Another week flies by..

Beans and I have been up to a lot.  It's been a bit stressful to keep up with everything but I guess we're managing. We had a busy week and not so very busy weekend.  Our homeschool group began art in park on Tuesdays again which means that Beans will nap on Tuesdays at least!  So far our week normally looks like this: Mondays- themed homeschool mornings (this month weather) 'Spanish hour' with friends in the afternoon.
Tuesday - Art in the park mornings - biking in the afternoon.
Wednesday - Music morning with friends - Letter day in the afternoon
Thursday - playgroup morning - baking in the afternoon.
Friday - Homeschool morning - swimming in the afternoon
Saturday - Art class/ Library / children's museum..aka Downtown dance:)
Sunday - cleaning day! (lesson planning)
I really didn't know it was that busy until now.
Anywho it's almost two in the morning..so I will attempt to rapidly summarize my adventures with Beans.  We had attempted a few last minute science experiments with the weather kit we got from the library (which Beans accidently destroyed a piece of! A part of the anemometer:( I tried supergluing, failed and ended up using a piece of tape..I'm awaiting my judgement call from the library to see if I have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a plastic anemometer that still technically works btw)
One of my favorite experiments found in the kit was the water cycle in a jar.  I took a pic detailing instructions and materials needed.  Beans has become pretty familiar with the water cycle thanks to the Magic School Bus and the Glazer Children's museum. But this really helped to actually demonstrate it.

Here is our 'Greenhouse jar'.. Beans had a blast putting everything together, she loves loves dirt.  This is what it looked like on day 2.  On day one Beans kept checking on the jar to see a 'cloud' would form.  But she was still a bit excited when she saw that it had begun to rain inside the jar when we checked on it in the morning.

Other fun stuff included the very anticipated thermometer in the freezer experiment.  The experiment was very simple, but still very fun for Beans.  We put one thermometer in the freezer and one on the top shelf of the fridge and waited an hour or so before taking them out.

 It's kind of hard to see but of course the freezer was much colder, it was below zero! Which Beans found very interesting.."Below zero? What? That doesn't make sense!" It will in time beans.  I then helped Beanpie record in her little journalmajig.

More good fun was the tornado in a bottle! Everyone should make this with their child. It's pretty much just a flat bottomed bottle, water filled 3/4 way, drop of dish soap and coloring, and marble. Swoosh and shake.

Our last Monday morning consisted of all things clouds!  Beans is using flat marbles to fill in dots on her cloud magnet sheet.  These are great activities for developing fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination. I love this site for finding these printables..http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/WeatherMagnet%20Pages.htm

We then proceeded with a 'cloud' experiment.  We added drops of water, using a dropper, to a cotton ball and waited to see how many it took until it began to rain. It took a LOT of drops.

 Beans was very anxious to get to work on our cloud book and I think it came out great! It was way fun making it.  We used 3 sheets of construction paper folded in half. We then hole punched the edge and tied it with some hemp. Then we got to work with the contents. We used felt, stickers, construction paper,water colors, glue and markers. These are a few pages.

Soft cuddly cloud book.

I've been getting into the hang and really enjoying putting together Montessori inspired tray activities for Beans.
Some of her faves over the weekend were the juicing activity..

  And she loved making bracelets and necklaces out of heart beads, pipe cleaners an shoestring.

But I think the thing she enjoyed the most was lying in that little Ikea bed and pretending it was hers..wacky kid!  That reminds me, I should go to to bed:)