How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World

Today we started a unit on the book How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World.  We started by of course reading the book.  We heard it at story time in the library a few weeks ago, but the kids really didn't remember much about it.  So we read the book, and every time the main character went somewhere, we'd flip to the map at the beginning of the book and find where that was, and each time my three year old would ask "Where's Texas?"  I guess it's good to always have a point of reference. 
So after reading the book a few times we decided to make an apple pie, using the recipe in the back of the book.  As we put in the ingredients we talked about where the girl in the book for them and how they're made (flour comes from wheat that we grind up really well, butter comes from milk that we mix a lot and for a long time, etc.) Plus we practiced counting spoonfuls very carefully, and before we started we all washed our hands really well and talked about why we do that (so we don't get germs in the food, so we don't put any "stuff" on our hands into the pie, etc.)  while we waited for it to bake we read some fun books from the library.  When it came out and was cool, I read the Apple Pie Book to the kids while they ate.  It was actually really delicious, and it WAS easy! 

The egg yolk really added quite the shine!

In the next few days we will be going into more detail about the countries mentioned, and the environments (rain forest, ocean, etc.), plus learning more about how the food is made.  We're going to attempt to make butter, and find someone with wheat berries and a wheat grinder (I can't wait to have some of my own) to show how that is made, and i may have to get some more apples because they REALLY enjoyed making apple pie today!  They also really enjoyed eating the skins as I peeled them off!

Impromptu Nutrition Lesson

This past weekend we went to visit my in-laws.  It was a good enough visit, but there's something that always gets to us about visiting there: the food.  Sure it tastes great, but there's almost no nutritional value and there's a TON of salt, fat, and sugar.  We always say that we gain about 5 pounds for every three days we spend there.  While we noticed the huge difference in ourselves, this past visit, the kids noticed too.  They were tired, had tummy aches, and were constipated.  They asked me why they felt this way and I explained that it was because we hadn't been eating healthy food.  We've had a lot of mini lessons on nutrition, but them experiencing the consequences of poor food choices seemed to really drive the point home for them.  Then, while we were waiting in the grocery store for my husband to use the restroom, the kids and I walked around and talked about what foods are healthy, which ones are not, and why.  They really enjoyed it, and when we got home, they wanted to go to the store to get healthy food!  It was a great little impromptu lesson!

Scripture Memorization

I've been sinking my teeth into the Simply Charlotte Mason website.  I don't claim to be totally Charlotte Mason homeschoolers, I do like a lot of the principles and techniques of Charlotte Mason education.  One thing we started a few weeks ago is this method of scripture memorization.  I'm not getting dilutions of grandeur here, with my kids being 5, 3, and 1, but it's been pretty effective.  Basically, you get a little card holder for index cards and then get dividers, and label them "daily" "odd" (it's not for family members so don't worry about fitting a person in this category)  "even" then one for each day of the week and numbers 1 through 31.  Put the scriptures you want to memorize, or other things you want to memorize, on their own index cards.  If they already know some, you can put those in too, to be a consistent review.  Either way, every day, we do the daily, then we do either odd or even, depending on the date (on the first of the month, we do odd, the second we do even, the third we do odd, etc.), then the day of the week, then the number of the month.  So on Wednesday the 7th, we do the card in daily, odd (seven is an odd number, in case you were curious), Wednesday, and 7. 

They suggest doing it for all 7 days of the week, but knowing myself, that wasn't going to happen, so I just did Monday through Friday.  I also couldn't find index card dividers that weren't already labeled A-Z, so I got some pink index cards and pink sticky notes, then used the sticky notes to be the part sticking up (I also taped them to make sure it didn't come up later on.) and put those on the pink cards to be an obvious divider.  I hope that makes sense, the memory card on my camera is full so I didn't get a picture. 

