Jobs and Homes

Sept 12th-25th, 2010...Week of the 12th was "Job" week and the week of the 19th was "Homes" week.

Jobs Week... This week we read books from the library about different jobs and kids thinking about what they would like to do when they grow up. We made a list of jobs to pretend throughout the week (doctor, dentist, artist, photographer, singer, construction worker, chef, etc...) We also took a few trips to visit people at their jobs. Lili had already been to see where both Grammy and Grandma work so this week we went to see Grandpa Riner , Daddy
and Aunt Nancy too. Lili got to sit in the new cars on the showroom floor. To bad my battery died on the camera or I would have more pictures. Her favorite car was the red Corvette. We filled helium balloons to bring home and got a tour of the body shop. There were lots of cars getting fixed. Lili loved it! Especially sitting in the driver's seat of all the cars. She also colored a mechanics picture for Grandpa.


Mail day!! Lili got a peek inside a mail truck and even got some mail of her own. We walked the block and saw what it was like to deliver the mail. Lili had fun and thought delivering the mail would be a fun job unless it was cold and snowing. She colored a mail carrier picture for Aunt Nancy.


At the end of jobs week Lili said she wants to be a ballet teacher and a mommy when she grows up. She also colored a picture for our dentist who we will be going to see soon and one for her dance teacher.

Homes week...no pictures of this. The girls have been sick so homes week has been extended. We are working on a booklet of pictures of different homes (our house, homes for dogs, spiders, ants, etc...) and a workbook page booklet about different animal homes. We also got several books from the library about different types of homes.

In addition to our weekly themes we went to the library like usual for the girls to pick out books of their choice. Lili reads 2 of her level 2 blue books to me each day and she is getting really good. Uncle Tom brought over a couple dry erase mats with addition and subtraction problems on them. Lili got out her math manipulative triangles and started whipping right through it.

Hopefully Lili will be feeling better soon and we will start our next theme...money!

Dinosaur Week

Sept. 5-11, 2010...

We are onto Lili's list of topics she wants to learn about. This week she chose dinosaurs. We read several books about dinosaurs from the library, made "fossils" in playdoh with toy dinosaurs and leaves/plants. We even had a meat-eater dine on an herbivore and leave his bones there in the play-doh, such imagination. We went outside and measured the size of several dinosaurs for a visual experience of how large they really were.
Tyrannnosaurus Rex- 45 feet
Triceratops- 30 feet
Brachiosaurus- 90 feet
Apatosaurus- 70 feet
Stegosaurus- 20 feet
Lili did a few math worksheets. They are sort of like a paint/color by number but to find the number in each piece of the picture you must figure out the addition problem. The answer gives you the number to know which color to use. Each worksheet/picture was of a different dinosaur. The first one I helped with and then we got out our math manipulative triangles and then Lili started whipping right through it on her own. She was so proud. We also made dinosaur skeletons by gluing different shaped pasta onto construction paper. I need to take a picture of them and post it next week. Lastly we made dinosaur eggs. We blew up balloons and then covered them in newspaper (paper mache) like you would for a pinata. Once they were dry we began painting them. They are currently drying and still need more painting so I will post pictures once they are done. Here are the pictures I took of them today, not quite finished.




In addition to our dinosaur theme we still checked out other books from the library. Lili and Gabi get to choose their books. Gabi has her own library card now and checks out her own books. Lili practiced writing her name, the letter Ff and the number 6. And of course lots and lots of play time with each other and mommy. See you next week!

On the hour...

Aug.22-Sept.4,2010...

Lili is learning to tell time to the hour. I printed her several worksheets, activities and cut-outs to help her understand the clock. After she finished each page we cut some of them up and made a sort of lapbook/clock folder. She enjoyed it all and colored everything after we were done putting it together. She LOVES to color. Now the folder tri-folds shut and holds the worksheets that were not used in making the clock folder. She can now tell time to the hour and is starting to learn the half hour.


The weather is finally cooling off a bit so we planned a picnic one day. I pulled the girls in our wagon to the bike trail and found a shady spot under a tree close to the park. While we ate our lunch we watched everyone on the bike trail. We kept track of how many bikes, people walking, dogs and people running so later we could make a chart or graph of who was on the bike trail that day. Lili made her bar graph of what we tracked on the bike trail. What we saw the most of were bikes and the least were people running.


Mystery Seed.....I came across this idea and thought we would give it a try. We found some dirt in our yard and put some in an empty yogurt container. We watered it everyday for the last week in hopes that there would be a mystery seed of some kind in that dirt. So far no luck. Looks like there wasn't anything in there but dirt.



Scavenger Hunt... both girls searched for, a flower, a small pebble, a rock with different colors, something green, something brown, a pine cone, a large smooth rock, a clover, something rough, something yellow, a Y-shaped twig and pine needles. They found everything. The large smooth rocks we painted. I need to take pictures of those. The items that could be pressed we pressed and are making scrapbook pages with them and some items (other rocks and pine cones) we took back outside. The girls love filling their buckets with "treasures".




Check out our discovery in the garden! Isn't he cute, to bad he is eating the tops of my carrots. I guess I'll let him stay a while so the girls can watch.


In addition to the above activities we also...
practiced writing Lili's full name, writing the capital and lower case letter E, counting by 5's, read lots of books (one on scavenger hunts and one on growing seeds), read some of Lili's level 2 books and learned new shapes (Octagon, Trapezoid, Pentagon and Hexagon).

Next week is....DINOSAUR WEEK!! Lili's choice :)