Chalk Painting and Hieroglyphs

Back in March, Delaney went to an art day camp hosted by the Museum of Northern Arizona. She learned how to make many things out of natural ingredients like the Native Americans. One of her favorites was chalk paint.

Since then, she has experimented several times, playing with different colors and consistencies.

Directions: grind up chalk with a flat stone until is becomes a powder.

Add water until it is the consistency you desire.

Paint the house until Mom catches you.

Don't worry. It washes right off.

This week, Delaney experimented with her paint until she had created a thick consistency.

Painting Sophie's hands for some handprints

She painted a love notes to Sophie, and a little portrait.

She recently read "Seeker of Knowledge, The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs", by James Rumford.  She decided to paint her own story with original hieroglyphs.

After that, she went inside and did some research on Chinese symbols and Korean symbols. I'm interested to see how she paints her next story.

Meanwhile, this little one is really interested in addition and subtraction.

Eating M&M's is subtraction, right, Mom?

We have been playing lots of games, many of which include making up stories about giving her candy, her sister taking some away, or her mom giving her some more. She adds or subtracts, and figures out the answer.

She also wrote me her first love note.

I wrote her a note, "I love you Sophie."

She traced it. Then she sounded out "I love Mom" (I LV MOM), wrote it independently, and proudly came to show me!

I might have to frame it. <3

Back to School

January brought a new year, a new city, and a different school adventure. Hailey returned to KAOL in Kingman, which brings me many mixed feelings, but also gives me much more time to spend with the little girls.

We have already gotten into some great routines. We usually do some writing and coloring first thing in the mornings. Delaney writes in her journal; she has started to write little stories and design her own fashions.

Sophie wanted to do the same. I asked her what she drew, and she replied, "Raining. It's happy rain!"

Soph draws lots of little circles, and colors in coloring books. She is also beginning to "pretend write", drawing little squiggles and saying that they are words. The other day, I had made her a little mad, so she went to write about it, saying "Mean mama! Mean mama!" the whole time. She must be beginning her memoirs. :)

Delaney and I made up our own "Pictionary". She is an excellent little artist and we had a lot of fun. I especially loved her doctor and nest in a tree. Sophie wanted to play too, and drew a flower and more raindrops.

Tracing a carrot to make a snake!

 

The girls have been watercolor painting often, too.

We have also been enjoying some math, science, and reading Charlotte's Web together, attending Storytime at the public library and Bookman's, and many other adventures, but those are posts all of their own!

Spring School!

We had our first day of Outside School today! It was so sunshine-y and beautiful, we couldn't stand to stay inside.

We lasted about 10 minutes in the 52 degrees and our clothes meant for 72 degrees...haha.

It was still fun though. :)

Delaney read a book, and we looked at our tulips that are beginning to bloom.

Inside, she pretended to be the teacher, and wrote directions and responses.

"Did you make a square? Yes I did. Ok. Will you have a dance?"

She finished her Easter basket she made from paper plates, with plastic spoon bunnies inside. We found this super cute project at www.LittleGiraffes.com.

 

 She added the "It's beautiful" sign on the bottom herself. I love it!

Journaling

Delaney started working on a daily journal in November. I read the book Never Too Early to Write by Bea Johnson almost every year to refresh my memory on writing/reading philosophy. Johnson guides teachers through all of the stages of writing, and how to teach kids to be amazing, creative writers, and improve their reading skills as well. I used this book in my kindergarten class, and had amazing results.

I made Delaney a journal with a large piece of construction paper folded in half, with blank paper inside. I let her decorate the front. When she journals, she uses one piece of paper and can draw whatever she wants for at least 5 minutes, then dictates her story to me. Some days she writes for the minimum amount of time, and other days she will draw for 30 minutes.

She has had some very creative days.

 And some days that you can tell that she is just waiting to be done...haha.

She is beginning to use some phonetic spelling to write her own stories, listening to the sounds that she hears in the words and putting them together.

We usually do this while Sophie is asleep, but sometimes she gets to journal too. :)

I make sure that I am doing some kind of writing while she writes. Sometimes it is sneaking in some email, or writing lesson ideas, or perhaps sneaking over to Pinterest, but I try to show her that I write/type too, and that it is fun! We often read a book of her choice beforehand. I find that this gives her imagination a little jumpstart, and sometimes she will journal about what we read, or make up her own related story.

I love journaling with her, and I can't wait to look back at our journals in about 6 months and see the progress that she has made!

Getting Into Good Habits

I have been using the Starfall Kindergarten curriculum for 3 weeks now, and I love it. It has been so easy to adapt for homeschool use. Delaney loves Backpack Bear. He joins us for class daily, and sometimes brings his friends, the Turtle, Rex, and Baby. They have to sit quietly, though, or they get in trouble. :)

We begin at 8:30am daily, and our schedule looks like this:

Calendar - days of the week (recognizing the words and ASL), months of the year, counting 1-31, & if we feel like it, we check the weather. It is almost ALWAYS sunny, so we usually only check if there is something interesting going on outside, or Delaney feels like adding a sticker to the graph. I supplement the calendar with www.starfall.com's calendar activity on some of the days. 

