The Week in Review (April 23rd)

It was another great week at our house!  We finished Psalm 23 this week!  That was very exciting.  I also set out two new activities for the kids: one that involved bean pouring and one that involved bean scooping.  They both enjoyed working with the beans, though with the spoon transfer activity, the kids would rather pour the beans from container to container as opposed to spooning them.  G also thought putting the beans in her mouth was a good idea, but she realized they didn't taste so great. 

Spooning Activity

Dry pouring activity

Here are a couple of shots of the little ones at work (I didn't take many photos of them doing their activities this week).

G using the spoon to transfer beans



After K worked on his transferring, he "made" us lunch with his beans; G made us cake with her pom sensory tub

M has taken an interest in the bead maze we have.  He gets so focused when he is playing with it, and other things he investigates.

The kids also enjoyed working with the pattern blocks, reading, time at the park and with friends, and family time at the library.

Fun on the tire swing

M on the swing

Looking forward to more good times next week!

The Week in Review (April 16th)

We had a lot of fun this week.  Grandma came in town, and we also saw Grammy, Paw Paw, aunts, uncles, and cousins over the weekend. 

We are almost finished with Psalm 23.  We worked on the first part of verse 6, and the kids are really learning the verses.  As a matter of fact, when my Mom and Dad asked them to sing a song, they sang the Psalm 23 song (a tune we made up to fit the verses) without any prompting from us.  That really warmed my heart. 

The children have also really enjoyed working with the pattern blocks my friend Flo let us borrow (I have been so blessed to have friends who will share their learning materials with us, and they are the ones to offer them or simply bring things to our home when they visit).  The pattern blocks we used are the magnetic kind, so it made it so that G could work with them too.  Most of their week has been filled with the pattern block work.

K working on a rocket

G working on a flower

G (and K) also enjoyed playing with a sensory bin of poms with a spoon, some bowls and some craft sticks.  She made cake and oatmeal for her Grandma all week :). I don't have any pictures of that, but I do have this great one of G reading with Grandma.

G loves reading Bob the Builder

Here's my little M man.  He really loves playing with G's leap frog computer.  He enjoys anything that involves listening to or seeing numbers or letters.

M is very focused =)

We did a little less structured learning time because, of course, Grandma isn't always in town.  The beauty of homeschooling.  It was a great week!

A New Set of Shelves

We've been waiting for a while to purchase a set of shelves.  We've been getting by with strong cardboard boxes up until this point.  Of course, I was very excited when my husband walked in with the box. 

He put them together right away with the help of K.  K even had the opportunity to use the hammer to nail the back on.  My husband nailed the nails in just enough so that they stood up, and K did the rest.  I love seeing K work with his Dad.



Hard at work

The finished product makes me smile!

The Week in Review (April 9th)

We had another great week here at the Jeune house.  Here are the highlights.

I decided to take out the magnetic doll that I purchased at a consignment sale about a month ago and G has really enjoyed dressing her (K has, too). 

G with her doll

G has also spent a lot of time with some foam numbers and letters we've had for quite some time.  I decided to pull them back out and the kids have been all over them. 



G with the numbers

K and G working together on the foam letter puzzles

K is my worksheet man.  His aunt bought him a preschool book a couple of summers ago, and he is flying through it.

K working on his numbers

K has also been working with the sandpaper letters that my friend Jessica allowed us to borrow.  K had already started writing his letters and words before we started this activity through tracing and the Leapfrog Scribble and Write, but going through each letter has allowed me to show him the proper way to write the letters he wasn't forming correctly.  He enjoys it. 

K likes to make words and then work on the sounds/letters

M has really been studying the measuring spoons and cups lately and playing with his stacking cups more.  He is also doing a little less rearranging.  Mommy is happy about that. 

To top off the week, the children (and Mommy and Poppy) were thrilled to be able to spend some time with friends from Tampa.  The Dads took the older ones to the FSU Garnet and Gold game, while the Moms relaxed at home with the little ones.

Water Bead Fun!

The kids have really enjoyed the water beads that a friend of mine (Thanks Flo!) gave us (You can purchase these from the dollar store; they are usually on the aisle with the bath salts, bath soaps, etc.) .  K and G have both enjoyed working with them.  It has also given me the opportunity to see their personalities at work.  

