Earth Day Recycle Space Craft

My daughter was born on Earth Day. This year she was very excited about the Earth Day/ Commander Chris Hadfield in Space contest on TVO kids, requesting kids to send in a photo of a space craft made from recycled materials. All week, they extracted materials from the blue box recycle bin and this is what they came up with! All I did to help was precut lots and lots of tape!

Blast off!

This might have really inspired AJ to consider a future career as an Astronaut. Remember that all along, he was very determined to be a Helicopter Pilot and nothing else. Well this week at school is "Je veux devenir" week with show and tell and career visits from moms and dads. AJ recently decided that he would like to be an Astronaut. Why?  "So I can see aliens and talk to them. I'm going to take a picture of the aliens and send them to you Maggie. And I'm going to come back home to see daddy after"

 

Quand je serai grand, je veux devenir astronaut!



Cute Things Kids Say

Overheard in our household...

TECHNOLOGY
Maggie: The people on TV have eyes but can they see me?
Maggie: AJ, you can't play on the ipod all day or your eyeballs are going to fall off
Maggie: Hypothesis, correct! Magnets stick to metal.

PRETEND PLAY
Kids: Mom, we're Scientis-ing
Lincoln: Can I bring the rein-dogs on the "obricot cot"? (He meant obstacle course, from the Barbie Christmas movie)

DAILY LIFE
AJ: Mom this is the best best dinner ever in the whole universe! (meatloaf)
Maggie: After we're done "tsak-nga"-ing can we play? (tsak nga is Chinese for brushing teeth)
Lincoln: Mom, your bum is pretty (I was wearing patterned jeans)
Lincoln: Mom your bum is not pretty (I changed into regular blue jeans)
Maggie: Mom, you lay out really cute babies!
Lincoln to Mary: Goodnight Happy-face!
AJ: How come you never sleep? You're doing too much work after we are asleep. You have to sleep when we sleep so you won't be so tired and sleep too long in the morning and you make us miss church!

NAMING THINGS
Lincoln: Po-nato. means tornado
He mixes up chicken and kitchen
Mary: bok bok (rooster)
Maggie: Is Palestine a city or a country? (we met a neighbor who's from there)

GRAMMAR
Lincoln: I'm gommabe make you a present
Lincoln: The orange is ate-en (means eaten)
Lincoln: For Christmas I'm gonmabe give you Arbonne for your present because you love Arbonne..
Maggie: I survey the room

Baby Handprint Crafts

It was my first visit to the new Stork Club baby group. I used to love going to mommy and baby groups with my first born, but when number two and three came along, it was such a big task to get there on time. Now with number four and on her own at home, it is so refreshing to experience that new baby time and mommy again.

This is a very neat sensory activity for spring time!

Baby Handprint Craft

Flower Petal handprint craft. According to the other resource teacher though, this craft is more appropriate a month from now (say 5 months plus) when they can choose to open the palm more readily (at this age, the reflex is to close the fist upon contact with any object, ie paint!)

Baby Foot Stomp

The flower petal craft should've been done with foot prints! Anyway this is Mary's first foot print. Baby wipes at the ready.

Money Cents

My son loves Math, he doesn't know that he loves it but he certainly does. I know he's only 4 years old and he's my son so I just think he's super smart because he can do "adding and minus-ing" as he calls it.  (Though my husband the over achiever said that in Hong Kong and most of Asia, children his age know the multiplication table by heart to 12x12). Anyways... he'll spend half an hour at his desk in his room, working on a  math worksheet, be it addition or subtraction, that comes with a colour by number activity.  Of course he could be motivated by earning the 20 minutes of ipod time on weekends only.

He's also very interested in money and identification of the currency. What a great and tangible way to encourage or reinforce so many math concepts - counting my fives, trading pennies for dimes and dimes for loonies (working with tens) etc.

I was able to teach him the "value" of money. For example
Penny - what can I penny buy these days?
Nickle - one plastic bag at the store or one jellybean
Quarter - one Timbit
Loonie - one coffee
Twonie - one hamburger
Five dollars - one Happy Meal
Ten dollars - a Pizza

What Did Mommy do Today?

Today was a day different than most school days because Maggie and AJ were home sick with coughs and sniffles; not a terrible kind of sick but enough to make AJ take a rest in bed for most of the morning and for Maggie to use up boxes of Kleenex's.

Easter Crafts - Dollar Store

AJ used to believe that a no-school day would be like a Saturday with access to the ipod, wii, unlimited movie and TV time (a mistake I might've made in the past). However I wanted this day to be a bit more structured and it turned out almost like a school day with me as the Teacher and these two trouble makers as knowledge seekers. To top it all off, I even had time for a short nap and to do some work too.

