Well we are rocking right along in this new year! Things have been SUPER busy lately! Seth is doing a public speaking workshop for 4H. He also starts guitar lessons through the Salvation Army next week. He is super excited about that!
The kids are still working on learning the recorder and doing well (our biggest issue is ME working in practice time but thankfully they are smart fast learners).
We went on a field trip to the Perot Museum last week and had a blast!! Here are a few picture highlights from that trip.
(cool thing about this one - we talked about the wooly mammoth in science this week - I pulled up this picture to help the kids to remember the skeleton we saw last week)
Then this week we went to the Children's Aquarium at Fair Park (see I told you - we have been crazy busy!!) Here are some highlights from that trip :-)
The boys enjoyed two different scavenger hunts that they had set up for them to do!
the two pics above are of blue-eyed MJ, the Loggerhead Sea Turtle, and we just fell in love with her! She has BLUE eyes (very rare for turtles)
This penguin pair were roaming the place while we were there! We got to pet them too!
So the kids are getting super excited about our new semester of co-op that starts next Friday! I am looking forward to a change of pace with the classes I teach - I am doing a couple more classes for Alyssa's age group :-) (and of course still doing a science class for the boys age range - we are doing Magic School Bus Science this semester!)
But with the younger classes come more "art" stuff....my classroom has been looking like an art room lately. In one of the classes the kids will be learning alphabet, numbers and shapes etc with animals! On the first class we are going to read Eric Carle's 'Animals Animals' (thank you Karen Hare for the book if you are reading this!!!). We are going to use Eric Carle's art technique to make a cover for a book that we will be making with all of our activities for the semester. To do this I needed to texture paint some tissue paper!
Here is my tissue paper hanging to dry.
And see that AWESOME WONDERFUL wooden gadget with the two hooks!! Seth made this for me one night when he was playing with Daddy in the shop! It was his own invention and he was so excited to give to me. I am so happy that I found the perfect use for it - it helped me to make a double rowed drying rack for these tissue papers!! :-)
Here is another shot of the tissues hanging to dry! We also decided to do these for our homemade valentines that we are making for friends for Valentines this year (there are a group of 57 kids that are exchanging valentines - kids are having a blast making them!)
And here is my finished example of the Eric Carle art!! I am so excited to see how all the kids' turn out!
I am also doing an Exploring Literature class for those young ones as well. The first class we will be reading 'Joey Ran Away' and here is our kangaroo craft we are going to do! :-)
I have to share this next picture :-) Seth's Draw To Learn Proverbs lesson was from Proverbs 8:12-16 and it stated for him to draw a picture of his country's leader and pray for wisdom for him. Well, he chose to draw this country's first leader - George Washington! I loved it!!
And Seth is learning his times tables - oh boy!!! He is not happy at all about memorizing them! I finally found a cool app that we tried out today and he is loving it! After about 20 minutes on his app he about has his 2 and 3 facts down!! :-)
Well as I type this it is snowing outside! Probably won't be enough to amount to anything but it is sure pretty coming down! We are trying to stay warm!! I am so thankful that my hubby found an AWESOME deal on a 150 gallon propane tank and installed a gas heater (with a thermostat) in our school room!! No more having to run out here at 6:30 in the morning to turn on some heat in this FREEZING room!! It now stays at a good constant temp and we stay nice and toasty!! I have to say - it has been one COLD winter!!! Hopefully that means it will be a BEAUTIFUL spring! :-)
Until next time,
Kellie
