Thursday, December 2, 2010

back in the swing of things

It feels great to have taken a mini Thanksgiving break from school and activities BUT we were ready to find our rhythm again on Monday! The kids were ready for some play, movement, and morning lessons. We have started our 4th block a short Math block full of great stories and the lessons of digits, doubling, tripling, greater/less and odd/even. I am so thankful for kids excited with life!

Here is Truthy trying out her water colors. She prefers to use 2 brushes!We were working with red and yellow!

The boys love wet on wet water coloring. Orien tends to like the wet never brushing off the paint brush between water and color. Cedar is slow and patient always starting with an idea and ending with simple color!

A friend introduced us to this simple holiday craft! Perfect for a cold day with negative wind cills. We wandered out land and found these pinecones. Then made an assembly line: Orien picking the pinecone, I hotgluing the spot and Cedar pressing the pinecones. The boys enjoyed it so much we made two. Cedar loves crafts and other ideas would be helpful!!

We started the week with "The Story of the Sun Dance" a native story easily used for a nice re-intriduction to the numbers we worked with during our first math block. We did a led drawing Cedars is the top and mine the one below. We chose to draw the lodge, scarface by the fire and the 4 animals that helped him on his journey as well as the big dipper.

This is my drawing from the story

After drawing we played a simple digits game. Cedar picks on card from each pile and then has to tell me the name of that number combination. He loves games, and numbers, does well unless it is a teen number.
We then read the story "Miss Many More" about a girl who wanted to bake a pie. Her father told her make a pie put of strawberries but she soon decided counting strawberries 1, 2, 3, 4 to 100 would take too long. She decided cherries in the yard would be easier 2, 4, 6, 8...but then got bored of that as well and went looking for something sweet in the garder. Man more decided that sweet green peas would be great 3, 6, 9, 12, etc...but after baking such a pis she found it disgusting and wanted to try again. She headed back outside and noticed grapes and liked the bunches 10, 20, 30 and came in and again baked a pie that didn;t turn out. Finally her father asked her to go to the pond and pick the fruit out there blueberries 5, 10 ,15, 20 and she baked a great pie. This above picture is Cedars from the story



Here is my led drawing from the story...tomorrow well experiment with different ways of counting blueberries and hopefully end with a great pie!

Today was our first woods day. We meet with the usual crew in 40 degrees and 40MPH winds and played on the ice at our favirite place, goose island. I love hos kids are so adaptible. The never once complained about the winds but boot scated and crashed for hours!

Cedar and Orien cruising across the ice on Lake Estes

We also finished up our Nevember poem by Elsa Beskow with a led water color painting mine on top Cedars on bottom

NOVEMBER
"Grey is November,
cold as cold
Stormy November,
wind and rain.
No snow.
No ice.
No glittering sun.
Grey is November,
except
by the bright fire
with a story,
a cushion for the cat,
the dark shut  outside
and
the light in the flames
where mysteries lie
and
we dream"

Cedar has also been busy with a boys knitting class. He is making his own hand mitties, here he is knitting during rest time.
I am so thankful for full days, wamr nights and happy kiddos. Welcome to December!

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