0630h Wakeup
0730h Breakfast done; Brush Teeth and Change Clothes
0745h Play time (usually that is the time to get into boots and Snow pants)
0805h Keep playing (usually that is the time to start walking to the bus stop)

0900h TV Time 45 min (I already asked them to wait till 9am for once! I fed the baby and took a little nap)
1000h House Chores with little helpers! I even changed the batteries on the smoke detectors and replaced some light bulbs that blew.
1100h Math and Games Time (Bee Hive Game - tens, counting by twos, quantities) and a Pizza in the oven!
1130h Crayon Art and Free Sketching
1145h Science Experiments - making a hypothesis, observations, and a conclusion. (This could be a whole new post, but Maggie was verifying that magnets only stick to metal surfaces and not anything else)

1200h Lunch
1300h more Crayon Art and Free Sketching
1330h Play time
1400h Movie Time 45 min (they watched a cartoon story about the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, while I fed the baby and prepped dinner, printing work sheets)
1500h Snack Time
(1530h School Bus arrives on a normal school day)
1600h Easter Crafts (Mary's classical music CD is playing)
1700h TV Time 30 min (gives me some time to cook and setup dinner)

1730h Dinner Time/ Snacks/ Fruit
1830h Play Time
1900h Bath Time/ Story Time
1930h Baby Sleeps
2000h Kids Sleep/ Fold Laundry/ Pack Kids Lunches

2100h Practise Piano 1 hour
2200h Night Routine/ Computer time
2300h Lights Out (until little people start waking up)

And that's a really good day without too much yelling, screaming, fighting or crying. We covered everything including a bit of Math, Science, Arts and Crafts, countless wholesome snacks, and even some Religion. Not sure if I could do that everyday and run a home school! I would've liked to fit in some music time and a French movie or book.

I feel like I need to rewrite the words to that poem, "What did you do Today?" since that's the same question my husband asked me today when he came back home from work.

DAY 2 @ HOME
0830h Piano practise for Mommy
0900h Piano Lesson for AJ and music writing
1000h Professional Development

Noon Lunch
1300h Kid Chefs! (AJ helps me make the meat loaf)
1400h Movie Time
1500h Reading
1530h Pickup Maggie from the Bus
1600h Snack Time/ Play Time
1700h TV Time

My goals that day were to fit in the piano lesson for AJ that we've missed for ages, and to really minimize the TV time. That used to be a problem for me but I realized that I just had to engage him to work on tasks together, such as cooking dinner and that really made the hour pass by so pleasantly!

The Talk

The World According to Preschoolers (continued)

Some day it will inevitably come up that I will have to give the complete answer to my kids questions about where do babies come from. For now, they have bits and pieces of true and factual information but not quite the entire picture for obvious reasons because I choose to give age appropriate answers.

While parking our car in the packed church parking lot, we saw a family walking by with seven kids all under the age of 7 for sure. I blurted out in shock, "Wow that mom has seven kids!!" and my daughter heard me and she spoke out in shock as well, "What? Why did that mom eat so much food?"

I had to laugh because I realized that her understanding of human reproduction at this point was asexual, though incorrect.

Known Facts

Humans are mammals.  She's seen me pregnant three times already, and how I went to the hospital with a giant belly and returned home with a wee little baby.

I have a belly button because I was attached to my mommy with the umbilical cord.

The deal with the egg and sperm, joining up to make a zygote, embryo, fetus and baby etc.

The mom has the egg, the dad has the sperm.

Boys have penises, girls have vaginas, for peeing.

People usually have kids after they get married, so according to her I got married four times!

When you eat a lot of food, your tummy gets really big and fat. As well, when the mommy eats, the baby inside gets big and strong.

Conclusion
Therefore, the mom surely ate a lot of food to grow 7 children! Well no matter which way or how it happened, seven children sounds pretty scary to me!

What Did You Do Today

It's the first day of spring break and the kiddies were at Art Camp. I asked them, what did you do today. Answer: Crafts, mom! Well this is for all the other days when I asked the same question and I got a less informative answer.

Art for Everyone:
Imagination Factory

WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY POEM

When children come home at the end of the day.
The question they're asked as they scurry to play is:
"Tell me what did you do at school today?"
And the answer they give makes you smile with dismay
"Nothing! I did nothing today!"

Perhaps nothing means that I played in the sand, or
Played with the teacher in our own band.
Maybe I painted a picture of red or blue
Or I heard a story about an elephant that flew.

Maybe I played with the play dough today
Or went outside to the playground to play.
Maybe today was the very first time
That my scissors followed a very straight line.

Maybe I led a song from beginning to end,
Or played with a special, brand new friend.
When you're only four and your heart has wings
"Nothing" can mean so many things.

Author Unknown