Our May Crowning "Hail Mary" Writing Practice

For the month of May we learned about a few of the Marian prayers and went to our parish's May crowning and basically did all things "Our Lady."
The girls love looking through all of the flower/seed catalogs that we get in the mail every Spring so we usually incorporate them into one of our crafts or lessons, and this year it was once again, a collage. But the change from last year's activity was that both girls wrote out the Hail Mary prayer themselves instead of just pasting a copy on their paper. This took some time and we didn't complete it in one day but they were both very proud of their work when it was finished.
Then of course the poring over the flower pictures and choosing just the right ones (the ones "Mary would like best") and cutting them all out took another day or two. All said and done these collages took about 3 days to complete but the writing practice was so timely for both girls and really boosted their confidence especially with sounding out skills.
One of the other prayers we had been learning about was the Canticle of Mary which I was able to find a performance of on youtube and the girls insisted on listening to it over and over and over again. The video was a bit cheesy but I figured at least it wasn't the Frozen soundtrack for a change, and bonus was they learned the words of the prayer! Here is the link to the video:
Canticle of Mary youtube link

                                                           

The Wonderful Distraction of Spring!!!

So in my attempt to keep track of our homeschool life, I am happy to say that we are way behind in documenting things because Spring has finally come and dragged us outside! We have still been doing school but in much more of a, "Hey, it's nice outside let's go do Nature Study for hours!" kind of way. Which has been so refreshing after such a long, cold winter.

We recently bought a great wagon and the kiddos have had hours of fun playing a variety of trip games like, "Escape the Tornado" "Vacation Fun," and "The Israelites Escape the Egyptians." All creative and dramatic--who knew a wagon could spark such fun?

Name Snowmen

This was a simple but fun handwriting/art project we did in January to practice the girls' names. This was mostly for Little Miss Middle who is really close to mastering her name. But all the girls had fun doing this one and it was a fun addition to the schoolroom during the dreary and LONG winter.

Arctic Animals Playscape

Playscape for the Littles
In the midst of all the crazy, I TRY to set up some kind of sensory table or work for our littlest one to give her something to do during lessons. I admit I fail at this most of the time but this was one of the more successful attempts lately, so I thought I'd share it.
Arctic/Antarctic Animals Unit
We have been immersed in all things Polar lately probably b/c it looks pretty Polar outside our windows. So I dug around for all of the Toob animals that our girls have received as gifts over the years, remembering that there were quite a few that could go along with our theme. We have a great little table that is low to the ground whose original purpose was probably some kind of Montessori doll cradle but for us--it's the sensory table.
Setting the Stage
The Toob animals combined with some blocks of "ice" and a little "igloo" shelter (complete with chintzy fabric chosen by 2 very fashionable older sisters) and our Polar playscape was complete. Now if only I could get this silly little one interested in playing at this DURING school lessons, all would be perfect. But at least it does entertain her and the bigger girls have played with this a surprising amount as well, Win-Win.

Toob animals can be found here:

Valentine Counting Chains

 I Can Count to 100!
My girls are very motivated to learn to count to 100 independently. So far our oldest girl can *most of the time* do it and Little Miss Middle fights hard to keep up. So when I saw this project on Pinterest it seemed like something they would love to do.
Tweaked a Bit
I don't know why I always change things I see on Pinterest--maybe it's my rebellious side :) --but I never do things just as I find them. The original idea for this was to use stamps and stamp ten hearts or whatever on each link of the chain, ending up with 100 stamps from 10 links. Well I decided to make the girls draw hearts instead. They are getting close to being able to draw a "good" heart but not quite. So I figured drawing 100 of them should prove to refine this skill. And fortunately I think it did.
Tweaking Even More
Because they did enjoy this and it made a cute decoration for the month of February, We stick with what works around                                                                         here.I think we will try it again for March.

Probably some kind of rainbow to go along with St. Patrick's Day. I will post pics if we actually get around to it :)

Rockin' The Dollar Tree

 

This Letter Recognition work is brought to you almost entirely by the Dollar Tree (and a little work by yours truly) These awesome see-through alphabet tiles are made from the flexible cutting mats that Dollar Tree (DT) sells in their kitchen utensil section. I cut each one into quarters and used a Sharpie--also available at DT--to draw on some capital ABCs.  They come in a 2-pack so I needed 4 packages to make the whole alphabet. 

The cute buttons were bought at Michaels in their dollar bins so for $4 we got about 100 bright little buttons. Not bad.

My kiddos use these letter tiles for lots of things--forming letters with playdoh, using other seasonal materials to form letters (acorns, confetti, small leaves, flowers etc.) using them to spell out words, tracing them on the light table or window to practice writing etc. 

So for a grand total of about 10 bucks we got what I thought was a LOT of materials that are fun and versatile--I try never to have toys or learning materials that can only be used in ONE way. My kids are pretty used to the phrase, "What else do you think we can do with that?"

Puppet Theatre: Worth the Effort

The girls received a puppet theatre for Christmas 2012 and also some handmade puppets of well-known fairy tale characters. I wasn't sure how well they would play with this b/c it requires a bit of storytelling effort for the show to be really enjoyable.
If It's Pretty They Will Play
They initially loved the look of it and handling all of the puppets but my hesitations proved correct when they didn't seem to know how to really "use" it. So after many, many puppet shows directed and performed by Mom (some better than others depending on my patience level) they finally seemed to get the hang of it.
If It's Working, Invest in It!
We've managed to collect many more puppets in the last year which has broadened the scope of our little puppeteers and has vastly increased the length and variety of storylines--which is appreciated by their main audience (Mom & Dad.)
Storytelling Skills
The best things to come from our experience with the puppet theatre are the ways in which the girls understand story concepts now (plot development, characters, suspense, setting etc.) that they may not have learned without having to work it out using the puppets. And also their ability to think spontaneously and creatively to create a story. This didn't come right away, mind you--but it did development after many attempts and a lot of encouragement. Which therein lies the other benefit we've seen--perseverance. The girls can look back now and remember how difficult it first was to come up with stories and see how much they have learned about how a good story can be crafted.
Now the puppet theatre has become a favorite playtime toy and one that I enjoy seeing them use. (even if I still have to put on a few performances now and again.)

May Flowers for Mary

These were collages made from Burpee seed catalogs that I can just never bring myself to throw away. They have such beautiful, colorful images of flowers that I just knew we'd use them sooner or later. And here they are transformed into wreaths of flowers for Mary, celebrating her crowning in the month of May. We printed out the Hail Mary prayer and the girls glued them onto their papers and then chose lots of flowers to cut out and arrange around the prayer. This was a great way to identify types of flowers they knew as well as spot some new ones to look for as the summer months begin.

Christmas (or anytime) Gifts 1

This was a small painting I made as a gift this past Christmas. I saw the idea on Pinterest but it was for S. Carolina and said the "Palmetto State" (that's S. Carolina, right?) but I thought I could pretty easily tailor it for the more awesome state of Michigan. 

Fall Letter Recognition Works

October 2013: We had a letter matching game for each of the girls that kept them busy for days and wasn't too difficult as far as prep goes. The simpler version was simply fall leaf shapes with the capital letters on them. These had to be put in alphabetical order. Simple, but challenging enough at first.

The second set was a set of leaf & pumpkin shapes that were both upper and lower case letters. These had to be put in alphabetical order and then the lower case matched to its upper case letter. This was pretty challenging at first but both girls managed it after a few tries and it really helped with their lower case letter recognition.