Dr. Seuss Week

This coming week we will be enjoying a lot of Dr. Seuss inspired fun to celebrate his birthday and several good, silly books! I have created a plan for the week that includes writing, reading, math, science, art, cooking, fun and more. Thought I'd share it here and then throughout the week we'll share how the day really went. This is the basic plan, but as we discover more we'll go with it - so I am leaving some room for this. As well, we will be finishing up the week with attending a local children's theater's production of Seussical the Musical... so fun!

Monday (science class day)

• Introduce Dr. Seuss, history and bio


• Read Cat In The Hat


• Holly to do book review on Cat In The Hat


• Cat In The Hat rhyming words
• Cat In The Hat Syllable Sort


• Create Cat In The Hat with Lego's


• Spelling words on Cat In The Hat hat


• Cat In The Hat hat with mosaic
• Enjoy Seussville.org


• Design a creative Cat In The Hat hat

Tuesday (play group day)

• Read Bartholomew and the Oobleck


• Holly to do a book review


• Oobleck science experiment


• King of Didd color sheet


• Create castle of Didd with Block
• Read One Fish, Two Fish


• Holly to do a book review
• Watch graphs/tally charts on Brain Pop - do activities


• Graph/tally work with colored fish crackers


• Fish bowl art project

Wednesday

• Read Green Eggs & Ham


• Holly to do a book review
• Dr. Seuss on Brain Pop


• Bake a birthday cake for Dr. Seuss' birthday


• Dr. Suess word search


• Green Eggs & Ham art project
• Egg experiment


• Watch Green Eggs & Ham movie


• Make green eggs and ham for dinner

Thursday

• Read Wocket In My Pocket


• Holly to do a book review


• Create Holly's own Wocket for a pocket and write about it


• Spelling words on a pocket
• Enjoy Seussville.org


• Read Yertle The Turtle


• Holly to do a book review


• Create a stained glass turtle art project


• Yertle the Turtle worksheet


• Create a turtle from Lego's

Friday

• Read Horton Hears A Who


• Holly to do a book review


• Look at a speck of dust under the microscope, draw findings


• Elephant art project


• Create an elephant from Lego's


• Cook an elephant ear, baked treat
• Dr. Seuss on Brain Pop
• Enjoy Seussville.org


• Watch Horton Hears a Who (family movie night)

Sunday

• Attend Seussical the Musical at the Tacoma Children's Theater

Week In Review

This week has been a fun busy week - we were camping at the beginning of the week, had company over throughout the week and kept busy with several school activities and play! A fun week for sure. I always find it hard to really do a 'review' of our week as there is so much to cover... I never know if I should try to write on some of the subjects, bullet point all we've covered, high light the more exciting parts, etc. I'll get this down eventually!

Holly has been working hard 0n her math - adding and subtracting moving into the teens. She does some of her work with manipulative's and some without. Moving into the higher numbers it is challenging her more and she is wanting to use them a lot more. I let her do some and then had her try some without in which she did a fantastic job. We also talked about how she can check her work in reverse - she thought that was pretty cool!

Reading was big in our house this week! We have read so many, many books - we read to her, she reads to us. Holly's reading has just blossomed and she is loving it. Her confidence has really grown and she is not as intimidated to try new words... finding she can be quiet successful! We did our weekly visit to the library and gathered some new books for her casual reading and several Dr. Seuss books for next week.

We added many new spelling words to her knowledge base this week and spent some time on various word sorts, reading and writing games. We played her Silly Sentence game, a game that is a lot of fun and silly indeed. She also practiced writing skills, free form and structured. Her writing is really nice the hard part for me is that Holly really wants to make it all 'cutesy' with curly tails and dots... wonder where she gets that from? Ha, ha.

For art she did her studies of artists, tried new techniques in art and spent time enjoying traditional kids crafts and painting as well.

Art Treasury - Hendrick Avercamp

Today Holly learned about the Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp. He was known for winter scenes... perfect for a day like today (snow is blowing). We read about him in her Art Treasury book and also looked up several more of his works online. She really enjoyed his winter scenes, Holly liked they were more 'real' she said. We also learned that Hendrick Avercamp was both hearing impaired and mute. What a life!

For Holly's art project she was to use watercolors on water color paper to create a winter tree scene, similar to the winter trees Hendrick Avercamp painted. She first painted the back ground with a blue winter sky and her ground is white with patches of brown earth peaking through. After this had dried she then used brown paint and a straw to blow paint and make trees. This took a bit of practice first, but she got it down quickly. A fun project that turned out really pretty!

Sight Words

We have really worked this year with Holly on reading and sight words - her reading has blossomed. Earlier on if you casually asked her to read she would tell you that she couldn't, even though she could. She lacked confidence. Now, Holly is really enjoying reading to us, to others and to herself quietly.

To get her to this point she really has worked on learning sight words through various games, writing, magnets, repetition reading, work sheets and fun work books. She started a new book to reinforce much of what she knows yet introduce some new sight words. The best part is that she is reading her way through it independently and feeling very confident. She loves it!

She likes how this Scholastic book looks, how it is designed and the variety of activities in it keep her interest. I like that she is able to work very independently with it and feel successful! So far this little book is a win win.

Art Treasury - Wassily Kandinsky

Today we did a small study on Wassily Kandinsky from our Usborne's Art Treasury book. We also spent some time online looking for more information on this artist and viewing several of his art works. Holly learned about the specific piece Squares with Concentric Circles which was painted in 1913... she thought it was cool that that was almost 100 years ago! We learned that his method with this painting was to see how various colors worked with each other or against each other in this abstract art piece. Holly also learned about 'abstract art' - meaning no people, objects or scenes are depicted.

We also tried a modern version of this style of art by folding a large piece of paper in half length wise and then in half twice again to create eight squares. In those eight squares we drew patterns of circles in oil pastels. After the circles were all arranged we then painted in each square with water colors. The paint did a nice job of showing through all the little details in circle where paper was evident, creating a nice resist piece. The colors are vibrant. (I created an art piece with her because she really enjoys that and it helped to show techniques as she was moving along versus simply describing them.)

Holly enjoyed this art project and study so much - we'll have to do another one very soon!

Dental Fun

This month is National Children's Dental Health Month and with that we have had a little fun learning more about teeth. What is fun is that Holly has already lost two teeth and has three current wiggly teeth - so, she was really into this.

We found some fun online games and videos to watch on the proper care of teeth and visiting a dentist... which she is familiar with. We printed out a diagram of a tooth and talked about all the various parts, discussed/tried proper brushing and flossing techniques and then she had some fun creating a small poster from other goodies I had available for her to use.

More Clock Work

Holly is really working on her clocks and telling time. She loved her work book, we read her story books and use the pretend clocks a lot. Today she started working on 'half past the hour' and increments of 5 minutes.

I had found this great clock project online from a first grade teachers website... for the life of me I cannot find it again. I'll keep trying and when I do, I'll add a link. Anyhow, Holly put this clock together today. We reinforced it with thicker card stock so that it will hold up for a bit.

The clock is great because it is a traditional clock with hands and normal hour positions. When you set the time, you can pull up the tab to see the relating time in increments of 5 - 5:25, 4:40, etc. It is really helping her to solidify those connections. I am sure it will still take some memorization and practice, but this one drop in the bucket to help her out!

Graphing Candy Hearts

Once again Holly enjoyed the tradition of graphing candy hearts this Valentines season. She enjoys graphing especially when it involves something edible. Now that she is a bit older though she had to work through some questions for me and write the answers down regarding her graph work. Still fun!!! The other day I found a cute unit on graphing colored fish crackers... we may have to try that one soon!