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From Law School to Homeschool

~ A California Lawyer Homeschool Blog

From Law School to Homeschool

Category Archives: Art

Valentines

04 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by calawmama in Art, Emerging Curriculum, Fun!, Homeschool

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Tags

arts, crafts, Valentines day

So I may have mentioned that we wi be visiting some seniors in an assisted care facility this week with one of our homeschool groups. (How wonderful is that??!!!!! I get really joyful just thinking about it :)) Anyway, today after visiting some older relatives of our own, we headed to the local craft store, which is quickly becoming one of the girls’ favorites. They go nuts for anything pink/purple and/or sparkly.

They talked me into all kinds of sparkly felt, foam, and heart shaped things of all different sizes and materials.

After we got home, even though it was almost time for dinner, the girls were so excited that they couldn’t wait to get started, so they were able to start working on a couple. I underestimated the amount of work I would have to do (I.e. cutting out all the heart shapes from plain rectangles), but you know what? That’s fine with me. I love crafting with my girls, and I know they really enjoy it too– they are especially excited to give things they’ve made to others, and I’m sure their creations will bring joy to the seniors and their friends who they will also be making them for.

Additionally, one of the packs of foam conversation hearts we picked up has acronyms I can personally appreciate, such as “LOL” and “tweet me,” so perhaps I’ll have to get going on some for my mom friends as well. Watch out!

Until then, pink and purple glitter glue for all!

Update, here are the valentines the girls made. 15 of them will come with us tomorrow, the rest will be for hs friends and family 🙂

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Fine Motor Skill Roundup

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by calawmama in Art, Education by Osmosis, Emerging Curriculum, Fun!, Homeschool

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beads, crafts, Fine motor skills, practical life, preschool activities, shelling nuts

I thought is write a post about some of the fine motor skill activities we have been doing in case there is someone out there also trying to work with their little kids. I feel like these may by be that strait forward, and thus might provide a change of pace.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of a Pinterest addict. I basically pin almost every fun looking activity for kids that I see on there, and hope to eventually get back to it, so I know these types of blog posts do sometimes actually get read and/or used! Yay!

Sorting Pom Poms

This is one of those things I know I had a picture of the kids doing, but now can’t find, ugh! Anyway, I’ve seen this pin on Pinterest where you have your kids put a certain number of goldfish in a section of an empty egg carton, based on the number written in the section. Here’s the problem, my kids always eat the goldfish, or any other edible food for that matter. So, as a twist on things, we use the rainbow Pom Poms you can get at target in the dollar section, plus you get to up cycle your empty egg cartons win-win! Aside from doing the counting, I encourage the girls to sort the Poms by color. This is one of my 3 year old’s favorite activities:

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Bead Work

What little kid doesn’t like making things with beads? While both of my girls love it, my 3 year old has immense trouble threading the beads. So I did what any other resourceful mother would do and looked for something that would be easier for her. Enter floral wire:

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It’s much much easier for her, and I can bend the very end of the wire so the beads won’t fall off. I also tend to bend the longer part of the wire so it’s easier for her to thread. Additionally, when the work’s all done, we can just unbend the wire and quickly “pour” the beads back into the container.

Shelling Peanuts

This is one of the activities inspired y the nature of Montessori I encountered when my oldest went to her wonderful preschool. One day when she came home, I came to find she could peel oranges!! Since then, I let her peel or open as many things as possible, for her siblings as well.

We recently went on an”play date” with a friend, and she gave the girls some peanuts in the shell as a snack. Since then, they insist we buy them when we see them at the store. I give them to the girls when I think they need something I keep them sitting down for longer than the 1 minute it usually takes to eat their snack:

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It’s pretty messy, but what thing that involves kids isn’t? Plus, for them, it’s also fun! That being said, obviously my 3 year old isn’t quite yet a shelling master, as she said this afternoon, “I don’t know how to crack them, I just know how to eat them.” Alas, she did end up cracking one successfully by hr end of the afternoon! The foregoing applies to anything with a shell or peel that doesn’t involve tools. Sunflower seeds have been a similar hit, though I have to watch and make sure the 3 ear old and the baby aren’t just shoving handfuls (complete with shells!) into their mouths.

Happy Wednesday!

