For all of our Easter resources please refer to the blog entry titled “Easter Resources“.
April 1-2
Not emotional but educational… and more importantly – LAUNDRY!
Looks like an episode out of hoarding but it actually is a week and a half of laundry for 7!
We tricked/convinced the twins to watch half of the first load!
But first… MONDAY… April Fools was a non issue here… except for Anthony (god son) contacting a bunch of people with his joke and getting trouble with his mom. I don’t talk to the kids about it at this point. We have enough problems with behaviours right now, I would rather not tempt fate! BUT we did make our April poster… again talking about spring is still somewhat theoretic but we managed.
April
We started working on our Easter assembly only to RUN OUT of glue stick!!! WHAT??? I could have sworn that I had enough to last a while yet. Which means I probably do but have misplaced where I put them. So instead we started on Wild Kratts… 3 episodes!
Bats
Zebra
Firefly
The boys worked on copywork out of our Julie Andrews’ Treasury – The Easter Bunny by Rupert S. Holland.
Poetry
We also had some Easter games I picked up at the Dollar Tree.
Gaming together
Emanuel got a head start on the penguins with his own two page illustration.
Penguins at play
Tuesday was a Ken at work day, and the kids and I started right on the penguins with Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Again I am going to do the resource page at the end! This was Emanuel’s suggestion, he has always loved penguins best. We had some worksheets and a second book from the library… What’s in the Egg, Little Pip? by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman.
Cute little story
We had worksheets to accomplish…
Colour by words
Zander created his own little car ramp/jump for his remote control car.
Jump/ramp
This also marked the end of our reading program for the school year… one last round of pizzas!
YUM
Daddy also had a special picture waiting for him on his desk here at home at the end of the day!
and thank you for enriching our literature and helping the boys WANT to read even more! Yes, Monday marked the beginning of our celebration of all things Dr. Seuss. After all, his birthday is on the 2nd of March! What book to start with… well the library helped me choose that one with the one week rental of the newest Lorax movie. We have touched on recycling and conservation before but I think the kids were REALLY affected by this book. The ending is slightly different than the movie of course and really much sadder. Trinity was especially upset with Once-ler and his lack of care with the trees. She simply could NOT understand why people would be willing to destroy everything and chase away the animals. She felt that it lacked explanation and was just WRONG! I have to agree that is was wrong… and be glad that she sees that straight off. We are doing folders for this unit with activities, For the Lorax we had 3 specific pages… Like the platypus I will also be combining my resources in a separate blog entry!
Gavin and Zander with our starter book
Emanuel and Trinity with two of the worksheets
Echo had her own book too… but this one was only influenced by Dr. Seuss.
Boardbook
The twins made our theme coloured paper chain… the table cloth is blue to round out the Dr. Seuss colours.
Paper chain
Anyway, we also had our platypus to face… a book to finish! AND a video to watch. The Perry Files from Disney’s Phineas and Ferb was a ton of fun! TWO videos to share today! One a brief veiw at a facility where you can SWIM with a platypus!! If only we lived in Australia!
Our second video is a day in the life of a platypus at a national park.
Our book for the day was one that took us two sessions to get through entirely: Platypus, A Century-long Mystery by William Caper. We really enjoyed this one as it focused on the last 100+ years of research with all the problems and bumps along the way.
The last book
We lucked out and got our hands on the Wild Kratts video for the platypus, Platypus Cafe from the first season and while this will go into our Wild Kratts binder and not our lapbook it was a welcome addition to our day. You can actually purchase episodes from this series on Amazon.com or watch a few on PBSkids.
Platypus Cafe
The Perry Files
We had our Pizza Hut reading program pizza today as well!
Well done boys!
It was actually an away day for Ken who was off to work at the office. It was rather different… but I think we did just fine!
Snuggles with Daddy
Don’t forget our outside time!
They built that whole structure
Tuesday was the beginning of assembly day for the kids, AFTER we learned about the Echidna. Sadly most videos are dedicated to the unusual male anatomy they have BUT I got a REALLY cute video of a baby one in a zoo!
I am hoping we will finish our lapbook by tomorrow. I will share the pictures of the whole thing then. In the meantime we continued with Dr. Seuss and Green Eggs and Ham. A VERY timely lesson for Miss Trinity with her picky food issues. We all drew pictures from the book and wrote out what this story told us. Earlier in the morning Ken had the boys and Trinity do the same for the Lorax. We also did some word searches and colouring pages.
Playing Green Eggs and Ham tick tac toe
Then Zander read The Foot Book to Emanuel! For Echo it was Hop on Pop. I would love to do all the activities associated with these books online but there just isn’t time! Thankfully I have added the main page with those links onto our reference blog. I DID try and have Gavin read the Green Eggs and Ham book but with the kids all wanting to see pictures I read it to them and he read Echo her book.
Reading together
Tomorrow it is The Cat in the Hat! Should be fun!! We have a craft or two and everything. When we got through the bulk of schooling I let the kids watch PBS. We lucked out – Electric Company AND a new (to us at least) Wild Kratts. Who doesn’t want to know more about the Colossal Squid and the Sperm Whale?
Wild Kratts
So life is good where learning can be found and we are learning left right and center!!!
With a little fresh air as well… that is a jump that Emanuel built for the neighbours dog to jump off of
Two more days and the kids are still settling into the routine of Daddy leaving each day and this is him leaving around lunchtime. The following week is going to take further adjustment! But it is a good adjustment.
We get creative to fill the time! I think those are zombies and ghosts on there???
So in the meantime I am packing our days with learning… and while the kids are not always on board we are seeing progress in many things. Just need to get science pushed on into our weekly schedule on a more regular basis. I cannot wait until it is warm enough to order our ants. We did get our time in on a special two part Wild Kratts. Dolphins AND Blowfish. I think we all learned a bit!
Blowfish
Dolphins
There was some spontaneous paper crafting with all 4 of our big kids… they made crowns!
Zander and Gavin
Emanuel
Trinity
And then Trinity and Emanuel took the stickers Aunty Karyn brought for us from Dollarama and made special space pictures…
Space… the final frontier
Add in the boardgames and we played our way to education.
Candyland for 2
Oh and the progress on Gavin’s Lego hour creation!!!
Legoland Gavin style
I treated myself to another snack thanks to Karyn – beloved Cheezies… bliss!!!!
CHEEZIES
On Wednesday we celebrated another month of reading… Emanuel got his first pizza coupon for working each day on sounding out and writing out a new word. I am so proud of their progress! This Pizza Hut sponsored program is great!!
NOM NOM
But before that lovely dinner we had a few things to accomplish… Starting with a more simplified how to from Art for Kids – a ladybug, note Zander’s hand holding his!
Lovely scene!
Gavin spent some quality time with his baby sister playing HER version of Skylanders… some sort of weird noised back and forth with various figures that would then end up in the line again!
So sweet with her big brother
And then there is our scissors practice – Trinity is getting rather pro with her S snake from Activity Village!!
All by herself!
And to round off our creativity Zander made a rather amazing sailing pirate ship out of Legos!
VERY yellow
It feels good to see them independently create a little more! And to see some passion in our work.
