Jell-o Letter practice

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I got a bit sick, and as usual I decided I would ignore it until it went away. Turns out, that's really not the best thing to do sometimes. I felt awful for a few days, and then I decided it was time to get on with life. (Plus I had a birthday party to set up for Kaydence) Then the day after the party it really hit me and I ended up in the ER! It wasn't that bad though, I was only there for a few hours. I got some medicine and got back on my feet. We did have a few days that we didn't do much besides watch movies and Netflix though. To make myself feel better about letting them watch so much TV I made sure that they at least spent a lot of that time watching Leap Frog DVDs. I love those, Kaydence loves them. She learned her letter sounds from those DVDs.

Today I wanted to work on learning how to write letters. Kaydence loves tracing lines on paper, but that get's boring after a while. So I decided to make a salt tray with alphabet cards. For the tray I used the wooden box that came with our Melissa and Doug sewing cards. I cut up some craft paper and wrote a letter on each one. (FYI, heavier paper would be better than what I used. ) I chose to use Jell-o instead of salt. Mainly because I had a lot of jell-o. I always buy Jell-o and then remember that we never eat it. My kids LOVE tasting anything they are playing with, and I thought Jell-o would feel like a treat. Plus, I can remember doing something similar to this with my Mom. The Jell-o always made it more fun. So here is what it looked like when I was finished. It was really easy to put together. The cards are nothing fancy, and I am going to buy heavier paper or possibly index cards. You can see through this paper. I had to prop it up with the Jell-o box in the back to get them to stay up.

Nolan also got a tray with Jell-o. He got mixed colors. He had a blast playing with it and licking his fingers. 

This was really fun. Before each letter I asked her if she would like for me to show her how to write it, if she said yes I showed her. Then she would erase it and do it by herself. A few times she wanted to try by herself, and if she got confused we did it together. 

I made an effort to be extra enthusiastic every time she finished a letter. I her to know she is doing great, it's a great motivator for her to want to keep learning. 

Around this time she asked for a straw. She held it like a pencil and wrote with it. It worked great! 

We made it to the letter G and she said she was finished. She asked for a spoon and a bowl. She 

spent quite a bit of time transferring the Jell-o back and forth with her spoon.

"Hang on Mommy, I need to get my princess."

Play doh

I'm fairly sure that in every post I've written so far I've promised something about birds. OOPS. Turns out, we're just not that into birds. We've done a few things and read some books, but we're kind of over it. (we were never that into it) We're moving on to something new. I'm thinking a Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See unit. 

What we have done is make our own play doh though! I found some instructions here. 

We don't have cream of tartar. (don't judge me, but I don't even know what that is) And I didn't use peppermint oil or glitter. Although I did promise to make a pink glitter batch soon. 

I did try to line up all of the ingredients to take a picture to start with, but then a couple of little busy bodies jumped in and started dumping it all in.

Miss Kaydence measuring salt 

Adding it to the bowl

Let's stop to admire Kaydence. That's her super model pose. 

Okay, we mixed it al up and then I decided we wanted three colors. We dropped a bit of food coloring onto each mound of "doh"

It took a while to work in, and doesn't look as good as the pictures, but it's done!

We had a blast playing with this play doh. We've tried some other versions of this that dried out really quickly or was hard to play with. This was just right. I keep them in plastic baggies, the only negative is that they get slimy after a while. The pink one had some weird brown goo oozing from it. I threw that one away. I'm not sure if it was because something else got added to the baggie (most likely) or if it was just some weird fluke. The blue and green are a little gooey, but have not yet developed any sort of brown ooze. This was the perfect rainy day rescue! 

I am working on building a tire playground in our back yard. I'll post pictures soon, but don't have high expectations because I literally have no idea what I'm doing! 

Bad idea?

Here is a simple truth about me, I mess up A LOT. I do things and then later I think wow, that was way more complicated than it should have been. Also, I always think things will be easier than they really are. In my head I know what to do and how to do it, somehow the execution of those plans just turn a out a little harder. Just ask my husband and all of the ridiculous(ly awesome) projects I have had him do for me. I just thought I would let you know now, because if you keep reading this blog eventually it will be filled with more mishaps than successes! Sort of, everything I do always turns out fine one way or the other. It just may not look like the pictures I've seen on Pinterest. But hey, who wants perfect?

Today we had a fun busy day! We went to a play group where we made wind chimes! I haven't finished mine yet, I am going to work on it after this. And then I took the kids over to Auntie Liz and Uncle Parker's house. Nolan and Parker are best buddies. I was taking this dog I've been looking after to meet his hopefully forever new owner. And I thought it would be best to leave the kids with Liz in case the guy turned out to be crazy. Parker came with me, to provide manly protection. Anyways after all that was said and done the kids were so tired! They both fell asleep on the way home. I had some time to read a book all by myself (a rare treat) and when they woke up I was facing the terrible monster that my sweet little baby boy turns into when he hasn't taken a long enough nap. (Just kidding, even grumpy Nolan is still pretty darn awesome) it was dinner time and I was thinking, "what the heck am I going to do about dinner?!" Idea! Deviled egg pasta salad! (It's amazing, check Pinterest) I was just talking about it with Liz even. It was meant to be.

