Remembering

I've misplaced my daily teacher's log so I'm making my entries here for this week.

Monday 10-15-07
Movement- new cd
Round and Round, Winds of October, My Little Pony, The Mill, Sailor Boy, Recorder Song Autumn, Wild Goose Flight, Trip Trip Trap, My Little Pony, The Cool of Autumn

Story Time- On The Farm by Kathryn Smith, The Wild Little Horse by Rita Gray, The Farm Book by Jan Pfloog

Many Paths Home School outing to Meadow Farms to learn about natural horsemanship. Ethan rode but Avery didn't. Ethan liked the horses and the ride but wasn't as interested in what the trainer was saying. Avery wants a baby horse and liked the horses but grew tired quickly. I would recommend a trail ride next summer for Ethan and I if possible. I enjoyed everything.

Art- Puff Ponies- We came home and settled in before making puff ponies- a 3-d stuffed horse out of paper. Ethan and Avery decorated, stuffed and Ethan stapled his while I did Avery's. They were very keen on the idea of a puff-person and played with their puff ponies that evening.

ECFE- Avery and Ethan attended and made faces with hats as well as painted and had daddy time.

Tuesday 10-16-07

Movement- Adaptation of The Wild Little Horse into an adventure using the puff ponies as visuals and recalling the movement patterns of the trot and gallop from Monday's field trip. A trot has 4 beats and gallop 3. Ethan trotted and galloped around the sofa and participated in the entire adventure of Little Horse with his puff pony. It took a while to get into our groove.

Storytime- A book about farm animals playing and I don't have it anymore because it was an ECFE book and Winter on the Farm adapted from the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Ethan and Avery both want to take care of animals and would like to have a farm.

Art- We took out our big drawing tablets and Ethan drew a big barn and horses. Avery drew a cat. We then created a barn on drawing paper using glue and craft sticks. Before Ethan created the barn he made a landscape for the barn, grass, corn and a blue sky. He then made his own barn after I demonstrated two styles of barns with the sticks. He wanted to make his own style. At first he put the glue on the sticks and then he put the glue on the paper and the stick on the glue. He drew the outline of the stick with glue before placing it. Following the completion of the barn he colored and cut out a horse. He colored the horse blue. The horse was pasted on the paper next to the barn. I only guided the overall project steps but not any of the placing of items nor color choices. Once the barn dried Ethan colored it red and blue.

Letters- While I made lunch Ethan made words using the word whammer. He found the letters for LOG, TAX, DOG, CAT, ARM, and his own word- DIE, which thrilled him. He sorted the vowels from the consonants.

Avery went to ECFE from 1-4pm.

During her absence, Ethan sorted three decks of flash cards into four categories-colors, shapes, objects (with the object word rather than the object color or shape), and numbers. From there we made our own sorting game using colors, letters, and purpose. He also learned about pent-hex-oct shapes, cones, cylinders, and cubes.

Ethan also took out the addition flash cards and worked on that while I started the stick ponies project.

The stick ponies were made out of one of my dad's sweatshirts with yard for hair. After picking up Avery from ECFE we ran our errands to the bakery, the hardware store for the dowel, and silbaugh's for the fluffing (stuffing). After we came home we stuffed the ponies and added the dowel. While Ethan was at Tae Kwon Do I glued the dowels in and tied them shut. We'll add ears and eyes tomorrow using felt and glue.

Ethan attended Tae Kwon Do and learned round house kicks. He will get a white belt in November. He likes the class and does well. Ryan says the class is a good class overall, ages 4-6.

We didn't go to the library but we ran errands. Tomorrow is storytelling day and tea time with Marcia. We'll add features to our horses, bake and create stories about our horses using farm and landscape pictures.

Still Here, Still Having FUN

We are having very good days and learning is fun. This week and possibly the next one or two we are weaving our days around the concept of midieval times. On Monday we learned about catapults, knights, castles and the organization of land surround castles. Yesterday we learned about dragons and caves. Today we're still working with Dragons and will make handpuppets and because it's story day we'll make story books by drawing the story about a dragon, whatever comes to their minds. We'll also make caves again and play with popcorn and make a popcorn dragon, on paper. (but a 3-d one would be cool)

I keep a daily log that I enter all of our progress in, what songs we do (which all have moment patterns), workbook pages, story books, and all activities.

We are having a successful fall. I look forward to every day and what might come by letting my heart and my kids guide the process.