wild and crazy life!

Our days have been nuts!  Never a dull moment and definitely in and out, in and out of car!  My 11 year old niece has started Florida Virtual School for 7th grade. The kid is a prima ballerina, amazing dancer and middle school and her dancing was overwhelming for that poor girl so we convinced her parents to try the virtual school and I'm her learning coach.  Beans and I are loving having her home!  Picking up my 8 year old nephew from school has started too in the afternoons, so we have to be done, fed and watered by 1:20 every weekday, which makes the mornings (heck, the whole day!) hectic.  Anywho, I've tried to not let Beans school mornings get out of whack, actually we've had some pretty exciting days:) We went on a trip to Sea World with our homeschool friends, so Fun and we learned bunches!

 About different Manta rays, sea anemones, sea horses, Octopuses, etc..etc. In the Manta aquarium.

 Beans got to "go into" an aquarium tank!

Penguins!
Beans got over her fear of a certain ride and loved riding it with her buddy. She also did a whole lotta walking that day.  We were pooped by the end of the whole day.
 The rest of the week was pretty insane. I was in charge if craft duty for art in the park morning. We made toilet paper roll characters. Originally this idea popped into my head on letter O day when I couldn't come up with an idea for craft.  It's pretty much a toilet paper roll with 8 holes punched into the bottom. Add some pipe cleaners for the "tentacles" and some googly eyes and voila!  I'll post a  pic soon.
 Other fun stuff!

 Beans doing one of her end of summer activities.  This is her favorite! This time I used home made play doh and it looked way better than the last time we used it.  Light brown doh for the sand and I added glitter to the blue dough for the water.  Beans is using toothpick umbrellas and some of her favorite small toys fo the "beach".

 My Niece clowing around:)

 Bean's Favorite boy is moving away and saying goodbye was the saddest part of our weekend.  Her buddy was insistent on having a sleepover and was fighting back tears and so was I! They got to play one last game of Candyland until they see each other again maybe in a year or so.. We'll miss them very much!

 During the weekend I made Beans a geoboard which she and my niece love!  I was grocery shopping and spotted  some gridded foam boards. Got those for about $3.  Popped some thumbtacks into them and  voila!  I noticed I needed to adjust it because with the pressure the tacks would come out so I then hot glued all of them this morning and it's great!

 This is activity related to our music month.  Counting xylophone tiles.

 Sequential Order with the same xylophone cards.

 Building a paper Xylophone.  Beans would pick the longest of the pieces and then glue them in order. I demonstrated first and then she was all over it!

 Peg games we scored at Good Will for $2.  Great for Math!

Practicing writing skills with her sand tray. The sand is ornamental from Michaels.

Until next time! She's awake!

Not so holiday feeling type of monday

Today's not so great. It's labor day, I've just been trying to get stuff done.  I can just dream and fantasize of a life in which all I need to worry about is raising my kiddo...one day..one day.  Bean's dad just took her out to have fun. She's was being so sweet and fun and I had a mile long list of things to do: Lesson planning for music students, homeschool plans, music morning planning and organizing, taking care of student loans and other finance related hoohaa online, going over Learning coach training for my niece's first year of virtual schooling, cleaning our place. Yuck, I'm being a total downer..ignore me!

We finished up weather month and starting our Music month:)
Beans got a brand new drum kit, a gift from Bean's dad's boss, head of Crush Drums and percussion.

  She really loves it and even talks to it!  She's been playing it everyday and we'll have some fun little jam sessions to the tune of the itsy, bitsy spider..(her choice)
We started our first music morning with friends last week and it pretty much consisted of instrument exploration: keyboard, scarlett's 1/2 size classical guitar, accordion, floor tom, bongos, rhythm sticks, shakers and bells.  I brought my classical and played a few songs like 'Shortening bread' and ' Twinkle variations'.  We want to make it as fun as possible so were going to do it mostly themed on The Beatles.
I made some yellow submarine magnetic characters for storytelling.. The house where I do music mornings has a whole wall that is a magnetic chalkboard! Lucky...

 We checked out some cool dvd's from the library that are Beans approved:)  'Notes Alive! Dr. Seuss's My many colored days', featuring the Minnesota Orchestra and 'Reading Rainbow - Zin Zin Zin a Violin', is a very fun, informative and capturing video that Beans and I enjoyed watching 3 times so far!  They feature children playing in an orchestra, the role of a conductor, the different sections of an orchestra, and the names of various musical instruments and feature the amazing, percussive theater group Stomp!
A few books we've read so far are:

I'm in the works of making a music themed sensory box and other montessori related activities for this month.  I'm a huge fan and believer of the montessori method and plan to base most of our homeschool curriculum and activities around it and the philosophy.  Making time to make materials and such has been a bit hard for me but when a little time to squeeze an activity here and there, it goes well!
One fine motor activity we did yesterday was marbles on golf tees!

   I didn't have foam blocks for the tees, so Beans used some clay blocks, which she had to use a little extra muscle power for.

 Beans loved this activity and even got pretty creative with stacking and rolling the marbles in the tray until they connected together and resembled letters:)

We also squeezed in some art time!

Last week we finished up weather with fun activities like placing umbrellas on the 'beach'. Beans LOVED this:) so fun.

 Sun coloring, cutting out and lacing.

 Cloud painting!  So fun dipping cotton balls into watercolors and sticking them on the paper and watching them rain a whole lotta colors.

Until next time!