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.

Unit Study: Brave

The morning was so busy with a bunch of activities that I thought a little chill time was in order. I had a Brave unit study pinned that I thought would go perfect with our afternoon. The girls brought out pillows and blankets and got cozy to watch the movie while I printed off worksheets for them to complete afterward. The worksheets covered math concepts, geography, crosswords, writing, and coloring. This was a great way to finish up our day of pinterest fun.

I really enjoy random days of fun. Most school days are planned out and business needs to take place. Although, I do find it funny how much we accomplished today and how much the girls learned through outside of the box/random activities. We went over math, science, geography, art, writing, grammar, history, handwriting, reading, and spelling plus the girls got to create a yummy breakfast. They did all this without even realizing how much work they were accomplishing because they were having too much fun!

Pinterest Fun Morning

I have at least 300 pins on my home school board. We have done quiet a few of them but there are so many that are just random or haven't really gone with anything we have done in the last year or so. I decided this morning that I would just start from the beginning of the board and if there was a pin we could do because I already had all the supplies then we would do it. 

 We started with paint bags to practice spelling words or just for drawing. Butterfly and Ladybug wrote each of their spelling words from this week and Dragonfly wrote words she knew how to spell.

 Then the girls decorated their construction papers with their name. These papers will hold rings for each book they read. They are very excited about this. I look forward to posting their progress.

 The last project we worked on was an art project using glue, salt, and food coloring.

I think they turned out great!

 This was a book that I read several times as a kid. I don't currently have the book but youtube had a video reading of it...PERFECT! So we watched the video clip and then the girls filled out their own I am as  worksheets.

They came up with some clever things. Butterfly is as loud as Papa....that one was my favorite.

We finished the morning with watching several other video clips that I had pinned. Topics covered were pronouns, time, George Washington, Martin Luther King jr., and writing lower case b and d correctly. This was such a great and creative way to spend the morning. I hope we will be able to do quiet a few days like this and I may actually get through all of my home school pins.

Monkey Muffins

 I love Fridays and desire to make them a fun day. Sometimes our schedule allows for lots of fun and sometimes, we have to get caught up on schoolwork missed throughout the week because of other activities going on. Currently, my three younger girls are a week ahead on their schoolwork. We have all been doing so well with the change in curriculum and schedule for school. The girls have been working so hard that today we were able to have a really fun day.

We started the morning by making gingerbread monkey muffins. The mix was given to the girls for Christmas and today was the perfect day to make them. This was a yeast mix so the girls got to see bread rise.

 We set up an assembly line in order to put the muffins together and so everyone had a task to do. This also works on working together and being patient.

 Ladybug was in charge of making dough balls.

 Butterfly dipped them into butter.

 Dragonfly rolled them around the cinnamon and sugar and then placed them into the muffin tin.

They were so proud of their final creation!

Keepers: Cookies

 Today, we finished up our keeper's pin for cookies. We split the girls up into three different groups. Group 1 made press cookies, group 2 made sandwich cookies, and group 3 made bar cookies. Instead of making a bunch of cookies none of us could eat (we are all doing a low sugar/no sugar diet), we looked through our Trim Healthy Mama cookbook and found 3 cookies that would fit our needs.

 Princess Flower and Butterfly made chocolate peanut butter cookies.

 Cami, Ladybug, and Dragonfly made peanut butter chocolate bar cookies.

 Juliette and Emily made ginger snap with a cinnamon cream cheese filling.

All the cookies turned out awesome! We enjoyed eating them while watching movies and playing games later that evening.

Back to A beka

With PF, I used A beka and I have been using A beka for Dragonfly but for last year or so I found that Math-U-See was working better for the other two. This year, however, I was finding that the girls were showing some gaps or weren't remembering topics they had already mastered. After much consideration, I decided to order A beka math books for Ladybug and Butterfly. I think they have been enjoying the worksheets for the most part but I am certainly seeing how many gaps are in their math education. Specificly we are finding that it is easy to count by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s when you start from the very beginning but when you are asked to count by 2s starting with 32, I was receiving crazy looks. I have been excited to get all the girls on this curriculum and I hope that it proves to move all the girls ahead in their math skills.

Princess Flower's Art

Apple Pie

 The girls really love the silly stories of Amelia Bedelia. Apparently so do other kids and teachers use these books to cover many different lessons in the English Language(lots of ideas on pinterest). There is now a new series where Amelia is a little girl. I put a bunch of books on hold at the library which have served as our independent reading books this week but I saved one particular book to do a fun activity with.

I read Amelia Bedelia's First Apple Pie to them and then the girls made their own apple pies. I didn't bring any pie pans with me so we made hand pies instead. I bought several different apples so we could look at the differences in apples.

 The girls each took turns using the apple slicer to slice up their apple and then I cut them into small chunks.

They added cinnamon, butter, and truvia to their apples and mixed everything together.

They enjoyed putting the mixture onto their pre-made pie crusts and then folding them over and pinching them.

 We put them in the oven and they tried to wait patiently. While they waited we talked about the words in the book that had multiple meanings and also about the meanings of figure of speech sayings.

Then they finally got to enjoy their pie. This was an awesome way to have an English lesson!

Marshmallow Snowmen

 We are in the process of eliminating sugar from our house. It is great when I can use food that we aren't going to be eating for school projects. I found this project on pinterest and thought it would be perfect to use up some of the mini marshmallows that I had in the pantry. This project was perfect for working on fine motor skills, cutting, and drawing circles.

Puzzles

I have always loved putting together puzzles. My mom has always picked out great puzzles for us to do during Christmas. One year, we even had a puzzle with our family picture on it. I really want to do that one day but for now there are plenty of fun puzzles at the store. I found this cupcake puzzle at Barnes and Noble and knew the girls would love all the colors. Although, I ended up working on it the most, the girls came by and were so proud when they found where a piece went. I am hoping if we do puzzles more often they will really get into them. Already I have another puzzle on the table and started.

Snowman Snack

During this month, we will be doing fun activities around snow/snowmen. My girls don't care much for cream cheese so we just left the bagel plain. Pretzels, raisins, and carrots made up the rest of the decorating fun.

Keepers: Cookies

 We started our pin for cookies. What better way to start then with chocolate chip cookies! Everyone got to contribute to making the batter and placing the batter on the tray.

WOW! They looked and smelled so good. We bagged them up and put them in bags to give to our builders. This will go toward the girls' pin for others.

We also started the character study of charity and memorization of Psalm 100.