Last night we read the fable “The Crow and the Pitcher”

A crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a Pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. At last, at last, he saw the water mount up near him, and after casting in a few more pebbles he was able to quench his thirst and save his life.
Moral of the story: “LITTLE BY LITTLE DOES THE TRICK.”

The story in itself is a nice little lesson, but being the geek intellect that I am, I decided this was the perfect oppurtunity to teach the kids about displacement. Parker and Sophie thought it was very cool and wanted to repeat the experiment. So what all did we learn from this? Literature, a moral, history (Archimedes), science, and standard of error (repeating of experiments to see if we get the same results). Pretty good for an impromptu lesson!

Tags: fable, science

Here’s the cake I did for my dad’s birthday.  Not thrilled with the colors and the vines look like silly string, but see all the pretty flowers????

Tags: cake

Here’s another simple little game to practice those math facts …

Addition Memory – Take the Aces-nines out of a deck of cards (to make it easier and/or quicker just take 2 of each).  Shuffle the cards and lay them face down and play like regular memory but instead of finding matches you are trying to find two cards that total 10.  I learned about this game from the Right Start math curriculum that we have and it suggests that the child uses the abacus if needed.  They have this suggestion to deter the children from counting on their fingers.

Tags: card game, math, Right Start

Parker, like most boys his age loves to build with blocks.  However, before he can start building anything, he has to do this first:

Tags: blocks, building

Finally!  Permission to be messy!  Read more: Messy homes are good for kids

One of Sophie’s favorite things to do is draw.  I recently got her the book I Can Draw Animals – she loves it!  This book shows the child step by step how to draw different animals.  Here are some of her results. (I’m including the final picture of the animal from the book as well).

FISH

FLAMINGO

FROG

HORSE

MONKEY

RABBIT

TIGER

TURTLE

Teddy Bear

Tags: drawing

Not really anything to do with homeschooling, but here is a picture of my first decorated cake!

Tags: cake

Children love to be silly and the center of attention.  What better way to accomplish both then to put on a play?  Introducing the Davis Clan dramatic reenactment of the Three Little Pigs …

PS. The Big Bad Wolf was played by Hilda Davis (the dog).

Yesterday we decorated our Christmas tree for the birds!  We spread peanut butter on pinecones and then dipped them into birdseed and used them as decorations for the tree.  The kids seemed really excited about this but after two pinecones they stopped and started digging in the dirt.  They found a worm and played with that for a while and then they came to me all excited over a ‘discovery’ they found.  It looked like a cocoon  – Daddy helped them put it in a jar and researched to see what it was.  It turned out to be the cocoon of a Tobacco Hornworm – which Mommy is NOT thrilled about – those darn things ruined our tomato plants this summer!

Tags: birds, nature

So Parker has been learning about sentences recently. What makes a complete sentence, what a fragment is, what is a noun, etc… He seemed to pick up the differences between nouns and verbs pretty quick, but has trouble sometimes distinguishing between complete sentences and sentence fragments. So we had a little project to do to help learn about sentences. We cut out sentences from a magazine and then a picture to go with the sentence. I had hoped to get Parker to make a story with this project but he did 2 sentences and then lost interest!

The kids starting their project:

Sarah learning to use scissors:

Sophie was all about the animal pictures:

Parker’s completed project:

Mommy’s reward:

Tags: language arts