Body Care 1

First of all, I want to apologize for the pictures. My camera had something on the lens. I tried to clean it but it didn't work so I thought it might be scratched. After I picked out the new camera I wanted, Nathan tried cleaning it and it worked. So the pictures on the next couple of posts will be fuzzy but it's fixed now for future use.

Audrey had preschool with Audrey. They talked about the letter D and went on a treasure hunt. Hailey enjoyed this activity and talked about finding the items. They also made a cute duck out of the letter D.
For Joy School, we talked about how we can take care of our bodies. We used a lot of felt pictures. I had pictures of foods that Hailey and Luc could categorize into what are healthy foods and what are sometimes foods.

I also had them follow me around and do some exercising. So now whenever Hailey sees someone running outside we talk about how they are exercising and how it's good for their bodies.

At the end, I did a puppet show where the boy made unhealthy choices and the girl made healthy choices. I still feel very silly doing puppet shows but the kids enjoyed it. Luc went around later with the girl puppet saying something about how she takes good care of her body.

Here is the website for Joy School: http://www.valuesparenting.com/joyschool/ .

Five Senses 2

After lunch, while I'm making Jello for Joy School, Luc comes up to me and says "If we are talking about our bodies again in Joy School, I don't want to join." I told him that it was okay with me but I was still going to do it with Hailey. Luc looks at me and says "fine but I will still have Jello!" Ha! That's the catch, I explained, the jello is for Joy School. When Joy School started, Luc was definitely there and involved.

Tuesday was the second part of the senses discussion. I had flannel board cut outs of the senses and we played a game to guess what the missing sense was. Generally, Luc is more outspoken and quicker so Hailey surprised me a couple of times when she answered correctly before Luc.

We focused on our sense of touch. I had ice cold water in one cup, hot water in another, a piece of sandpaper, the prickly weed from outside, flannel, a rock, and glue that we supposed to be sticky.
Then they helped me make pudding and was able to paint with it.

Luc was mostly busy with eating it.

Then I had paper bags with different items for them to use their senses to guess what it was. Since Luc saw the jello early, he kept saying Jello for each bag. I got annoyed with that quickly.

Finally, to end the day, they got to cut out shapes in the jello and eat it with their hands while I read a book. Hailey wanted snowmen and Luc wanted stars.

It was a fun lesson and I had almost everything already expect for the second box of Jello of a single flavor.

Five Senses 1

We don't have Joy School on Fridays. So here we are on our second week of Joy School.

Today, since it's Monday, Hailey had Preschool with Audrey. This time it's at Audrey's house. Hailey was so excited and wanted to bring her backpack. (I keep an apron in there just in case it is needed.) They read "If you give a Mouse a cookie" and shaped cookie dough into "C". Then they read "A Very Hungry Caterpillar" and made very cute c-shaped caterpillars with pom-poms. Hailey enjoyed it a lot.

So with Joy School today we talked about our five senses. First, they had an easy task of picking up the beanbag and walking across the kitchen and putting in the basket. Then they had to do it blind folded. I had Hailey be blind folded first and she did it perfectly. Somehow, I think she could see. I spun Luc around first to make it harder and so my point was proven in the end.

In this picture, Hailey is trying to get the beanbag across the kitchen without hands. (they both cheated at the end to put it in the basket.)


After this, I hide some popcorn in the microwave. I had then do finger plays with me while we waited for it to cook. Then they used their senses to guess what it was. Luc loved this part. They ate their popcorn while I read "You can't eat a pickle with your ears." Hailey surprisingly did not eat her popcorn. I don't think she has ever had popcorn before today.

After learning a song with flannel board pictures, I had a smelling unit ready for them. We took turns smelling what was in my cup, then they put glue down and sprinkled the item on.

Skill wise, they both did every well. One change I would have made is that two of my smells were different Kool Aid flavors. However, Kool Aid mixed with glue doesn't harden. The book suggested jello powder but I didn't want to be wasteful. I see their wisdom now.

