Today's Adventures - Monday September 26, 2011

Today's Verse

Then Jesus said, "Come to Me all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

Today's Quote
Weave in faith and God will find the thread. ~ Author Unknown

 Working, Learning and Playing Together

During circle time this morning Michael chose these number puzzles to work on together. This is one of his favorite activities.

Austin brought in a Katydid from outside for us to see.

Our preschool/kindergarten theme for the next few weeks will be Transportation. Austin helped Michael with this picture/word matching activity from the Transportation Preschool Pack  from Homeschool Creations.

Amanda folding laundry.

Austin shredding old paper. We use the shredded paper in the guinea pig and Amanda's pet rats cages instead of buying litter for them.

Luaren and Michael playing with transportation flannel set I made to go with our tranportation theme.

Creating

Today I made this block for the patchwork curtains I am working on for the playroom.

Here are some I did over the weekend.

From the Kitchen

Michael helped me mix up a double recipe of Homemade Egg Noodles.

Here are the noodles drying and also a two loaves of Traditional White Bread that had just come out of the oven.

Critters
Amanda's new cat, Sheena, is still getting used to her new surroundings.

Pepper thinks she has found a new friend but Sheena doesn't want to play.

Favorite Homeschool Activities from Austin and Amanda

 Austin said his favorite part of our lessons today was this short video about the Giant Prehistoric Bear.

Amanda's favorite part was the three chapters I read aloud  to them from The Tanglewoods Secret by Patricia St. John.

Tonight I Am Grateful For . . .

This goofy guy who keeps showing up in my kitchen window.

Every day is an adventure and I never want to forget.

Mammals or Reptiles?

On Fridays I try to do a science activity that corresponds with our theme for the week. Our theme this week has been Dogs and we've also read about mammals and talked about the fact that dogs are mammals.

Since we have quite a few pets I thought it would be fun to take the kids on a little tour of all our pets and discuss whether or not each one was a mammal and why. Of course, it is a group of preschoolers and mostly we just had fun looking at, touching, holding and talking about the different animals. But we did take a little time to decide whether each one was a mammal or not.

Our first stop was to look at Austin's little box turtle. This turtle's name is Alien. He is a very active little turtle and fun to watch. Due to the obvious lack of hair we decided he was not a mammal, and I explained that he was a reptile.

Our next visit was with Little Red, our guinea pig. Little Red is very sweet natured and also has a lot of hair. She has a backbone, she drank milk as a baby and she is warmblooded. She's also a lot of fun to pet.

Next up were Amanda's pet rats. We didn't take them out of the cage as they can be a little temperamental sometimes. They do great with Amanda but I decided we would just look and not touch. The kids were excited to see them and we all agreed that they are mammals.

This is Lana.

The tan and cream rat here is Amber and the grey and cream rat is Mickey.

Next we went outside to see Miracle and Dragon our two larger box turtles. These two are less active than Alien is, but they were still interesting. And definitely not mammals.

We stopped and talked to Toby, one of our cats. Our other cat, Scout, was nowhere to be seen. We're seeing that most of our pets seem to be mammals.

One more pet - Roni. She just had surgery and she's wearing the cone to keep her from licking the stitches. She is, of course, also a mammal and the inspiration for our dog/mammal theme this week.

The kids had a lot of fun with this little pet tour and I think the animals enjoyed it as well.

Here is a list of our other dog/mammal related activities this week.

Homemade Dog Biscuits

Dog Counting Book

Circle Dog Craft

Sorting - Mammals and Reptiles

~Linking Here ~



He's A Good Cat

I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of our cat, Scout, sitting in the window of this shed. Eventually we want to put windows in this shed and paint it but for now Scout is enjoying it the way it is.

He really is a good cat.