Music Fun

Among other things, we had some music fun today.  Over the past couple of weeks we have been learning and singing some of the old time classic songs.  You know, the ones every 1st grader has learned since the beginning of time.  There is a bunch of them listed in this wonderful resource book:

What Your First Grader needs to know

So, we were singing along just fine when we came to the song "On Top of Old Smokey".  I couldn't remember the tune.  After some crazy attempts Faith finally recovered from laughing hysterically at me and said, "Why don't we look it up on YouTube?".  Oh...good idea...why didn't I think of that?

We found "On Top of Old Smokey", and a bunch more.  Our music class lasted over 1 1/2 hours today.  Just one more thing to LOVE about learning with Faith. :)

Here are a some links to our favorites today:

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain

Enjoy!

Phoenecian Fun

We recently studied about the Phoenecians.  One of the things we really liked about these people was their love of the color purple.  We love purple too.  Unlike us, the Phoenecians couldn't just go to the store and pick out a purple shirt, hat, gloves, etc...  They had to make their own purple dye from natural sources.  So, we became like the Phoenecians and made our own purple dye too.

First, I cut up some purple cabbage and we let it simmer for about an hour.

Next, we drained the cabbage and, voila, we have beautiful purple dye for our "beads".

Then we added our beads (pasta) and let them soak in the dye until we were satisfied with their beautiful purple color.

Aren't they beautiful :)

Finally, we strung our beads and made a necklace out of them.  Faith was so excited about her creation that she ran and gave it to grandma before I could even get a picture...but you get the picture...  

Have I mentioned how much I love learning with Faith? :)

This idea was taken from our wonderful history curriculum:

Story of the World, Activity Book 1

Busy "First" Day

Our impromptu first day of first grade turned out to be a very full day of fun, crafts, oh yea...and learning. 

Ask Faith:  "What are craters?", "Which planet is closest to the sun?", "What color is Mercury?".  This last question posed quite a debate for us.  We decided it should be gray but didn't have any black paint so our Mercury turned out a nice shade of baby blue.  :)

First we read up on Mercury.  Then we made Mercury.  We mixed up some dough, found some marbles and small pebbles, and pretended to be meteors crashing into the planet and creating craters!

This was a big meteor crash...both hands!

We then moved on to History.  We read about Africa and determined where Africa is located compared to ancient mesopotamia and sumer etc...(We have been studying these ancient places throughout the summer).  We then learned about some of the traditions and arts that have come from ancient Africa. 

Our first project was hand painting. This is our version of hand painting. Geometric shapes were painted on the hands. Faith wanted to actually paint her own hands but I convinced her this would be almost as much fun.

We used Oil Pastels and Watercolor Crayons for this project.  Both of these techniques are taught in"Artistic Pursuits"

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What we use.

After hand painting we learned how to make paper beads.  This jewelry is still made today and can be very beautiful. 

 Creative Beads from Paper and Fabric: Create Your Own Crafts and Embellish Ready-Made Items; No-Sew Fun for All Ages

Ours were made from construction paper and glue.  By the end Faith was able to make a bead totally on her own which takes some coordination!

Paper beads ready to be made into a necklace.

Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the finished product.  Faith was so excited that she immediately ran to give it to Grandma.  I forgot to get a picture.  It was becoming a long day... ;)

After all of this hard work we were tired and hungry.  Since Faith was ready to play, not cook supper, daddy went out picked up some pizzas.  Way to support our home school Daddy! :)

Curriculum Low Down

Before I share about our wonderful day on Wednesday I thought that I should share the curriculum that I (we) are currently using.  I say we because I have a wonderful daycare/home school provider who has been a tremendous help and really relieves some of the burden.  This is what we do...

Artistic Pursuits Grades K-3 Book 1.

Faith is an artist! Seriously, she LOVES art.  Most everything we do incorporates art and the foundations came from this book.  This book says Grades K-3.  We have enjoyed almost the entire book this summer.  If you have an artistic child, this book is wonderful.














The Story of the World Vol. 1 Ancient Times (Activity book is a must for a kinesthetic (hands on) learner)

After reading "The Well Trained Mind", I decided that I would like to follow the classical approach as much as possible.  Since this is way to extensive to get into here, I will just recommend this book along with The Story of the World Series.  You will see very quickly what an awesome curriculum this is and how much we enjoy learning about history.

Exploring Creation With Astronomy

This is a wonderful book full of activities.  Apologia has an entire series and I plan to use them straight through our journey. 

 













We are doing Math and Reading/Writing with our wonderful day care provider so I will cover those in a future post.  These by far are the favorites for us both at the moment.  This post will give you good background info for my next post about our wonderful "first" day.  Hope this helps in your curriculum search. :)