K enjoys sorting the beads by color (the containers in the first picture are from our stacking cups; I found the small containers at CVS with their dollar deal items).  This work affords K the chance to work on his sorting skills as well as his fine motor skills.  It's fun and funny to watch him at work.  K will only touch the beads with a measuring spoon/measuring cup because he really does not care for the way they feel (they are sort of slippery). Even when they fall into the tray, he uses a measuring spoon to retrieve them. He's also very particular about the way he transfers them. He likes to sort all the beads of one color before moving on to the next, so he has to push other beads out of the way.  He's like his mother =).

K at work



The finished product with the small containers

G will sort them by color for about two minutes, then she just places them into the containers and takes joy in moving them from container to container.  She also enjoys opening and closing the little containers.  In contrast to K, digs right into the beads with her hands.  The water beads are one of the first activities she chooses almost every day. I have also given her measuring spoons/cups and additional containers to use while she works with the beads.

G at work (probably right before she is done with color sorting and simply dives in with those hands). 

Fun and easy! 

The Week in Review (April 2nd)

We had another fun week at the Jeune house.  These are some of the highlights. The kids worked on memorizing Psalm 23:5a.   Because it is the week we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, my husband and I wanted to make sure we spent some time focusing on that.  The family used a modified version of the Resurrection eggs, making it appropriate for our children.  We only used 8 eggs.  Here is the breakdown of what was in them:

1. Palm leaves (we used some leaves from some faux flowers we have at the house): John 12: 12-13
2. Bread: Mark 14:22
3. Silver coins (we used three dimes): Matthew 26:14; 27:3
4.  Cross: John 19:17-18a
5. Sign that read, "The King of the Jews: Matthew 27:37
6. Sponge: John 19:28-30
7. Stone (we used a rock from our construction sensory tub): Mark 15:46
8.  Nothing (He is risen!): Luke 24:6

Our little egg carton

The kids have really enjoyed opening the eggs and seeing what was inside.  They looked forward to this activity every evening.  In conjunction with the eggs, we read a children's book that chronicles Jesus' life..  We trust that God is moving in the children's hearts as we talk about him and his ultimate sacrifice.  My husband leads our family in this activity before the kids go to bed.

We also did an activity that I found here on Confessions of a...Homeschooler. It was pretty easy, and the kids enjoyed it.  You only need clear contact paper, tissue paper, scissors, tape and a sharpie or dry erase marker/crayon (I decided to use the dry erase tool because it allowed me to erase the cutting lines).  We also got to reinforce our cross discussion and talk about why eggs are used to celebrate Easter. 

G working

The finished product!

I thought this would be a good week to work on coin recognition since we would be talking about Judas and the "silver coins" he took as payment to turn over Jesus. I got the nomenclature printables here from Counting Coconuts (the link is near the end of the post).  When I first introduced this activity, K wasn't very interested, but then I added this cute little song "Coin Order" I found on Growing Up Centsible, and he was much more open to the activity and chose to do it two of the three days I offered it.  Even G enjoys singing the song. 

Cards and coins

K sorting coins

We also had fun outside using our sidewalk chalk on the deck.  K's writing is getting better and better everyday, and G had fun simply coloring and asking me to write her name.  She's really into that.  M liked the chalk a little too much as he tried to eat it, so that was the end of his holding the chalk =). 

Enjoy your Resurrection/Easter weekend!  Our King is Risen!

The Week in Review (March 26th)

This week was another fun week at the Jeune house.  My Mom, niece, and nephew came into town as we celebrated my birthday Sunday, so the kids had the chance to spend much more time outdoors with them.  They also got to build structures out of marshmellows and toothpicks, an idea I got from The Big Book of Primary Physical Science: Motion, Magnets and More by Adrienne Mason (checked this book I checked out from our local library).

Here are more of the higlights.

Here is some practical life work as K helped Poppy wash the car.

K rinsing the car

K worked chose some pages out of his workbooks to complete. He really enjoys writing.

K working on his uppercase letters

G enjoyed opening and closing the eggs and matching them with each other by color.

M has begun to try to place one stacking cup on top of the other.  He has had some success with it too =)

We also had lots of fun with our friends who brought water beads for us to enjoy (Thanks Flo!).  G loved touching the beads, K not so much.  He does not like the slippery feel of them, though he did do some pouring and scooping with them later on that day since it didn't involve touching the beads.

All in all, we had a wonderful week.  Glad I get to enjoy this with my children.