America

Perhaps this is the last snow for this year? Or maybe it's just wishful thinking...

We picked up a few books about North America at the library last week as part of our continent studies and we've been reading about The United States first.


So You Want to Be President? is a cute book that includes lots of little facts about the presidents (who was musical and who wasn't, how many presidents were named James, the pets presidents have had, etc.) and it's been a great introduction to the names of our former presidents. Next year we will study more about the presidents (specifically the first three or four) as we learn more about early American history.


We also read America as an introduction to some important concepts and symbols in America. We learned the words "constitution" and "democracy" and learned about the American flag.

Of course, we had to make our own:

We used oil pastels for these projects, which are fast becoming the boys' favorite drawing medium. They are still learning to keep their fingers/hands/arms off their drawing unless they *want* it to smudge, but the bold colors are so much more exciting than regular crayons! We also invested in some 9 x 12 paper a few months ago and we're loving the larger size! I'm considering ordering even larger sizes for next year since this bigger size has provided an opportunity for bigger and better art work. Maybe some 18 x 24?

Where are your studies taking you lately?

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Spring Birds

Ender has been fascinated with birds over the last few months, so when I saw this project on Deep Space Sparkle I knew it was perfect for us.

We're planning to try this project with various materials, so for our first version we used crayons and marker before cutting out our birds.

Then came the difficult decision of what kind of background to draw...

Ezra's bird

Ender's bird

Next up, trying the bird project with pastels and watercolors!

Tips to Occupy Your Toddler

{Ezra at 18 months}

I'm sharing toddler tips at Simple Homeschool today.

Come on over and join in the conversation!

Blue

I cast on last night for a new nephew expected in early May. You can't tell yet, but this is the Pembroke Vest [rav link] in the 6 month size.


I'm not terribly happy with it. Not because of the pattern, but because I'm generally unhappy with knitting lately. I've seriously cast on four different things in the past week and ripped them all back out after about 2 hours of work, because I wasn't crazy about the project. I can't seem to find that one project I really want to work on.


Do you ever get that feeling? I haven't lost the knitting love- I *want* to knit, I'm just not finding a project to be super excited about.


Perhaps the problem has been the renewed focus on sewing- this week has brought new shorts and pajamas for the boys and hemming a gazillion work pants for Brian- I'm on the 5th and last pair this week, and then back to my petticoat!


And since Ginny also invites us to write about our reading, I'm almost done with Redwall this week for fiction, and I have the Red Pyramid waiting. For non-fiction I've been looking through booklists and working on all kinds of things for next year in our homeschool. I'm still waffling on a math curriculum, but I have the basics down for our 6 terms of science and history, and I'm just about ready to start setting booklists.


What are you reading?

100

Ezra asked, "Am I big enough for the number board yet?"


Ender has been using the 100 board to review counting lately, and true to this frequent theme, Ezra insisted that he was ready to use it too. I was fairly certain that he would lose interest after placing a few tiles, but he kept at it through completion!

I started him out the same way I started Ender - with the tiles stacked in groups of tens (1-10, 11-20, etc.) with the numbers in order and a mat underneath that marks where each tile goes.


After he completes the board a few times I'll give him those same stacks of ten but with the numbers out of order, then progress to completing the board without the mat, and eventually with all the tiles mixed. Ender is using the work in that way right now (all 100 tiles mixed) as well as placing tiles counting by 2s,5s, and 10s. I still have a hard time thinking of Ezra as a 3-6 Montessorian- wasn't it just yesterday that he was so small?