Outer Space - Weltall

This is what happened after I completely failed a unit on stars for December. Well, maybe not "failed" but miscalculated. As in somehow I forgot December would be so busy I wouldn't have time to breathe, let alone do preschool justice.

So... this is what happened. And it's a lot.  And we're not done.

I now have a schedule for preschool/my day. 7:00 am - 9:00 wake up, breakfast, get dressed, make beds, etc. play. 9:00 Lukas goes down for a nap, school time for the kids. 10:00-30ish, play time. 11:00 am Lukas wakes up, and we usually go run errands. 12:00 lunch. 1:00 nap time/quiet time - my time to clean up and do whatever I want. 2:00 pm, Joshua/Mama time. 3:00 Lukas and Abigail wake up and the kids can play while I do whatever. 4:00 start feeding Lukas dinner. 5:00 Lukas in bed (for the night, I know, this is way too awesome but it's true) 5:30 Derek home and time for dinner. 6:00 Derek and I clean up the kitchen, the kids play or take baths. 6:30-45ish, the kids ready for bed. 7:00 pm the kids are in bed, lights off. And now that I've taken the time to write that down, it will probably change... probably tomorrow.

Anyway, from 9:00 to 10 or 10:30 for the last week or so we have accomplished the following.

We read about astronauts and rockets.

 We built our own rockets

 and we flew to the sun (10...9...8...blast off!) and learned all about it and the basics of a solar system

 And we used this little lantern in the dark to represent the sun while we orbited around it. It was fun spinning around while orbiting saying "Now it's morning, now it's noon, evening, night. Now it's morning, noon, evening, night." I think I got the concept across. You know, what is a day and what is a year, etc.

 We've also visited mercury, venus, earth, and just today mars. Each time we jump in our rockets, blast off, fly around the house, and land on our planet. Joshua makes sure to have his "solar system" map so he knows where he is. Each day we learn a new planet I review the ones we've already talked about.

 Here's some constellation math - aka dot to dots. I'm trying to help Joshua learn the numbers past 10. 11 and 12 are really tricky, but he does ok after that. kind of.

 Here's some more star math. The sum stars are star punch outs that Joshua had to glue in the appropriate spot. He was cute about this. He told me I couldn't say anything while he did it because he wanted to do it on his own - or I was just annoying him or something.

 This is Abigail's math worksheet. She actually did it right, but needed a little coaching to stay on task.

 

So already I've got this out of order. When "lernenzeit" starts we look at our calendar and move our snowflake to the appropriate day, mention what we did yesterday, what we will do tomorrow, and what we are going to do today. Then we move into the kitchen, pull our our Tagebucher, and write a daily entry. These are so far not very creative. After our desk work, then we do our "hands on" stuff. So here is a bunch of our desk work - and the math stuff about was too.

 This is Joshua's Tagebuch. Basically he is talking about how he likes certain characters from his new movie. But the last two days he's started writing out the alphabet on his own, which I think is fantastic.

 Abigail's Tagebuch pretty much revolves around princesses, babies, and loving her mom. I also especially like the line, "I'm learning potty training."

 This was a review Joshua did one day. After awhile he got bored of copying my letters and kind of went off and did his own thing.

 Ok, more focused here. A a and B b for Abigail. I helped her with the first letters.

 This one is Joshua's. He did them all on his own.

 More Arbeitsblaetter. Abigail's job was to color in the fields that had a B in them She decided just to color the B. And the second page was to color the pictures that started with B. She was really mad that she didn't get to color the house.

 Here are most of Joshua's worksheets. His job is to trace the word I wrote and then write it himself. I kind of think this is above his ability, but then again, I suppose my job is to make him stretch out of his comfort zone. I can tell that "d" is going to be a struggle. After he is done writing the word he gets to color the picture.

Another new feature to preschool this year is the integration of a variety of subjects in one unit. Therefore I included Music. Did you know Mozart wrote the music to "Twinkle, Twinkle, little Star"?  Of course, it didn't have those words back when it was composed. Joshua knew this song but Abigail didn't. So we learned it. We talked a little about Mozart. And I found a nice little accompaniment on the piano. It sounds sweet. We also are learning "Ich bin wie ein Stern, der hell leuchtet." I am like a star shining brightly.

 And of course art! What better than Vincent Van Gogh and Starry Night!

 We used Van Gogh's Starry Night to inspire our own versions. Here are Abigail's.

 Here is Joshua's.

 And here is mine. (I'm kind of proud of myself!)

 And of course, history! Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon!

 Ok, I mostly did this on my own. It has been my secret dream in life to make a diarama. My older sisters got to make them in school but I think we moved before I was old enough to make one. I've been dreaming about it ever since. So I made one. (I'm also using this for the cub scouts, so it wasn't entirely a selfish project. Ok, it was. I'm making the cub scouts make diaramas just because it's always been my secret dream.) Joshua did help me paint the planets. He painted earth all by himself, and helped out with Jupiter and Neptune. I'm still sad that Pluto was demoted. Even if it was like 15 years ago or something. Sorry about the glare. I couldn't get rid of it.

 I've already realized there a few photos on my camera that didn't get downloaded onto the laptop in time for this post. But there will assuredly be another post or two on space. 

Another thing we have done is watch a few videos on Youtube. Before we blasted off in our rockets to visit the sun we watched a real space shuttle launch online. Which prompted us further to watch a few other videos.  A lot of stuff out there is junk. However, there is "The Majestic Beauty of the Cosmos" which is amazing! It makes you just stand back in wonder and amazement at what God has created and puts things into perspective of how we know so little. Anyway, google it. It's awesome.

