Math Trays

 I have found with my middle two girls that math just doesn't come easily. They need lots of reinforcement and many opportunities to add and subtract over and over. Their A Beka worksheets have been helping them quite a bit but doing worksheets over and over again can get old. I decided we needed a little change up to our normal morning work. Last night, through the help of pinterest, I put together 5 math trays for all three of my younger girls to work on this morning.
The pink tray: Gum Ball adding and subtracting plus a graphing and coloring.
The green tray: Dice addition
The blue tray: Addition questions were on each clothes pin and the answers were on the popsicle stick. They clipped the clothes pin onto the correct stick.
The purple tray: Creating their own addition questions with correct answers using numbers on each clothes pin.
The yellow tray: Subtraction flashcards and a graph that contained the answers along the bottom. They had to write the question into the correct graph square.

The girls were able to complete all their trays before lunch. Dragonfly needed some assistance from me but the other two worked independently. It is great that the three of them have all reached a point that I can use the same trays.

Butterflies

We started working on a new pin for Keepers today....Butterflies. Today, we discussed the four stages of a butterfly's life cycle and then did a fun art project to reinforce what we read about. 

 The older girls added alot more detail to their plate. They turned out really cute. Then they created their own butterfly on a color sheet I had printed out for them. I didn't end up getting a picture of any of them.

We finished our butterfly fun with a cute snack.

Turtle

On our walk, we found a turtle floating in our lake. Because this turtle didn't swim away, the girls were really able to get a good glimpse of this turtle. It has been fun living by a lake and really getting to educate the girls about the nature around us. Our lake is full of many animals and birds that have migrated here for the winter. 

Space Center

Connector straws. The girls learned how to create all different shapes and designs.

Dragonfly got to climb the wall for the first time. She was so excited! She made it about halfway before asking how to get down. 

Valentine Fun

It is always exciting to get together with friends for fun and games. I truly love so many ideas on pinterest and I think the site has helped me plan so many creative things for the girls to do. We decided for one of our keepers meetings to have some fun Valentine games and heart shaped snacks to go with our study of birds. I found 3 minute to win it games that I thought would be a lot of fun. 

 Game number 1: Get as many mini marshmallows into the cups in one minute.

 Kids started by throwing one at a time until they realize that throwing handfuls increased their odds of making the marshmallows into the cups.

 Game number 2: Get as many conversation hearts out of the bowl and into a cup using only chopsticks in one minute. (there are Xs on each heart to keep the kids from eating them. The black mark meant they were poisoned!)

 Game number 3: Make the tallest tower you can in one minute without it falling over.

 In between games and while waiting for their turn for the next game. We got in a few photo ops.

 Will does not seem thrilled!

 We got them all lined up to receive a cup of marshmallows. As with all things, there is always something random we create. This time we decided to have a marshmallow war before tossing all the dirty marshmallows.

 I didn't get a great picture of the marshmallow craziness but they had a blast with it.

 Then inside to chill out a bit. Emily provided everyone with a story.

 Our last project for the day was to make a bird feeder. I found a cute idea for stringing popcorn on garden wire. The kids could then shape them anyway they wanted and hang them on a tree.

We had such a fun day.

Pretend Play

 After the girls were done with school for the day, they decided to hold their own school with their stuff animals. Butterfly thought hers about Northern Alabama and then read them a story. Ladybug read her mini ladybug a Hello Kitty story and then proceeded to use this story to share the gospel with her ladybug. I love listening to their imaginations at work. This is also a great time for me to evaluate what they are learning without having to quiz them on it.