Geocaching!

Today, we tried something new after Spanish school.  We went on a treasure hunt!  It's called geocaching and it's (mostly) easy and fun!  You go to www.geocaching.com and register for a free account.  Then, you search for "caches" near you.  We have a nice creek and walking trail in our neighborhood and we learned that there are about 10 within a mile of our house!  Who knew?  So we used the GPS on the iPhone and headed off along the trail.  We searched for the first one for a long time with no luck, but then, we moved to the next one and had success!

Inside the bottle was a long log of names and dates - probably 40 or so dating back 2 years!  We added our names to the list.  Then, there was a treasure inside...

Two (thank goodness!) Halloween rings!  The rule is that if you take something, you have to leave something, so Zoe chose to leave her smaller field journal with plenty of words and pictures but also lots of space for the next person to use as well.

This was so much fun and we will do it again soon!  It's so interesting to learn about hidden things that have been right under our noses all along!

Then, there was rice to be dyed for a new sensory bin.  Can you guess the theme?  The students are very excited.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Like many schools, we used the impending holiday as an excuse to break our routines and do something different.  However, we did learn quite a bit about the first Thanksgiving.

We played with our Mayflower and First Thanksgiving Little People set.  These are new and are such a great toy!  They have played with them for hours.  By the way, the Academy uniform for the kindergarten student was "a snowflake."

We did lots of Thanksgiving busy work.  It seemed a little boring, but I forgot how much fun holiday themed activities are to kids!

While they worked on their turkey work, played with play-doh, and played with the Little People, I read the Magic Tree House Thanksgiving book.  It probably took over an hour, but we read the whole thing and they enjoyed listening to it.  Zoe followed the plot the whole time.  They were amazed that we read a long chapter book in one day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Visiting Librarian

We started the day with a puzzle.  Zoe has a matching US puzzle and map and is getting really good at using the map for a reference when she gets stuck.  We have so many friends and relatives all over the country, so it's a good way to remember who lives where.

We caught up on some handwriting and journaling.  Zoe illustrated and wrote about her dream last night.  It involved rainbow fairies.

We are moving into addition in math.  I found these great mats that make the process very easy.  They both enjoyed them and we practiced saying the number sentences.  Then, we flipped the mats over and did the subtraction number sentence.

Grana has been visiting us this weekend.  She always tells us stories about her library and all the kids she reads to, so it was a treat to have her in our school for a change!  She read us a funny Thanksgiving story.

Then Grana and Lucy played in the fall bin.  Lucy made Grana find all the "money" and set up a pumpkin store.  She drives a hard bargain.

Zoe and I did another logic problem.  She loves these and is really good at them.

After telling Grana bye, going to dance class, going to get a haircut, playing with Aidan and Olivia, and a quick rest, Zoe relaxed with a Christmas book that Nonnie and Papaw recorded.  These are very special to the girls and are the current favorite books around here.  Thanks Nonnie and Papaw, and thanks Grana for visiting our school!

Stuffing, by a mile

This is a belated Friday post.  It has been busy here at the Academy headquarters!  We practiced our writing by making a welcome home poster for Avery.  We made patterns with the letters, and wrote a whole sentence: "This is a heart."

In a frightening twist on history, pirates found the Mayflower and built a big wall in the ocean so the Pilgrims (and one confused Native American) could not get off when they found the new world.

One of Lucy's workboxes told her to go find something that started with H.  After lots of thinking, she chose Horsey lovie.  Good choice.

We are learning about magnets now.  Today, we had some free exploration time.  Here, Zoe sees how many discs her magnet can hold at once.

Zoe has been wanting to make handprint turkeys.  i think the tailfeathers add a subtle touch.  We also did a draw and write about what we are thankful for.  Zoe is thankful for everything and Lucy is thankful for her pink Christmas tree, animal toys, Sawyer, and her family.

  Zoe and I made a survey asking what people's favorite Thanksgiving food is.  As our family arrived, she asked each person what their favorite was, read them their choices, and marked their answer.  She did a great job!  Emmy and Grana persisted in picking more than one favorite, but Zoe insisted they had to pick one!

After Zoe collected her data, her daddy thought it was time to learn how to graph in Excel.  He was a little bug-eyed at the end of the project.

