You Can't Catch Me...

Once we got back from Legoland, we began a week of learning with a gingerbread man theme.  You just can't go wrong with gingerbread men.  They are awesome.  So many fun things to do with them.  And here are some of the things we did:

Math:
Gingerbread Man Skip Counting                                                                 

Sawyer put the 2's in the correct order.  Then we counted out loud.

Hayden skip counted the 3s and the 5s

After putting his gingerbread numbers in the right order, Hayden had to
fill out a worksheet that had blanks where the correct number should go.

We used mini marshmallows to find the perimeter and the area of a gingerbread man that I printed out onto some brown construction paper.  The boys first estimated both measurements.  Then we figured out how close their estimations actually were.  Sawyer must have asked 20 times if he could eat "just this ONE marshmallow" while we were doing this activity.  It's like I was torturing them with the little fluffy pieces of goodness.  Haha!

 

Measuring the perimeter of the Gingerbread Man 

Measuring the area of the Gingerbread Man

Reading:

Of course, Hayden had his weekly Dear Dragon reader.  This week was "It's Winter, Dear Dragon" and he did a great job with it!  We also continued Reading Eggs, but also included a few activities from Starfall.com.

I started doing spelling words with Hayden again.  I'm giving him five words to learn, plus one bonus word.  This week his words were:  book, good, look, cookie, and December.  I'm trying to find some fun spelling activities for him to do throughout the week.  One thing I found was pyramid words.  Since we're in the month of December, I decided to change "pyramid" to "Christmas tree".  Then, I printed out green-filled squares for him to write the letters of his spelling words in.  He didn't even realize how much he was writing!  Yay!

Of course, keeping in theme with the gingerbread man, I had to order the book because it was nowhere to be found at the library (that's what I get for procrastinating!).  Luckily, Amazon and I have a wonderful relationship, and I was able to order it and have it delivered in 2 days.  *sidenote: for any moms out there who don't know, you can join AmazonMom which is a trial 3 month period of their AmazonPrime membership.  You get most of the same advantages as the Prime membership including free 2-day shipping on all items.  Plus, you get 20% discount on diapers and formula and other things if you set up a recurring order.

After reading the book, we made our own little gingerbread men.  We sampled a couple.  Then we did a graphic organizer using this huge gingerbread man that I drew on butcher paper and stuck up on the chalkboard.  I had the boys come up with as many words as they could to describe their gingerbread men (similar to the Halloween jack-o-lantern graphic organizer we did in October).  They did a pretty good job this time, especially Hayden.

Writing:
I found a bunch of fun puffy gingerbread stickers in the Christmas section at Walmart and decided to let the boys use them to make their own gingerbread story.  Little did I know how carried away they were going to get with this activity!  They started off well, telling the story out loud as they added stickers to their writing paper.  But then, it got out of control and became more of a contest to see who could get the most stickers on their paper.  The story-lines, as a result, were forgotten.  Oh well.  It was fun anyway!

Other activities:
We did a science experiment using our gingerbread men cookies based on the idea that the gingerbread man didn't want to get wet in the river (or couldn't swim, etc. depending on the version that you read).  The boys each came up with their hypothesis as to what would happen if their gingerbread man cookie got wet, and then we performed the experiment.  Sawyer thought his would drown.  Hayden thought his would fall apart.  Here are the results of each:

Sawyer's gingerbread man.  He couldn't keep himself from touching it.

Hayden's gingerbread man.  It swelled up and floated.  Gross.

Another thing we did with our men (that really ought to be up with the math, but oh well) is we compared different sized gingerbread men.  We talked about big vs. little, took guesses as to how much they all weighed, which would weigh more, etc.

And last, but not least, was our Gingerbread Man Scavenger Hunt.  I did this with the boys a couple of years ago, and Hayden was really disappointed when we didn't do it last year.  So, I decided to do it again this year.  I found a big gingerbread man pan at Walmart (same time that I found those stickers), and I baked the gingerbread man while they were in bed one night this week.  Then, I printed out some gingerbread man templates, colored them, and wrote clues on the back for the boys to hunt him down.  The first clue was hidden in the back of the book that we read, and when we reached the very end, it fell out and the boys began the hunt.

