Box Day 2014

Oh, what a happy day! Our school materials were delivered to us this morning. The children tore into the box and squealed with delight. Andrew skimmed through the books, but stopped short at his new Bible. He loves it so much, I think, he will sleep with it tonight.

I will be reading the teaching tips tonight. Thankfully, Sonlight makes it easy on teachers by having everything super organized. I am pretty confident, we will be able to start our 2014/2015 school year on Monday.

Patience Card Games

This idea came out of the blue. I grew up playing patience card games and loved them. It did build up my patience (somewhat) and also integrity - what's the point of cheating in solitaire? 
Andrew wanted to play card games with me today. I had to tell him, I had no time. But I had enough time to teach him a couple of the easiest patience games. Saara brought out a deck, too, and learned a watered-down version of solitaire. The main thing - they had fun!

Making and Sending a Birthday Card

Today, we spent some time making a birthday card, and then, learning how to properly prepare the envelope for mailing.

Take a medicine cap and trace circles out of color paper.

Circle is one of the trickiest shapes to cut out.

Line the circles up, add some googly-eyes, and draw legs and feelers.

Pretty simple and and pretty cute.

 

Learn where to write the sender's address and where to write the recipient's address.

What do you say in a birthday card?

One more vital detail.

A Puppt Show

One morning Andrew and Saara brought out a box of craft sticks. An hour later they had built a 'stage' and some puppets and proceeded to put on a full show with some ingenious stage effects. All done by themselves. I just took pictures.

Getting Ready for Next School Year

I was ready for a few days of reorganizing and packing of the old school materials. Surprisingly enough, I spent only a couple of hours cleaning out the bookshelf and the supplies cupboard. I made a pile of materials to give away. We are really, really done with preK and K. 
Kind of sad. 

A Pillowcase Dress

On a trip to the Joann's store Saara picked up a free tutorial of a pillowcase dress. She bugging me for weeks to make it. So, finally, we brought out the fabric and, with some help from me and Andrew, she sewed herself a pretty summer dress.

A&M Physics Show.

Once again, we had a fun afternoon at the library. For the first time, Andrew and Saara were able to watch and participate in the university's physics show. A lot of the information Dr. Tatiana gave was above Andrew's and Saara's head, but we did find some demonstrations right up their alley - things that we had talked about and tested in our own science classes.

A lot of the demonstrations involved liquid nitrogen. Making the cloud was the most popular one.

Saara got to help out with one of the demonstrations. This one showed that the faster airflow on top of the paper lifts the paper up - something we tried and talked about when studying how airplanes fly.

Andrew trying his hand at an experiment.