We started working on our pumpkin and fall lapbooks yesterday. So far, Sophia and Olivia have in their lapbooks:
- a sensory pumpkin pie. (Cut a brown circle and orange circle from construction paper. Glue the orange on top of the brown to look like a pie. Take glue and spread it over the orange part. Sophia smelled pumpkin pie spice first. Guessed what spices were in it. Then she smelled each one on its own: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. She sprinkled each onto the glue, and noticed which spices were lighter and darker than one another. She tasted some of them.)
- read "The Prince Mammoth Pumpkin" - an excellent parable. Sophia really enjoyed it...particularly because she worked in our pumpkin patch this summer and could visualize elements of the story.
- recipe for pumpkin bars. Made those on Sunday and the girls enjoyed them for dessert that night.
- a journal entry about a nature walk on Monday, October 16th. Noted visual observations (leaf changes), sensory observations (cold), and activities (pressing down with her shoe on gopher tunnels and holes).
- leaf paintings using fall colors (red, yellow, and orange). Talked about how red and yellow make orange, and kept adding yellow paint to the red paint until the orange was the color we wanted. Used single colors and blended colors on the leaves.
- did fingerprint paintings in orange. These will become pumpkins once we use a marker and add faces and stems.
- various worksheets that have a pumpkin theme. (The worksheets focus on letter recogition and patterning/math.)
Olivia was at preschool from 8:10-12:20 today. She LOVES it. She went to speech therapy, heard the story "Leaf Man," explored a sensory table of leaves, decorated a construction paper pumpkin, painted a leaf (made from a grocery bag and painted in fall colors), played in the gym, and had snack.
In addition to the above, I worked with Sophia on activities from the Oak Meadow (Waldorf) curriculum. This week, the focus is on the letters B and C; and numbers 1 and 2.
She is working on an alphabet book right now. Last year she put stickers in the corner of each page at the top (one letter per page). This year, she is (and will) draw a picture incorporating the letter into the picture. For example, for the letter A she drew a gate with the letter A in it after reading a story about Peter Rabbit and how he escaped under the gate.
Last week she drew a picture of bear inside the letter B after I read Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. Today she drew a butterfly using the letter B as the body and wings. She drew the picture after listening to a poem about butterflies (sung to the ABC song), and story called "The Butterfly Story."
After that we explored the concept of "one." I read "The Story of One Big Sun" which she really liked. She drew a picture in her math book (she'll work on this during the year). She did a title page with flowers and sun plus her name. Then she flipped the page so there were blank pages facing one another. On the left side she drew a picture of the sun and on the right side of the page the number one.
We talked about how there is one sun, but many rays (enough for everyone and everything); one forest, but many trees in the forest; and one family, but several members in the family.
We had lunch, read some books, and then rested.
Sophia had her first Brownie meeting today in Marine on St. Croix. What a nice group of girls! There are 3 homeschooled girls (including Sophia) and 9 girls that go to Marine Elementary School. Sophia knew many of them from church which helped.
The girls painted a picture using apples and paintbrushes (they will send their picture to another girl...they drew names from a pumpkin); frosted cookies and made them into scarecrows using candies and other decorations; and then enjoyed hot dogs, fresh vegetables and dip, grapes, and s'mores. It was a really fun time.
Came home and Mary (respite care) was doing puzzles, playing games, and reading with Olivia. Mary stayed until 8:00 reading and playing with the girls.
We had a lot of fun today!!
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