stART-Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Author: Judi Barrett
Illustrator: Ron Barrett
It never rained just rain, instead it rained things like soup, juice, and meatballs. This fun book helped us to discuss community helpers, weather, and the food pyramid. We also made this spaghetti and meatballs craft to go along with the story.

Nature Scavenger Hunt

We started our day by searching for these nature treasures on our scavenger hunt.

 This free printable has been in my stack of things to do for months, but I can not remember what lovely blog it came from.  Please let me know if this scavenger hunt page came from your site.

The girls started racing to see who could find each item first, but as they got harder to find, they started to work together.  Olive decided to search for the perfect sticks, while Jem searched for two circle rocks. This was a good activity to do and started our day off right.

Simply Healthy-Homemade Veggie Wash

 September is here, which mean cooler temps, flannel sheets, shorts and long sleeves, brightly colored trees, pumpkins, crock pots, and yummy scuppernong grapes. Each Wednesday I will focus my blog posts on something that's simply healthy.

A few years ago we use to use FIT to wash our vegetables and fruit, but now we just make our own and it works great.

Homemade Veggie Wash Recipe:
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
2 TBS baking soda
2 TBS lemon juice
Directions:
-Mix ingredients then pour in clean spray bottle. Spray vegetables and fruit generously. Sit for 5 minutes then rinse off well.
-Make sure to first mix ingredients in deep container since there will be some fizzing from the baking soda and vinegar.

Science Experiment-What makes healthy soil?

                                                                      Project 1:
                               We used shredded carrot, lettuce, plastic bag scraps, and soil

 

Cover the items in soil and put the lid on the plastic container.

Questions: 

What do you think will happen?

  Which items will decompose and which items will remain?

What happens when items decompose?

 

(This photo is taken after a week).

Explain that compost is made when the nutrients from the lettuce and carrot combine with the soil, this is healthy for the earth, but the plastic bag will remain for years.

Have your children make predictions on what will happen after a week. Olive was happy that her predictions turned out to be correct.

We are linked up with ABC & 123!

Curriculum Swap Winner

Drum Roll Please............................ The winning number was pulled out of a hat by Olive. Thank you to all who participated and a special thanks to Jolanthe for hosting to fantastic clean-out!
On a side note, if you were not the lucky person today, I'll be hosting 2 giveaways in the month of September so I am wishing you much luck!

The winner is: The Unsell Family
She writes:  Thanks for the great give-a-way. My favorite part of my day is curling up with a great book and reading to my kids.
~Jen Unsell

I really enjoyed reading about the favorite part of your day. I cherish my early mornings before the kids get up and getting the first cuddle of the day.

Insects- Ants

We started our Science lesson on insects from Living Learning Books and made this fun ant craft to go along with it.

To make this craft you will need three sections of an egg carton, markers to color, eyes, glue, pipe cleaners for the legs and antennae.

All insects have six legs and three body parts- a head, thorax, and abdomen.

Sensory Tub With Colored Rice

Jem really enjoys her special sensory tubs. I added the rainbow rice and orzo we colored a few weeks ago, scooping spoons, egg holder, pom-poms, beads, tubes, pipe cleaners, big tweezers, and shells. I really have a good time putting these together, but the real master at this is Mari-Ann over at Counting Coconuts. They are really beautiful creations.

This magnifying glass was a big hit with Jem. She loved seeing all the colors pop out of her sensory tub.
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On a side note, today I am featured on Just Like June. I am so excited so please stop by her lovely blog and check it out. She has many wonderful ideas for old-fashioned living in the modern world.

Crochet Doll Tiara

I have been teaching myself to crochet thanks to Kira's help over at Just Like June. She has some great tutorials that have started me off the right path. To be honest, this is actually my second time trying to learn. The first time...I tried to make a baby blanket for Olive before she was born, but it turned into a baby cape!

I basically made 3 rows of single stitch, then somehow stitched 6 and connected it to every third loop...I'm just getting started, but the girls were happy that I was able to make something for their doll. Maybe I'll be able to make a blanket by Christmas...wish me luck.

Preschool- Letter A and Twiggles ABC

See the letter A:

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Feel the letter A:

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Eat the letter A

 Choose an apple or this cool alligator cake I made for Jem's 3rd birthday in June.
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Letter A Activity

Confessions of a Homeschooler has this cute apple lacing activity along with an amazing Letter of the Week Curriculum to purchase. We will be doing many activities from her site as well.
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Hear the letter A:
The Ants Go Marching
author unknown

The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching one by one,
The little one stops to suck his thumb
And they all go marching down to the ground
To get out of the rain, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching two by two,
The little one stops to tie his shoe
And they all go marching down to the ground
To get out of the rain, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The ants go marching three by three, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching three by three, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching three by three,
The little one stops to climb a tree
And they all go marching down to the ground
To get out of the rain, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The ants go marching four by four,
The little one stops to shut the door

The ants go marching five by five,
The little one stops to take a dive

The ants go marching six by six,
The little one stops to pick up sticks

The ants go marching seven by seven, hurrah, hurrah
The little one stops to pray to heaven

The ants go marching eight by eight, hurrah, hurrah
The little one stops to shut the gate

The ants go marching nine by nine, hurrah, hurrah
The little one stops to check the time

The ants go marching ten by ten, hurrah, hurrah
The little one stops to say "THE END"
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I have been using KidsSoup for many of my printables for over a year now. You can find everything from the alphabet to on the farm activities. To make their site even better they have added
ABC Twiggles. 

At ABC Twiggles the alphabet is brought to a new dimension- you can hear, feel, taste, see, and write the letters. I just print off what we will be learning for the day and use their lesson helpers to get us started.

The best part is you'll be able to win a year's subscription to this cool site, ABC Twiggles, in September!

I'm linking this post to 1+1+1.

Dictate, Draw, and Drama

The idea behind the 3 D's (dictate, draw, and drama) is that I want Olive to present a story, illustrate it, and then act it out. She started by telling me a story about a mermaid who lived with her friends underneath the sea and they had magical seaweed. I wrote the story down in her own words and then she drew a picture on a separate piece of paper.

 Jem and I enjoyed being the audience while she acted out her tale with puppets. This was her favorite part!

Before school started I labeled many things in the house with these cards. I read that it's helpful for children to identify the object with the word. I found these nice labels over at 1+1+1.