How's the Weather?

It's freezing at our house today and the weather report calls for 100mph winds coming over the mountains before morning.  We decided to forego today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity and play games instead.  Maybe if it's nice where you live, you can get out and do some exploring for us!

Take a nature walk.  

Ask your kids what they can see and hear.

Point out "nature" and "non-nature" items.

What did you see?

Round Two with the Senses

Remember this chart?

Click the chart photo for a reminder

We re-visited it today...just flipped it over and traced the lines...this time charting how we use our senses in nature.

 

Of the items in nature Beck chose (trees, mountains, dirt, deer, rain, & tarantulas) we decided that the only one you can taste is rain.  I decided to keep my mouth closed and not put any ideas in his head that you could probably eat dirt or give him a lesson on where meat comes from...

The Joy of the Earth

My initial thought in starting this chapter was this:

"Studying nature in December?  The world looks so boring and blah!"

I've changed my tune.  Of course the earth is beautiful in all it's variations seasons.  And, of course, looking at it through my child's eyes is helping me to see that beauty.

First things first, today we put the final leaf on our Autumn picture.  

We've been collecting one leaf every Monday since September and studying the ways they change as we get closer to winter.  The leaves are gone and there is snow on the mountains.  Winter is pretty close to being here...

Today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity:

Create a telescope and then use it to help your child focus on specific items or sounds in nature.

Beck LOVED this activity, mostly because now he has a telescope, but also for the things he got to see.  He convinced himself the telescope was helping him to see things bigger.  He looked at the dirt on the mountains, the pine needles under the tree, and the cactus in the garden.  

He even let me have a turn...

Studying the earth together is going to be fun!

Charts and Puzzles

First, I want to clarify my opening thought from yesterday.  I realized today that the "rut" stems from my lack of preparing for school beforehand.  It doesn't surprise me-I'm nothing if not a procrastinator. My homework is to make being organized and ready a priority.


We had a lot of fun in school today.  The Teaching Your Children Joy activity today introduced Beck to charting.  I was a little nervous that he wouldn't understand the concept, but he caught on quick and even put his own spin on it.

Back to the senses, the top of the chart is the 5 senses

The side of the chart is 5 random items Beck and I chose

Start the charting, identifying which senses you can use on each item

What made me laugh and smile?  

As I was cleaning up I realized Beck was singing his chart to me. 

 Here's a little snippet:

Instead of a craft today, Beck and I did puzzles together.  I scored huge at our local thrift stores today, finding these great puzzles and the uncut felt games as well as a few other things. 

 We spent an extra half hour doing puzzles than we normally would for school and it was worth every minute!

No School On the Weekends

Hope you're enjoying this crisp fall weekend.  When you have some downtime, check out this great article with activity ideas for focusing on the senses...

Developing Brains: Laying the Pathways to Learning

It's Great To Be Able To Hear

We have cousins at our house today that are almost the exact same ages as Beck and Peyton.  It was fun to have them join us for school (and an eye-opener to the social skills that Beck and I still need to work on).

Today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity focused on the sense of hearing.  I found this website with sound effects and had the kids guess what noises they were hearing.  Check them out here:

http://www.audionetwork.com/sound-effects

For the most part they thought this was a very funny activity; even if it took awhile to understand that they weren't going to see the noise on the computer screen.  Their favorite sounds were definitely under the heading, "Bodily Functions."

And then for fun we made Halloween puffball creatures.  

Isn't It Interesting?

Of all the weird or unusual things I convince my kids to do, wearing a blindfold is where they absolutely draw the line.

Today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity was to identify objects using taste, smell, touch, and hearing.  No seeing. 

It did not go smoothly.  I don't think I'll be blindfolding Beck again anytime soon...

Part of the Body is Our Senses

Today we talked about the five senses.  It was a fun review for Beck and it was a great opportunity to teach Peyton parts of the body.  He loves to point at his mouth, nose, ears, eyes, and hands.

After dancing the "Hokey, Pokey" again (it's total chaos, but my kids have been begging for it since we first did it the other day) we decided to take a walk to the park and use our senses along the way.

We saw the leaves were changing colors and heard them rustling in the wind.  

The wind felt chilly on our skin and we could see it blowing the American flag.

This mailbox was our favorite site along the way:

We heard trucks and vans, wind chimes, and the stroller wheels going through water.

We saw the neighbor's horses and then smelled them, too.

We stopped to smell roses and a lot of other flowers.

We felt flower petals, sticks, the cold metal playground equipment, and wood chips in our shoes.

We tasted water in the fountain and our snacks when we got back home.

(We've scheduled the ultimate in sensory activities for tomorrow night when we'll cut open our Halloween pumpkins for carving.  Is there anything more potent than the initial smell of fresh pumpkin?  And what affects our sense of touch more than squishing your fingers through gooey cold pumpkin innards!)