Showing posts with label Language Arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language Arts. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Other things this month...

Uploading pictures off my camera for the month and have some more I'll share...

Earlier this month the girls took out the shells they collected from the creek in May, as well as shells they collected from Virginia Beach, VA and York Beach and Wells Beach in Maine. They were grouping them, touching them, drawing them, smelling them, listening to them, learning about them.

Georgia, feeling inspired by the movie Imagine That, wanted to know what scones were. We looked up some recipes and realized we had ingredients to make cranberry scones.

Olivia wanted to know who the Queen of England was...also inspired by Imagine That. (same scene as scones...the girls love that scene!)

Georgia went to the Creative Kids Club at the library where they made a tambourine out of paper, paper clips, and bottle caps.

Olivia had her first visit with the dentist.


And added some pictures to her alphabet book. She loves cutting out pictures, words, and letters from magazines and uses them in her alphabet book, or in collages.
Pan starts with a P.


The girls are also participating in the summer reading program at the library, have played soccer, captured bugs, fed the daring jumping spider they captured, watched it make a nest and later found lots of itty bitty spider babies.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Thanksgiving Studies

We read some books from the library:

Thanksgiving Poems by Myra Cohn Livingston
Thanksgiving by Natalie M. Rosinsky
The Wampanoag Indians by Bill Lund
Massasoit, Friend of the Pilgrims by Virginia Voight (This is a biography that we started but have not yet finished.)

We still have some more to read another day.

We visited Scholastic's site on The First Thanksgiving. This is a great site!

At National Geographic, Georgia made a Thanksgiving themed Mad Lib, read about the first Thanksgiving, and of Thanksgiving traditions, and had fun with the Cartoon Factory Fill-In.

We also watched a neat video of an "exploding pumpkin." Not exactly Thanksgiving, but fun anyway!

And we played some Thanksgiving themed games at Funschool.com, such as Turkey Flibriks, and Thanksgiving Feast.

We still have lots more sites to check out another day!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

This weekend...

We are all trying to rest up and feel better. This weekend we stayed home as much as we could. We were excited to see snow! But it melted as it hit the ground and eventually switched back to rain.

Georgia and I played a few games of Scrabble this weekend. She used her American Heritage Student Dictionary to look up the words I used that she didn't know.


Olivia looked in her insect book to learn more about her little insect toys.



And she played Boggle Jr a few times. She challenged herself this time. She spelled the word on the card with the cubes, then took the cubes off, covered the word and spelled it on her own.


And she baked some oatmeal raisin cookies with Dad. They were yummy!


Olivia is cracking the eggs.


Georgia watched some episodes on the Discovery Channel about the Iditarod. She is excited to watch some of next years' race, only 110 more days. She can keep updated here. She also watched the Survivorman show a few times. She loves that show.

Olivia played on Starfall. This site is great for young kids learning to read!

Georgia pretended to have her own horse stables. We printed out some pretend checks here. She learned about the parts of a check, and how to fill out a check ledger for keeping a balance. She wants to fill in deposits from her "paycheck", and debits from her "bills" as she manages her horse stables.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

This Week...

This week Georgia worked on some math, phonics, her cursive, and re-read a lot of her favorite chapter books. She received her Ranger Rick magazine and has read that cover to cover. She also had her gymnastics class on Tuesday, and went swimming on Thursday. Wednesday she came up with an idea for art. She thought of finding a picture of a horse and covering it with ripped pieces of paper. Here's what the girls came up with....(they both wanted to make a horse like Spirit)

Georgia added a bald eagle and some trees. She told me she made some trees smaller so they would look farther away.

Olivia had gymnastics on Saturday. She went swimming on Thursday, too, and I was really impressed with how much she has improved. She is a lot less timid about playing around in the water. The shallow end is 3 feet, which is still too deep for her to stand in. The water would go to the middle of her face. But she used a noodle (long foam that she puts accross her chest and under each arm) and she even put her head under water a couple times! She does need to remember to keep her mouth closed, though! She smiles so big when she is having fun, but then a wave will go up her chin!

Olivia is also improving her reading! She is picking up more and more words everytime we read together! She also likes to just take a book and look through it, studying the words. She's used some of Georgia's chapter books that do not have pictures. Today she layed down on the couch with the rather large American Heritage Student Thesaurus and quietly looked it over, studying the words. She was so engrossed in her word searching that a good thirty minutes passed! She still likes to do her copy work where she'll take a notebook and copy down words she sees different places. Her writing is improving, too. The copy work and perusing books is something that she came up with on her own, I don't tell her to do it. If I do try to help her sound something out or ask her what sound a letter makes she gets irritated and does not want to hear it. She is truly an independent learner! When I read to her I usually point to the word I say with my finger so she can follow along if she wants to. Sometimes she tells me to stop, but sometimes when I don't do it she asks me to do it. That is how Georgia learned to read.

