I'm sorry, I should have posted this last weekend, but we were all trying to get over being sick.
Two weeks ago we learned about the digestive system and the letter P as in popcorn and "peas porridge hot" (in case you thought there was another sound for the letter P, I guess).
But we all got really sick. Mostly with colds, but after 3 or 4 days of Kaleb having super goopeys eyes with no end in sight I figured it was time to at least take him in to the doc. Pink eye. hooray. And that night when I got Joshua up to use the bathroom one of his eyes was nice and goopy/crusty. Pink eye strikes again. Luckily, no one else got it, although we were all paranoid and even Derek and I used some of the drops occasionally when our eyes started to hurt (the doc said that was fine and actually encouraged us to do so since pink eye is so contagious). Kaleb was also on a strong dose of antibiotics for a ear infection pink eye combination. Apparently amoxocillin isn't good enough for that. After the eyes were looking better and the noses were less runny, the rashes and the sore throats began. Abigail, who didn't even get a cold or pink eye got the rash. I'm not quite sure how that worked, but it made her the most miserable.
Anyway, I suppose I can stop with the health update now. That's not really what this post is about, but it is kind of important because we didn't do a whole lot two weeks ago with homeschool. And even preschool was just one day, since I found out Wednesday night about the pink eye and had to cancel early Thursday morning.
What I can remember from that week - apparently I have a pretty short memory - is below.
For preschool I had planned the first day to talk about popcorn and the letter P. We had a very informative book about popcorn that I thought was going to bore the kids out of their mind, but they all sat at the edge of their... pieces of the carpet and were totally entranced. In fact, even while doing the little coloring sheet (practice writing P and p and then color the pictures that start with "p") two of the children were so into it I had to come up with some other activity to keep the rest busy until the two were finished. We played "which do you prefer" which is the same game as "would you rather" but I altered to to add a new word to their vocabulary... and prefer starts with p. Believe it or not all the kids prefer watching movies over reading books. Well, they just haven't learned yet what they are missing.
For our snack we had party popcorn and peanut butter popcorn. The first time I made party popcorn I about gagged. Not really. But it was so sweet it kind of made my teeth hurt. Then we ate it all and I had to make another batch. Typical. The peanut butter popcorn was good, but not a sugary as the party popcorn and therefore, once the preschool kids had tried the party popcorn they all decided the pb popcorn they had just been raving about wasn't good and they wouldn't eat it anymore. Except my kids. They will eat anything that isn't salad.
Then we glued a bunch of regular popped popcorn onto big pieces of paper and played a lot. Play starts with P. I figure that counts as being educational. So educational in fact, that the girls played Princesses and the boys used the legos to put a Pirate in Prison. See, this P thing really sunk in.
Thursday we were going to have mini pancakes with peach jam on them for snack and learn the hand clapping game that goes with the rhyme Peas Porridge Hot, and there was a coloring page in there too, but like I said, we cancelled.
Alright, enough preschool.
Our study of the digestive system wasn't as interesting as I thought it was going to be. Two or three years ago when we tackled it I remember making digestive juices in a baggy and watching our breakfast digest - in essence the baggy looked like it was filled with vomit and it was disgusting. We then all got sick and there really was a lot of vomiting going on at our house... sickness I guess goes with this subject at our house.
Let's just continue. We didn't have time to go to the bigger library and the ONE book about the digestive system was checked out at our smaller more local library but they did have a DVD of the Magic School Bus and one of the episodes on the DVD had elements of the digestive system on there. The video editors maneuvered around what happens to the remains in your GI tract after you've gotten all the nutrients out that you need, but the kids know what happens anyway. And since they were sick, the kids got to watch all the episodes on the DVD because they didn't feel well. Also, I had checked out that same book a week or so earlier, so we read the book first and then watched the movie. Kind of redundant, but watching movies sometimes feels like cheating, even if they are very educational. Also, the kids colored and labeled a diagram of the digestive system afterwards.
Later in the week we figured out how long our digestive system would be if we uncoiled all those small intestines. Twenty four feet! That is pretty long. In fact, it is longer than my living room so we had to go from northwest corner to southeast corner to get it all the fit. (And then we hung it up in the downstairs play/learning room from northeast to southwest.)
Sorry. I thought I had taken pictures of our digestive system diagram and the lab sheet we used to calculate our digestive system - you can find them both through Pandia Press try before you by - but i guess I didn't.
Since we were already taking a trip to our local little library I let the kids play on the computers. That was educational. Joshua found a game about the human body so he played that for awhile.
And finally, by this point I'm pretty sure (crossing my fingers) the kids weren't contagious anymore, we went to the city's production of Beauty and the Beast! My former running buddies daughter (she was also our former babysitter when I would go running with Kim) was Belle and she was fantastic. Really, absolutely wonderful. Lukas was on the edge of his seat. He had never been to the theater before and it was so exciting for him. Abigail sat on my lap and halfway through the show she started kissing my hands (I know this sounds really weird but when she is really happy she just wants to share the good feelings and since my hands were in her lap she just lifted them up and started giving them kisses!) so I'm pretty confident the kids had a very good time. However, they were all obviously still getting over their illnesses because right when it ended they all just wanted to go straight home, eat dinner, and go right to bed. It was 3:00 pm.
We didn't end up learning about the Mayans at all since we all felt so crummy I didn't really have a good plan anyway. It just sort of worked out better that way.