We've been slowly adding one a week, we're doing Articles of Faith. First I read all of it, then we go through and I say a phrase or a word if it's a hard one, and they repeat.  We go over it about 3 times like this, then maybe say it all at the same time (slowly).  I don't try to force my 3 year old to do this, he usually stays in the room and sometimes participates.
I was just hoping that this would help my young kids get more familiar with the scriptures, expecting that it would be more effective as they got older, but my 5 year old nearly has the first three Articles of Faith memorized!  I'm amazed how well it's working!

Volcano!

  
 We've been going through the regular lessons and things suggested in What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know and What Your Preschooler Needs to Know, as well as doing a few worksheets, but the week before last, I thought we'd do something a little more fun that most Kindergarteners and Preschoolers don't get to do.  We learned about volcanoes!  Not only that, we made one! 
First we checked out a few books from the library about volcanoes, watched some educational videos on youtube, and then made and made errupt our volcano!

Here is the final product.  Painted and with people and trees and houses and rocks made of modeling clay.

Here is a shot of one of the volcanoes "erupting."  We did the regular baking soda and vinegar, I just added some food coloring to it so we could have red or orange "lava."  During this project I used some of my husband's worn out work shirts for the kids to wear over their clothes so they wouldn't get messy, and put some old sheets on the table to protect it.

I had a hard time getting a picture when the lava looked just right, here my timing was right but there's a little kid arm in the way!  That's how it goes I guess!

In case you were curious:
to make the volcano I used an old milk carton cut in half with the halves upside down.  I duck taped some empty yogurt cups on top of that, then made the basic volcano shape with aluminum foil.  My 5 year old held with the tape, ripping the foil, and smoothing it out.  Then my five year old and I covered it with paper mache, using a mix of two parts water with one part glue, and strips of newspaper, while my three year old played with the baby.  When that was dry the baby ate in his high chair while my 3 and 5 year old painted, and as you can see from the interesting placement of green and purple, they had a lot of fun!  When the paint was dry they made trees, houses, people and rocks from modeling clay, I thought all of these things looked very much the same, except the two big rocks my three year old made, but the point is they had fun and learned a lot, and they knew what those things were supposed to be!

Starting Kindergarten

N started her first day of Kindergarten on Monday last week.  We made a big deal out of it and put and peal and stick white board up in our dining "room" and did a lot of fun stuff.  We've done it every day and have been doing a lot of reading from What your Kindergartener Needs to Know and doing pages from Daily Learning Drills  .  Plus I made a counter with beans and an empty egg carton that I wrote numbers in each spot.  We've also been slowly working on Bob Books.  And practicing cooking and doing things like jumping jacks, tag, sit ups, leg lifts and running at the track of a local school for P.E.  She also made a necklace out of beads leftover from when she made me a birthday necklace and some buttons from a shirt that turned into part of a quilt.  we've also done water color paints, a lowercase letter scavenger hunt (she had to find the cards with lowercase letters on them and match them with the template of uppercase letters and say the sound) plus we've been talking about the weather and strangers and trying to explain why we save money.  We have also been listening to the primary songs on CD for the primary program coming up.  And we have been talking about what it means to call Christ the good shepherd and trying to memorize the first article of faith and talking about where the articles of faith came from. 

June 8, 2011

Just to update you on what we've been doing for homeschool, we've been doing the summer reading program with our library, taking walks and talking about the various things we see, doing a calender every day, practicing N's scripture that she's giving in Church on Sunday.  And N and D have been helping me cook and asking all kinds of questions on why we do certain things in certain ways.  The big question I struggle with is when D keeps asking me why I have lots of owies on my face.  No explanation of acne seems to curb his curiosity, but I don't even know why I still get owies on my face more than a decade after puberty ended!  Little tangent there.  We've also been talking a lot about where our food comes from.  N has watch parts of Food Inc., and Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution with me and that has sparked all kinds of questions about where food comes from and how it's made and where are the seeds (I had to look up why banana's don't have seeds).  It's been quite a learning adventure!