Tomorrow we plan on attending Prairie Days. Should be lots of fun! We were just talking about life without electricity, and Olivia picked out a Little House on the Prairie book that I was reading to her. Should be neat to see it all reenacted for us. Mark is excited to see the cider making, and the girls are looking forward to the horse & wagon rides. I'm interested in seeing the honey extraction, blacksmith, spinning, quilting, pottery....okay....all of it!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Language Arts

The girls both made a sample of their handwriting for their portfolios. They'll repeat this again at the end of the year for comparison. Georgia wrote the alphabet (upper and lower-cases) and numbers in cursive. Olivia printed manuscript letters and numbers.

The girls both had a great time laughing while reading their Mad Libs they made at FunBrain. It was a good review for Georgia for parts of speech, and a good introduction for Olivia.

The girls have also worked in their workbooks. Olivia has worked with opposites, starting sounds, upper and lowercase letters. Georgia reviewed some phonics, consonant blends and teams.

Monday, September 15, 2008

This Weekend...

On Saturday afternoon the girls went to the Butterfly Day event at the Nature Center. They tried on butterfly goggles to see how butterflies see, learned the life cycle, saw chrysalises, live butterflies, and made a butterfly craft that will be on display at the Nature Center.





Saturday night, Georgia went to a pool party and had fun playing games and eating pizza.

The girls both checked their e-mails and typed e-mails to friends and family. Olivia would ask me how to spell words and I told her as she typed. Sometimes she already knew how to spell them, like the words hi and go.

We watched a show on the Animal Planet called Weird, True, & Freaky featuring strange cuisine from around the world.

We also watched a show on the History Channel called Clash of the Cavemen.

Sunday was Georgia's 8th birthday. We had quite the eventful day. When Georgia woke up, Olivia wanted to give her the gifts she picked out for her right away. She had picked out dark purple nailpolish and a pretty pink top with horses on it.










We had strong winds that knocked out electricity for a lot of people. All the shops and restaurants downtown lost power. There went our plans for the day. But we had fun playing games, decorating and eating her birthday cake, talking about days without electricity, or having our own solar power. At 8:30 PM the girls were playing their version of chess by candlelight when the power returned.


Georgia was so surprised that they would be out there in the dark and in the rain to fix the electricity. She said we should send them some money as a thank you. I said, "We already pay them...maybe you could write a letter instead." And so she did....





Friday, September 12, 2008

Word World


Oliva watched an episode of Word World on PBS this morning. Afterwards she played games at their website. She sounded out words, distinguished between upper and lower case letters, and some other activities. We printed out some coloring pages and will return again. We'll have to remember when they are on television so we can see it again.
They also have some snippets on YouTube here.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

This Week....

Here are some of the things the girls did this week...

The girls both worked on making pipe cleaner animals. They each have a kit that they received from Grampa T. Olivia has a forest animals kit, and Georgia has a Noah's Ark kit.

Here are the first two that Olivia made: a rabbit and a fawn.


Georgia checked out the new world history book we ordered.

And both girls read more of the library books we have.

Olivia did some painting...

...and colored pages from her Africa book.

She's also been doing copy work. She takes books or magazines and will copy words into notebooks. It's great practice for writing!

Georgia crocheted some more.


More coloring for Olivia....this time in her dinosaur book.


Coloring is great for working her hand muscles to help with writing and other fine motor skills.



Thursday, July 31, 2008

Reading Group



Georgia and Olivia both had their reading groups at the library. This summer's theme is bugs!

Olivia's group read a pop-up book about bugs, and one about an ant. They sang songs, danced, and made a craft. She picked out a kangaroo with a joey toy as a prize for reading.

Georgia said her group read some books about Fly Guy. They also played musical chairs, made a craft, and had a snack. As a prize for reading Georgia received a spy kit. We had fun trying on the moustache disguises!!
who are those people????

Beads and Pirates....Aaargh!

The girls decided to make some bead jewelry yesterday.


Today they are pirates! It started with reading a book about pirates. Olivia got the idea to make a map of the house and hide some treasure. I helped her make a map of the house and she marked where she hid treasure with a red X.
Georgia got in on the fun and made a map, too.
But we couldn't stop there. We made some eye patches with black felt and yarn. Then we made some swords with cardboard and tin foil.
Argh!

Sunday, May 25, 2008

This week we...

We watched the movie Hoot and really enjoyed it. The girls also learned about the burrowing owls and how one person can make a difference and help save wildlife.

We played some bingo games this week. One was about space, and the other had lower case consonants.

We went to the park a couple times, had fun on the playground, and saw how big the goslings are getting. We also visited a park in a neighboring county to do some geocaching.

We have been having fun with the new web cam we bought. We bought it to "visit" my dad, but we have also used it to make our own little movies. It's so much fun!

The girls had fun making pictures with glitter...and I had "fun" cleaning up afterwards. No matter how much I think I got it all, I'll still see glitter here and there for a while!

