The 5 Senses Nature Day

We had a nature day today. There's a neat park not too far from our house, that has winding hiking paths and a nice clearing with picnic tables. I love parks that don't have play structures. It really makes the kids bond with the outdoors and nature so much more. Plus, Elise is at the age where she really wants to be pushed on the swings all the time, so it's really nice to come to parks like this where she gets more involved in playing with the other children.
I had the idea for Lola to find random things around us and compare how they felt, smelled, looked, etc...
She seemed really into it at first, but starting losing interest about halfway through. Here are some of the things that we talked about:

First, the leaves: The leaves were brown and felt very dry. They made a crunching noise when you crumpled them. They smelled like dust.

The rocks: There were different rocks and some felt smooth and some were bumpy. They were hard and gritty. They smelled like dirt.

Pine needles: These were long and green. They felt smooth and left your fingers sticky. They smelled like our Christmas tree.

Afterwards, Lola had fun playing with a magnifying glass and looking for clues. I'm really excited for Christmas because I got her a kids geology set that I think she will really enjoy!

Fairy Making!

Lola received this cool little fairy-making kit for her birthday from one of her friends. It's awesome! We made the cutest little fairies and had a lot of fun making them. I would definitely recommend this gift to a little girl of this age, (even though Lola needed my help for certain parts).

Science Project: Dissolving in water

Today, Lola had an idea for a science project. She said that, at school, her teacher had used colored sugar to see if it dissolves in water so today Lola wanted to try other types of solids to see if they would dissolve also.

We tried five things. Flour, sugar, salt, ground oats and oil.






The flour only partially dissolved, but mostly did not.
She knew already that the sugar would dissolve completely, but we tried that one again anyway.
The salt did not completely dissolve, as she noticed the water was quite cloudy after mixing it.
The ground oats did not dissolve at all and she was able to pick up spoonfuls of oat particles.
Lola hypothesized that the oil would not dissolve but didn't realize it would end up sitting on top of the water! She thought that was pretty cool.

More on DISTAR...

We did our math and language arts lessons today and I have come to the conclusion that I enjoy using this method for math, but not so much for language arts. It seems awfully redundant and, while I understand the theory behind the repetition, I feel silly some of the time and I feel like it bores Lola. I think in a group setting like at her school, it's probably a little more exciting, but when we are just doing it one on one...not quite. Again, maybe too soon to make a judgement, I'm going to give it more time.

Birch Aquarium and Distar

I felt like I haven't done as much outside the home with the kids as usual so I decided to forego playgroup today and take the girls to the aquarium. They love it there so much. In fact, when I gave Lola a few options of where to go today, she chose the aquarium.
A few of the exhibits were closed, but the girls enjoyed themselves nonetheless. Lola loves to stop and play by the gray whales sculptures. There is a board to the side that has tons of information on them and she loves me to read gray whale facts to her.
We visited the tide pools, where some staff were showing kids a couple of snails. There they are in the box that Elise is crouching by in the first photo. Except Elise did not give a hoot about the snails, she just wanted to dip her hands in the water and maybe even sneak her fingers into her mouth, if she could get out of mommy's line of vision for a quick second!

Later on, when Elise was napping at home, Lola and I did a math lesson and a language arts lesson using the DISTAR. It went a lot better today now that I have seen her teacher doing it in class. It's actually pretty self-explanatory, once you understand the concept, because there is a script to follow. From what I understand, we have as much freedom to stick to the script or not, as we please, but I want to at least start off doing it the same way as Lola is learning it in school. I don't want to confuse her even more! She is doing great, though. I'm not 100% sure about this DISTAR stuff yet, but I need to give it more time for sure.

To catch up a bit...

Last weekend, we took a family trip to the desert so I haven't blogged much lately...We went with a few other families with kids so there was tons of socializing, playing and swimming involved!
Monday was the day after we got back home and my first day to work with Lola using DISTAR. This is the method of instruction that is used at her school. So, on Thursdays when I pick her up, her teacher will give me the sections of the workbook that I will need for the days that I am homeschooling. This way Lola is on the same page as everyone else on the days that she is in school.
My first time trying this method was confusing and I felt that the material itself was far too easy...Lola was yelling out the answers before I could even finish the request. We ended up fiinding some fun math and language art excercises online instead.
But after volunteering at her school yesterday, I finally got to see her teacher using the DISTAR correctly and realized that I had not been doing it right at all. I am going to give it some more practice and see how it goes.
For tomorrow, I gave Lola a few options of what we can do and she chose the aquarium. She said she wanted to learn more about whales! Anyway, when we get home and Elise is (hopefully!) napping, I plan to give DISTAR another good effort!

p.s. new camera finally arrived so expect photos very soon!

