Sunshine gardening +bird watching

With some mild sun protection applied, we headed outside to enjoy a spring day. We started with a  little bird watching and noting. Then did some earth exploring. She found lots of critters digging in the ground. It was the first time she had seen a centipede. She held the worm so gently when she found it. Digging in the earth inspired her to want to plant some flowers. So we started some in little egg cartons and also picked up a few pansies at the grocer.
How do you spread curiosity? How do you guide your little chick in the direction you are hoping? How do you fill their minds with questions then fill in the blanks with answers? I've been investigating idea in an educational model called Leadership Education. It's interesting to see how our country's historical leaders  and founding peoples were educated. I feel like we're both learning so much together and this time of exploration and questioning is so valuable to both of us. 

Celebrating life

Great Granny turned 93 today! We had a ladies day out with taking her out to lunch. After lunch we went with Aunt GG to visit the Tractor Supply store where they had new baby chicks and ducklings, while Great Granny and Granny had their beauty appointment.  When we returned home we had some coconut cake and strawberries. 

Dr Seuss birthday

Our truffula tree cupcake

We enjoyed talking about the beloved Dr Seuss today in memory of his birthday. Did you know that Dr. Seuss had several pen names? Read more about Dr. Seuss here.We recently found two old books (come over to my house)&(maybe you should fly a jet)that I don't remember reading at the fabulous half price book store:)We had a long day of chatting about one of our favorite authors.  At the end of our day we even baked up some truffula tree peanut butter cupcakes from the book The Lorax. 

Great finds at half price book store.

Field trip Friday painting

Art was our focus on field trip Friday. It was dollar paint session at our local pottery place. She made herself a little garden fairy and a plate for her Great granny who's birthday is coming up. There is a big difference between her patience with painting pottery at age 4 and at age 5.  After the pottery painting we went to the local book store where they were having Dr Seuss birthday celebrations. There were some stories and crafts for FrEe..:) Love that! One of the ways we try to stay in budget with our homeschooling is really planning and searching for free local activities. The painting would normally cost 15 bucks for her and I to paint but because we waited to go on dollar day it really saved us some money. Check out what's going on in your area, it's actually pretty surprising where you might find free stuff for kids:)

10 minute activity for the routine to continue

Do you ever need 10 minutes of uninterrupted time during the day? (You know, wash dishes, switch laundry, scoop cat box)  Here are two ideas. IDEA A is to have two glasses - one with water, the other with a small amount of juice(we're using grape here)- Add an eye dropper and instruct to add drops of juice to the water to see how it changes the water. ( Later add how many drops....) IDEA B is to put on an old disney record and a  princess dress grab a bear and dance! 

Our spring bugs arrived

Ladybugs and butterflies are Here! We ordered them from Insect Lore. We already had the butterfly house net from last year but the ladybug cage was a new fun adventure. Oh how strange the lady bugs are. Raising bugs is so fascinating for a five year old. Number one, they change so quickly and number two they change so dramatically. We have to make sure the ladybugs have water, but the caterpillars are self contained until they turn into butterflies. The first thing we did after settling our new insects in their habitats was to measure them. Ladybugs were 1/2 cm and the Caterpillars were 1 cm.

adding water to the ladybugs

look how tiny the caterpillars are

one cm long ~caterpillars

1/2 cm long lady bugs

Leap day

Does anyone else's cat attend school too? Our little cat just loves to be involved in school. She always comes when we are reading stories and it's very interesting the look she has, like 'yes, continue...' Today we are working on coin counting. Part of this idea came from the lovely Mailbox magazine. There were addition questions on the cupcakes. That was part A. The second part was the adding the coins to pay for the cupcake. So she had to know what each coin is worth and how she could pay using the different combinations of coins. This game went very well. We used a small muffin tray to sort the coins first then I had made an aide for her to see the worth of each coin, incase she forgot. 

Later we practiced our numbers on the blackboard.

And don't forget talking about Leap Day. We briefly talked about how this day was special because it only comes around every 4 years. We also talked about what leaps. And this is her drawing of a frog.