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This week we continued the theme from Salamander Room . We focused on the forest reading two books by Marianne Berkes. Monday and Tuesday we read Over in the Forest: Come on let's take a peek and then Wednesday-Friday we also read Over in the Jungle: A Rainforest Rhyme. At the beginning of the week we learned about the Temperate deciduous forests that we are very accustomed to seeing here in Pennsylvania. Then mid-week, after introducing the Rainforest, we began to talk about the rainforests as well. Marianne Berkes provides many neat learning and teaching ideas in the back of these books as well a small write-up about the animals in the story. Many of the ideas for this week's school came from the books themselves. Tree was our word for the week. (We also talked about other words that have ee in the middle of them: week, bees, seed, knee, cheek, etc.) For math: we counted animals! These two books by Marianne Berkes are counting rhymes to 10. This is...

This week we read the story by Anne Mazer, The Salamander Room. What a neat story about a little nature enthusiast and his big imagination. The illustrations by Steve Johnson add so much to the story and even though we read this book for a whole week (as we always do) we didn't tire of the text or pictures. Each day provided us with something new to discover.  For math- we counted animals and insects and added and subtracted them.  For Social Studies/Geography we discussed relationships between people (Mother and Son) and between people and animals. We also marked the forested areas around the world on our map. Anastasia got to choose where to put our salamander story token and she put him in the trees of PA.  For Art we talked about drawing realistically, dew drops, shadows, trees and animals. We also noted the use of space. The illustrations in this story begin as a snapshot and by the last few pages have overtaken and outgrown the pages.  We learned ...

We are back to school and happy to be back in some sort of routine. The book of the week was, Little Nino's Pizzeria by Karen Barbour.  The story of family business, hard work and togetherness. Karen Barbour shares the idea that money doesn't buy happiness and family is more important than success in a way that young children can understand. The colorful illustrations engage the imagination and reinforce story content, while adding much more than the words contain. We enjoyed learning about Pizza. This became our word of the week and by week's end, Ana at least, could identify the word by sight. For health: we studied the food pyramid and decided that pizza is a complete meal. Whole wheat flour for the dough, sauce and veggie toppings for vegetables, we even could add fruit (pineapple), pepperoni is the meat and cheese constitutes the dairy. The fat is found in the dough and also the pepperoni. For math: we counted, added and subtracted pizza toppi...

All summer the kids and I focused on learning about our solar system. We read books about stars and planets, rockets and astronauts. We memorized the 8 planets in our solar system and also familiarized ourselves with the known dwarf planets. We learned about our moon as well as asteroids and stars. We read the biographies of Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride and the story Pupniks , about two Russian pups that visited outer space. We also read many silly picture books about space and space travel. We had fun making 3d models of our solar system, countless painting and coloring projects as well as a poster representing all the planets/ dwarf planets, the asteroid and Kuiper belt in orbit around the sun. We had fun in our pretend rocket counting down and blasting into outer space. We pretended to walk on the moon many times! We even ate pudding out of Ziploc baggies!  Gwendolyn also pretended to be CAPCOM and enjoyed playing with the "computer" ...

This past week flew by quickly! Nice to have Labor Day weekend adding an extra vacation day! We spent the middle of last week in Ocean City New Jersey. Enjoying time together with grandparents and Aunt Becky on the beach at the boardwalk and just hanging out at the house together. We tried some new things. Anastasia, our adrenaline junkie, enjoyed many rides on the boardwalk and Gwen tasted sand! Tristan always enjoys making sand castles and digging in the sand. Jason and I enjoyed sunrise and sunset at the shore. Beautiful! Peaceful! and relaxing, though always a little sleep deprived when on vacation with an infant!   We enjoyed lots of good food. Some of the places close to where we stayed, Mildred Strathmere Resturaunt , yummy sea food,  Captain Bob's  super cool, casual, and made with love, and a la mode , Ice cream!. Of course, being on vacation with Grandma usually includes chocolate chip pancakes and she did not...