So here are their collages, with the jello running. (2 days later and it is still a little sticky.)
Then we had a taste center. No one could guess the sugar; Luc thought it was salt. It was funny to see their reactions when they had the Kool Aid mix because it was very sour and they didn't expect that.
There was a hide and seek game we didn't get to and also a hearing exercise we skipped. This was a very time consuming lesson but I think the kids understood a little what their senses are.

*Side Note: At the beginning, we talked about what our bodies were and Hailey first pointed to her bum again and then pointed to other body parts. Yeah, she's learning!!!

Joy of the Body 2

This lesson was about introducing the body again. We talked about how it can move. To feel their muscles working I made elastic bands for them to put on their legs or arms.

Luc really got into it while Hailey stayed hesitant.

Then after our discussion about our bodies, we shaped gingerbread dough into little bodies.

Luc enjoyed the dough a lot. However, it wasn't easy to roll and shape the dough. So, after everyone made one, we did the rest with cookie cutters.

While we waiting for the cookies to bake and cool, we made hand and feet mobiles. Hailey needed me to trace, cut and connect her hands and feet. This project was too advance for her skill level.

I encouraged Luc to do it all by himself. He traced his hands and feet. He cut out one hand and was too frustrated to continue. Once we got to the hole punching stage, he got excited and went a little over board with it.
Finally the cookies are done. I made a powder sugar icing to top it. They were surprisingly soft.

The kids loved the cookies.

*Side note: I had a hard time with the gingerbread dough. The day before, I pulled up the recipe and noticed I was missing a couple of spices. So, we went to Walmart and I finally got to make the dough around 8 or 9 that night. Since it was a brand new bottle of ginger, it went everywhere and I got more ginger in the bowl then was needed. Also I didn't have enough nutmeg. After everything was mixed, Nathan helped me separate the dough into three portions to smash down and wrap. They need to be refrigerated for at least 3 hours.

So, we finally go to bed around 11 and right before I fell asleep, I realized that I forgot to put the egg in. I'm not sure what that would have done to my cookies but I know it's not a good ingredient to forgot. But I'm too tired to do anything about it. Unwrapping the dough and trying to put it back together to add the one egg did not sound like I good idea to me, so I went to sleep.

I woke up around 6:00 thinking about the dough. So I got up then, showered, and went to Walmart because I ran out of nutmeg and shortening. I can back and made another batch of the dough to find out I am 1/4 c short of molasses. I just rolled my eyes and continued. By 7-7:30 everything was done and ready to be refrigerated. I bought donuts so we all sat down and had donuts together.

The end result was that the second batch of cookies turned out great. However, next time I'll pay closer attention to it.

The Joy of the Body 1

Today was the first day that Luc joined us. Hailey was excited to share joy school with him and kept telling him that there is a surprise. (that was the way I introduced it to Hailey)

We started talking about our bodies today. When I told Hailey this before the lesson, I also asked what is her body. She bend over and pointed to her bum. It was a funny sight. We started potty train recently but it's not going well.

So to start the lesson, we shaped our bodies into different letters. Both got into this activity. Then we walked in different ways following what the CD sang. Then we looked at different pictures from "Your Insides" by Joanna Cole. I finally had the time this morning to go to the library and really look for books. They were all in the nonfiction section even though they were for children.

Our little act activity is to put back the body that I cut out. They had me outline the body on the paper first which I thought was a great idea but something I wouldn't have thought of myself.
Luc saw me cut these out and so ask me when we were ready to do it.

Hailey still wanted more help from me even though I know she really could have done it herself.

Then we read a quick book about feet to more onto our finally activity...painting with our feet.

Chloe came here right in time to join us. They got the sidewalk pretty messy but really enjoyed themselves.

And that ended our Joy School for the day. Luc was talking to Chloe later about having his picture on the school house with his own window. I was afraid that he would think that this was too childish for him but he had fun today. He is a more active boy who needs to move. Robert is like that too so it's great that I have this chance to work with Luc to learn how to work with Robert.