First swim class....

Today was Samantha's first swim class. She LOVED it. All week she has been driving me crazy asking if today is swim class day. When she woke up this morning really early, she got dressing in her swimsuit and clothes and came into my bedroom and said "I'm ready for swim class Mommy!" It was funny. I had to tell her she had a long day ahead of her before class was to start.

Week of playdates.....

Since this week was a school vacation week for the public school we followed and decided this was a good week to just relax and have fun. This has been a busy week.

On Monday Samantha went and played with her cousin Kylie at while I worked. They had so much fun together playing outside.

On Tuesday we went with a few families from church to Roger Williams Zoo. Samantha enjoyed going there with friends. It was a nice warm day for a zoo trip. Not sure if she had more fun looking at the animals or having a friend to see the zoo with.

Then today, Thursday is our Mops (Mothers of preschoolers) day. After Mops we went for a play date and picnic at the playground with our Mops friends. It was a fun filled day. They all had fun playing on the swings and playground equipment. Samantha was so thrilled to show me she mastered the monkey bars. She can make it all the way across. After most of our friends left Samantha and her friends Owen, Emma, Seth and Shane played in the baseball field running around and picking dandelions. We decided it was time to go as the thunderstorm rolled in. She almost fell asleep on the way home. Now that's a sign of a fun day. Early to bed tonight.

zoo fun

I took Samantha to the zoo today. We wanted to get out of the house and let Steve rest. We were just looking at the magazine Auntie Lyette sent Sam for her birthday. In it there is a story of a little otter. So cute so we thought we head to the zoo to look at the otters and learn a little more. Well we learned some new stuff about them but................. this is the first time ever going to the zoo and the otters never came out!! The bears were out, the baby cougar was out, the beavers were out, a cute little baby duck was out, even the crane was out. But can the cute little otter be out. No. Maybe next time they will be out. There were some cute little baby ducks so tiny and adorable. Oh and the crane was building a sort of nest for its egg. I didn't look like a normal nest kind of thrown together not in any form. More like a little bed for the egg not a nest. Then something scared them away and off the ran leaving the egg behind.

Swim class

Samantha is excited. We are enrolling her in the home school swim class at the YMCA. This is the first activity that she is participating in that is for home school kids. Its really inexpensive. $35 for members. Its an eight week course. They also have home school gym class too and I think that is something we will do in the fall along with the swim class. Last Thursday I took her to watch a friends children during swim class to make sure she wanted to do it. It took all she had in her to stay seated and watch, she wanted to join right in. The did allow her to join in with them as they did the gym class. The look of joy on her face was priceless.

So we did our study on bees the past week and it was very interesting. We are almost done with it. She now wants to learn all about foxes. So that will be our study for next week or so.

More on bees

I almost forgot she learned more about bees today. how they make honey. Its really interesting. The bee takes nectar from the flower in its mouth. The enzymes in its mouth helps convert the nectar into honey. The bee will deposit pollen on the flower as it takes the nectar. The bee puts the honey in the honeycomb. Then it will actually flap its wings over the honey to remove the excess water from it. We watched a video of this. It was so amazing to see hundreds of bees flapping its wings to dry the honey. Samantha thought this was funny. we also learned that honey resist bacteria, mold and fungus and doesn't go bad due to this. She wants to learn more about the bees and watch more videos of them making honey. Off to search the interent for more information.

Samantha isn't a lover of honey. But she knows that when she has a sore throat it does help to sooth it and will take a teaspoon of it.

sick days.....

This week has been a long week and its only Tuesday! Samantha has a cold and sore throat and she kindly passed that on to me! One of the joys or not such joy is if your home schooled you can still do your work when your sick. That is if your not hugging the toilet bowl sick. Since she is not that sick I have a week of school work planned for her.

Yesterday was nice with Daddy doing all the work with Samantha. Since he didn't listen to the directions before I left for work she did double the work. HAHAHAHA. Ok that wasn't so nice of me but....... So instead of doing only 4 work sheets and some activities she did 8 worksheets. That cuts our week down for work.

Today was a fun day for homeschooling. Since she did today's work yesterday we had more of a fun day. We colored some fake stain glass windows to hang in her bedroom. I wish she had more patience coloring. When she wants to do it she can do a beautiful job when she isn't so into it well lets just say her work is not so beautiful.

Then we did some work out of our devotional on giving. Samantha doesn't mind giving away toys, hugs (to the right person) even art work that she makes. But when it comes to giving away her money well we are working on that one. She gets an allowance. How much she gets at the end of the week depends on her. We have a chore chart. Each chore is assigned an amount. Then each day I assign certain chores and if she does them she gets a check mark and at the end of the week we total up the money. Its up to her how much she makes. When I give her the money we break it down to put in her banks that we made from our mops group. Share/save/spend. So she has no problem with putting 20% in the save but she wants to put the rest in the spend. She doesn't want to put 10% in the share bank. But she knows that she will only get an allowance if she is willing to do as she is told to do with the money. One day she will give willingly and even maybe joyfully I hope? She loves putting money in for charity at the holidays even when its her own money. So I don't get why she wouldn't want to do this. She was so thrilled the few times now that we went shopping and she spent her spend money. Her own money her face lit up when she handed over the correct money to the cashier. Oh and the craft that went along with this devotional was to make a sign any kind of sign and give it away. She happily did this. She made a beautiful sign that said friends forever and gave it to her friend Chloe. She did this with great joy. I need some smiles and this one would be shaking its head is wonder or confusion.

