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!