Bushels of Fun

So far this week we have learned about carrots, potatoes and beans as we practiced counting, identifying colors and letters and retelling stories.

Miss M and her daddy were my students on Monday as our friends were off celebrating Memorial Day with their families.  Our streak of inattentiveness continued but having her dad there definitely helped.  She liked being able to show him what to do with the calendar and dancing to her favorite garden tracks on the Dance N Beats DVD (I have some fabulous video but have been forbidden to post it anywhere).


I took the carrot cut outs and hid them around the room so we could work a little on prepositions (in, on, under and between were our main focus) and this was quite fun for her, especially when she decided it was her turn to hide them.  Unfortunately she wasn't interested in sewing them together but one tip I had for that was to wrap tape around one end of the yard to make a "needle" and keep it from fraying, then tape the other end to the back of one of the carrots so they can't pull it out when they are sewing.  I'm hoping she'll be more willing later, especially as our rather unpredictable weather has been keeping us inside a lot.

She had a blast reviewing colors with Daddy.  I gave each of them one of the laminated magnifying glasses and they took turns picking a craft stick with a color written on it, then they would both go around the room and look for something that color.

The last activity she agreed to participate in was the Eye Chart and only if Daddy was sitting behind her while she sat on one of our footstools.  Whatever, it worked and she did great until the very last line.  She likes to play doctor with her stuffed animals sometimes so maybe I'll keep it out for her to use or make a couple more so we can review more letters and numbers later on.

Yesterday we planted our bean sprout from a couple weeks ago in our garden.  I check on it today and it seems to be liking our rainy weather.  I'm not even sure what kind of bean it is but it will be fun to watch it grow.

Today we only had one of our friend's with us as we did lots of dancing (both kids really needed a physical outlet due to being indoors so much with our unseasonably damp weather), counted beans, made fingerprint beans on our beanstalks and retold the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk" together.  The counting beans activity was actually really fun for them, they liked scooping them into their own bowls.  We used spoons of different sizes and made predictions about how many beans we could scoop with the small, medium and large spoons.  We counted them, made piles and compared which one had less and which one had more.  I would have let them play with them longer but Littlest is dropping her morning nap and was getting a little too hard to keep away from the beans (and the beans from her mouth).

I really love the story kits and am trying to come up with a way of storing them separately so Miss M can use them on her own and we can quickly grab them for story time before bed as well.

Only two more days in this fun unit and then it is June already!