Around the same time I had a GREAT idea... The kids are tired and grumpy so I'll get them involved with dinner. I've been wanting to find a better way to let them help me in the kitchen. They can help me peel eggs!

That was a great idea right?

Well, as it turns out it was possible that it was a terrible idea. I got out the hard boiled eggs we still had left from Easter. I got out two bowls each, one for shells and one for peeled egg. In my mind I knew that they would probably be ugly, but since I was going to chop them up who cares?!

That was my fatal mistake. Setting loose your 4 and 2 year old on a pile of eggs would generally be no big deal. Just not if you're also planning to eat those eggs relatively soon. These eggs, oh goodness these eggs were a hot mess. Kaydence got bored fairly quickly when she discovered that it was not as easy and cracking an uncooked egg. Nolan was all about it though. He cracked those bad boys and pulled apart those eggs with gusto. There were chunks of eggs everywhere! And mostly with the shell on. By this point it i realized was too late to fix the problem, he was having fun! Unfortunately, I then had to go through the egg chunks and take the peel off. It took forever, and since there were no more eggs to demolish Nolan went back to being grumpy. Dinner eventually got finished, and it was as delicious as I remember. It would have been more delicious if it hadn't been such a pain to make, but now you know

Never let your pre-school aged children peel eggs you intend to eat unless you are prepared for the mess. Or you could just peel your own eggs and let them have their fun.

iPad

We've done it! We got an iPad.

I said for a long time, "I don't need an iPad, I have my phone and my computer." Which is still true, but since I've decided to homeschool I've been reading about all sorts of apps for learning. I decided I wanted one, and I've been looking for a few months for a good deal. Since I wanted one primarily for a learning tool I decided on on original ipad or an ipad 2. The ones that were being sold for a good price went fast, but mostly I found people asking for outrageous prices. We're talking for the price of a brand new iPad I could get a used one. I finally found one that sounded perfect. I paid $150 dollars for an original iPad, in perfect condition. She still had the original box and she gave me three covers and a case to go with it. Plus a charging cord. 

I was really excited. She cleared it so we could start fresh. I filled it with the Apps that I've been looking into. I started to write the name and a quick review of all our apps, and then I realized that I have quite a few. So here are my favorites so far:


Bugs & Numbers-  It's full of number activities and they are all really fun! I've been having a hard time seeing how much she is really picking up when it comes to math. She can count from 1-20, but other than that she generally isn't very interested. I haven't pushed it. Anyways, apparently she knows much more than I was giving her credit for! These games have been fun for her to play, but even more fun for me to watch her figuring them out! She is so smart. Each game is different but they all help with number recognition.

Curious George Dictionary- I had the best surprise when we played on this one. Nolan repeated every letter of the alphabet as we looked at them, and pointed out what george was holding. It was amazing. I haven't worked with him with any of the letters yet, other than reading to him. He participates in a lot of the activities I do with Kaydence. It also has a few stories that you can read, as well as numbers, quantities, opposites, and colors & shapes


We also got a Bible stories app, it has seven stores from the bible, and Kaydence loves them. She likes reading about Jesus. We have one for the Book of Mormon as well, but the music was really loud. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to read to you or not. It was free, but you only get one story, and then you have to pay to get more. We'll probably end up paying, because it is pretty cool. We read scriptures together as a family every night. But it's always good if they are interested and wanting to read them on their own.

We do have some rules for the iPad though. They can only play with the iPad for a little while each day. Playing the iPad is fun, and they can learn a lot from it, but I don't want them sitting around with it all day. They can only play on the iPad when I say it is okay, and if they fight over it I take it away. It get's put up high during the times they aren't allowed to play with it, and if it has to be taken away more than once they don't get it for the rest of the day.

Yesterday we went to the Botanical Gardens with our playgroup. They have a fairy garden set up for a few weeks. It was so fun! All of the little girls (and Nolan) were holding hands. We told them they would see real fairies if they were very quiet and looked hard. Not sure if that was good or bad though, because then they were upset when they didn't see any fairies! Aren't they so cute? We're going to go back again. It was a lot of fun! 

 That's all for now. We haven't gotten around to too much bird learning so far. We had plans to make bird feeders with toilet paper rolls, peanut butter, and bird seed. But then I found ants in the cat food. It threw off our day. After the exterminator comes we'll work on them. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures and post them soon!

-Karly

Support

Earlier this week I went into total panic mode.

"I have no friends! I can't homeschool, I'm never going to meet anyone! Everyone else is right I can't do this!"

Luckily, I joined a few homeschool support groups. I belong to a few groups for the Austin area, and I also joined a couple of playgroups to help us get out and meet new people. Anyways, I sent out an e-mail for help to one of these groups. I got so many replies back! Reassurances that they feel the same way I do, knowing that they are doing similar things, and that I'm not falling behind just because we fell off schedule.