Two weeks ago we learned about the digestive system and the letter P as in popcorn and "peas porridge hot" (in case you thought there was another sound for the letter P, I guess).
But we all got really sick. Mostly with colds, but after 3 or 4 days of Kaleb having super goopeys eyes with no end in sight I figured it was time to at least take him in to the doc. Pink eye. hooray. And that night when I got Joshua up to use the bathroom one of his eyes was nice and goopy/crusty. Pink eye strikes again. Luckily, no one else got it, although we were all paranoid and even Derek and I used some of the drops occasionally when our eyes started to hurt (the doc said that was fine and actually encouraged us to do so since pink eye is so contagious). Kaleb was also on a strong dose of antibiotics for a ear infection pink eye combination. Apparently amoxocillin isn't good enough for that. After the eyes were looking better and the noses were less runny, the rashes and the sore throats began. Abigail, who didn't even get a cold or pink eye got the rash. I'm not quite sure how that worked, but it made her the most miserable.
Anyway, I suppose I can stop with the health update now. That's not really what this post is about, but it is kind of important because we didn't do a whole lot two weeks ago with homeschool. And even preschool was just one day, since I found out Wednesday night about the pink eye and had to cancel early Thursday morning.
What I can remember from that week - apparently I have a pretty short memory - is below.
For preschool I had planned the first day to talk about popcorn and the letter P. We had a very informative book about popcorn that I thought was going to bore the kids out of their mind, but they all sat at the edge of their... pieces of the carpet and were totally entranced. In fact, even while doing the little coloring sheet (practice writing P and p and then color the pictures that start with "p") two of the children were so into it I had to come up with some other activity to keep the rest busy until the two were finished. We played "which do you prefer" which is the same game as "would you rather" but I altered to to add a new word to their vocabulary... and prefer starts with p. Believe it or not all the kids prefer watching movies over reading books. Well, they just haven't learned yet what they are missing.
For our snack we had party popcorn and peanut butter popcorn. The first time I made party popcorn I about gagged. Not really. But it was so sweet it kind of made my teeth hurt. Then we ate it all and I had to make another batch. Typical. The peanut butter popcorn was good, but not a sugary as the party popcorn and therefore, once the preschool kids had tried the party popcorn they all decided the pb popcorn they had just been raving about wasn't good and they wouldn't eat it anymore. Except my kids. They will eat anything that isn't salad.
 |
| party popcorn - just add melted white chocolate or almond bark and party sprinkles |
 |
| PB popcorn - just add melted butter, melted peanut butter, and sprinkle with powdered sugar |
Then we glued a bunch of regular popped popcorn onto big pieces of paper and played a lot. Play starts with P. I figure that counts as being educational. So educational in fact, that the girls played Princesses and the boys used the legos to put a Pirate in Prison. See, this P thing really sunk in.
Thursday we were going to have mini pancakes with peach jam on them for snack and learn the hand clapping game that goes with the rhyme Peas Porridge Hot, and there was a coloring page in there too, but like I said, we cancelled.
Our study of the digestive system wasn't as interesting as I thought it was going to be. Two or three years ago when we tackled it I remember making digestive juices in a baggy and watching our breakfast digest - in essence the baggy looked like it was filled with vomit and it was disgusting. We then all got sick and there really was a lot of vomiting going on at our house... sickness I guess goes with this subject at our house.
Let's just continue. We didn't have time to go to the bigger library and the ONE book about the digestive system was checked out at our smaller more local library but they did have a DVD of the Magic School Bus and one of the episodes on the DVD had elements of the digestive system on there. The video editors maneuvered around what happens to the remains in your GI tract after you've gotten all the nutrients out that you need, but the kids know what happens anyway. And since they were sick, the kids got to watch all the episodes on the DVD because they didn't feel well. Also, I had checked out that same book a week or so earlier, so we read the book first and then watched the movie. Kind of redundant, but watching movies sometimes feels like cheating, even if they are very educational. Also, the kids colored and labeled a diagram of the digestive system afterwards.
Later in the week we figured out how long our digestive system would be if we uncoiled all those small intestines. Twenty four feet! That is pretty long. In fact, it is longer than my living room so we had to go from northwest corner to southeast corner to get it all the fit. (And then we hung it up in the downstairs play/learning room from northeast to southwest.)
Sorry. I thought I had taken pictures of our digestive system diagram and the lab sheet we used to calculate our digestive system - you can find them both through Pandia Press try before you by - but i guess I didn't.
Since we were already taking a trip to our local little library I let the kids play on the computers. That was educational. Joshua found a game about the human body so he played that for awhile.
And finally, by this point I'm pretty sure (crossing my fingers) the kids weren't contagious anymore, we went to the city's production of Beauty and the Beast! My former running buddies daughter (she was also our former babysitter when I would go running with Kim) was Belle and she was fantastic. Really, absolutely wonderful. Lukas was on the edge of his seat. He had never been to the theater before and it was so exciting for him. Abigail sat on my lap and halfway through the show she started kissing my hands (I know this sounds really weird but when she is really happy she just wants to share the good feelings and since my hands were in her lap she just lifted them up and started giving them kisses!) so I'm pretty confident the kids had a very good time. However, they were all obviously still getting over their illnesses because right when it ended they all just wanted to go straight home, eat dinner, and go right to bed. It was 3:00 pm.
We didn't end up learning about the Mayans at all since we all felt so crummy I didn't really have a good plan anyway. It just sort of worked out better that way.
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