For all of our Easter resources please refer to the blog entry titled “Easter Resources“.

March 18-19

Sometimes you just have to stop and take a breather and since the previous weekend was St. Patrick’s Day and we shuffled some of our unit ending stuff (like assembly of the poster) to Saturday out of the necessity of having to make Wednesday a light day (VISITORS!!!) I figured it was best to throw all but our final St. P’s book, worksheet and our spelling out the window and do a jimjam day.

All at work

What was memorable?

Final book

In fact, our first in a year really! Those who had been keen to get dressed in the morning had the option to get back in their sleepwear and the rest of us grabbed pillows and blankets and sat back to relax.

Pj’s with accessories

After as much tv (with some blatantly educational stuff squished in for good measure… Word Girl, Handy Manny and his Spanish…) as anyone wanted and some yummy food for meals and snacks we moved onto Minecraft. I think one or two made their way outside to play in the snow too but so much was coming down it was just not much fun I am told. We have gotten a TON of snow this weekend!!!

Tuesday was back to the grind stone… though at a quicker pace than we are used to to catch up. Dinosaurs and Easter galore! We had our first Easter book – Easter by Trudi Strain Trueit.

Eggs!

Again, I am making a resource blog for this theme. So at the end of the series I will post all our links etc. If you are interested in something you see us doing here in the meantime drop me a line and I will send along my resources. I do love Activity Village and Education.com (both links on the right) for my thematic worksheets though!

A jumble of learning

We made TWO cards today, thumb prints of course. One is already in the mail box on its way to the birthday girl. The other is for Baby Lily. The kids have definitely gotten into the creative mode with these.. cats, hedgehogs, even a sheep have made their way onto the page.

Just waiting for words and signatures

We finally found a moment to record our special St. Patrick’s Day poem: The Fairies out of Sally Go Round the Stars by Sarah Webb and Claire Ranson.

Fairies

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl’s feather.

The book we got it from

We ended our night with a movie… Veggie Tales: The Night Before Easter… not a bad ending to our day with popcorn and all!

The movie

Movie and popcorn

Tomorrow we start our Easter poem memorizing. Although instead of a poem… we are doing a song!!! Wish us luck!

Emanuel sharing his dinosaur time with Echo!

With fall firmly here we decided it was best to take advantage of the warmer day and some spare time, so we went down the block to one of the walking/bike paths and took some pictures of the family dressed up a little (or more than a little in the case of the girls). I have to say, there is so much tree variety here that the colours are lovely and bright and differ greatly!

My 5 babies

Just the girls

Just the boys

After our photographic enjoyment of the start of fall we headed out to Jo-Ann’s to facilitate my newest project – a shawl… something time consuming and still on the easy side with a coupon I got in the mail for signing up as a teacher. It took a bit of hunting as the original pattern I found and fell in love with (after 4 aborted tries) did not match the picture or really make sense to my resident (through FaceTime) expert Karyn. Instead I decided to make THIS one with my light weight yarn. 

And then it was time for SCIENCE! I was so glad that Amazon came through FASTER than projected with our solar panel items. We had a car and a grasshopper that went on super sale. I lucked out and saw a listing on Facebook so I could take advantage. We talked about how the sun is needed to shine on the panels where that light is turned into energy to move the wheels on the car and to make the grasshopper squiggle. What I LOVED about these two is that as soon as they landed in shade they STOPPED so the kids got a really clear idea of the cause and effect. Of course we had to record this in our observation journals! Add to that our usual work and another chapter from our Judy Moody story and we are progressing nicely.

Hands on learning

Fun in and out of the sun

Thursday was a rather random day. With someone coming over to see about something in regards to the house we figured it would be best to take the kids out for a walk. Now I believe everyone when they say FALL IS HERE, but once again – the COLOURS!!!! We stayed out as long as we could before fingers were chilled and our minds were made that we need to get mittens and gloves before a bonfire we have planned for Saturday at another friend’s home. But I think we had fun, and came home with a selection of leaves and seeds to draw in our journals. 

Pre walk car time

So cute!

With all 5 kids sick (and Emanuel another tooth lost and probably swallowed at night – did I mention he lost his FIRST tooth in August???) I figured quiet time with Cyberchase and Handy Manny was a good choice. Sometimes you just need to lay back and let the educational programming entertain you.

Tv time

We did tape our Autumn poem An Autumn Greeting.

Then of course there was MORE time outside in the afternoon – gotta use those leaves before they blow away!!!

JUMP

And Emanuel drew a Triceratops for us instead of a daily dino… just to give Mommy one research free night! Well done!! Frill and all. 

Well drawn!

I am on the hunt for the next poem to memorize… maybe something fall again, or Halloween-y??

Love love love the colours… and the seeds that look like banana peels!