Here is the final report: Stuffing wins, with 7 votes, followed by dessert.  No one  chose cranberry sauce or green beans.

H is for Hospital

Today was a special day for us.  First, we were back after the fall break.  The girls had a wonderful week in Nashville and did more field trips, crafts, nature walks, and projects than we do in a month!

Today, we started by name writing - we are going to try to do this every morning.  Lucy is making progress despite that tricky Y!

Lucy did some counting work (hippo starts with H, our letter this week).

Zoe read a new book and is improving her fluency all the time.  She is feeling confident which is so nice to see.  One of the things I found at a wonderful teacher store in San Antonio was a box of word family books.  We are working on moving beyond just sounding out words to looking for patterns and word families is a good way to build this awareness.  With these, you flip over one letter at a time and make new words.

We made some patterns in math and then... I showed the girls my new iPad!  I found an amazing Montessori number concept app (can you hear Maria Montessori turning in her grave?).  I gave each girl a turn to work with me on some harder work and each one a turn on the iPad.  It worked  really well.  Zoe did her first logic problem and Ms. Lickey's GT class came rushing back in a flash!

Then, it was time for science.  Our sweet buddy Avery is in the hospital for her first cystic fibrosis "tune-up" and has been there 9 days.  So we packed up our school and went to Ft. Worth for a visit!

When we got there, we met her friend Liam.  he was recently diagnosed with leukemia and was getting chemo during our lesson.

We began by talking about our lungs and how they work.  We breathed quickly and slowly and took big breaths with our hands on our chest to feel our lungs fill with air.

Then, we used straws and baggies to show how lungs fill up and empty with air.  We used a stethoscope to listen to our breathing and heart beat (and we got to watch as about 5 people came in over the hour to do the same to Avery).

Then, we looked at some lung diagrams as a reference and colored some pictures of lungs.

After that, it was time to talk about how we can keep our (and especially Avery's) lungs healthy.  We talked about how to cough and sneeze while covering our nose and mouth.  Then, we put some lotion on our hands and everyone got one color of "germs" after we pretended to cough and sneeze in our hands.

We shook hands with our friends and noticed all the colors!  We shared our germs!

We figured out that the only way to get all the germs off was to wash with soap and rub our hands together.  It was a fun lesson and very appropriate to our setting.

It was time for Avery's "puff and shakeys" so the girls snuggled up and played with blocks (Obviously, Avery didn't have anything contagious).

We love you Avery and can't wait until you are back to Fun Friday where you belong!

Fall Break

Our Allen campus has closed for fall break.  Enrichment classes are now being held on our Nashville campus.  Seminars (taught by prestigious professors Nonnie and Papaw) include: Swimming, Tea Party Etiquette, Playground Physics, Play-Doh Peas and More, The Many Uses for Glitter Glue, and Seussical the Musical.

Caution: Melting Paint

Whenever we have a few spare minutes, the girls ask, "Please, can we just do a little bit of homeschool?"  Sometimes, they just think of little projects to do.

But my favorite way that this plays out is when Zoe decides to be the teacher.  Here, she is showing Lucy 3 sequence cards out of order and saying, "Is THIS right?  Nooooooo.  Is THIS right?  Nooooooo."  While Lucy tries to finish looking at her book.

We had only one friend coming over for Fun Friday, so last night, we decided to prepare a fun messy activity.  We carefully poured some paint into ice cube trays, put them in the freezer, and made predictions about what we would find in the morning.

Olivia came to help us finish up our water unit.  First, we did some floating and sinking investigations.  The girls went all around the house to find things they wanted to test.  Then, with Zoe as our record keeper, we took turns predicting, testing once, and then testing again.  We were surprised at some of the things that floated (a big heavy block) and sank (a little puff ball).  We figured out that most things made of wood floated and talked about logs floating down the river.

Then we just had some fun water exploration time.  

Then, it was time to pull out the paint!  I added sticks as handles and we discovered the paint had frozen!  We predicted what would happen if we left them out of the freezer.  We put some ice cubes on a plate to see which melted faster, the paint or the ice (the ice won).

At first, they worked like crayons.

But then, they started to melt...

...and things got really fun!

Thanks for coming, Olivia!