Action songs if we need them. Our favorites are "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes", "If You're Happy and You Know It", "Tooty-Ta" (Cullen is a pro at this one!), and "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear".

Morning Letter (which is found in Backpack Bear's backpack...a much anticipated moment!) - reading a familiar format, finding sight words, counting words in sentences, punctuation.

10 minutes of more.starfall.com games or songs. I generally use this time to give her a little break from me, and I do some quick morning chores. I make sure to set a timer, though, so I don't get distracted and forget to come back to school!

Literacy activity(ies) - this is usually a focus on an alphabet letter/sound, rhyming, sight words (current sight words: at, an, the, love, I, you, we, me, a, is, see, for), writing letters, reading/sequencing a book, etc. The amount of activities that we do correlates with the attention span of the day.  Delaney had an AMAZING attention span this morning...she did not want to play any computer games, she wrote in her journal, played a sight word game, read and sequenced her sight word story, practiced writing alphabet letters and wrote a "letter" to her dad. Other days, we will play on Starfall for awhile, read her favorite story books and draw a picture. 

Journal - I am especially excited about this...It is the first time she has used actual letters to write a "note", then dictated it to me. I will have to write a whole post about the development of writing skills.:)

Sequencing her story

Portrait of Dad from earlier this week

Learning family names

We finish up with structured activities around 9:30am. I had planned to do this Monday-Thursday, but Delaney was so brokenhearted that Backpack Bear didn't have a note for her last Friday that I decided we will have school every weekday and continue to adjust our plans to fit her amount of interest. I have been so happy and impressed with her so far. She is learning quickly and enjoying everything we do...it is rarely a challenge to get her to participate. I have to act a little silly sometimes, but hey, I do that all the time anyway. :)

I teach math and science throughout the day with whatever we are doing, unless I see a skill that she needs to focus on a little bit, or an activity that is fun and fits in with what we are doing. Delaney can count to 20 now, and recognize most numbers through 30. Cullen has been doing some beginning addition with her, and we do subtraction all through lunch, right? I have a workbook for extra reinforcement, but I use it pretty sparingly. When she is in the mood, she will blast through 4 or 5 pages, so I save it for those moments. 

Now that we have successfully completed 3 full weeks and developed a schedule that makes everyone happy, I plan to add more art into our plans, as well as trips to the library and various places, so we don't just sit at home with each other all day. If there is any local activity that you know of and could share with us, please do! Also, any comments or ideas are ALWAYS appreciated! 

The Monsters vs Little Bo Peep

...aka The Beauty of Child-Directed Work! :)

Delaney has really been enjoying all of our monster books lately. Some of our favorites are "There's a Monster in My House", "Leonardo the Terrible Monster", and "Go Away, Big Green Monster".  (P.S. "Go Away.." is only $6.81 on Amazon right now, for the hardcover. That is a REALLY good deal. Maybe Amazon should consider sponsoring this blog. Haha.)

Anyhow, we have been reading these books multiple times daily, so I decided it was time to do some artwork. I got out a large green piece of paper, lots of different shapes, glue and googly eyes. I envisioned Delaney making an AMAZING green monster to hang on the wall.

While I put Sophie down to nap, Delaney sorted through the materials and found some pre-cut sheep in the bag. By the time I had returned, she was arranging them on her paper and looking for the glue. I told her that we were making a monster today, not a field of sheep. She informed me that they were Little Bo Peep's lost sheep, and she needed a Little Bo Peep to put on the paper with them.

What a great idea.

We said the nursery rhyme a few times, which she knows by memory, while I looked online for a printable Bo Peep. DLTK has a bunch of great nursery rhyme printables, and we found everything we needed.

She added some cotton to some of her sheep to make them wooly. Pulling apart cotton is an excellent fine motor muscle builder. It's more difficult than it looks for little bitty fingers.

Finally, she wrote her name with a little help. The "D", "L" and second "E" were independent.

I have never been the type of teacher to stick to a lesson plan at all costs... (even though I am sure this gives some teachers/administrators heart attacks)...I have always been open to new directions based on what the students are interested in, and just fit my skills lessons in with the activities we end up with. I find that everyone ends up enjoying the project more, and probably learns more because the learning is definitely less forced. I think this philosophy will be well-suited for Delaney, and we will add a little more structure in as she gets older. During this particular activity, we worked on rhyming, counting, fine motor, writing letters and a little bit of science while we talked about sheep. I couldn't have planned it better. Great job, Delaney. It was a fantastic idea, and a lot of fun.

Maybe we will make a monster next week. :)

Water Paint

Delaney hasn't really shown much interest in learning how to write, but she loves to paint and draw with chalk. While it was nice outside last week, she asked if she could water paint, and I turned it into a nice opportunity to practice writing numbers and her name.

Water painting is the least messy painting ever. All you need is a nice big paint brush, a flat area outside, preferably a lot of sunshine, and a bowl of water, and there you go.

I drew numbers 1-5 on the patio with chalk, and she named them. I painted on top of the 1 to show her how to paint it, and she painted all of her numbers for awhile.



I wrote her name with some chalk, and she painted the D, then decorated around her name.


I love this art activity. No mess, many, many possibilities, and plenty of room for creativity.