Learning about senses at co-op

JayBird had another great day at his homeschool co-op. They have been learning about the senses. He did a great job applying information he learned at the co-op with information he has learned elsewhere, as after the co-op he went on to tell me that our sense all work together so they can do more than what they could do alone. He learned over the summer that team work is working together to do more than you can do alone. So he applied it to his lessons on the senses. I love how he makes all these connections! They tried tasting some foods with their nose plugged, which made it difficult to taste – so the senses were not working together in that situation. JayBird informed me that his favorite activity of the day was touching stuff, like squishy things, cold things, rough things.

Co-op was very hands on this week with the activities that they did and the crafts that they made. Here is what JayBird made in just the few hours that he was there:

A Model Tongue

 

A Nature Frame

 

A Marker Holder

 

Now on to field trips for the rest of the week! It is a packed week!

Just doing their thing…

We finished up our week of learning about Abraham and God’s promises to Abraham, though I will detail this more after we finish our week learning about Isaac.

 

In the meantime, here are some random pictures of JayBird and JellyBean doing what they do best…playing! And of course, learning through that play!

Window Art

 

Puzzles

JayBird has always amazed me with his puzzles skills. He is definitely better and faster than me! This Noah’s Ark puzzle is a big circle, so no edges and corners, and there are no outlines to help know where to put the pieces in the circle. He also has this Melissa & Doug puzzle of the United States. It does have outlines on it but nonetheless, I would think it would be more difficult for him, yet he completes it in no time at all, maybe only getting frustrated when something isn’t fitting because he may have mixed up North and South Dakota.

 

Reading some beginner reading books online with Mom.

 

JellyBean playing her very own computer game for the very first time! She enjoyed playing this game from Fisher-Price. She simply had to touch any key on the keyboard and a new letter would appear along with a voice saying the letter name. At the end, you see and hear the entire alphabet. She loved it!

 

  

Building the alphabet together

 

Finished….and acting crazy for the camera as usual.

 

And here’s JellyBean copying what JayBird was doing with his “crazy arms” in the above picture.

And here is the final product of the ABC tower, along with song!

 

1st Day of Co-op 2010!!

Today was our first day of the Love2Homeschool Co-op! Hmmm…not the best picture of both kids there, but we were in a rush to get “first day of co-op” pictures so we wouldn’t be late!

It seemed that JayBird had a great time! He is in the Kindergarten class. He did preschool with last year’s co-op and this year he is better suited for Kindergarten. I had to explain that one to him though since he is so used to calling himself a preschooler and he is still technically preschool age. JayBird enjoyed art and then learning about the sense of hearing. They had this awesome HUGE ear diagram that the kids got to look at, look through, and even crawl through. Yes…it was that big! When I passed by him while he was in line to explore the ear, he was happy to see me, excitedly saying “Hi Mommy!” like usual, though this time he didn’t run to me with his arms open wide as normal. I went over to him and he told me about the ear he was going to see…then I messed with his ears. He then turns to me and says “Okay Mom, you can go back and be with JellyBean now!” as he pushes me and ushers me away! Usually after not seeing me for a while, he would want me to stay with him or may want to come along with me. Well, apparently he has grown up in just a few hours of Kindergarten co-op and didn’t need/want me there with him anymore! My little guy is growing up!

JellyBean had fun playing during co-op time while the other moms and I planned just what we would be doing with our toddlers during that time. We have lots of fun gymboree inspired activities to do with them and at times they will join the preschoolers when the activity is age appropriate for them too.

More pictures quickly taken right before we left…

JellyBean was SO excited to have her very own backpack, At first, when I brought out JayBird’s, she exclaimed “Elmo!” I explained it was not hers but that I have one for her. She was very happy with her backpack saying “Mine!” and it is the perfect little size for her!

Just for fun, here is JayBird’s “First Day of Co-op” picture from last year, along with a random picture of JellyBean from that time last year as well. My how they have changed and grown up!!

 

Huh? What? I can’t understand you!

The tower you see here in this picture represents the Tower of Babel that JayBird made from blocks and using a simple color pattern. The little wooden guys? Yep, they are the prideful men that tried to build such a great tall tower to show how great they are. But as JayBird will share with you, as he did with many members of our extended family, God is the greatest of all and He showed this to the men by “making them talk funny.” (BTW, thanks to our family members for dialoging with JayBird as he continues to share what he learns. It is a perfect way to help retain and understand what he is learning!)

Building the tower with blocks did not catch JayBird’s attention much at all…until I suggested bringing out the wooden people and using them to act out the story. He was all about doing that! Just another example of how he loves to be more hands on…and he also loves to act! (Hoping to start some preschool drama classes soon…we’ll see!)

We then babbled to each other in our own made up languages to show that we could not help each other much if we couldn’t communicate and understand each other. This brought lots of laughter!

Fun with Yoga!

In order for Mom to get any exercise done around here (which honestly, very rarely happens), I have to get the kids involved somehow. It’s easy when you find a fun kid’s yoga video set to music on YouTube. Both JayBird and JellyBean are learning lunges, tree poses, and downward facing dog. They catch on quickly to the terms and bounce right into the pose. Otherwise they can be found crawling under Mommy while she is in bridge pose or climbing on her back while in cobra pose. And I have to be careful, or my yoga mat will be taken over by little ones! I think they will be happily surprised come Christmas time when they have their own type of mats waiting for them under the tree. No more taking over mine or sliding around on towels. I do hope to continue some forms of exercise for my well-being. And hey, it may be even more involved with the kiddos around and they learn to love exercise too! PE is indeed a subject in the homeschool home!

