Human body

Last night while we were reading our bedtime story Kaydence interrupted asking what the bump in her knee was. It was her knee bone. She then had several more questions about bones. So we stopped reading and I googled skeletons. We looked and the pictures and talked for about 30 minutes. I asked her if she wanted to learn more about bodies in the morning. After that there was a crazy loud storm. We ended up staying up pretty late watching care bears in my bedroom.

So this morning rolled around and after breakfast Kaydence wanted to repeat an art project we did the day before. Its out of my montessori art book Let Out the Sunshine. These pictures are from the other day when we did it. **on the original day** Nolan spent a little bit trying to cut with scissors, and then asked for help. I cut his paper into strips after that. It's the first book in the activity. Again, we didn't follow the instructions exactly, but basically you have them cut long strips of paper and then glue them to a white paper. Kaydence asked me if I would do it too. So I sat down and cut strips and glued them to my own paper. Kaydence watched me very carefully and started to try to do hers like mine.

This morning Nolan was not interested in cutting or gluing. He played with his trucks and ninja turtles. While they were both busy I pulled out my montessori book to see if it had any helpful lessons. Turns out my book is great. I already knew that though. There was a suggestion to use a stethoscope to help them hear their breathing and heartbeats. We have several play stethoscopes, but no real one. So I thought I would post on the local homeschool facebook page to see if someone had one they would be willing to let us borrow. Not only did a lady respond pretty quickly that she had one, but she lives down the street from me. Crazy right? We went to pick it up and then we spent some time at the library checking out new books.

When we got home it was lunch time and Nolan was so grumpy from our late night. We had lunch and took an early rest. We watched the Magic School Bus inside our bodies while we ate. Once we got up I got the stethoscope out and I let them both listen to my heart. Nolan loved it, he wanted to listen to his heart too. For some reason it freaked Kaydence out. She listened for a few seconds and said, "I don't like that. It scares me." I have no clue why that scared her, but I didn't push it. She watched Nolan listen for a while. The book also suggests that you do a google search for heart drawings and photos so they can see what a real heart looks like. It includes (in the book, it's an e-book that I have printed out) links for cool videos you can watch. I went to youtube and looked for human heart beating. There are a few videos of chests open during surgery where it shows the heart beating. There is also a computer generated hear showing it beating, it was pretty cool. I was thinking that the surgery video would scare Kaydence since she didn't like the sound of her own heart. She asked to turn it on, so we did and she LOVED it. We watched that video about 15 times. She was asking why the person needed surgery and all sorts of questions. I'm not sure I answered all of her questions accurately, but I tried. We also turned on a clip of Bill Nye the Science guy I also found on youtube, but by that point she was tired and ready to play.

We had our dog trainer come over for our last lesson after that. One of our dogs is a crazy puppy and our other dog has this weird obsession with light. She's been helping us with both. Anyways after she left we had a snack and then Kaydence was ready to learn about skeletons.

We sat down and I googled an image of a skeleton and we looked at all of the bones. My montessori book suggests bringing out a pad of paper and having the child feel the bones in their body and make a list of the bones they could feel. I meant to do that, but I didn't. We felt our bones and we talked about what they did. She was mainly interested in her rib cage and we spent a long time talking about how the ribs protect our lungs and heart and why they are so important.

The other activity in my book that I wanted to try today was letting them feel and explore chicken bones. Lucky for me I already had some leftover drumsticks. I cleaned the chicken off the bones and gave them a really good washing. I put them on a piece of white paper and gave them magnifying glasses. We talked about how hard the bones were, and how light they are. I had them try to break the bones, they couldn't of course. One of the bones in my left overs actually was broken so I brought that one out and let them look at the bone marrow. We talked about blood cells being made there. The book suggested taking a fork to get the bone marrow out, but I decided not to do that. Kaydence asked for some crayons because she wanted to trace the bones and color them. She asked to paint the bones too, but I decided against that.

There is Bella hoping the magnifying glass with make a reflection.

There you go! Another day in our life :) we haven't done her reading lesson yet. It's been a busy day. The other day I ordered a book called Explode the Code. They are phonics lessons. I'm going to be using it along with her reading lessons. We will be starting a handwriting program once I can decide which one to use. 

Sensory Balloons

We're up and running again! For some crazy reason last week I decided it would be a good idea to potty train Nolan. So we did it. He is finished now, aside from the occasional accident. We spent most of last week downstairs in our TV room because we had to run to the potty every few minutes. It's also easier to clean off of the hard floors than the carpets. But it's done now! No more diapers!

So here is what a general idea of our days are looking like so far.

