homeschool « Plath’s Adventures

Archive for the ‘homeschool’ Category

Winter “Garden” Harvest

January 27, 2012

The seed catalogs are pouring in and it’s time to start planning our garden for next year. I’m getting the itch to start a few lettuce seeds already, although it’s probably too early. However, we are growing onions in the kitchen!
Pinterest clued me in on this little tip… Did you know you can grow green onions from the grocery store after you use them up? Just throw your root ends in some water until they get going and then transplant them to soil.

Here they are the morning after I used them in our egg rolls:

Two days later, look how much they’ve grown!

Adelaide is not impressed… she just wants her milk.

Remember the cool dragon craft I mentioned on Monday?
We made him yesterday and think he turned out ferocious!

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Bowling and Thrifting

January 26, 2012

We took a bowling trip with our local homeschool preschool group this week and had a great time. It’s our first time bowling, but definitely won’t be our last. Eleanore had a great time.

And it looks like I’ll be channeling my inner Julia Child, as I picked up this nice enameled cast iron dutch oven, made by Descoware at the thrift store.

Apparently, Descoware was Julia Child’s cast iron pan of choice. I have been thinking of picking up a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking… Beef bourguignon anyone? Think I may have found a recipe for next week’s menu. Of course, I didn’t find what I was LOOKING for at the thrift store (tap shoes or wooden folding chairs), but such is thrifting.

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Keeping Busy

January 20, 2012

Enjoying lots of books this winter, even though it hasn’t felt very wintery. We finally got a bit of snow over the weekend, although this has still been a very mild winter snow-wise for us. We’ve been working our way homeschool-wise through Jan Brett’s The Hat and The Mitten, Snowy Day, Snow Music, penguins (including nap-time readings of Mr. Popper’s Penguins), and this week is dragons in honor of Chinese New Year today.
We made red lanterns:

and cool dragon masks

Source: alphamom.com via Lisa on Pinterest

as well as a dragon puppet:

Source: krokotak.com via Lisa on Pinterest

This art project is definitely on the agenda:

Source: notimeforflashcards.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Check out my winter pinboard for more ideas and to see what else we have up our homeschooling sleeves.

We’ve also spent a lot of time baking in the kitchen. Everything from cookies to bread, pizza, bagels, pretzels. Eleanore is getting great at mixing dough.

and Adelaide is gobbling it all up

A lot of pretend baking and cooking has been happening, as well. We moved the girls’ play kitchen out into our dining room this past week and they’ve both had great fun baking cookies and rattling the pots and pans.

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Organization and Vintage Sheet Sewing

January 20, 2012

I’m not very organized. I have good intentions, and will spend entire afternoons organizing an area in my home, only to have it demolished a week later and in complete disarray.
See this pocket chart?

I bought it to keep our homeschool week supplies organized. Not very organized anymore. See the pocket chart on the other wall for our daily schedule? I had hoped to keep us on track using it, but it’s not very beneficial since Eleanore can’t read. It’s beautiful with the watercolor cards, but pictures would better serve our home.

See this shelf? It’s supposed to be a self-serve shelf for Eleanore for art supplies, puzzles and manipulatives. Now it’s just a catch-all.

I could seriously go through my home and show example after example. What’s my point here? My extreme disorganization is one of the reasons I LOVE pinterest and ravelry. They’re both places to keep my projects, ideas, inspiration and recipes organized without adding more clutter to my home. I used to have piles of paper patterns, homeschool art and lesson project ideas and recipes printed out cluttering up my kitchen and bookcase, but now I don’t need to. If I didn’t have ravelry, I know I wouldn’t have been organized enough to complete my 52 projects in 52 weeks. Yes, you read that correctly. I successfully completed 52 knitting projects in 2011!
A few of my last projects of the year:

a simple wooden ring toy for Adelaide for Christmas

a fae folk hat for Eleanore that she won’t wear

a celtic neckwarmer for me out of madtosh yarn
Still need to grab a picture of this… (see above for comment on organization lol)

and a scrappy soaker for Adelaide

I will not be attempting 52 projects in 2012. I have knit almost nothing so far in 2012, except for half the waistband of a pair of longies for Adelaide. I just do not have knitting mojo right now. We did get out the sewing machine today though and whipped up a few things. I needed to patch the patch on a pair of my favorite jeans. I’m just not ready to throw them out yet, and the vintage sheets I’ve been thrifting make the perfect patching fabric.

I also used a vintage sheet to sew up a quick camera strap cover. Super simple and I love that I can change the look whenever I want to.

