More about the Snow-Crystal Lake Hike

Last week we adventured into Azusa Canyon with a group of the Finlay family to explore and go hiking. (Margaret was also with us, but she was taking this picture)

When we got to the parking lot and found a pile of snow, the kids were immediately out making snowballs with Uncle Evan.

With little patches of snow and logs to play on along the way to distract, these kids did an amazing job hiking. 

Crystal Lake didn't exactly live up to its name that day, but it was a great stop for throwing rocks and pretend fishing.

Just for the record, the kids actually all had mittens to wear, it just seems they took them off for all the pictures.  Although, they were excited enough about the snow, they didn't mind the cold hands at all.

Weather

We had a perfect week to learn about weather.  Southern California weather can be pretty boring (in a good way), warm and sunny every day.

Except...

During our week of weather we had wind, sun, rain, clouds, hail, and even a chance to play in the snow!  Real life learning is much more fun.

 

 We made it rain on our papers to watch the colors spread.  We then turned them into umbrellas.  Interestingly all the kids chose to put their clouds under the umbrella rather than on top.

We used balloons to talk about wind (blowing them up and letting them go) and about static electricity and lightning.

We talked about solids and liquids and what happens to water when it freezes.  The boys are playing with the ice and making it melt again.

We made windmills, which the kids were interested in, but they were too hard for them to blow.  I need to figure out a different way of making them.  They liked watching me blow and spin it around, but when they tried to do it, they couldn't get it to work.  

We did take advantage of the windy weather to get out the kite, which was a big hit.

 I loved the Science with Weather book.  They had great ideas for projects to do with interesting information about how things work.  It would be a good book for older kids (maybe ages 6-8?).  We also had the classic "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" and sang a lot of weather related songs:
If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops
What's the Weather
It's raining it's pouring
Rain is falling all around

Happy Valentine's Day!

We did a theme week about hearts/valentine's the week before Valentine's day to give the kids plenty of time to make valentine's cards. 

Food-pretty much everything we ate for a week was in the shape of a heart.  Heart shaped sandwiches, quesidillas, pizzas, cookies, hotdogs, jello, puffy pancakes, cheesecake...

We used conversation hearts for color sorting, graphing, stacking, making patterns, decorating and of course eating.

Brielle discovered a love of cutting out hearts.  We had hearts all over the house.

We used this idea to sort a deck of cards into suits.  Then arrange in number order and make a pattern. 

Valentine's books, parties and fun.  Great week!

Skirball Museum-Noah's Ark

In January we met some friends at the Skirball Museum.  I've heard of it, but hadn't tried it yet.  It took 1 hour to get there, so it is a little bit farther than we usually go, and they don't open until noon (which means no nap time for the kids), but we had such a great time, I would love to go again.

There are other exhibits to see, but the main kid-friendly one is all based on Noah's Ark.  You have to have timed tickets to get in, and are limited to 2 hours.  The kids could have stayed longer.

Animals to play with...

boats to build....

ropes to climb...

animals to ride...

and rain storms to create.

The whole exhibit is created with recycled material.  You can see the zebra mane is made with a keyboard here.  It is amazing to see everything up close. 

Some Random Pictures

For those that might wonder, we don't do everything based on our weekly themes.  We have a lot of play time, and also other learning time that is not part of the theme.  Basically, we are always having fun.  A few pictures from this last month of other non-theme related fun:

The kids were sorting the blocks into colors, and loving the time to build and crash.  Blocks are always fun to play with!

Brielle is very interested in science.  At the Huntington Gardens last month she wanted to do all the hands-on activities in the conservatory.  I was impressed she was doing well figuring them out on her own (as I was busy chasing Ethan, who doesn't stay in one place for a very long time.)

Brielle got these stringing beads for Christmas, which we have used for making patterns, spelling words, or just working on find motor skills.

I can usually keep Ethan busy when I need to focus on making dinner by doing some kind of puzzle or activity.  In this case we had a container that James brought home from work that had lots of little holes.   I kept a close eye on Ethan (afraid he might try to eat, or stick q-tips in his ears) as he did this activity, filling the holes with the q-tips-more great fine motor skills.

Other things the kids love...painting.  They made these Home-Depot projects a few months ago.  But we just got around to painting them this month.

We just used washable paint, which is a good thing.  I happen to know how messy it gets.

But, they loved the final results!

And, the kids love playing games.

Groundhog's Day

Since living in California, I have found that Groundhog's day is not nearly as anticipated.  We don't really have a need to look forward to spring in SoCal, since 1. Winter time is GORGEOUS, and 2. it is already spring with blossoms on trees and flowers blooming long before Groundhog's day.

However, we still had fun with a Shadow and Groundhog theme week.  We had some repeat activities from last year.

A couple of new ideas we loved:

 

From Sharing Kindergarten we used this printout.

We thought of word that started with the letter G, and also words that rhymed with 'hog'.  I used her idea of hiding them around the room for the kids to find.  They loved it enough we then did it 4 or 5 more times.  We took turns hiding, finding, and practiced counting each time to make sure we had them all back.  big hit.

The kids are loving having their food decorated.  Every time I give them lunch they ask what it is shaped as (even when I didn't actually do anything, we can always pretend.)  We made groundhog muffins, bread and toast.  Brielle said in this case that the banana was the burrow door.  And when we were talking about rhyming words we had hotdogs for lunch.

We traced our shadows, and while the kids played I then traced random other shadows (shovels, rakes, etc.) and the kids guessed what item I had traced.