I mentioned in the getting started section of this that it's important to join such a group and it's so true! The members of the homeschool community are so ready and so willing to reach out and help! I haven't even met ANY of these ladies who have been helping me. They just knew and understood what I was feeling and wanted me to know that it would be ok. Seriously, they're great.

Anyways, by chance I met another homeschooler in my neighborhood! I went to a playgroup at her house and was feeling nervous. She mentioned that her daughter dropped her second nap so she was having a hard time finding time to do school with her son. Bam! I asked if she home-schooled and we started talking about it. Her son is the same age as Kaydence and they were getting along really well. Even better she called the next day to invite me to a play date at the park that several other home-schooling families in my area were going to. It got canceled because of rain, but I ended up going over with her to another woman's house to meet her. She had this amazing school room set up.

I can't tell you how good it feels to know that there are so many people close by. We've been out on play dates almost every day this week! I was feeling really nervous going into these new situations, with no one I have met before but I am SO glad that I did. I never would have met those wonderful ladies if I hadn't. Or if I did by chance meet them I probably wouldn't have been brave enough to talk about homeschooling. If you're looking for a way to find homeschool groups I would suggest meetup.com they have book clubs and a ton of other groups too, not just for homeschool or playgroup. I joined a book club and a coupon group too. (I'm trying to find someone to teach me how to coupon like the people on extreme couponing!) I've also had a lot of luck with Yahoo groups.

We're going to be talking about birds for a couple of weeks, so get ready to see some fun bird activities coming up! I will be posting some of the crafts we have been doing and a tutorial on how to do them.

Fair warning, my crafts look like they were done by a 4 year old. (because they are)

-Karly

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Dinosaurs

We did Dinosaurs the week after snakes. Again, I had a hard time finding age appropriate non-fiction dinosaur books for my kids. I found as many story books with dinosaurs in it as we could (sorry no book list again! this one was done before the blog too) and I did the best I could with non-fiction books for older kids. We learned what a paleontologist is and the difference between a herbivore and carnivore is. We didn't get into types of dinosaurs too much more than that. We watched a lot of episodes of Dinosaur Train. And I showed them a few documentaries, which they thought were awesome. Although, since they have the attention span of a 4 year old and a 2 year old they didn't pay much attention to those.

We started our week off with a trip to the dinosaur park! (http://thedinosaurpark.com/) It's in Cedar Creek, TX and a lot of fun! It's a walking trail with dinosaurs all along the path way. Each dinosaur has an information for you to read about the species. They also have a fun scavenger hunt set up! At the end there is a playground and a place for the kids to dig up fossils.

Sorry about the weird picture placement. I'm working on it. Somewhere I have a picture of me with my head sticking out of the T-Rex mouth. I'm just not sure where it is.

We spent a lot of time doing dinosaur crafts. We made two different kinds of dinosaur fossils. I have pictures, and instructions. We painted our toy dinosaurs and made foot prints with them. We did some dinosaur counting and I hid little dinosaurs around the house for a dinosaur hunt. It's the same thing as an easter egg hunt, except you don't get candy. Just little dinosaurs. 

Here is one of the fossils we made:

Here is the link for directions I chose to bake mine in the oven for about 30 minutes. Then we let them sit outside for about two hours to finish drying. While we waited I took our leftover sand and dinosaurs and made a little sensory box. It's smaller than I usually do them, but I didn't have a lot of sand. 

Here is Bubba exploring the sand. 

That's our cat Dexter in the back round. This little sand box kept them both really happy while we waited for the fossils to dry. 

The fossils dried and we got to break them up to free the dinosaurs! Bubba was a bit frustrated, it was harder for him to get them out. I helped him, but I couldn't help taking a picture of that face first. 

I gave them both a magnifying glass so they could look a their fossils and explore like real paleontologists. 

We spent a lot of time playing outside with that sand a little dinosaurs, even after the fossils were done. I got it out over the week and they were just as happy with it on other days. 

Kaydence counting dinosaurs 

This sounded like a good idea, but it didn't quite work out. The idea is to freeze the dinosaurs in water, and then free them with paintbrushes or spray bottles. It should be an outside activity, on a hot day. We had a cold front come in and I was just looking for something to keep them busy while I cooked dinner. It backfired big time. The ice took FOREVER to melt. They were bored, and didn't see the point. I ended up pouring warm water in so they would melt and then they just played in the water. 

Cute dinosaur printable back. It's free! Kaydence is cutting lines check it out! 

This is us painting with our dinosaurs. We made the finger paint ourselves. It was a bit clumpy. 

This was our other fossil craft! I liked this one better, and I think the kids did too. Find the instructions here 

And to end our week we went to the Texas Natural Science Center over at UT. It's free and they have real fossils. Kaydence was excited to see them, but less excited once we were there. I find that seeing the bones is one thing, but she likes it more (at this age) to see the real life replicas of a dinosaur. 

It's the greatest state in the USA.

And now we're caught up. In the future my posts won't be this long. I'll spread them out through the week to keep them shorter. We're just trying out a new program, which I will talk about tomorrow!