There were six clues altogether.  Any more, and Sawyer would have lost interest.  It was just enough to keep them excited and on the move for about 15 minutes.  The clues I came up with were:

Clue #1: I bet you think you are smarter than me, but with these shoes I can run as quick as your Mommy! (my running shoes)
Clue #2:  Good try!  I was here, but now I am not.  I'm hungry - I think a snack will hit the spot! (the boys' snack cabinet)
Clue #3:  Mmmmm.......those gummies were good!  You know, I will brush now like good gingerbread boys should!  (their bathroom by their toothbrushes)
Clue #4: What do you know? I'm still faster than you! I even have time to read a book or two! (the book case in their reading corner)
Clue #5: Ha! You're too slow! Now where did I go? The kitty in the window would probably know! (a silhouetted cat shaped decoration that hangs in our dining room window)
Clue #6:  Kitty cat thinks that it's time for a rest.  A room for a baby is where that is best!  (the baby's crib)

The Clues

We found him!

Celebrating our find with a hot chocolate/gingerbread man party.

 And to end this fun week of Gingerbread Man activities, we took a field trip to the Gingerbread House Extravaganza to see the winners of the competition displayed and do their scavenger hunt that they have set up for visitors.  These displays are amazing!  The people who build these different houses/buildings/trains/etc. are super talented!

About to begin the scavenger hunt

A Victorian manor with Santa at the front door

The Lorax (Sawyer's favorite)

The Bakery (one of my favorites)
The builder of this one made teeny tiny croissants and cinnamon rolls that
you can kind of see in the windows.

The Christmas Train

Log Cabin

They LOVE nutcrackers!  There were a whole bunch of them here.  What luck!

Old Firehouse (Hayden's favorite)

The horses in front of the firehouse pulling the water wagon with a tiny
Dalmation along for the ride. 

An overall view inside the St. Andrews Episcopal Church where the
extravaganza is held.

LegoMania

The last week of November and the first week of December were spent learning through Legos.  We planned our first family theme park adventure to Legoland in Winter Haven, Florida at the end of the unit.  It was a nice break from our normal routine, and the boys had a blast with both the unit and the trip to Legoland (of course!).

Reading:

Cut and sort the Lego characters (this was a Sawyer activity)

Here I took sight words and found a worksheet that I could print out with the
spaces for each letter.  I put labels with letters onto separate Legos and Hayden
would connect them together to form his words.  Then he had to find the blanks
that matched his word.

Using Scrabble tiles to spell the colors of the Legos.

Sawyer assembling the letters of the alphabet

Hayden hunts for letters of the alphabet in one of his Lego magazines

Matching the minifigure to the correct sentence.

After matching the minifigure to the correct sentence, the boys were able
to figure out what each minifigure was called (i.e. viking, snowboarder, robot, etc.)

Writing:

Lego figures with sentences to describe them.  Hayden had to fill in the blank
with the words given at the top.  Sawyer had to trace the words.

Here, Hayden had to look at the Lego scene and describe in a sentence what
he saw.

Using Legos instead of playdoh to cover the letters in our sight words.

Math:

Here, we took a handful of Legos.  They had to sort and count the different
colors.  Then, we put them on a graphing chart.

Sawyer's Graph

Hayden's Graph

Seeing how well the boys can listen to and follow directions.  After a pile of
Legos was put in front of them, they had to choose the color Legos I told them
to get and put them either on top of, in front of, behind, or underneath another
Lego.

Ordinal positions:  He had to tell me which Lego was first, second, third, last, etc.

I put a handful of Legos on the sheet of paper.  The boys had
to close their eyes while I took a certain number of them away.  Then they
opened their eyes and had to figure out how many I took.  We also did the
reverse where I added to the amount rather than take away.

Other Fun Activities:

We found a Lego online game through Zoodles.com

One of the games on Zoodles.

They had a building challenge each day.  This day was to build a favorite animal.

Roll-a-Minifigure activity.  We took turns rolling the die.  Depending on the
number rolled, we got to choose a head, torso, accessory, legs, etc.  The first one
to get all the parts won the game.

Finished minifigures that the boys built.

Thus ends our Lego Unit.  

Pictures from our trip to Legoland will be in a separate post.  

