The Start of Kindergarten

Well, Callie is officially in kindergarten. Even though she is 6, and not the traditional 5, I still can't believe she is old enough to be in school. We have made the decision to homeschool for now. We don't know how long we will homeschool, but it works for us right now, so that's what we're going to stick with.

I bought the kindergarten curriculum from My Father's World. It has been pretty easy for Callie since it starts out learning letters and numbers, but I focus more on handwriting, and I love the Bible lessons that all the lessons are based on.

We made a Creation timeline during the first week of school:

Auntie Anna also did a fun ocean craft with them:

And we had a fun lunch that went along with what God has created:

And a rare pic of my baby girl sleeping:

Creating Art on the Light Table

I got this idea from the Play at Home Moms. I bought some frames from the Dollar Tree and I already had the gems. We used clear glue to get the best results. The kids really had fun doing this. I need to buy more frames! Disclaimer: I know I've said this before, but I feel I need to reiterate: Callie dresses herself. Currently she has this need to wear Josh's undershirts. We have a very odd child! :) I love her quirkiness.

Pouring the glue on.

Starting to create.

Callie decided to write her name on hers...

so Josh decided he needed to also.

The finished products, with no help from me.

After they were done, I pulled out some words made for the overhead projector and Callie and I had fun creating silly sentences and reading them to each other. Josh also had fun just putting the words in various orders and having me read them.

Coffee Filter Butterflies

Callie was begging to paint something, so I threw this together really fast. I am going to be starting a unit on bugs/insects this week, so I thought it would fit in perfectly. I pulled out our stash of coffee filters and our spray bottles containing liquid watercolors. The kids had a blast spraying the filters. We had to let them dry the rest of the day before we could scrunch them together with a pipe cleaner to make the butterfly. They were really into painting the filters and made a ton of them. You can see from the bottom pic that we only made a couple into butterflies before they tired of that! (For anyone wanting to know, the liquid watercolors can be bought at Discount School Supply. There is a button for it in the left column of my blog. They are a little pricey, but are so worth it because the colors are amazing! They also last a long time.)

Josh wanted to stack all of his on top of each other.

All done!

Homemade Slime!

Today we made some homemade silly putty. I would really label it more as slime though, because it isn't hard like store bought silly putty. It is really soft and squishy and oozes out between your fingers, which creates tons of sensory fun.

Directions:

2 Parts School Glue

1 Part Liquid Starch

Food coloring if you want it colored.

Mix the glue and food coloring first so it combines better. Mix the glue and starch until you get the desired consistency. If it's too wet, add a little more glue, if it's too stringy, add a little more starch. It did take awhile to get it to mix up right, and the longer it sits, the dryer it will get.

The supplies you need. I found the liquid starch at Wal-Mart.

Pouring in the glue.

There is still a lot of liquid in the bottom. I had to add some more glue at this point.

Still pretty wet.

Callie wanted me to video tape her talking about the silly putty, so here it is:

Our finished product.