Owl Moon

I personally LOVE the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. I used it all the time in the classroom when I was teaching Readers' and Writers' Workshop. It has beautiful, rich language that greatly demonstrates wonderful writing. In addition, it tells a beautiful story of a little girl's simple adventure with her Pa (almost every kiddo has a simple adventure story to tell!) While I know the twinkies are too young to understand some of the poetic devices found in this book, I'm a big believer in exposure to great literature leads to great readers and writers! So I read the story aloud and we talked about the season and what the little girl was doing. We also talked about what sound an owl makes and where animals are hiding in the book (this will lead to another activity later). After we were done with the book, we made a shape owl with handprints (I'm a sucker for a handprint craft) and talked about all the shapes in the owl (we know all of these already, but reviewing is VERY important!)Here is a cute little picture of our owls!













And the finished product...













A little later, we worked on sight words by playing a fine-motor clothes pin matching game.












And finally we continued to work on our alphabet border for our "classroom."
This idea is from Totally Tots, which has amazingly cute ideas to do for all kinds of ages! My goal is to put Upper and Lower cases all the way around our "classroom." We have a ways to go, but I think it looks really cute already. When we are reviewing these letters we play the usual guessing games (What sound does it make? What are words that start with this letter? etc. We also practice writing that letter as well). Here we are working on the letters...




...and here it is up on the wall!



We also worked on some other crafty things around the house. I'm hosting a crafty night tomorrow night with my girls, so I wanted to get a jump start on my crafty list! (Don't worry girls, I didn't do anything we are going to do tomorrow!) I also managed to do three loads of laundry, made pork tenderloin and sweet potatoes for dinner, and read a few chapters in my book! All in all a very successful day!

Merry Christmas and January Fun!

Well I hope everyone had a marvelous Christmas! I know we did! We had a great time with family and all of us received WAY more than we could have ever wanted. We are truly grateful for all the wonderful memories that were made, despite the circumstances.
For Mommy School in December, we did a lot of wonderful activites (labeling Santa, making Santa hats, handprint Santas) and we did focus on the REAL reason for the season and made footprint manger scenes, labeled the manger, made the nativity out of toilet paper rolls, and did this AMAZING nativity pack from Over The Big Moon. I have lots of pictures to show from those activities, but I have been working in reverse for a few months now, so you don't get to see the things we are doing until after the "season" is already done, so I thought I would try to do things a little different this time. I am posting our January "schedule" for Mommy School now. Let me just tell everyone out there that, yes, I was a teacher for 8 years, but, no, that does not mean the same thing as homeschooling! I am very new to that part and since I have never taught the littles before, I really have no idea what I'm doing! A lot of our homeschooling is just like parenting-trial and error. I try something and see if it works. It might work one day and not the next. When I began this Mommy School, I was making plans for each week. That was WAY too structured for us. Part of the reason I want to homeschool is because I want to really slow down and enjoy things (family visits included!). So then I switched to just a daily list of things I wanted to get done, which worked o.k., except that I didn't really know what I had accomplished for the entire month and I couldn't remember which activities we had and had not completed. So this month I decided to do a "Monthly List," which just lays out the entire month, but things are organized by subject rather than by day (too much pressure to get everything in each day!). So I print this out and it is hanging on my fridge. I just mark off the things that we have completed and certain things I do EVERDAY (sing ABCs for example).
This month we're focusing on Winter/Snow/etc. and SIGHT WORDS!! So far, the kidlets know the following sight words : I, am , a, the, and. We're working on reviewing those and learning a few more (which I haven't narrowed down yet!). They can also recognize their own names and their sibling's names, and "MOMMY" so we usually include those too. The "Art/Craft" section will be done as a response to the literature that we read. It is pretty interchangable as to what book and craft go together, so I can just choose which one I feel like doing that day. I have a great teacher friend over at The Garretts who has taught the littles and I glean from her amazing knowledge from time to time to make sure the activities I'm doing are developmentally appropriate. Anyway...we've already completed some things on this list (even though it isn't officially January yet) as I would much rather have to add more things to do than to feel like we didn't get everything accomplished. Some things are a review (like the alphabet-mine already know all letters and sounds)but I wanted to throw them in so we can decorate our classroom!

January Monthly Mommy School

Hapy New Year to you all and kiss and hug your kiddos!