Thursday, October 15, 2015

Homeschool Life: Apples & Letter "M"

             Hey folks! We've been all over the place with our school stuff lately. We've been doing apple crafts and activities lately since 1) We're taking Myka to the orchard soon for her birthday and 2) I wanted to wait until the leaves starting turning more before we started our autumn theme stuff. However, there was some major resistance (and still is) to a certain project that I thought she would love, so we laid off the apples for a bit and moved on to letter “M” because she always seems to like our letter activities.
             Lucky for her (and me), she got an extra break over the weekend since she spent it with my parents. (Not that we usually do “school stuff” on the weekends anyways.) Then Monday my husband's cold finally caught up to her, so that put a damper on things. I'm just glad she's feeling better before her birthday! No one wants to feel like crap on their birthday!
             Anywho, now that she's feeling better, we've been having some learning fun. We finished up with letter M by making a moose hat (which I made too big for Myka's head, so she insisted I wore it) and coloring our do.a.dot page instead of using the markers. Oh well. She's been very into us taking turns when working on things lately, so it provided an interesting opportunity to introduce her to what a pattern is. (Which, by the way, is harder than hell to explain to a 3 year old, imo. Lol)


             I'm trying to finish up with the apple fun by tomorrow (writing this on Thursday, 10/8) so we can move on to our fall stuff next week. I probably sound like I'm a lot more structured with this stuff than I really am, for the record. I try to stick to a theme for two weeks since we're doing some of the A Child's World curriculum as well and that's how it's structured, but other than that, I have learned two more valuable lessons this week. 1) Crafts at the kitchen table are NOT a good idea. I didn't even think about it until my husband brought it up: It doesn't matter what craft we're doing, she probably doesn't stay interested in it long there because it's harder for her to reach. Duh! 2) Setting a few choices out on her short table in the living room seems to go over well. She can pick what strikes her fancy the most at the time and we still end up doing everything eventually.



             As you can see, I may have went a little overboard on the whole apple thing. We've got a “sewn” apple (big hit), apple wreath, collage apple, and more. We even did a “cut to find the picture” apple page and two science experiments involving apples as well! O.o


             Don't worry. I'm not totally OCD. She has other fun, educational opportunities that aren't “theme” related too. (Not like she still doesn't watch movies too. :P) She actually wanted to revisit some activities from past themes in the curriculum this week, so she played with the carrot color matching game again (even though she totally cheats lol) and made more “tree faces” with some weird modeling dough we got for half off a long time ago. I actually let her play outside by herself (watching closely the whole time, of course) for about 45 minutes while she did that and other things. She did good about not wandering off! I also remembered to get my felt boards back out this week and made a few Halloween-themed pieces. Now I just need to work on making some story or nursery rhyme-related pieces for fun!


             So, while it may sound like we are busy constantly, we really aren't. We'll usually do a few educational activities a day (if that). Other than that we try to get outside at least once a day and Myka likes to help me with most household chores. And we do go to or host the occasional playdate. Ok. Maybe we do like to stay busy. ;) Now if you'll excuse me, the beast slumbers and I must start planning next week's fall activities. ;)

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