Shopping List

I am so thankful for my little girls, who are big helpers!  Lately, they have been enjoying helping out around the house more.  This is great practice for them and helps lighten my workload.  One of the tasks that Arin helped with was writing her first shopping list.  I told her how to spell the words and she wrote them down.  This was particularly helpful as my hands were full holding the baby at the time.

Sorting Coins

Our newest scholar was born eight weeks ago,  Arin started back to school six weeks ago, and yes, I have been very neglectful of my blogs.

In math, Arin has been learning the values of coins and how to count them.  We have a jar of money that needed to be wrapped. 

Today, the girls helped me sort the coins into piles.  While doing this, I took a few different coins and had Arin count them. 

I also introduced Ella to the names of the different coins.  We also talked about which was the biggest or the smallest coin and which looked different than the other coins (penny because it is a different color). 

While the girls were sorting the coins into piles, I started wrapping them.  Arin quickly became interested in what I was doing.  She started counting piles of 50 pennies and then she rolled them.  This was her first experience with rolling coins. 

Ella liked this activity at first, but she is young and her attention span isn't very long right now.  However, Arin really loved this "real life" math lesson, so we will be doing this type of learning activity more often.

Flower Arranging

We are still anxiously awaiting the arrival of the baby - she's four days late right now.  I had planned to have our extended school break last until after baby arrived, but have since decided that if she is not here by tomorrow, I'll start Arin back to work until the baby is born.

Today, we did one of the activities from our Fall Fun List ~ Flower Arranging.  It was the first time that the girls had done an activity like this and although it was a quick project, they loved it. 

They chose to display their creations on the piano :)

Dolphin Tale

Arin is anxious to see the movie Dolphin Tale.  We have plans to take her to the theatre to see it, but just have not found the time for that just yet.  However, a couple of weeks ago, we won tickets from Chick-Fil-A to go to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.  The Clearwater Marine Aquarium is home to Winter, the star of the movie Dolphin Tale.  This past Sunday, along with some of our family, we took the girls to the aquarium, where they got to see the famous dolphin.  It was quite busy there that day, so I did not get as good of pictures as I had hoped :(

Arin holding Winter's tail

Ella holding Winter's Tale

Winter swimming without her tail

Winter swimming with her tail

Winter

Most of the family that joined us for the day

Recently, we learned about some great curriculum to go along with the movie.  Eventually, we plan to do many of the hands on activities included.  You can find the FREE curriculum for this movie and a few other movies at Homeschool Movie Club.

Apple Painting

It's been raining for about 24 hours straight.  It's days like this that I am happy that we have a Fall Fun List with quick, fun activities already planned to keep my little munchkins occupied.

We had a few apples that were past their prime for eating, so I cut them in half - some around the middle and some top to bottom.

I stuck a corn cob holder in each half and gave them to the girls to dip in paint and stamp on paper.  Instead of just stamping on regular paper, I had them use a roll of gift wrap.  The girls have recently picked out some gifts for some of our family members, so they will be able to use their new apple wrapping paper on the presents.

Arin had done an apple stamping activity when she was little, but this was Ella's first experience with it. She got bored pretty quickly, which isn't too surprising since she does not have the love for painting that Arin has.

Caps for Sale (Before Five in a Row)

We've taken a couple of weeks off from Before Five in a Row and this is not the book that I had originally planned to row next, but it is a book that we owned, so we went for it.  This is also Arin's last week of school before our extended break - baby is due in just 11 days!!  Arin has been schooling since July and has completed 62 days!  She has done so well.  She asks for school every day and hasn't had one meltdown yet.  I am so proud of her :)

This was a light week of school as we transition into our break.  We rowed Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.  This is a story about a peddler, some monkeys and their monkey business.  We went to the zoo to see the primates.  I didn't get any good pictures, but we saw several varieties, at several ages and stages of life.

We read the book every day and we watched a video of the story on YouTube.

The girls worked on the Caps for Sale printables from Homeschool Creations. (unless otherwise noted, all of the following printables came from this printable pack)

Ella worked on the pre-writing skills printables.

Arin worked on the bible verse tracing worksheet as well as the vocabulary tracing/writing sheets.  Notice how my little monkey is wearing her cap during schooltime :)  That hat was actually made for me when I was a baby and both of my girls love wearing it now.

I took the monkey and the caps printables found in the pack and changed them up a bit.  I printed five of the monkeys, wrote numbers 1-5 on their bellies and then gave those along with several of the caps to Ella.  Ella stacked the correct number of hats on each monkey's head.

Arin worked on the beginning sounds worksheet.

Arin worked on a rhyming worksheet.

She also worked on a penny counting worksheet.

Arin learned the names and values of the different types of coins using this game (found in the above printable pack)

She also worked on measuring skills.

Because I printed extra monkey and cap pages, I had several strips of caps left over.  I let Ella cut these apart.  This was a very special activity for her because up until then, I had not let her use scissors.  Scissors scare me - there seems to always be hair or clothing getting cut instead of paper, but Ella was very anxious to be allowed to use scissors like her sister.

Arin sharpened monkey themed pencils with a monkey themed pencil sharpener.  The sharpener was a bit harder to use than I had expected.

Ella worked on a monkey counting game from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Just for fun, I gave the girls monkey themed notebooks, which they have been happily writing and drawing in all week :)

The peddler in the story has great posture and is able to carry a large stack of hats on his head without dropping them.  The girls practiced improving their posture by balancing a book on their heads while walking.

We gave the girls a Barrel of Monkeys game.  They enjoyed this game, even though it was more challenging than they expected it to be.

 There were no bananas mentioned in the story, but when I think of monkeys, I always think of bananas too.  I gave the girls each half of a banana and asked them how many sections do bananas have.  First, Arin thought they had one section.  Then, she broke the banana in half and decided that it had two sections.  I reminded her that she was only holding half of the banana, so if she broke her half in halves and Ella broke her half in half, that was already four sections.  They decided that they had no idea how many sections a banana had.

I broke the banana apart (this is easiest to do with half a banana at a time) and showed the girls that every banana has three equal sections.

We ended this book with a sweet treat - banana milk shakes :)