H.A.L.L.O.W.E.E.N.

October 15-17 Solace had school off for conferences and stuff, so we hung out at home and did mommy school (among other things like forgetting all other responsibilities I had that week-seriously, I missed every lesson and everything I was supposed to to that week). Here are the poems the kids came up with about Halloween.

First is Ender's. (In case you cannot read it, I will type what it says under the picture.)

Happy Halloween

All of you

Loo Loo

Looks cute
Of all

Wall Wes Wet

Ender

Ender

Night to eat

And Solace's...Hello Hello

Armour is Cute!

Like our mom

Like us too

Oh, and like dad.

Witches stole Armour.

Ender saved him

Eash of us was happy

Now we are trick or treating

Oh Boy have we been Busy! Remember way back when D was for Dinosaurs...

When we did the D for Dinosaurs week, we went on a mommy school field trip to the special dinosaur exhibit to learn even more!! It was SO fun. Here are a few of our pictures:

Kindle in the car seat/strollerBoys and Baby
T Rex in the background
In the background is the herd of deinonychus eating a tenontosaurus.
Here's a better pic of that...
Here is Kindle staring at it...
Check out the look on her face.

Mommy School update

Though on my blog it may look as though I have lost track of mommy school, it is not true. I am just staying busy with it (and everything else). I do not think I am going to be able to put up the daily lesson plans, but I will just give a general overviews of the weeks...(well, the ones I haven't already blogged about)...
A was airplanes
B was baseball
C was caterpillar
D was dinosaur (we did a TON of stuff this week!! We learned about all kinds of dinosaurs and even went to the Children's Museum and saw the Dino exhibit and learned more. I will post pics of that "field trip." We learned about all kinds of different things with Dino themed worksheets-math, coloring, drawing, science, history, even a bit of geography as we talked about where each Dino was found. It was an awesome week)
E was for Ender (We did an "All about me" themed week. We made books all about ourselves, we did our favorite things and made our favorite foods. We had a blast!!)
F was for fish (...sort of...I was going to do something else, but we wanted to get a fish as a field trip for f week. so we did f fir fish, but this week we really focused on a bunch of different f words and did worksheets and fun, and other learning inspired by a variety of f-inspired words.) BTW, I know my readers and I know many of you just thought of naughty words-or at least one-we avoided that completely-this is mommy school people! :)
G is for Growing (We are learning about growing. We bought some tulip and daffodil bulbs that we are going to plant today or tomorrow, we are talking about their growth. We are also talking this week about kids growing up healthily-so we will talk about health and taking care of our bodies so we can grow up happy, healthy and well. We also focused on other g words yesterday such as grandparents and we went to the zoo and visited the "g" animals-goats, giraffes...)

We are loving mommy school and learning a lot-sorry to keep you out of the loop!

Mommy School: The B's & C's

Do I ever do what I promise?! Man, sorry the B for Baseball lesson never made it on here. Obviously I am just putting up overviews anyway, but I thought I would do B & C today!

B is for baseball
(Please see previous post here for pictures of our field trip).

Here is what we did last week:

Monday: Read Baseball facts book (Smithsonian Baseball facts or something like that), B for Baseball worksheet (practice writing the letter B-B & b), Go to Baseball game in the evening as a family.
Tuesday: Write/Draw a book of the story about our baseball game experience, Talk about rhyming words using baseball words.
Wednesday: Draw a baseball & a bat for art activity, Draw multiple pieces of equipment and do basic addition, Shape lesson (what shapes do you see in this room, what shapes did we see at game?)
Thursday: More writing B's practice worksheets, read B books
Friday: History lesson about the National Anthem as sung at beginning of games, play baseball, all B dinner (as picked by Ender, we ate for dinner that night the following BBQ: Burgers on Buns with Bacon, Baked Beans with Bacon, Beef Brats, Baked chips, Broccoli, and bananas).

C for Caterpillar (more specifically Callie the Caterpillar)

This week is C for Caterpillar. I was struggling to pick a C theme, and over the long weekend, Wes caught a caterpillar and though it would be neat to keep him as a pet and watch him become a butterfly, so we did that, and I had my theme! Here are the plans for this week. We have already done mommy school today, and I think it will be a popular week! Ender brought out Callie (as he named our "pet") to participate today. It was funny and pictures will follow the plans. BTW lots of field trips planned this week-we'll see how that works out...

Monday: No School-Labor day. (We did take nature walks over the weekend and get the caterpillar.)
Tuesday: What is an insect? lesson plan, Read parts of a few books (The Very Busy Bugs by Jack Tickle, Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman, and the whole Cat in the Hat book, On Beyond Bugs All About Insects by Tish Rabe), C for Caterpillar connect the dots worksheet, Play dough caterpillars.
Wednesday: Read the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Lesson plan on the Life Cycle of the Caterpillar.
Thursday: Go to Library check out books on Caterpillars, read them, Practice writing C's 2nd worksheet, Caterpillar Camouflage art lesson, other C insects discussion.
Friday: Make "Where do Butterflies Come From" art project, Go to new butterfly house at zoo, Cook Cookies!

And as promised, pics from mommy school today:

B for Baseball...

This week in Mommy school we are doing B for Baseball. I know I said I would post the lesson plans, but I just haven't. I have them written out, but I will have to put them up later. So, for now just enjoy the pictures of our family night field trip to the Royals game on Monday. I have a great story about the game that I will be sharing in another post about Ender. For now I'll say we were in the general admission seats, hardly anyone was at the game, and we had a lot of room to spread out and be obnoxious. The Royals won and we had a great time, though Wes was highly disappointed that we did not leave with a ball...Armour wore Ender's Indiana Jones hat the whole day and wouldn't take it off-you'll see that. Here are a few pics:

Wes, Ender & Indy watching

"Look at my loose tooth!"
Mom & baby
Mom GameTrying to catch a ball
SEA

Mommy School Week 1: A for Airplane

This year for school, Ender, Armour and I are doing Mommy school. Mostly Ender & I, and Armour is doing easier things that go along. I decided to teach the weeks by going letter by letter through the alphabet and choosing a theme to base all the lessons on for the week. This week we have been doing A fr Airplanes. As part of it, we took a field trip to the Strategic Air and Space museum. This is what our lesson plans for the week have been. In the future, I will post the weekly lesson plans before the week begins.

Monday: A for Airplane ABC's project.
Tuesday: Geography/PE lesson-kids were airplanes and we looked at a US map and constructed our own map on our lawn, marking locations they might want to go (home in Omaha, Spokane, SLC, Disneyland, Disneyworld, Wisconsin, Kentucky, NYC...) Then we played a game where they pretended to be airplanes flying to all those places. We also read the first chapter in a small biography of the Wright Brothers.
Wednesday: Solace had half day so we went to the museum. We first read a book at home about the different kinds of planes. When we got there we talked about the planes and we took note of the different kinds. We especially noted if each plane was a jet or a propeller plane. It was fun. We also did an art project where we drew some of the airplanes we saw. It was awesome!
Thursday: We were supposed to finish the Wright Brothers book, but we had no time yesterday and are doing that and our Friday lesson today.
Friday: Practice writing big and little A's, Finish Wright Brothers book, make and race our own paper airplanes (will probably do this part this evening when dad & Sol can do it with us-some things are just more fun with a bigger crowd.)

Here are some museum pics: