. 

All in all I'd say we had happy taste testers. 

I was so excited to find this apple parts printable over at 2 Teaching Mommies. We went over the apple parts while we were tasting them and then did a few fun activities like this afterwards. Great to recap everything we learned, without me having to drill them on it. (You know what I mean-smile)

 At the end of the week the boys wanted to plant all of the apple seeds just like Johnny Appleseed.

It's been a great week and we found out that in our house green apples are always at the top of our chart. Now I'm off for some of that delicious apple dip. Hope to see you here again soon.

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Endangered Species Ocean Animals

After reading A Perfect Time for Pandasand Pandas and Other Endangered Species: Fact Trackerwe wanted to learn even more. How many other animals are endangered and how can we help?

So of course, I set out to find a few fun and interesting ways to show and teach my boys more about Endangered ocean animals. I came across these Montessori cards at Montessori helper for 10 cents. I couldn't beat that price for such nice high quality cards.

Apologia Anatomy and Physiology Science

If you have been following my blog, you know that as a family we have spent the past year living and loving nature studies. We have also spent time learning the phases of the moon, in preparation for a big Solar System unit. So with all that said, we only dabbled in Anatomy this year. We spent a little bit of time the past few months learning about how our bodies work.  Here is a small peek at how much the boys learned with the  Apologia Anatomy and Physiology Science.  (This page does contain affiliate links) 

Cells... What a fun activity to go along with all the learning. I wrote about our week of cells here. I included links to blogs that I used for their great ideas and free printables. 

Phases of the Moon

Moon Phases, what a wonderful thing to learn...

I don't ever remember being taught about the different phases of the moon. I remember learning about Neil Armstrong, and how cool it must have been to actually walk on the moon. I wasn't alive when that amazing moment took place but I can only imagine after reading through all the stories and seeing all of the pictures how miraculous that moment in time must have been. I hope my children got as much out of reading Neil Armstrong's biography as I did. I totally recommend all of the Who Was Series books by Roberta Edwards they are great books. Now lets get to the really fun part, and that's learning the Moon Phases. 

It's incredible all that we can learn about the moon. I never even realized they have a page in the newspaper that charts the 28 day cycle of the moon phases as well as when the moon rises and sets.

Here you see how we explored part of God's day 4 of creation, Giving us the Sun, Moon, and Stars. You can find great information on that at Children's ministry resources. It turned out to be another great free resource packed full of information, as well as crafts. 

As the children read I had them hold up a picture of what they were reading about, so everyone could see it. This set of Montessori cards is from ETC Montessori, and they offer it as a free download. I laminated all of our cards and charts so they would last longer and be easier to work with.

Of course we couldn't do the moon phases with out food being involved. These Oreo's are a favorite of the boy's, so I thought "why not make learning fun".

Here are a couple of pictures of how I set up for the  table for the kids to start learning the phases.

The Moon chart in the top left corner can also be found at ETC Montessori. 

We have followed the paper each week in tracking the moon rise and have gone outside on several occasions to get a look first hand at the moons phase. 

In the end, we ate the moon's (smile)

Craft Time

I found this craft activity at I heart crafty things and knew it would be perfect for our Moon unit. 

This was super easy, after tracing a circle onto your paper, add a little flour to white paint, paint the moon, take a water bottle in a circular motion add more texture. then allow it to dry. When it's dry draw stars or add star stickers to your picture. Voila a masterpiece.

The older boys drew their own stars with a white colored pencil.

Little B added star stickers to his moon picture. 

 Moon painting's were the perfect way for us to end our moon unit. 

If you are interested in a few other moon books that we enjoyed, check out Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me  and Planets, Moons, & Stars. 

I hope you come back to check out our Astronaut Sensory Play for this Unit. It was out of this world.

You can check out some other great learning activities on my Pinterest page Science.

I would love to hear how your family learned about the moon. Feel free to leave me a comment or join me on Facebook so we can chat. 

If you missed out on Part 1 and Part 2, here is an easy way to click back over and check out all of the Solar System activities we have done. 

 

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