7-8am we're waking up. I give it a larger timeframe because sometimes I have the kids play together in Kaydences room while I get a few more minutes of sleep. Generally this doesn't last more than 5 minutes at a time, but can't blame me for trying. We're usually up by 7:30, but today they both slept until 8. I was happy.

8-8:30 (or earlier, depending on wake up time) I let them watch some TV while I make breakfast. I'm not my best in the mornings. Takes me a few minutes to get up and moving, and once we start our school day the TV goes off.

9am. This isn't an exact start time, we just start whenever breakfast is finished and I've cleaned up. You get the idea. We start off with some sort of montessori style learning activity. Nolan can be involved and we do it as long as they are interested. I'm using an at home montessori curriculum as a guide. I haven't set up the proper Montessori environment (according to the book) and I'm not planning to do everything 100% Montessori. (it's crazy expensive, even at home) We pick a "practical life" activity. Right now I am just going through the pages. Once we have done a few I will give them the options and let them pick what they would like to do. Yesterday the activity was sweeping. I've done that with them before and they got bored very quickly. This time we started out by making sensory balloons. We took a package of balloons, some funnels, and some kitchen ingredients. We used flour, lentils, dried kidney beans, and rice. Mostly because that's what we had. They scooped the ingredients into the funnels until they were full and then I tied the balloons shut.

Kaydence was interested in tying the balloons herself. So I let her try as long as she wanted and only stepped in to help when she asked me to. 

Scooping the ingredients was harder for Nolan. He tried for a while and then he used his hands. He switched back and forth from using his hands to trying to scoop. He would stay very still and watch Kaydence as she scooped and then he would try to scoop again. He got bored filling the balloons before Kaydence did, so he went to play with his toys and we finished up. Now I brought in the sweeping. (We made a huge mess) I don't have a kid sized broom. I thought about buying one, but when my kids get a hold of a broom they generally wave them around in the air. I decided it was better all around not to give them access to brooms on a regular basis. Instead I bought them a little (as in smaller than the one I use) brush and dust pan. I used the broom to sweep into a big pile and then Kaydence helped me sweep it into her dustpan. Most of what she swept went all over the floor, but hey, that's what learning is about. Nolan didn't want to sweep. He was fighting a battle with his superman. 

Then we brought the balloons over to the coffee table. We made 4 of each type of ingredient balloon. 2 for each of them. I mixed them up and the game is to squeeze them and match them together based on how they feel. Kaydence finished pretty quickly and was done, but Nolan spent a long time squeezing them.

After we were finished with that I gave them a few options of what to do next. We ended up playing with our felt There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly set. I bought it used and then found it was missing a few pieces, which was annoying. (My fault for not asking first) We used some other animal toys for the ones that were missing, and the kids don't know the difference. I've also set up a rewards system for Kaydence. Every time she reads me a book she gets one gummy bear. So she read me three books, and then I took a turn reading to her. 

11am we decided to take a trip to the library. I like to go on Mondays because Sam is usually off work and I can look for books without the kids wanting me to hurry. However, I forgot it was labor day so the library was closed. Instead we drove around and enjoyed the pretty Texas landscape. 

12am- lunch. We usually eat earlier than this. Otherwise they beg for snacks and are then too full to eat lunch. While I fix lunch I generally give them the option to color or play with other things. They wanted to watch X-Men cartoons, and I was okay with that. I love X-Men. 

1pm- rest time. Nolan takes a nap. He's usually out for 1 1/2- 2 hours. Kaydence rests quietly on the couch. She has the option to play on the ipad or watch a show. I am going to make her some quiet boxes to play with during rest time, I just haven't gotten there yet. I usually only have her rest for an hour. It's pushing it to get her to lay still for that long anyways. We get up and do her reading lesson. We're on lesson 50! Oh yeah! She loves her reading lessons. Nolan woke up screaming that bears were going to get him. That's relatively new. He will go upstairs alone to play, and then realize he is alone and start screaming that bears are going to eat him. Sam put him to sleep, but wasn't in the room when he woke up so he freaked out. I had planned to do an art project from my Montessori art book, but he just wanted to be held. So we read books and colored instead. Kaydence read me a few more books. Usually around 4 we're done with any official learning that I have for us to do. Sometimes it's earlier than that, sometimes later. Most of this is just a general idea of what our day looks like. Starting soon we'll have dance classes and things like that. We'll adjust our day around those things. Some days (like toady) Kaydence decides she wants to wait to do her reading lesson until Daddy comes home. We're flexible. 

We're going to start a kindergarten level math program soon, as well as handwriting without tears. Or something similar. I'm leaning towards singapore math, but I'm not sure just yet. 

Here are some afternoon silly pictures from me and Bubba. It's one of his favorite games. I make a silly face and he tries to copy it.