I have plenty left of this sheet to hopefully sew up a summer dress for Adelaide.

Eleanore even got to help with her first sewing project! We used yet another vintage sheet scrap to sew a quick drawstring bag. She loved sitting on my lap, feeding the fabric through and doing the back stitch button.

She immediately declared it her lego horses’ new home.

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Rollerskating Fun

January 11, 2012

We’ve been meaning to try out roller skating for AGES, but it’s never worked out. Today we decided to give it a try and headed out for a preschool skate with some friends.
It was VERY tough at first to figure out balance, and there was a lot of apprehension.

As well as a lot of falling.

But after some tips from the teacher and her helper

we were able to use the “t” to help our balance and were skating almost unassisted by the time we were ready to leave!

Crafty and homeschooling updates coming soon! I have an update on my 52 projects in 52 weeks for 2011

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Christmas Preparations

December 5, 2011

While we haven’t dragged the big boxes of Christmas decorations out of the garage yet, we have started a little bit of decorating, mostly for our advent countdown. Eleanore cut out and glued together her first paper chain. She also cut out her first paper snowflake. I couldn’t remember how to cut them out, and had to google…

Our nature table is slowly making its change over to winter. We had our first snowfall of the season last week, so we figured it was time. We’re also starting a new holiday tradition, or at least trying one out to see if we like it. I wrapped up 24 Christmas or Winter books from our collection, and Eleanore is opening a book every day. She loves matching up the number on the package to the number on the calendar after we have calendar time.

This printable I found on pinterest is also proving very fun. Eleanore loves glueing on the cotton ball every day to form Santa’s beard.

Remember last week, when I posted I was thankful for our first snow? Well, not even 5 minutes after I hit publish on that post, this happened.

A huge old oak tree fell across our driveway, blocking us in, and Jason was out of town, so wasn’t able to clean it up for us. With the help of my Mother in law a few hours later, we did manage to move the car out of the way so we could head to our homeschool science class the next day. It also didn’t stop us from enjoying the snowfall.

But a few hours later? The power went out. Then the electric pole started smoking. It caught on fire. A visit from the fire department and then the electric company made for a rather exciting day.

All is well, and Jason is now back home. The tree isn’t completely cleaned up yet, but he made a good start on it yesterday. Phew.

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Halloween Fun 2011

November 2, 2011

Here are a few pictures from Halloween. Eleanore had a good time with her first official trick or treat. She keeps asking me if we can do it again.

Tuckered out after trick or treating:

Eleanore *loved* making a spider hat this week. We took a plain paper plate, painted it black and cut out the center, and then glued on accordion-folded legs and googly eyes.

We also made some simple roving ghosts for our Autumn tree.

Pumpkin guts were fabulous sensory play. Eleanore squished them between her fingers for an hour while Jason carved the pumpkins.

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Halloween Fun & Fall Crafting

October 20, 2011

We had our first Halloween event this morning, so I figured it was time to unveil the costumes. We headed out to a Halloween party at a local working farm where we got to ride the hayride, play a few games and join in on a parade with the goats and a runaway pig. It was great fun!

Eleanore is a bat this year. Here’s a better picture of her wings:

I used this easy tutorial I found on pinterest, and Adelaide is a spider. I just winged her costume, adding stuffed felt legs to a pair of sweatpants and long sleeve tee. I then knit them both black hats. Really easy, but I’m pleased with how they came out.

Adelaide is growing up so much lately. She’s climbing onto things now when she spots something she wants.

She’s really taking to food these days, eating two, if not three, meals a day with us. She just had her first pasta the other day and enjoyed it. Her favorite food is definitely applesauce though, after mama’s milk of course.

Eleanore has done lots of pumpkin crafting and learning this week (our homeschool theme of the week): watercolor painting, a tissue paper pumpkin collage, a painted paperplate pumpkin, we even made and have played with orange playdough this week, as well as learned about the pumpkin life cycle with various books and these montessori cards. I worked on a little needle felting, whipping up this pumpkin the other day while Eleanore played with a jack o lantern felt activity I cut out for her.

However, the real highlight of the week was the crafting done by Jason. We went lamp shopping last weekend, as the dim lighting in the living room was getting to us every evening. Well, we saw a floor lamp we both liked, but Jason said he could make it. He definitely succeeded, and built and finished it that same day.

I like it so much more than the one in the store! We still need to get a new lampshade and a larger harp for it, as we just used what we had at home, but our living room is already so much brighter. I need to get a better picture of the top, as the harp is screwed into a branch that came from a tree in our yard. I love it!