Painting and Color Mixing

We've been reading Warthogs Paint by Pamela Duncan Edwards and Henry Cole. It's about a group of warthogs who decide to paint their kitchen on a rainy day. They mix red, blue, and yellow to make other colors. Carlee really enjoys this book and is learning color mixing very quickly. Spending a whole afternoon painting and mixing colors together doesn't hurt either. This is our masterpiece from today. She had a blast and it was nice mommy & daughter time while the baby napped.

Learning some Life Skills

I used the free online RRP diaper pattern sized down with normal velcro for the tabs to make Carlee's baby a diaper. She's been changing her, rocking her, and putting her to sleep. Very cute.

Of course, she's been learning a lot of new skills while watching us take care of her sister, and Carlee even gets to help with some things. She is also learning how to treat babies, and how to be patient & loving, etc.

Simple Addition

Today while baking cupcakes for a party Carlee would be attending this afternoon, we were measuring the ingredients. "We need two cups of flour," I told Carlee. I let her scoop one cup of flour out and pour it into our bowl. "Remember, we need two cups of flour, how many more do we need?" I decided to ask this question out of the blue. I was simply going to introduce the topic to her, and I honestly completely expected her to answer "two," since I had just reiterated that we would need two cups of flour.

To my surprise, she answered, "One more." Wow. It's amazing how much kids know/learn/pick up on their own. I might just try adding more simple addition and subtraction problems into our activities to see just how much she understands.

Freezing Experiment

Today, Carlee decided she wanted to make Orange Juice Pops. So we did. =) What a fun way to learn about how liquid freezes. We had to use a mini muffin tray, since we don't have an ice cube tray, but it worked. We talked about how the juice looked and felt before we put it in the freezer, and then checked on it throughout the afternoon studying its properties and progression. Finally, the pops were frozen! We then talked about what the juice looked and felt like when it was frozen. Carlee noted that it was very cold and hard. I asked her what she thought would happen to rain if it got really really cold. She said it would get really cold and freeze. =) She then enjoyed the orange juice pops for snack time. This was such a fun science lesson and she didn't even know that that's what it was!

Wee Movers & Shakers Class!

Today, while at base, I (out of the blue) dropped by the gym to see if they had any classes starting soon for preschool age. Luck would have it, one started this afternoon! It's a Wee Movers & Shakers class full of dancing, singing, and lots of physical exercise. I took her up to the class right away, then came back to pay. Carlee loved it! She'll be going 2 times a week. I'm excited for her. She'll enjoy getting out of the house. Due to uncooperative weather and having a newborn in the house, we haven't been getting out much. We're changing that now, though.

I also just finished making Carlee some shape manipulatives. I used my paper punches to punch out stars, circles, and squares out of 3 colors of cardstock. Then I laminated all of them... that was fun. heh. We'll be working on patterns and classifying. =) Eventually, I'll add more shapes and more colors.

Christmas & Winter

December was a very laid back month as far as homeschooling. With a brand new baby sister to watch and be entertained by, Carlee was not too bothered by taking a break. We did a lot of reading Christmas and winter themed books, though. We mainly focused on learning about the religious aspect of Christmas, and understanding that we are celebrating Jesus' birth. My favorite book to read to Carlee on that topic, was The First Christmas by Carol Heyer. The illustrations are gorgeous, and Carlee followed the story easily. We also did a lot of Christmas related crafts and baking.

Next month we are going to continue learning about winter, since we only briefly talked about it.

Fall Time!

For November, Carlee started a "fall" unit. We've been reading a lot of books about fall, the holidays Halloween and Thanksgiving, and about trees, pumpkins, apples, etc. She's really enjoying it, although it's a challenge to really teach her what fall is all about, when here in Sicily, there's really not much evidence that it is indeed fall.

For one activity, I cut up an apple and we talked about the different parts of it, the colors they come in, how they grow, etc. Then Carlee got to use the cut up apple halves to make apple prints with paint. Very simple, and yet she loved this.

This was an activity we did last Thursday. After talking about how some trees have leaves that change colors and eventually fall off, Carlee got to make her own colorful fall trees. I had already colored some rice red, orange, and yellow. She then glued the rice to a tree I had drawn for her.

Her most exciting activity, however, was on Friday. As we were walking to a friend's house for a picnic lunch, we went on a Fall Treasure Hunt. I gave her our small digital camera to take pictures of anything that she thought was related to fall. She did extremely well! Here are a few of her photos:





I printed out all her pictures, and next week, we're going to make a little fall book. We'll have a lot of more crafts to do, and hopefully a trip to the library to find some books on Thanksgiving.