Home-SU-Cool

Yes. Summer is here. Shown by the fact we're finished with school (Kindergarten for Ian). Also shown by the rise in temperature. So what are we doing for summer besides lazing around? *Lots of playground time and outdoor time. Time to practice cycling and scootering! *Make home-made bubbles *Water play in balcony *Going to the library *READING! (yeah! I'm trying to come up with a list of fun books to read together, besides finishing up a few of Little House on the Prairie series) *Drawing *Making some crafts MAYBE (at least for the girls) *Butterfly farm!! (yeah! They are arriving end June) *Church Retreat *Visit to New Hampshire, a friend's place *Maybe visit to the city when daddy has half day Fridays off For mommy, I have my own plans too *Read and prepare for MFW 1st grade *Research and plan for Exploration Days *Research on Character Building/Bible materials *Research and make preschooler busy bags *Spring cleaning (almost done)

Cannot believe I actually MISSED the plan for the LAST unit. =) Didn't finish "that well". But I'm not a perfectionist, so I'm ok. =) So, here's the plan AND report for Y-Yellow. We had a BLAST. Colors are just so fun. We did: *Making playdoh (recipe below) in primary colors and then mixing into colors of the rainbow *Rainbow cookies. Oh my, SO PRETTY!!! It was hard work. (recipe below) I want to make this cookie again without the colors, for the more you work on it, the harder it is. It really was. AND, I really want to try it with REAL butter one day. I'm sure it's DELICIOUS. *Science Experiment (I found online here ) It was too funny. I didn't know what to expect and don't even know if this was supposed to be the result. *Mixing colors (food coloring) *Mixing colors for paints (painted mouse paint. Wksheet here *Flower color mini book (well, I made it mini) *Crayons sight words coloring *Color by numbers ( here , under "Y&

I realized I just didn't take much of Q-Quail unit! Also we didn't do much more than the curriculum, but we did go in depth of the bible story and learning to not grumble and be content! This is especially so because we had a WHOLE week of gloomy skies, grey and rainy. But Day 6 finally we had some sun and I decided to give the kids a surprise to the park. They LOVED it.

My son, when thinking about the Q unit, said "Queens!" (where we live) ha. Here is our plan : *Reading in depth the story of the complaning Israelites *Color quails *Bible Memory in progression (like X-Fox) *Object lesson on the oil on feathers Booklist Don't fidget a feather Feathers for lunch Yertle the turtle and other stories The biggest house in the world Count their blessings (Berenstain Bears) Bible Do everything without complaining or arguing (Philippians 2:14)

Thu I went to a Mom's Night (dinner) at the homeschool group I was newly aquianted with. It gave me A LOT of thoughts. I had to say, we had been praying for a long time for a group. It seems that it's mighty hard here in Queens, NYC. And when I found this group, it felt like God answered my prayers. Last time I went (for the first time), they were doing a Passover Seder, which was wonderful for me (cos I've never seen one done, and the Messianic Rabbi was amazing) but it was not exactly what I thought a group does (I was more thinking of "support" groups). But something happened that night that made me think about God's "leading". I wrote that experience in my personal blog and here it is: * * * * * * Last week I got to know a homeschool group by chance. And they happened to meet near our place (20 mins drive) and they were going to meet the day I found them! ha. We were looking for a group for a while, though we have not really known what we'

V-Vegetable got us really thinking about how much vegetable we eat and we attempted to eat more this week. We even made vegetable soup together (the kids helped me cut) Here are what we did besides vegetable soup *planted carrots (success!) *Planted beans (sprouting today) *Planted cilantro (got those little kits from Target for $1) *Did vegetable printing and used them as wrapping paper for Mothers' Day present for Grandma *Learnt about the food pyramid *Read wonderful books *Watched some really cute videos of vegetable and gardens from Sesame Street

V-Vegetable Unit is great for us for our kids really need some "push" in eating vegetables! (though I recently found the magic Spinach...it's versatile and doesn't have a strong taste, so I can put in many dishes and the kids will gladly eat it). Here is our plan: *Teach about the food pyramid, emphasizing on Vegetables (they are GREAT in grains, fruits and dairy). Wonderful resources, posters, games, worksheets here * from the site I printed off a "fruit and vegetable diary" and plan to do a charting at the end of the unit *Vegetable printing (using okra, potato, carrots or other veg) *We happen to have nice vegetable posters and reusable stickers that I put on the windows * Vv tracing for the preschooler *GREAT WONDERFUL Vegetable/garden videos on Sesame Street. Games too! *Make Vegetable Soup *Sprout carrots/beans Booklist The ugly vegetable How Groundhog's garden grew Food for Thought Rabbit Food Mrs Spitzer's garden The tale

We didn't have a lot of activities for X-FoX, but I'm very glad that Ian managed to memorize the verse, including the spelling by the last day. (we did a progressive filling in the blanks) We baked gingerbread man(without ginger cos the kids didn't like the taste) and had so much fun reading "Fox in Socks". Ian also found that the new word "enemies" turn up in many instances (in worship songs, in bible reading...) Nowadays I give him Math sums that he needed practice in in his little note book.I think this give him practice at his pace and also in his context. We also found a REALLY funny (and amazing) pbs short clip video of the fox hunting in the snow. He (and his siblings) loved it!