Then we talked about the different type of clouds and read a book on them. What a great day for looking out the window (she sick remember so no outside) and try to pick out what kind of clouds are out there. She was thrilled to learn that she can make a could on a cold day just by breathing or walk through one on a foggy day. Its fun to see the light bulb go on in her mind when she learns these things.

So as I write this blog post she is in the kitchen playing with the dreaded moon sand. How I hate the stuff. Its messy and gets into everything. No matter how careful you are it just messy. She is actually playing with some homemade moon sand that works just like the store bought stuff. The only thing is it did dry up some while being stored so we just added more water. I think its because its not being stored in a air tight container. I don't even want to go in the kitchen to see what it looks like in there right now. If you want the recipe for moon sand here it is....

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups water
3 cups corn starch
6 cups sand

mix the corn starch with the sand first. Then add the water little by little until its the right consistency. If you brave add food coloring but I warn you we use red and every time she plays with it her hands are stained pink. Not that she minds. But you might want to use the colored play sand if you don't want it to be regular sand color. Keep in an airtight container.

I am about to brave the kitchen in the hope that its not covered in sand. LOL Enjoy your day!!!

A day filled with learning and fun.....

Today is Sunday and we are home sick. Samantha has a back cold so we stayed home from Church and ice skating. Its been a lazy and productive day if that is even possible. First Samantha played on the computer while I got supper into the crock pot. Then we did some school work....

We continued using bee's in our lesson....
Bee Math: we used bee shapes to count and do simple addition... If you had 3 bees and you add 3 more bees how many bees will you have? Samantha had fun doing this. Its so much easier to figure out when you have the objects in front of you. We are working on the number 9 this week so I then had her color a big number 9 then fill it with 9 bee's that she picked out of the 21 we had been using to do addition. She also did a work sheet writing the number 9 and picking out what group has 9 in it.



Before we even started doing our work I was trying to get the computer to play the radio station Klove. While I was doing that Samantha was drawing a picture. I was really impressed with her work. She showed me how she made the big person big since she was closer up to us and the other people small because they were so far away!



We are working on the letter J. So we did our usual worksheets with her writing the letter J in upper and lower case Jj. Then she had to pick out what pictures begin with J. Then she made a list of words that begin with J. She was so excited with this as she wrote them all herself. The only help I gave her was how to spell the words...

kitchen table science....

Water = liquid
ice = solid
steam = gas

On Saturday she learned about how one object can be in so many different forms. We started out with a liquid water then froze it and turned it into a solid. First she tried to break the ice with a pick. Then we melted some of the ice first with just hot water and watched the big ice block melt slowly.
Next we took an ice cube and put in over a flame to watch it melt very fast. Then we covered the pan and watched the water evaporate and fill the pan and it turned into a gas. Fun with science! We did add strawberries and grapes to the water first just to add some more fun to it. She had to figure out how to get the fruit out to have her snack. ****frozen grapes taste good but frozen strawberries are mushy and not so good****

I found this website http://www.catie.org.uk/testing_time_index.html and she had fun trying to figure out if something was a liquid, solid or a gas.

Buzzzzzzzzz

Samantha wants to know about bees so this week we will be looking into the life of a bee. When Sam was about 2 years old she got stung by a bee and still remembers it to this day. We were visiting Grandma Muriel and Grandpa Steve on the Cape. Grandma Muriel, Samantha and I were going to a fair. As we were waiting for the bus to bring us there, Samantha was looking at some flowers. One had a bee on it. She reached over and picked the bee right off the flower. OUCH he stung her. Since then she has asked about bees of and on. Then we were watching the Bee Movie and she learned that when a bee stings a person he will die. That really interested her. She wants to know why it dies. So off to the internet we went. So for this week I will be posting all kind of interesting information about bees and showing off the fun projects Samantha and I will be doing.

Oh and a bee dies because his stinger has barbs on it and when it goes into the skin the barbs holds it in place and as the bee tries to fly away it rips the stinger out and his insides come out. He will soon die. Interesting and gross. Poor little bee. Not all types of bees will die when they sting. Some bees can't even fly.

So for today Samantha said I am the queen bee and she is the princess bee. LOL
Have a great weekend.

Easter....

Happy Easter to all! Today was a fun Easter day for Samantha. We went to church, baked cookies, then got together with our family for dinner. I wanted to update the grass in the basket made it to Easter. But it wont last for much longer. Funny the cat never touched it. But if I move a plant I have in my bedroom out in the living room he will eat the leaves off. He almost killed it. Its also a plant that is supposed to make him sick. Obviously it doesn't as he will try and eat it at every chance.

Ok so how does this apply to learning. Hmmm not sure.....well every experience you learn something right? Like today Samantha learned if you tell Mommy no and stick your tongue out at church that will have a consequence... no computer time for a few days. LOL

I hope everyone had a wonderful and peaceful Easter!!!