The girls both received their NWF magazines and have read them cover to cover.

We had fun making shadows with our hands. We figured out how to make a dog, bunny, and soaring bird pretty well.

We learned more about China and had a Chinese meal. Olivia and Georgia seem to use chopsticks better than I do...and I've used them quite a few times in my life! They picked up on it quick!

The girls played their geography game, put together puzzles, wrote stories, drew pictures, practiced gymnastics... all the usual fun stuff!

Georgia practiced writing in cursive some more, and practiced playing the recorder, too.

We read some more library books.

Georgia has taken some more pictures with the camera.

Tomorrow we'll be releasing the snails back to the wild. We've really enjoyed watching them but its time to let them go.

I'm sure the girls will also want to make some more movies tomorrow!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Letters and Writing

Georgia has been learning cursive writing. She is doing really well.

Olivia has been working in her alphabet book, practicing writing her letters and recognizing beginning sounds and the letters they start with.
Olivia has also been practicing counting past fifteen. She usually goes from thirteen to eighteen, then in the mid 20s ends up in the 70s somehow.

Forgot to mention when we were entering the playground last time we were at the park Olivia says, "No Dogs Allowed, I guess dogs can't come in here." I looked around and sure enough, there was a sign that said, "No Dogs Allowed." I love those moments. My heart just melts!! It's so exciting!!

She's also noticed the outline of our state on street signs when we are in the car. She points and says, "Hey, that sign has Ohio on it." Love it!

Tonight the girls have gymnastics. Olivia doesn't like her new coach as much as the first one she had. Sometimes she says she doesn't want to go if its going to be the same teacher. Her new teacher is nice, but her first one was really great with the little kids group. And they played fun games that the new teacher doesn't do, like "Scrambled Eggs." Two more classes until the end of this session. I'm not sure if Olivia will want to take gymnastics again next session. She says she doesn't and likes practicing at home, but I'm sure she'll miss it. But, it's her choice. We'll see....






Thursday, May 8, 2008

Rainy Days

The past couple days have been cool and rainy. We've been keeping busy finding things to do indoors, though. Georgia has worked more on the Rainforest lapbook. She's made minibooks on rainforests of the world, Brazil, South America, big cats of the rainforest, and on birds and reptiles of the rainforest.





We haven't been back out to check on the robin's nest. We were hoping to do that today, but there's more rain. We have read in some of their magazines about robins, though. One day, the girls decided to make their own magazine/book. Georgia made one titled "The Robin's Nest". Olivia made one titled "The Fennec Fox Magazine".




They are not finished with them, but when they are, they want me to scan them and put them on here. It's so cute....when they are doing something they'll say, "You want to take a picture and blog it?"



The girls have been learning how to use the camera and have practiced taking pictures. They both want their own camera. I was thinking that it would be a good birthday gift, but their birthdays aren't until September, and there will be so many great opportunities for pictures during the summer. So I need to do some research on the best ones for kids. Some have good reviews, some have bad....



While we can't go out birding, we can watch and identify the birds that come to the feeder. Whenever they see a bird come they get all excited! Today we took some pictures of them.









Georgia and Olivia took the last two photos.


One day this week the girls took out their magnets set and did some experimenting.


They've also looked through the travel magazines some more. Georgia told me about Utah's Salt Lake, and how things can float easier because of the salt. That prompted her to look through our science books and she found some good density activities and experiments to try.


They watched some Brain Pop videos.


They read a lot of books, some library and some of their own. We got a lot of books on China this time, and one of them, The Empty Pot by Demi, is one of Georgia's favorites. It really is a great story. The emperor, a gardening enthusiast, is getting older and decides to choose a successor. He gathers all the children of the village and gives them seeds. He tells them that in a year, the child who brings him the best flower grown from the seeds will be the next emperor. Ping, a child who is already an avid gardener, thinks he'll have no trouble. But the seeds won't sprout. He replants them in richer soil, but they still won't sprout. He tries all he can think of but the seeds will not sprout. After a year, the children are gathered again, bringing their flower pots. All the children have beautiful flowers. Ping has an empty pot. He does not want to go see the emperor but his father tells him that he has done the best he could, and that was good enough. Ping decides to go. The emperor looks at all the children and their flower pots. He frowns. Then he sees Ping and his empty pot and asks, "Why have you come with an empty pot." Ping tells him of all he did and how nothing wouuld sprout. It was then that the emperor told them that he had given them all cooked seeds; none of their flowers should have sprouted. Ping was the only one to be humble and honest, and he was named emperor.


I love that story!
You can read the entire text here.

The girls also had their gymnastics class on Tuesday. Saturday Georgia has a nature class called "Beginning Birders." Beginning? he he he Olivia's class is next Thursday and is called "Let's Get Growing." Saturday there is also a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony for a new county park!