The Summer of Indecision

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by calawmama in Academics, Art, Education by Osmosis, Homeschool, Nature, Science, Socialization

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Tags

california, homeschool, museum, nature, park, playdates

The first year of my son’s life, beginning in the May of 2011, was incredibly hard. Having only relatively recently moved to the area, aside from family, we didn’t have too many close friends to interact with. Additionally, the friends I did have were almost always busy because they are just so awesome that everyone wants to spend time with that.

Thus, if you look at the calendar before we decided to take a test run at homeschooling, we *might* have a scheduled playdate maybe once a week, more likely once every two weeks or more often. Sure, we would get out of the house, usually to a place like Target, or to visit family, or to the park, but very seldom would I have the opportunity to interact with other moms, or have planned get togethers with other friends.

I did figure out that the most integral part of making friends is pursuing them, so we did have the opportunity to spend some quality time with my oldest’s preschool friends outside of school. However, given the fact that this only constituted about a handful of families, scheduling conflicts and family life often limited our interactions.

Thus, prior to this summer, which was when I started to seriously consider homeschooling, my daily calendar was pretty empty. Once I came across our absolutely wonderful homeschool group, things changed dramatically. (More on our amazing group later).

Here is the annotated version of our summer:

June:

  • Our first meeting was at a local park playdate, which was attended by 17 families (the group has a total membership somewhere around 75 families right now)
  • Group event at a local science museum/aquarium, which included lectures on Earthquakes and later snakes. Went inside butterfly terrarium, huge aquarium, and many other amazing exhibits. Had the opportunity to spend 1:1 time with two different moms and their similarly aged kids.
  • Group event at different science museum with other (significantly smaller) homeschool group. Had the opportunity to briefly interact with another mom and her young daughter.
  • Went berry picking, had the opportunity to get to know two different mothers and their children in addition to several other members of the group. Girls gorged themselves on not quite ripe organic berries.
  • Many other playdates with non homeschooler friends. Having group scheduled activities inspired me to regularly contact our other friends for get togethers at local parks and children’s venues.
  • (All this, and we had only joined the group/preschool ended mid month!)

July:

  • Tons of park playdates/group get togethers, one of which was at an amazing city park, recently subject to a multi-million dollar renovation, another of which presented the opportunity to explore a dried up creek bed with an almost 5 year old as our tour guide/expert.
  • Attended two different botanical gardens on their free admission days, one with each of the two groups.
  • Began scheduling playdates with friends we met through our homeschool group.
  • Attended local zoo get together with two mom friends and their kids from homeschool group.
  • Had opportunity to create “messy art” at event regularly hosted by mom member of our homeschool group.
  • Read books and watched YouTube videos about tarantulas, at big girl’s request!
  • Attended local children’s museum with group, which boasted ridiculously high up slide playground out front, and rode carousel in honor of younger daughter’s third birthday with our friends 🙂
  • Listened to avant garde Jazz and other jazz recordings as chosen by our local librarian.
  • Truly discovered the potential of a good librarian and how amazing our local library is. Years of performing my own legal research made me oblivious to the absolute joy it is being able to watch my oldest daughter ask another adult to help her select titles based on her interests.
  • Group and individual visits to local awesome children’s museum.
  • Playdates doubled up on some days.

August:

  • Visited the two botanical gardens with our groups again!
  • More messy art!
  • Went to Disneyland! Ok, that one’s not really related, but it was so much fun. I’m not really a “Disney” person, but I really like Disneyland. Maybe even love California Adventure!
  • Visited our favorite local children’s museum with 10 or so families from our group.
  • Visited local historic farm with one of our friends from the group.
  • Attended various park get togethers
  • Got big girl a library card! She even got a pin stating the fact 🙂
  • …and can you believe the month isn’t even half over? We’ve got homeschool events planned at parks, local hiking areas, museums, and even a National Park Trail

With all this excitement, particularly in contrast to the prior unscheduled year, you can imagine how easily swayed I have become to the homeschool experiment. I’m certain the outings will elucidate the abundance of opportunity for socialization, both for my kids and for us moms! And it has also shown me the opportunity for education by osmosis. My oldest daughter played a computer game at a local science museum that talked about/demonstrated how scientists use viruses to make gold nanowires–girl is not even 5 years old yet!?

I am absolutely thrilled about the upcoming year(s), and I know that my enthusiasm is contagious. I can only imagine what the coming months will bring, and I am so happy to be able to share the journey with my littles.

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