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Monday, September 3, 2012

Back to School - Color Mixing - Geometric Art

Our first week back to school was pretty successful! Being organized helped A LOT! We didn't get everything done that I had planned, but we got most of it done, and that was great! Here are some pics from our week:

Preschool

In preschool we did a lot of pattern work and also color mixing. The girls were excited to see new colors appear when they mixed colors together. We'll do some more of this next week. I also did some review of letter sounds with Flossie. She knew them all pretty well except V which she caught on to after a few tries but forgot at first. Looking at our alphabet chart she could name every letter but G which she forgot for some reason. I wanted to go over the sounds we already learned last year to make sure we didn't need to repeat any, and I think we are good to go on the ones we did this week. We have a few more to review next week and then we'll be off and running to finish up our last few letter sounds before moving on to reading!

With Sarah I am going to work a lot on her small motor development. She can trace her name but it is shaky. She is very enthusiastic about doing it though and proud of her accomplishment which is awesome! She did a great job with patterns this week and loved playing with Playdoh! We really missed her over the summer and are all glad she's back!


Cutting Practice

 Float and Sink Experiment

Using pebble counters to do some simple addition.

Calendar Notebook


Name writing practice using a sand tray


My refrigerator's ice maker is on the blink. It keeps making icebergs in the ice tray. So you know what they say, "When life gives you ice bergs, use them for preschool!"


This girly knows a lot of letter sounds!


Some small motor practice and patterns.


 Color mixing for science

 More color mixing for art!


Third Grade

Jem did pretty well this week getting everything done. It took him awhile to get each subject done though. I had planned for him to do 2 exercises a day in Math but I think it is going to be too much for him during the carrying and borrowing  section. It's just taking him too long. We'll go down to one until he gets through that. He seems to be enjoying the readings we're doing and is enthusiastic about our art studies. He even did some more on his own this weekend. Having him have to do 2 Free readings a day has worked out just as I planned. I made one of them be a non-fiction book of their choice from our "Free-Reading" shelf, which is all of these great books I have that no one ever opens like Science Encyclopedias, and History Encyclopedias, and Atlases, and Animal Books, all kinds of cool books that I think they would find neat things in if they would just pick them up and look at them. At first he said, "Those books are so big and BORING!!" But I picked one up and just leafed through the pages and found 3 or 4 things right away that were clearly interesting and showed him how I didn't mean for him to read them cover to cover but just open it up, find something cool, and read for 15 minutes. That first day he came back saying, "Mom, did you know . .  .?"  "Oh,  how interesting!"  :)  



 Not sure if sitting on the table to do your work is allowed in public school but whatever works here in Nowville :)

Middle Eastern Geometric Art ala Jem


Fifth Grade

Scout was very busy and organized this week.  She seemed to be all business, trying to get her work completed first before everyone else so she could be done with school. So far she seems to like all of her literature and isn't complaining about the quantity of work. I like our new plan to get the most important things done first and then move on to the next group  and then the third group. She seems to like rules and structure and as long as everything is clear, she can work within that just fine. So far, so good!


The big kids couldn't resist doing the color mixing art with the preschoolers!


Middle Eastern Geometric Art ala Scout

Well, I couldn't be left out could I?  Here's my stab at it:




Now I realize that this might miss the whole point. They used geometric shapes because they were avoiding making images of humans and animals. BUT, I thought maybe a plant was ok. You think?