Tonight was Micah's Art Fair with our co-op Eastside Explorers. His age bracket is still under the non-judging category, but we selected some of his images for sharing, participation and experience. He had: 1. Scooby Doo and 2. Dr. Seuss Series
Today was "starry Friday". We set aside some time to focus on Micah learning several ways to make a good star. He was an eager student and thrilled when he got it! It's so fun to watch the lightbulb go off and see that transition from "huh?" to "ah-ha!".
Oh my goodness. This is such a moment. First of all, Micah does a nice job telling his dad about things we do during the day. So, the other evening he's telling Matt about primary and secondary colors. Then he begins telling Matt about the 'jails'. Huh? He continues to explain but when he comes to that word he struggles and says "it's not jails, .." and he keeps thinking as he's talking. Finally Matt gets it (I still don't) and he asks Micah "what are some other words for jail?" They come up with "cells, prisons". Micah lights up with 'prison' - "That's it." he says. Then I get it - "PRISM". He was explaining about prisms and colors' wavelengths. He also told Matt how the wavelengths are "sucked up" (I know I explained it as "absorbed") into the object and the color/s we see are the ones being reflected.
How I love pulling out my hands-on teaching tools that I've saved all these years! It was tangram time with a purpose (not just for playing with as before). We read Tangram Puzzles by Colleen Adams to get some of the history and mathmatics behind them. Then we experimented with our own. In what country did the tangrams originate? How many tans in a tangram set? What are the geometric shapes in a tangram set? Is it possible to make 14 convex tangram designs with 1 set of tangrams? What are the two rules for tangram puzzles? Hmm, is this a Tangram Trivia? Could be.
Thanks Aunt Alice for the set of colored tangrams and their images. (Lilly is using them too.)
Micah's square and triangle.
Lilly's purple and blue.
patterns, eating, eating, ... :) We are also having fun with their website: http://www.frootloops.com/ Micah and I are hooked on the game that is similar to Tetris. He plays on his computer and I play on mine and we compete for the highest score.
We did a lot of painting and coloring this week, just experimenting and observing. After reading a book entitled Skippyjon Jones - color crazy by Judy Schachner (where the cat colors grass yellow and the sun blue, etc.) I pulled out a favorite poem of mine from 1991.
Purple
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? What a favorite classic. A perfect start to a color unit. Micah can read it and Lilly loves to listen to it. Then each of the
m groped through the crayon container and pulled out a crayon of each of the Brown Bear colors. 
We love to invite friends to go to the zoo with us, but this particular day ended up being just the kids and I. It was very nice. :) The day was BEAUTIFUL, they both chose an animal they definitely wanted to see. We lingered around, went to the Walabee playground, ate our lunch ... it was super. We even heard the tiger growling and got it on video. :)
Sounds quite simple ... and some of it will be. This is a perfect example of how well different levels of learners can learn together. Lilly is also working on shapes & colors. While working on the basic shapes: circle, square, triangle... and basic colors: red, blue, yellow, green ... Micah and I can go deeper and work with "primary & secondary colors", taking shapes into 3-
D and getting a "sphere, cone, cylinder". And take it wherever it goes! Micah and I each have a goal within this unit: Mine - Micah would be more comfortable and consistent when 'reading' these colors and shapes as words; Micah's - learning how to draw some of the shapes better, especially a star.
There are many more pictures. I set it up in a Shutterfly account. The link is: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AatWrFi5ctW-T
*Read Psalm 100
for a long time. He got some tickets for Saturday's game vs. the Lakers, so they went. Matt got Micah a jersey, they went early to watch warm-ups close up, and Micah got to play in the new kids' area: The Gorilla 'something'. They had a great time!
I was so excited about the story of the Lorax and the science activity I was going to do with it! 17 years ago, ... yes, 17 I wrote this science activity. I was in graduate school at Ball State University. It was a science class with an amazing hands-on, "I Wonder!" attitude professor. In this class I met my dear friend (who now lives in Phoenix and has a daughter Lilly's age) Amy Evert.
The kids and I went outside, I read the story and we talked about it. Then we "polluted" glasses of water with food coloring and predicted how many glasses of clean water it would take to dilute it well enough to be "safe". We'll be able to reference this next month with Earth Day.
Hop on Pop provided great lesson opportunities with initial and final sounds of words. Micah created some flip books based on some of the rhyming words in.
One Fish, Two Fish ... The Yink likes to drink pink ink and wink. We made a pink drink from the Dr. Seuss Cookbook. Matt makes a good Yink, don't you think?
We started Monday morning making Oobleck. It was gooey and stiff - at the same time. The science aspect was that it represents a liquid (flows; takes shape of the container) and a solid (firm; has a set shape). Then we read the story of Bartholomew and the Oobleck.
*Situation occurs only God could do!
Bartholomew and the Oobleck was a good example for part of this as well as relating with Daniel 4.
Micah, Matt & Chad went to a spring training baseball game before Matt left for his weekend retreat and Chad headed back to Kentucky.
ekend) and took Micah to his Eastside Art and Science classes.
After reading Dr. Seuss we chose to add a few of his 'nonsense' words, but mark them separately.
We played: *egg toss; *doughnut towers; *soup can towers; *cup and saucer relays; *egg on a spoon relays; and had our own obstacle course (hats and all).
