Butterflies, Butterflies Everywhere!

It sure is a good thing we had hubby move the butterflies over to their "butterfly garden". No sooner did we get them over than they started "hatching"! The first day two broke free of their cocoons. As of today, 4 of the 5 have emerged! (Sorry for the cruddy pictures again. These were also taken with my phone.)

Here are some of our yellow & black spotted ladybugs

Art Study

In Elizabeth Foss' Alphabet Path curriculum, she also incorporates art work into a study. With my two, we can't get extremely indepth with the art, but we did discuss colors that the artist used, and what medium Princess thought the artist used (Junior was off doing something else and had NO interest in art. LOL). Then, she re-created the painting herself. Since we are on "A" week, we used Paul Cezanne's "Apples" painting. I'd say Princess did pretty well for a 3-1/2 year old.

Paul Cezanne's "Apples"

Princess' Rendition

My Family Cont'd

Another project from our My Family Unit from our Little Saints preschool program. The kids loved using pictures of themselves to make a photo montage of our family.

I Believe in 1 God!

A couple of weeks ago, I was searching for a fun project to do for my church's Mommy Group that I'm trying to start. Since January is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus, I came across this activity on Catholic Icing. She created a program for her pre-school co-op, which I LOVE! I have added that into our curriculum as well. We are now slowly working our way through 3 different curriculums, choosing the things I think are the most fun for my little ones. 

This craft is based on the number one, and the Nicene Creed: 

 Sorry the pics are a little fuzzy, hubby took my car to work this day and my camera was in there. All I had was my cell phone. =(

Ladybug & Caterpillar Update

So, we've been watching our caterpillars and ladybug larvae that we got from here grow everyday. By Monday, all of our caterpillars had turned to chrysalides, and it was time to move them from this:

to this:

As I was NOT going to touch these things, Hubby had to do it after dinner Monday night. YUCK! Did you know that even when a caterpillar is in chrysallis form, it moves? UGH! We were able to keep two hanging on the lid of the cup, but the other three dropped and had to have silk removed from them. (Yes, apparently caterpillars can spin silk so that they can move around in their container, then get tangled in it when they don't have a good grip on the lid.) Anyways, Hubby picked one up with a q-tip and it started squirming all over the place! GROSS!! So now all 5 of our chrysalides are in their home. Now it's a waiting game.

As far as our ladybugs, they are all hanging upside-down in their habitat as well! Who knew Ladybugs had a similar life-cycle to butterflies?

If you look close, the yellow thing in the middle of picture below is actually a ladybug larvae turning into a pupa! Princess and I got to watch it moving around to turn into one! God's work is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! I cannot believe the wonders He has created!

We'll keep waiting for them to "hatch"!

Blessings...

Sarah

A Unit/My Family Week 2

Since we got soooo busy last week, we ended up having to turn our "A" Unit into a 2 week unit (which I really ended up liking, so we will probably do the same with all the following units). We started the week making drawings of "My Family". Junior's is more of an "abstract" piece. ;-)

For this being Princess' first time actually drawing "people", I'd say she did a REALLY great job!

 Then we continued our Catechism lesson for the week: Love Others as God Sees You. The kids really enjoy making projects where they get to use glue. This is our Window to our heart. There is a "picture" of God the Father in the little flaps. You can REALLY see how hard Junior is concentrating on opening that glue stick:

Princess is working on letter formation every chance we get by tracing everything possible. I've been writing a LOT of stuff in pencil for her to trace lately. 

I think this picture was taken right after I found Junior sneaking bites of a chocolate chip cookie in the kitchen. Can you tell??

I'm working really hard on letting the kids work be "not perfect". It was quite hard for me to NOT fix this glue job. LOL. 

They're here!!

For Christmas this year, Junior got this Ladybug Land & Butterfly Garden. So, thinking it would be awhile before they were delivered to us, I went ahead and ordered them just about a week after Christmas.

Well, they got here just last week!

Total Excitement!!

                                   Ladybug Larvae                                                 Caterpillars

We finally put the ladybugs into their home, and several of them are already changing to pupae! All 5 caterpillars have starting building their chrysalides!! We can't wait to move them into their garden home so we can watch them turn into beautiful painted butterflies. Now, if only our front garden was a nice home for them. Guess that's something we'll have to add to our spring cleaning list, planting a butterfly garden so we can grow more butterflies!!

Blessings...

Sarah

Along the Alphabet Path "A" Unit

I found THIS program when I was browsing one of my favorite Catholic Home Schooling Blogs, Shower of Roses. Along the Alphabet Path incorporates one of Princess' favorite things, fairies, with learning about Catholic Saints, Cooking/Baking, Art, Music, Book Studies and so many other things!

Anyways, after not getting much done last week, I decided to turn each letter into a 2-week "unit" instead of a weekly unit. That gives us plenty of time to do any of the activities and more!

We started with meeting Mrs. Applebee and the Apple Blossom Fairies. Princess listened with eyes wide open to the first story where Mrs. Applebee tells Michael about her "children" (the fairies). When the story was over, we read about St. Anne, and started to color our Apple Blossom & St. Anne Coloring pages:

 We had apples for a snack.

Once I noticed the kids getting bored with coloring (they are only 2 & 3), we decided to make our "Letter A" Apple Pie! The kids had a blast measuring, pouring, and mixing the ingredients, as well as cutting the letter A's to put on the pie.

 Even Marshmallow got to get in on the apple action, having his first taste of "real" apples...

 Don't they look soo excited? LOL

Watching their pie bake.



Mmmmm...it tasted so good! The kids would only eat the A's. They wouldn't even try the pie. But, us adults sure did enjoy it!!