Doo enjoyed her first class on the woodworking bus.
Today she made a name plate out of wood and used sandpaper and a saw for the first time. The teachers also discussed various tools. This is a 6 part series so she will be attending the class until mid-November.
Our two homeschool co-ops have started. Tuesday’s began classes while Wednesday’s was a fun, “welcome” day with those classes will beginning next week.
On Tuesdays, our secular co-op takes place at a beautiful church and there are several classes taking place each hour. She is currently signed up for 4 classes but they may add a morning yoga class which we will definitely join if it happens.
Doo started the day off in her cooking class where she made delicious waffles.
Lunch was very busy and loud – she was pretty fascinated by all the hubbub. After lunch was free time and she enjoyed playing hide-n-seek with new friends.
After lunch is a laid-back games class. I hope this mellow time helps her maintain her energy for the day since it’s packed full.
Her final class is called Odyssey of the Mind which is actually a world wide creative problem solving program for kids Kindergarten – college age. I think she will really like it and benefit from the teamwork.
Wednesday’s co-op was a meet and greet plus a few fun activities. Everyone was really nice and welcoming. The kids tye dyed t-shirts, which was a first for us, and then created “snow” which was a huge hit.
And, note to self, wear gloves next time there’s a tye dye activity. Yup – my hands are stained blue and red and I’m told it won’t fully wash away until the weekend!
We unfortunately spent the Summer Solstice indoors since Mama is sick but it was still a good day. We re-watched both Toy Stories in preparation for seeing the third one (probably this weekend.)
Every solstice/equinox we get Doo a new book about that season. This morning we read her new Summer Solstice book.
After her rest time, we made window stars. I was inspired by this old post and followed the directions here. The sun rays look very pretty through the star colors.
We started rowing a new book today called Lentil by Robert McCloskey.
We are pretty much done with Five in a Row, at least for a while, but I wanted to row Lentil since it takes place in a (fictional) small town in Ohio. Our good friend L lives in a small Ohio town (Doo calls her Tia) so I thought it would be fun to learn more about Ohio and small town life. Tia sent a whole package of Ohio info to us plus she had given Doo an Ohio ABC book a couple of years ago. We’ll probably talk about Ohio this weekend.
In the story, Lentil learns how to play a harmonica. We watched Mommy’s favorite male singer, Neil Young, play one during a song and then Doo put on a long performance with her plastic harmonica. In fact, it still is going on as I type this…
We’ve been taking it easy here due to illness but yesterday we did walk some videos on YouTube showing high wire walking.
Yesterday Doo made a little Madeline craft and then we watched My Fair Madeline which was a short animated movie that we got free through Netflix streaming (Xbox.)
Earlier in the day we had a picnic – I like this spot because it’s almost always deserted and Doo can explore far off from me while I keep an eye on her. She had fun finding birds in trees, playing with sticks, looking over our nature books and finding ladybugs. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm day.
Photo from yesterday’s field trip.
Today we covered a few things I had not gotten to in the last few days. Papa sent us a couple of sites so we read more about birds and, specifically, owls. Plus we read a bit about a newfound dinosaur in the evolutionary path of a bird. I tried to explain evolution to Doo but it seemed a bit mind boggling for a 4 year old to grasp. I do think that the pictures of bird and human evolution helped some, though.
We also made an owl out of paper plates. Doo needs more practice with scissors and we teamed up for the stapling.
Minna’s mother sells quilts to support the family. After the father’s death, she continues to sew them but also makes them with “The Quilting Mothers”. Minna’s new coat is basically quilted together with old scraps and rags.
We watched people make quilts by hand…
…and by machine.
We looked at photos of various quilts as well and then Doo colored her own. Later on, she even called me into her room to show me a drawing of a quilt in one of her books (she’ll still do this for lighthouses!).
We started The Rag Coat today which is about a girl who lives in the Appalachian Mountains. Her father works in the coal mines and eventually dies from “miner’s cough”. The family is poor so the girl, Minna, does not have a coat to wear to school (she goes to school for the first time around age 9). Her mother and her mother’s friends quilt her a coat out of scraps from other sewing projects. Minna loves that each piece has a story to it (baby’s blanket, etc) and shares these stories with her classmates.
I printed out the first template here and ripped up some construction paper for rags. Doo colored the picture and glued the scraps onto the coat to make her own rag coat.
