Twinning at MotherHood

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Homeschooling P, Q and R

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This weeks letters are P, Q and R!

Piles of pancakes!

P

Today’s letter is “P”. For breakfast we had piles of pancakes 🥞 with bananas and chocolate chips and then spent some time learned about Peru. We watched some videos about Peruvian culture, explored the Peruvian Andes on the map and read a story about Machu Picchu. For our art lesson we learned about the cubism of Pablo Picasso and then drew pictures 🖼 using Picasso as inspiration. After art we read some Beatrix Potter 🐰. Then we did our usual spelling, sight words, math, etc. They’ve also been doing Kodable, which is teaching them how to write computer codes.

Drink of the day – Pumpkin Porter.

Q

Today is a “Q” day. We took a spelling quiz and they got piggy banks as a reward for getting their 💯 . Well, once you have a piggy bank you need something to put in it, so we learned about the value of quarters (and nickels, dimes and pennies) and then we practiced counting coins. Whenever they correctly named the change and the amount they go to put the 💰 in their 🐷 bank. They were very excited about this particular lesson!

Drink of the day – QUARANTINI!

R

“R” day! Today we had Rice Krispies and red apples for breakfast. Then we went exploring in the backyard and found rosemary, rose bushes, and red spider plants. All plants that start with R! They liked learning about the different parts of the plants and how they can identified. They were also very impressed that rosemary can be used as a spice! Finally, we did math and spelling and then went exploring in the woods with Nana and Papa. 🌲

Drink of the day – Red wine 🍷.

Stayed tuned for S, T and U!

Rocks and states

Posted on by Posted in Homeschool .

As a geologist and a mother one of the things that brings me the greatest joy is sharing my passion for science with my kids, so we work science topics into most of our homeschooling lessons. Recently, a Twitter friend published a book called “The 50 State Gems and Minerals: A Guidebook for Aspiring Geologists” and I knew it would be a great resource on this crazy homeschooling adventure! I agreed to review it for him, and we all waited eagerly for it to arrive.

When it came I opened it and flipped through the book to make sure it would be an appropriate learning resource for my 1st graders. While the text is intended for somewhat older kids (and curious adults), the pictures and general information is perfect for my guys. Each page is dedicated to a state and has a map of where the gems and minerals can be found along with beautiful pictures of samples. There is also a short paragraph discussing the properties of each gem and mineral as well as a description of the historical and geologic significance of that resource. I left the book on the table to see if they would be interested, and at least 3 times that day I walked in to the kitchen to find one of them flipping through it. Success! The trap was set.

The next day after spelling and sight words we pulled out the new book as well as our mineral collection, rock collection, and map of the US (similar to this). The goal was to learn more about rocks and minerals and to get some US geography practice. For the activity we picked a state in the book, located that state on the map, read about the gem and mineral, and then examined our hand samples to see if we had an example of that type of mineral. If we did we placed that mineral on the state and moved to the next state. If we didn’t, we discussed why we might not have that type of sample in our collection. They were very disappointed that we didn’t have any emeralds in our sample bag! Hey, me too kids, me too.

Which mineral goes with which state?

The whole activity lasted for about 50 minutes and they were engaged the entire time. In fact, later in the day one of them came in to my office to let me know that he had discovered another piece of pyrite in our collection bag, and then reminded me that pyrite is called “fools gold” and can be found in Montana. I’m calling this experiment a success!