November Events

November came and went pretty quickly with a lot of stuff crammed into a little amount of time.  We finished up our Ancient Egypt unit, focused on Thanksgiving, and really just tried to stay afloat with the excitement of the approaching holidays.  I apologize for not staying on track with the blog.  There has been just too much going on, and every time I've sat down to start it, something would pull me away from the computer.  Before I knew it, we were 2 weeks away from Christmas.  It's crazy!  I'd say that my New Year's Resolutions should include staying on top of this thing, but I'm not sure I'd be able to keep that one.  So, let's just say, I'll do my best to at least get everything we do posted in a somewhat reasonable amount of time.  (I'll give myself a 3 month grace period.....Ha!).

So.  In a nutshell, this is what we were able to accomplish for the month of November:

Reading:
Just so you know, a lot of what we did didn't get photographed this month.  Our littlest member of the family is becoming more demanding when it comes to wanting attention and food, and it was all I could do just to get the lessons taught with Baby Riley hanging on my hip and trying to grab everything within reach (how quickly that starts to happen!).

However, both Hayden and Sawyer are doing really well with their reading.  Hayden read his 10th book by the end of the month and got to pick out a new book from Barnes & Noble.  Sawyer has read 4 books/shooooorrrrt stories in his Hooked on Phonics set.  We're kind of stuck right now in our lessons because he's not looking at the whole word before he blurts out what he thinks it is (i.e. the word is 'map' but he says 'mat' because he looks at just the first letter and assumes that all the words are ending in -at).

Hooked on Phonics computer time.

Hooked on Phonics worked for me!  Sawyer read his first "real" book!

Tracing color words with the right color crayon, a lesson from his Dear Dragon reader of the week.

Finding the letter Ii

Sight word practice: spell, stamp, decorate

 Writing:
Actual writing assignments were pretty minimal this month.  I figured we did enough writing in the other subjects, especially Hayden, that this would be enough.  I don't fuss too much about proper handwriting skills (which some people may not agree with, but there you have it) because I personally don't feel that it's terribly important how they write the letters, as long as it's legible and the act of their writing is fluent.  For example, Hayden insists on writing his lower case a's and o's by starting the circle at the bottom instead of at the top, and he forms the circle backwards to the way I was taught.  I show him the write way to do it, and if he thinks hard enough about it, he'll do it correctly, but when he writes it his way, it's just as clearly written as if he'd done it correctly.

Glitter glue sight words - part 1

Glitter glue sight words - part 2

Math:
Math became a little more challenging for Hayden this month as we moved into larger numbers.  The biggest mental block for him was probably figuring out how to align numbers  with the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands matching up properly.

Tens and Ones and Right Triangles - look at that mess of manipulatives!

Matching base 10 cards to Place Value Cards.

Stacking the numbers (from above)

Sliding the numbers into the correct position.  

Writing the numbers correctly in his math journal after matching up the cards and stacking them.

I really thought I had more pictures than this.  Sawyer actually did quite a bit of prewriting practice as well as math activities.  I apparently didn't document them at all.  He worked on sequencing for part of the month, putting things in the correct order, ordinal numbers, positional words, etc.  Sorry for the lack of photos.

Thanksgiving:
Of course for the week of Thanksgiving, we changed things up a bit.  We strayed from our usual curriculum and did some themed activities (which, honestly, we all enjoy a lot more than our regular stuff, but it's so much more work for me to do and I never have time to set it up properly to make it worth our while).

Hayden doing copywork to work on his handwriting.

Color the Sight Words on the turkey (both boys had this activity but different words)

Putting items under the correct numbered column.

Clipping the beginning letter sound of each picture shown.

 Ancient Egypt:
This was a long time coming to finish.  I can't believe I didn't take pictures of Hayden completing each of the mini books!  *sigh* oh well.  Here are pictures of the finished product at any rate.  This is the first of all the lapbooks we've done that Hayden actually completed almost entirely on his own.  That one reason it took so long for him to finish.  You'll notice his handwriting is pretty crappy when he doesn't have lined paper to write on, but it improved as we went along.  The Children's Games mini book was the first of the books he completed.  The Story of Baby Moses was the last:

Outside of lapbook 

Inside of lapbook

Children's Games accordion book

Inside first fold of Egyptian houses mini book

Egyptian houses minibook opened up all the way

The Nile River (I let him slide on this one.  Just had to learn it)

First opening of Baby Moses mini book

Baby Moses answers on the inside of flaps

How a mummy is made accordion mini book.  Another one I let him slide on.
It was a lot to write!

Hayden's name in hieroglyphics.  He did this all on his own.  I was so proud!

Inside Where in the World is Egypt? minibook.  Sorry the picture is sideways!