Art Day!

Today, we were supposed to go to the New Children's Museum, but we had a rough night with the baby, so we changed our plans. We decided to make today an art day at home. We're having a Halloween party for Lola's birthday and we need decorations so we hit the craft store and came back with some great ideas and new art supplies. We made some really neat spiders, bats and black cats! There are so many that we are not nearly finished them all. Lola used puff paint to decorate the bats. She did such a beautiful job. Photos will be uploaded soon!

Playing with friends

We had a nice day playing with our friends! It was mellow, but mellow is really good sometimes!

Cool science projects

Today, I couldn't decide between 2 science projects so I decided to do both even though they weren't really related concepts. Oh well. There's a lot of good ideas out there and a lot of them don't take very much time to do, so I don't see the harm in doing as many as we want.

The first was an experiment on what floats in our bathtub. We grabbed a box and went around the house finding stuff to put in the bathtub, to determine if the object would float or sink. I asked Lola first if she thought the object would float or sink before she put it in the bathtub and why. Some of the items were cups or bowls so we tried each twice, once empty and then again when they were filled with water. She really liked this experiment and Elise enjoyed getting a bonus bath out of the deal!

Next, we moved on to making play dough. We measured all the ingredients and put them in glass bowls. I let Lola feel the different ingredients and we talked about the difference in the textures, colors. smells, etc...we then made the play dough, during which we talked about how each of the ingredients plays an important role in the finished product. For instance, I asked her how she thought the play dough would have turned out if we had forgotten to add the flour or the water, etc..

She's been playing with the dough all day. She loves it. I also gave her a handful of whole cloves that she's been using to create eyes/noses/buttons/cake candles, etc....

Playgroup again

Today we went to playgroup and the kids both played at the park for nearly 4 hours. Um, I think Lola met the minimum of P.E. minutes she needed for this week, and then some!

Aquarium

We went to the aquarium today. We learned a lot about gray whales in particular. Lola loves whales and was especially interested in the differences between gray whales and humpback whales. She also loved the sharks and jellyfish. While visiting the tide pools, we learned from a staffer that one of their lobsters had recently shed its shell and was currently hiding under one of the rocks, since it was now "soft" and vulnerable to predators. Lola got to hold the discarded shell, which was cool. Another staffer picked up some starfish for the kids to touch and observe. I definitely learned some new things mysel today!

Fridays...

Ok, Fridays are going to be interesting because we usually go to playgroup at the park on Fridays, but I still want to try to fit in a math or language arts lesson in somewhere. What might work out well is going to playgroup in the mornings and then doing a lesson while Elise naps. Today, we went to playgroup for an hour, then came home and logged onto PBS Kids. There is section specifically for teachers with fun little learning games and other great resources. Lola and I played Kindergarten-specific math games together and we really enjoyed them.

Our first day!

This is officially our first real homeschool day. I figure that, as a mom, I'm pretty much my child's first teacher and, therefore, homeschooling all the time, but this is our first "real" day since she started Kindergarten. Lola is part of a great new charter school that offers a hybrid program where she goes to class 3 days a week and I homeschool her the other 2 days.
What I love about this so far is that I'm way more attentive than I used to be. There are tons of opportunity for learning and I've become far more aware. I definitely feel more accountable and that's good. Keeps me from being Lazy Mom. And the bonus? Elise gets to learn right along with Lola. Elise loves to do everything that Lola does, so it's very nice to have her home part-time.

For our first day, I thought we'd do something fun so we went to the zoo with some friends. My friend lead us to areas of the zoo that I don't usually go to. I get stuck in ruts a lot because I'll develop a routine and never really stray from the routine. This was fun because we saw exhibits we never saw before and Lola loved it all. We went to the insectarium where there was a butterfly garden. We got to see catapillars in various stages of metamorphosis. One, in particular, was only partially hidden in the chryssalis. It was awesome to observe the process that closely.
We also to see a snake's recently shed skin in the tank. Lola was so excited to point it out!
Morphing seemed to be the theme of the day, which was pretty appropriate, I thought!