Grandfather Mountain!

Saturday we got the opportunity to go to Grandfather Mountain! I haven't been since I was a young child and Josh had never been so it was a treat and a blessing to us. It was great family time and an awesome experience for Ryan and Scott as well!

             Ryan kept asking if there was a "Grandmother Mountain". I'm sure there is somewhere??

The kids learned about what a habitat is.

They also learned about how animals in habitats all need water, food, and shelter.

After the lesson they got to play a game where half the group pretended to be deer, and the other half pretended to be food, water, or shelter. It was sort of like a tag game to show how animals are dependent on natural resources.

We saw three bears. (It was nice to see them behind a fence instead of our back yard)!

Josh showing off his "Otter" personality. =)

Watching the Otters swim and play!

Mildred the grandfather Mtn. mascot 

Holding Mildred's paws

On the bridge! It was so windy!

It was a little scary, but really cool!

Funny pose with Mere!

Family pic after we crossed the bridge.

Josh and Ryan went out to the farthest point together.

Scott didn't like the wind.

Awesome weather the whole day.

"Let them praise the name of the Lord,

for his name alone is exalted; 

his majesty is above earth and heaven."

Psalm 148:13

Back across

Amazing!

1 Mile above sea level at this point.

Ready to hit the road.

Rock candy in hand!

Showing some tired eyes here. Ryan got up at 5:45 a.m.

And some cousin fun in Boone to top the day off.

We were pretty loud! =)

What a fun day and what a gift! Praise the Lord for all he has created and the beauty we get to enjoy in his creation daily. 

Dinosaurs!

Last week was dinosaur week here. For 3 days we read about dinosaurs, traced dinosaurs, made dinosaur prints, eat dinosaur eggs, and watched dinosaur shows. I quickly found out that I know very little about dinosaurs! lol - Maybe thats why I don't think this will be my favorite theme of the summer. I think the boys had fun though and it certainly kept them active, engaged, and learning! Here are a few photos from our week!

Sensory table - I totally thought this would be a hit and after the first day, they really did not care for it anymore. 

I worked so hard! =)

Dinosaur foot prints in playdoh.

This is Ryan's phonics workbook - not related to dinosaurs.

Scott was pouring rice into different containers and Ryan was working on a puzzle here. The rice was everywhere at the end of the day and I vowed that rice will not be used anymore. lol =)

Puzzle work

Tracing 

Dinosaur color match up - All the dinosaurs are cut in half and he had to match them up. This is really more for Scott, but I couldn't ever get Scott interested. 

Dinosaur egg sort.

Dinosaur egg graphing

And of course Dinosaur egg eating!

Q-tip painting - They are suppose to make dots in the circles to complete. I demonstrated that at the top of his page, but he seemed to have his own plan for the dinosaur. =) 

This is before Ryan decided to break out of the mold and just paint the whole thing brown. lol =)

Had to share this - Scott outside saying, "Go away..Leave me alone" (which means he's pooping) lol Working on that.

One of Ryan's trays - Circle all letter D's.

Tracing practice 

Cutting practice

Scott building by himself.

This seemed a little cumbersome so I changed it and only gave him 3 dinosaurs to put the correct number and color paper clip on. 

Hard worker!

Fine motor skills!

My mom is the paper mache queen. She can make almost anything so she made us these dinosaurs to paint and add eyes and spikes to.

Paint was everywhere!

Perfecting our Apatosaurus.

And painting ourselves! We are still working on finishing these and adding the eyes and spikes.

It was a busy, but fun 3 days of learning. Excited about the memories made. This week's theme is plants! Should be fun. I'm excited!

Ready for the summer!

This has been a crazy busy week here. But such a fun week. This week we started back doing school. I know, I know, everyone is finishing school so why are we starting back?? Well, we haven't done school here for several weeks. I really needed to step back, refocus and evaluate things. Also, I just finished up two online classes to renew my teaching certification. Potty training on top of that and well, I just needed a break.

During my break I had the God given opportunity to take a preschool class (even though that's not what my certification is in). That class totally has changed my view of teaching Ryan here at home. It gave me tons of resources and ideas to use this coming year. Along with that I have been doing some major research on "Tot school" for Scott. Trying to teach Ryan with a 2 year old throwing crayons across the room has been a challenge and disheartening at times. I knew something needed to change and I didn't want to miss valuable time with Scott while I was pre-schooling Ryan. After thinking, researching, planning, and lots of learning I am ready to go for the summer.

My reasoning for doing school in the summer is to keep the kids active, mentally engaged in something fun, and have new and exciting experiences for the three of us together. It really isn't for academic purposes although that will be a side benefit.

 I am doing school with the kiddos 3 days out of the week. More than that is just too much. For those 3 days we will have a fun theme that the boys have an interest in already. This past weeks theme was camping. We had a blast! All of the phonics games, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, songs, number sense activities, science etc. all revolved around camping. Here are some pictures from our week!

Here are Scott's tot trays I set up for the week. The goal is for the trays to be fun and engaging for him.  NOT forced or pushed. This has been different for me since I am use to teaching school aged children. Today, when we were doing these Scott totally peaced out and said, "Bye bye, I'm going to work. I'll be back later." My initial reaction was to say, "Come here! We aren't done! - But instead I just said, "Ok, see you later!" and he came back in a few minutes. He can graze through the trays that he's interested in and I can initiate meaningful and educational conversations with him through the manipulatives.

Smore phonics with Ryan. Matching the picture to the beginning letter sound.

Fine motor skills with mini marshmallows

Handprint camp fire

Smores ofcourse!

Yum! 

Mosquito tracing!

 Print awareness - Cheerio puzzle

Beans to pour into different containers and explore. They soooo didn't stay in the tray! 

Tangram fun! Ryan loves these!

Positional word coloring with tents.

Camp fire snack with grapes, pretzels, and cheese! They liked this so much we did it again the next day!

Then we had to set our tent up!

And of course we needed a camp fire with marshmallows to roast!

Yum!

They loved pretending that they were real! They also pretended to go fishing with their fishing rods and kill a deer with their guns for dinner!

This was a beautiful moment. They both played with Legos for like 30 minutes while I was prepping something. So rare!

Ran out of time and didn't get to this activity. Was going to have them hop from one letter to the next while music was on and then stop the music and have them freeze and tell me what letter they are on. (Scott can tell me the color, not the letter yet).

This is Scott's book corner. It has only tot books in it. 

This is our calendar area. I did have a table there, but got rid of it and put the bean bag there instead so they can reach everything on the wall. I love it! The room has a built in ledge which I always thought was weird, but now it serves as a perfect pre-school book shelf!

I definitely still have a lot to learn about how to teach a 4 year old and a toddler and things weren't always smooth and as I had planned (there were some tears along the way that weren't caught on camera!), but we all had a fun 3 days learning about camping! Next theme is Dinosaurs!