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Valentine’s Week (Feb 11-15)

Feb18

-What a busy week!  Monday began with our homeschool group Valentine’s Day party.  The kids were so excited to exchange Valentines.  We made Valentine’s Day M&M blondies to share with the group.  The kids had so much fun playing at Clarke Park and picnicking.  Lots of goodies and candy, but lots of good times too Smile

-On Tuesday we went to a Valentines themed story time at the library.  We had a pancake breakfast in honor of Mardi Gras and I tried to eat all of the candy in our house!

-Wednesday was Ash Wednesday so we attended Mass in the morning at St. Luke’s.  A and S behaved well, but M decided she had enough after communion and had to be taken outside during an intense rain storm.  Always an adventure!  We spent a lot of time talking about Lent and the meaning of Ash Wednesday.  A decided he wanted to give up chocolate, although I told him he wasn’t old enough to have to participate.  I decided to give up desserts (AHHHH!) and getting lunch out for the kids during the school week.

-Thursday was St. Valentine’s Day.  We went grocery shopping and had a special steak dinner.  For breakfast I made heart shaped cinnamon rolls with pink icing, strawberry milkshakes, and pin scrambled eggs.  We had a light school day with only Valentine activities.  Aidan did some coloring sheets and a candy heart bar graph.

-Friday was a nice, slow day after a busy week.  We tried to finish up the school work we didn’t get to earlier in the week.  M did some more dot worksheets with a Valentine theme.  She really seems to like them and after we talked about the letter Vv she did a great job finding them on the paper.  We also tried a pattern worksheet, but I am not sure how much she really understood it.  She did like gluing the squares in the correct spot on the paper.  A and T went to the Philadelphia Union game Friday night, and the girls and I had a great shrimp pasta dinner at my parents’ home.

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January 21-25

Feb18

-We discussed Martin Luther King, Jr (I forgot to check out library books this year, so we just talked about segregation, racism, and the “I have a dream..” speech)  Aidan made an insightful comparison between racism and the Dr Suess movie The Sneetches.  I was telling him he should never judge anyone by their appearance because God made us all to be different.  He said oh, that is like the movie where some Sneetches have stars and the other Sneetches won’t talk to them.

-We watched the Presidential Inauguration for the historical significance…..not a fan of the speech content Sad smile

-A and M watched Wild Kratts: Lost at Sea.

-We read The Mitten and used our printables to act out the story and practice counting with M.  We practiced ordinal numbers with A.  The kids really enjoyed playing with the mitten and animals when we were finished.  A helped M match the pictures with the words.

-A played a Wild Kratts computer came on the PBS Kids website.  The games were neat, but my computer was acting slow and that made them hard to play.

Tot School January 14-18

Jan18

On Monday, M colored a snowman booklet.  We also began the Arctic Animal Tot Pack.  We began with a “dot the Pp” page and we used a purple dot marker.  I talked to her about big P and little p and then asked her to put a dot on the p when I called out big or little.  She really did a great job! 

 

We talked about the sound a p makes and put the letter in our Leap Frog Fridge Phonics set (we did not pay that much for ours!).

Then we used some tracing pages from the Arctic Animal Tot Pack to practice left to right movement.  I placed the paper in a heavy duty sheet protector and we used dry erase markers, an idea from 1+1+1=1.  She really liked the markers, but the worksheet itself didn’t hold her attention very long. 

M also played with pom poms and tweezers, painted with water colors, and practiced color sorting with our counting bears.

We did another P coloring page from the Arctic Animal Tot Pack, and M was able to identify “big P”!  My goal for now is just to help her become familiar with the idea that letters are letters.

Books we read this week:

Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?

You Can Do It, Sam!

Katy and the Big Snow

Gingerbread Baby