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!