Sprouting Lima Beans

Today we decided to try to sprout some lima beans. This wasn't a planned activity. Callie had seen something on tv about growing beans and she asked it we could do it, so I said sure! Callie did hers during Josh's nap, so I had Josh make one after supper. We just placed some paper towels into cups and pushed lima beans down the sides. Then we poured water in. We will see what happens in the next couple of days.

Putting in a paper towel and the lima beans.

Pouring in the water.

Letter "O" Week

This week Josh is learning the letter "O". We continued with our curriculums from Confessions of a Homeschooler and Callie is doing the Ready2Read program by the Moffatt Girls. The girls that are staying in our "classroom" are gone every other week, so we have this week to use it again. This is the first time we've been in there since Christmas!

They each made a bowl of "blueberry oatmeal" for the things in the sensory box to eat!

Matching up letter discs to the word on the paper.

Doing the octopus puzzle. Josh loves puzzles.

This is what Callie came out of her room wearing. Makes me laugh!

Color by sight word.

Gluing the "at" and "an" family apples into the correct column.

Writing the missing numbers.

January Sensory Bin and Playdough

I have had the sensory bin for about a week, and I made the playdough this past weekend. That's how long it's taken me to get back in to the swing of things after Christmas vacation!

The playdough isn't dyed, is scented with almond extract, and is sprinkled with white glitter. There are cookie cutters to spell the word "snow" and a snowman cookie cutter. In the box are spoons, a knife, and a rolling pin.

There are glass gems in the little white bowl.

Can't really see the glitter, but it's there! This playdough smells heavenly. I really want to eat it.

Contents: blue snowman bucket found in the Target dollar section, clear food prep bowls, various scoops and spoons, a nesting penguin, polar bear finger puppets, rubber ducks, glass snowman beads, and tiny snowflakes, all from Oriental Trading Company, plastic ice cubes bought on ebay, blue Christmas ornaments found at the dollar store, and finally acrylic gems from Michaels.

For the medium, I used clear plastic pellets, like what is found in bean bags. This was the first and last time that I will use those. Even though my kids are careful, these get everywhere and they are hard to see to pick up.

Fun Food Friday: Dinosaurs

Today's lunch was super easy. I had to run some errands this morning, so by the time I got back, I didn't have enough time to create what I had originally planned. I pulled out the trusty sandwich press (I really need to get more of those things because they are great!) and went to work.

The dinosaurs are vegan grilled cheese sandwiches with candy eyes. I put tomato soup in the big bowl and cut up cucumbers in the silicone cup. Couldn't be easier!


Here are the supplies I used for this lunch:


    

Colors in the Bath

For bath time yesterday I got out some color tabs that I had bought at Target. They are little dissolvable tablets that create various colors in your water. I placed 4 clear plastic vases that I had bought from the Dollar store on the ledge of the tub. I then filled them half way with water and let the kids pick which color tab they wanted. Callie chose yellow and blue, and Josh picked yellow and red. They were amazed when I dropped the tablets in and the water turned colors. Now, I had high hopes of making a color mixing lesson out of this. They immediately reached to grab the cups and asked if they could dump them in the water. "Wait" I almost screamed, though I did hold back my voice a little! I could see my grand teaching moment vanishing. I asked Callie to pour some of the blue into the yellow, and she was surprised to see it turn green. After that tiny little educational experience, the cups were dumped into the water. Oh-well, they still had a ball mixing all the water in the tub. I still have more tablets, so we'll pull them out again another time and try the lesson over. It is important for kids to play while learning, so I really didn't have a problem with all the colored water ending up in the tub, I was just hoping to prolong it. :)

Teachable Moments

This happened last week and I am just now getting around to posting it. We made some breadsticks with some refrigerated Trader Joe's pizza dough. Callie and Josh each wanted their own piece of dough to make a pizza with. When they were done patting them into little circles, Callie asked if I had any nutrients to go on top. I had to smile to myself. I love that my kids are learning what nutrients are and what is healthy and not healthy. I told Callie that I had a bunch of veggies in the fridge that were full of nutrients, so we went through and picked out what she wanted to put on her pizza. I chopped up some broccoli, carrots, and grape tomatoes. They placed what they wanted on their pizzas (including a heaping spoonful of flour - to help the veggies stick - or so I was told), and we baked them. They both ate the pizzas too. There are so many teachable moments that pop up in our every day lives, so maximize those as much as you can. We are constantly talking about healthy foods and vitamins and minerals. Neither Callie nor Josh are extremely picky, and they both eat pretty much any veggie, so I am very proud of that fact. I think learning about their foods, and helping to create what they eat, has helped them have a wider appreciation for their food.

Fun Food Friday: Mr. Snowman

I have been posting these on facebook since last year, but figured I'd post them here also. I was inspired by a blog called "Meet the Dubiens" and I get a lot of my ideas from her. Enjoy!

The snowman is made from bread spread with vegenaise and topped with veggie corned beef and vegan mozzarella and cut into circles. The hat is cut from fruit leather and the arms are carrots. The buttons, mouth, and snowflakes are all different kinds of sprinkles. The nose is a carrot and he has candy eyes. Super fun and cute and the kids loved it, which is the most important!

Here are the supplies I used for this lunch:

       

Bubbles and Fizzies!

I am still trying to get into the swing of things after being gone so long, so we haven't done any "school" related things. We are also having two colporteurs staying with us every other week for about two months. They are sleeping in our "classroom", so that makes it a little hard to have our morning routine. They are gone next week, so we will hopefully get back into our morning meeting time. I was feeling badly since I haven't really done any activities with the kiddos this week, so I quickly put this fun experiment together. We have played with baking soda and vinegar before, but I had seen an idea on Pinterest to add hidden colors, so I thought that would be a fun twist. Needless to say, the kids loved it! When they colors started showing up, they got really excited, saying things like, "Look, it's green!" or "Cool, look at the color!" I loved seeing how excited they were.

Drops of food coloring on each spoon.

The coloring is covered up completely by baking soda.

Cups with vinegar and the spoons ready to go.

Smelling the vinegar to guess what it was.

Stirring the first spoons and seeing the color!

Callie wanted to mix the colors, so I said, sure!

Mixing the colors together.