January weeks 1-3

I suppose it's time to post something about what we did in January. 

Looking back, we did more than I thought we did. I guess what I mean is, I was so burned out with December and preoccupied with a handful of other things, that I didn't really plan anything for January. So although it's kind of random and not much to look at, at least it's something. Here it is.

I bought each child a binder, a notebook, 6 folders or so, and pencils of their choice to make their Lernbuecher.  I had great plans for these. But sadly, for the first 3 weeks of January, they just sat in the plastic Walmart bag they came home in.  (Wait for upcoming posts... we're definitely using them now!)

Derek made the children a "Maus Haus."  The idea of a mouse house dates back to when Joshua was maybe barely 2 years or so and we lived in Spanish Fork.  One day I found him behind all my clothes in my big closet and he said he was playing  in a "Maus Haus" back there. So now the term mouse house just refers to any sort of special place or fort. This specific mouse house had been in the planning and prepping stages for at least 2 months before we had all the materials and the design together to put it up. It takes up a TON of room in the kids bedroom. The roof always falls off so they don't use the roof anymore. And they don't actually play in it that much anyway. We'll probably still keep it for another month, just because it took so much time and energy to put up. (It's big enough that I can fit inside along with all three of my kids. It would be kind of a squeeze to get Derek in too, but I bet we could do it.)

Joshua all the sudden got interested in money so I made him some and for an afternoon we just bought and sold the same 6 books back and forth to each other. He was very kind and when I didn't have enough money, he sold me the books back for cheap. 

I almost, but not quite, failed at finishing the alphabet in one year. Technically we talked about every single letter. On "Y" he wore his "Y" jacket. He already knows Y pretty well because there is a huge one on the mountain not too far from us. We talked briefly about Z on the last day of the year. You know, last day, last letter. But that was all.  And for X we played tic-tac-toe.  This was an excellent way to get him to write out a letter. And having the box really helped him write it correctly, instead of writing a "t" or something similar. My favorite is the game where Joshua was the O's and he created another box for himself on top so that he could win. 

 One day Joshua told Abigail they were going to have school so he gave her a piece of paper and told her to start writing letters. This is what he wrote.

 Another fun activity that we've done a few times to solidify letters and building words is playing with the scrabble squares. I like doing this but I'm always a little reserved because I have really fond memories of this particular scrabble game at my Grandma and Grandpa's house out in Benjamin when I was really little. It seemed like that was the summer evening activity. All the adults got together at the little breakfast table and played scrabble. I have such nice memories of that... even though I was too little and was not really ever allowed to play.

 Rummy-O is another good one to work on numbers.  We've also played a little Yahtzee and Uno. I'm sure there is something educational in there somewhere. After one round of Yahtzee Joshua said I could go ahead and just roll for him every time, but he loves Uno and is actually pretty good.

So that is what I accomplished when my mind was occupied elsewhere. I'm a little disappointed at how little brain power I have. Apparently I can't work on too many projects at a time. My brain shuts down at 1 and a half.

But we have been really busy with our Astronomy unit and eventually I'll post about that. I wasn't satisfied with our unit on Stars for December, since we didn't really do anything for it, so I've expanded it along with my approach for pre-school this year.  So far things are going well.

Christmas

 Abigail got this little baby Jesus and manger from nursery the week before Christmas. I thought it was a cute idea. 

Ok, here is our Christmas Day. It started out nice and quite and serene...

 And then two little kids ran out of their bedroom and added a little more energy to the mood.

 Opening stockings.

 Opening presents (the rug was also a present... we don't generally have a rug like that in our living room)

 Abigail got a pink princess dress, a tiara, and a wand (on the ground) that she has worn it every single day since Christmas. She wasn't too interested in modeling for us though.

 Here is the aftermath of Christmas morning at our house. The red bucket with a white lid is the gift I gave Derek. It is a honey bucket. 55 lbs of raw local honey. I'm excited to eat it! His gift to me is in the middle of the car carpet. I'll explain at the end of the post.

 At Grammy and Grampy's house after church.

 Abigail and I performed the songs we had practiced during the month. Plus "I am a Child of God" because that is her favorite song and she wanted to keep performing.

 We also performed with Grammy on the recorder and me at the piano.

 And of course we sang "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" with Grammy on the guitar.

 Below is the gift Derek gave me. No matter what I do, I will never be able to outgift him. First of all, he bought me the best rocket stove on the market. It's actually made right here in our hometown. It is 100% stainless steel, weighs 17 lbs, and is awesome. That was a big surprise. But then up in Midway I opened a gift and found this! For months, he and his dad had been building me a chest to keep my rocket stove in and a supply of wood. I didn't know what it was at first. I thought it was a piece of furniture for inside the house because it looked so nice. I feel bad keeping it in the garage. Anyway. It is wonderful and it is so nice to know that if there is an emergency I will actually be able to cook my food storage. Derek is already talking about constructing an oven so I can bake bread without electricity. I understand to some (most) people we may seem a little odd, but come what may, I will NEVER starve. I simply refuse.

 It's even carpeted inside!

 The rocket stove is so heat efficient that you can cook an entire meal with only twigs and dry leaves. Although we have little wood sticks, which are typical for this kind of stove, we could really burn just about anything and have plenty of heat to cook food.

That's all. Merry Christmas.