Reading Awards and Valentines Crafts

Here are some pictures of our new reading incentive program. I found these cute "Cat in the Hat" cutouts and stickers at the craft store, and decided they would be cute as awards to hand out for reading.

I put a "prize" on each one and laminated them for the kids to pick out when they have done more than their required reading each day. I put multiple of each prize in their so they can bank them, and use more than one at a time. I also tried to make the prizes somewhat equal in weight as far as the kids are concerned, so they will be equally motivated to get any of them. The prizes include:

~ One 30 minute show of their choice on Netflix

~ One item from the dollar store

~Ice cream

~30 minutes on the computer

They are pretty excited about it, and Emily immediately read an extra book after her normal reading lesson today to earn a hat. She got a show from Netflix, and said that she want to get a prize every day. Ian is still a little resistant, but is already a little jealous of emily's prize, so I'm sure he will be motivated soon!

Valentines Crafts!

Here are some pics of our Valentines crafts as promised.

First the kids each made these cute heart/ mouse bookmarks that I found through teacherfilebox.

Then we made some little woven heart cards, and some little heart chains that can be hung for decoration.

Happy Valentines Day!

Since the kids are getting a little older they are very excited to celebrate most holidays, even if my hubby and I dont usually do much for them... one such holiday is Valentines day. Last Friday we had the Valentines exchange and party, which was so much fun, and really gave the kids a chance to spend some pure fun time with their friends. (Emily also won the mailbox contest, with her Emily Goes Wild box that we posted pictures of last week! Yay Em!)

Today we are trying to theme our school activities around Valentines Day, So we have already done some Valentines themed worksheets, and made some Valentines Petit fours:

We are also planning on a couple of crafts this afternoon/ evening, assuming the kids come inside since it is a beautiful day ( especially for February!!... all the windows are open, and the wind is blowing the dust out of the corners!) We will post pictures of our crafts later.. even if we extend Valentines day into tomorrow morning! :)

Road trip & reptile farm!

As I mentioned last week, the kids conveniently showed an interest in learning about frogs and other reptiles last week, just as we planned a weekend road trip to South Carolina to pick up our dog... wouldn't you know, directly across from our hotel was an indoor reptile farm...

Most of the farm was very cool, with large habitats and a lot of information on some endangered species. There were a couple of turtles that we suspected weren't living.. but we will just pretend they were sleeping and moved so slowly that algae could grow all over them. Anyhow, the kids got a nice view of the reptiles and it helped to further their curiosity.

Just for kicks here are some pictures of other moments in our trip... The town we were in is very touristy, and cheesy.. probably was a popular attraction in the 50's.. but we definently think that if you go there for a short stay with the right attitude to have fun, it is a cute fun little place with very friendly people.

We also got to hang out with my dad, which is always awesome, and doesnt happen often enough! the morning we left we stopped by a little amusment park to play mini golf, and included in the 8 dollar admission was access to all the rides, but since we were the only ones there, we had a personal escort taking us from ride to ride.. it was like being at Wally World in National Lampoons vacation! No good pictures of that though since we were too busy having fun.

We also successfully got our dog home.

I think she's happy to be home.... even if she's exhausted.

when learning opportunities come up unexpectedly!

I know, I already posted today, but couldn't pass up the chance to talk about something that happens quite frequently around here.... When the natural curiosity of the children leads to learning moments.

So this afternoon, we were watching the "Princess and the Frog", and one of the kids pipes up and says, "what I want to know is how frogs go for so long underwater without breathing!"

So I had them go into our "library" and see if we had a book on frogs (which we did)

Inside we found at least a cursory answer, that when hibernating frogs stop breathing through their lungs and absorb oxygen through the skin from the water. We will probably continue our research online too. Also we had already made plans to go to a reptile farm this weekend, while we are on a little road trip to pick up or dog from her "vacation". We will be sure to post pictures when we get back!

Gotta love how things just present themselves like that!

Catching up!

Well, I realize we've been slacking on updating this blog, and now that all the craziness from the holidays has calmed down, and life has settled back into a predictable rhythm, I figured we would post a few of the things we have been up to this week.

First, I've been feeling that although they are really good at them, the kids are starting to get a little sick of some of their worksheets. So I've been doing a lot of research on different activities and games that can help reinforce some of the concepts they are learning and maybe even show how they are real life skills as opposed to work that they are doing because they have to for school. One simple example is that they always groan about the half page of addition or subtraction problems that is included with almost every math lesson in their workbooks. They just seem to get board with it much faster than the other exercises.

Thus, I figured out a game, which involves the dice we use for our twice a week after dinner Farkle tournaments. We simply take one die and take turns rolling, adding up the numbers that we individually roll, until one of us reaches 100. Very simple,but the kids really enjoyed it, and I can also adapt it to subtraction, and I'm sure many other concepts.

Here is our individual scoresheets from our game this morning.

Also, They really enjoy telling us the time, and to encourage the use of analogue clocks instead of digital, which seems to be very easy for them, we made dry erase wrist watches, that they can use to answer questions about time, and also figure out questions about the passage of time (ex: if your bedtime is 8:00, and you get up at 7:30, how many hours pass while you are sleeeping?

here they are feeling all cute with their watches.

We also have a Valentine's party on Friday with our homeschool group where we are supposed to create "mailboxes" with a theme of "Fall in love with books", where they pick a favorite book and represent it with their boxes. Emily picked Emily Goes Wild , a cute story about a monkey (Em's current favorite animal).

Ian originally picked a Dr. Suess book, which would have been easier, but settled on one of his favorite Star Wars books that he is working on reading. Unfortunately, there are no illustrations, so we were forced to get creative with decorating, but I think it turned out well, and we incorporated the book directly into the box. They also made some cute foam crafts to hand out as valentines at the party. Check out the pics below...