Cotton

Today, Arin had the opportunity to see a cotton field for the first time.  It was a lot of fun to see her excitement as she looked at the plants and felt the soft cotton.  I told her how our shirts were made of cotton.  She was fascinated to hear the process that cotton goes through from plant to clothes.  We also were able to pick a little of the cotton and "disect" it, taking the seeds from the plant.  The whole time we were there, Arin kept saying, "This is so amazing". It was a great learning experience and we hope to visit another cotton field in the near future.

Play Putt-Putt

One of the things on our list is to play putt-putt.  Last month we took Arin to do this.  She thought it was one of the greatest things that she has ever done and she often asks to do it again.

Mosaic Turkey

Today, we opened a back of 15 bean soup (dried beans).  Arin separated the beans into piles.  She really enjoyed this.  We talked about the colors, sizes, shapes, and even the patterns that some of the beans had on them.  Once the beans were in their piles, I gave Arin some glue and a picture of a turkey.  She had a great time placing the beans on the turkey's feathers.  Then, she colored the turkey's body with crayons.  She kept telling me, "This is so fantastic!"

Along Came a Spider

While playing outside this morning, we found the coolest looking spider.  I've never seen a spider that looked like this before. It had bright orange spots on it and green legs.  We enjoyed looking at it and watching it run around its web.  I took several pictures of it.  Tonight, I tried to figure out what kind of a spider it is, but no luck so far. 

I set the computer up on the dining room table and gave Arin some crayons and paper.  She was able to look at the pictures of the spider and draw one for herself.  She is really enjoys this new activity of drawing what she is looking at.

Florida: Dolphins

Florida's state salt water mammal is the dolphin. 

Today we read:
Baby Dolphin by Julie D. Shively
A Whale of a Tale! by Bonnie Worth
If Dolphin were a Fish by Loran Wlodarski

We have other dolphin books on order at the library, but they are not in yet and I would like to finish up Florida and move on to another state, so we read what we had and did a few activities to go along with our books.

I started out by asking Arin what letter the word dolphin started with.  She quickly responded with a "d".  I printed out this letter Dd and Arin practiced writing it.

Next, I printed these dolphin number cards.  I mixed them up and gave them to Arin to put in order.  She had them finished almost before I could grab the camera.  (also noticed that my pictures are blurry because my camera was on the wrong setting and I didn't realize it.  grrr!)

Next, Arin used the dolphin number cards for a different counting game.  I gave her a bowl of goldfish crackers and told her to feed each dolphin one fish.  She would count out the number of goldfish needed for each card before placing them on the dolphins.

Arin also completed a dolphin dot-to-dot (this one has numbers 1-18).

Finally, I found a dolphin coloring page online (cannot remember where I found this).  I shrunk it to fit four dolphins per page.  Then, I drew small circles on half of the dolphins (1-12) and the corresponding numeral on the other half of the dolphins (1-12).  I laid the numeral dolphins, in order, in front of Arin.  The dotted dolphins we handed to her, in random order, to count and place on top of the correct numeral dolphin.

Drawing a Still Life

Yesterday on our nature walk, we found a bottlebrush tree.  We picked a couple of its flowers and brought them home to set in a glass of water overnight.  Today, Arin and I looked a little closer at the plant, talking about its colors and parts.  We also observed that some of the leaves on the plant were larger than others, depending on their location.  Then, we got out our watercolor pencils and watercolor paper.  On a separate piece of paper, I showed Arin how to draw the flower that we were looking at.  Then, she took her turn at drawing.  This was our first time at attempting to draw a still life picture and I think she did a great job. 

 

Once she was done with her drawing, she painted water over top of it (afterall, that is the fun of using watercolor pencils).

Unplug Your Kids: Purple

We haven't participated in Unplug Your Kids in a while, so we decided to get back into it today.  This week's theme is purple.  I found a recipe for Purple Monstrosity Fruit Smoothie.  The girls like smoothies, so we thought we'd try this.  Arin said it was yummy!