Art, Science, and Lessons for the Heart through Noah

Interestingly, before even beginning learning activities revolving around Noah’s Ark, JayBird wanted to make an ark craft. Originally he wanted to make it out of popsicle sticks, but it worked out better to cut strips of paper. This also gave him practice cutting on straight lines.
 
We then talked about a variety of things that God wants him to be obedient in. As you can see, it is written on the ark, each in a different color of the rainbow. This was such a fun spur of the moment activity!

And then, onto some drawing to fulfill his passion for art! This is a giraffe for the ark.

In learning that Noah was obedient and had to follow careful instructions to build the ark, we practiced our listening and problem solving skills with a scavenger hunt. Special little treasures were hidden around our backyard. JayBird (and JellyBean) were given simple clues to find these treasures.

Clues eventually led to the best treasure of all…

 JESUS!!

We used our children’s Bible to count by 2’s by counting the animals entering the ark, but JayBird being the active boy and kinesthetic learner that he is jumped up, grabbed some counting bears, and made his own game of counting by two’s. He put the red and yellow bears in pairs of two. The blue bears are laying their side was to represent a dash in between each pair. For him, this made sense and helped distinguish each pair. He then practiced counting by 2’s up to 12…and almost 14 but not quite. He problem solved and did the math on his own to go from ten to twelve and when he figured it out, we hugged and were so giddy together that he figured it out on his own! He didn’t want any help at all or even for me to look while he was figuring out what came after ten while counting by two’s.  :-)

(Oh, and those black crescent shaped moons on his shirt…well he was pretending to be a cow with moon shaped spots earlier in the day. LOL)

Here JellyBean works on a brand new Noah’s Ark puzzle. I think her favorite part was making the birds fly in the air. :-)

When learning about the flood, our science experiment was seeing if items would sink or float. JayBird would make a hypothesis for each item and then place the items on a chart.
 

And of course we had to see if Noah’s Ark would float…

We also acted out the scene of Noah and his family coming off the ark and praising God for keeping them safe. Then we made banana rainbows! JayBird sliced up bananas that we arranged into the shape of a rainbow.

Both JayBird and JellyBean then sprinkled colored/flavored gelatin onto the banana slices to resemble a rainbow. I realized later that this probably could also have been done with kool-aid powder, and at a fraction of the cost!
 

They thoroughly enjoyed their creations! Mmmm! Such a good way to have fun with healthy food! My kiddos go through phases of loving bananas and not wanting them so much. So this is a wonderful activity to encourage them to eat bananas when they are in their no banana stage! We’ve already done it a second time!

A beautiful rainbow represents God’s promise to never again flood the earth.

A first? Or just a rare moment?

This picture here is a very rare moment. Actually, I am hoping it is the first of many! JayBird and JellyBean were both playing blocks…without knocking each other’s blocks down! Mainly it is JellyBean bugging her big brother and knocking down his block towers and castles. But today, ahhhh, today they allowed each other the space to create. It was a wonderful site to see! And yes, now it is marked down in history so that if it never happens again, I can remember the one time it did. Or better yet, remind them of what it looks like!

Adam & Eve…and the serpent

JayBird spent a nice amount of time making this scene of Adam & Eve, the Tree of Knowledge, and the serpent. In fact, he used every single color of playdough that we had and pretty much used up every amount of it! (I have since bought some more to increase our stash!) This was completely his idea to make and he seemed to really enjoy doing it. It was very time intensive for him but he continued through to completion!



Here the kids brought in different kinds of play food to represent the fruit in the Garden of Eden. Their task in these pictures were to jump over the serpent (a puppet snake) without touching it. This was good jumping practice for JellyBean…not sure that she actually jumped though. Almost looks like it in the picture though! JayBird practiced jumping over the “serpent” forwards and backwards. Then we just had fun with the puppet as we teased each other with it and tried to run away, staying far away from it as possible, just like we want to stay far away from temptation and sin.

JellyBean’s recent activities…

t JellyBean is taking some developmental leaps. She is getting much more verbal, saying more words, and learning some of the words to Jesus Loves Me and some of the letters to the ABC song. Oh, and let’s not forget Barney’s I Love You song! (TV…what? Nah, that doesn’t happen here! Hehe) We have saved Barney's ABC episode because she loves singing the ABCs with Barney. I think that will be one of her best learning tools in learning the alphabet because of her love affair with Barney.


 JellyBean has enjoyed getting right in there with JayBird with drawing (well, scribbling) and cutting. Yes, she’s using scissors! She doesn’t hold them correctly, but she does manage to cut the paper all around the edges.


Through our summer adventures, she has gotten over her sensory fear of sand and has gotten down and dirty at the beach…well, maybe not that dirty, but she did play in the sand! (Oh, and JayBird got over his fear of the water and the waves. Yay!)

Okay, well…she almost got over her sensory issues with sand…
 
JellyBean continues to take part in some tot school activities. Some she loved and others she could do without. She was not into dropping stacking pegs into the cardboard of a paper towel roll, but she LOVES sorting colors with our counting bears. She caught on quickly and always caught herself if she made a mistake. JayBird joins right in with her tot school activities, sometimes because they love to play together and sometimes because they are just fighting over toys.


 

And here is a video of JellyBean’s favorite activity…the one that left her saying “More!” She caught on so fast with sorting the colors. We also tried working on verbally saying and remembering the color names and sign names, but that is still definitely a work in progress.