Skip to main content

Playing it Safe Week - 10/4/10

It's October!  Although I'm not a big fan of Halloween, I love autumn and everything else that goes along with it. The falling leaves, pumpkins, the briskness in the air, scarecrows and farms.  Along with our new month, we have new music, art, and Bible to focus on.  I'm looking forward to seeing how the transition will be, or if we even will notice it.

We have an artist for this month!  We will be looking at Claude Monet's works.  We are going to be following the Charlotte Mason style of picture study where we will display a work of art, and then discuss what we see or remember about the picture.  (She actually recommended focusing on one artist for either 6 or 12 weeks, but we will only be doing it for 4 weeks).  Each of the four weeks, we will choose a different print to discuss for that week.  This first week, we will be concentrating on Monet's The Terrace at Sainte-Adresse.  In addition to looking at art prints, we will also be reading some picture books about the artist that we get from the library.  I'm hoping to possibly get a couple of book reviews about these sometime in the next month.

As we say good-bye (for a season) to Saint-Saens, we are going to be introduced to another great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Classical Kids has an incredible music curriculum that plays a master's work while narrating it with a story of historical fiction about the composer's life.  We will be listening mainly to Mozart's Magnificent Voyage and Mozart's Magic Fantasy.  I think that Noah will really enjoy the audio book feel of these CDs.  Like what we are doing with Claude Monet, we will also be getting other books from library that introduce us more to the person of Mozart.

Our memory verse this month is Proverbs 3:5a.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart." NIV  We are choosing verses that are part of the lullaby CD that we play for him all the time to make it easier for him to learn the verses.  The CD is called Hidden in my Heart, and we just love the music.

So, we cheated with our field trip for this week.  We already went!  On Saturday, we went to the pumpkin patch to pick up a pumpkin at Carleton Farm.  Hat tip to Rene at 100 Digits for letting us know about all the great pumpkin patches in the area.  We had a great time shooting pumpkins in the pumpkin cannon, going on a hayride, riding the animal train, eating kettle corn, and picking out our pumpkins!  It was so much fun.






Our theme for the month will be personal safety. As we near Halloween and things get a little crazier, I want to make sure that my friendly son knows the boundaries surrounding strangers, what to do in case of an emergency, and just how to play it safe at home and away. I don't want this to be something that scares him about the world, but instead something that makes him more confident since he knows how to react if the need ever arises. This first week, we will be talking mainly about playing safely and about police officers.

We will also be doing a lot of focusing on our potty training.  We've been going out a lot and doing a lot of fun stuff, but it hasn't been helping our habit training of using the bathroom.  We are going to try to stay home this week as much as possible.  Good thing that we already did our field trip!

Our weekly line-up...

Monday we are going to take it easy and concentrate on reading our new library books about safety.  We also have a lot of fun books on Mozart and Monet that I think Noah will enjoy.

MOPS starts on Tuesday!  I'm very excited.  For those unfamiliar with the program, it is a wonderful opportunity for "Mothers Of Preschoolers" to get together for a hot breakfast, listen to a talk, and socialize with other moms while their children have a fabulous time playing games, learning Bible stories, and singing songs with their MOPPETS teachers.  We will be going every Tuesday to MOPs as I get to interact with moms two weeks a month and am a MOPPETS teacher on the opposite weeks.  I'm hoping that my 13 month old doesn't get too much separation anxiety.

On Wednesday we are going to attempt to mimic our famous painter and create some watercolor paintings.

Thursday is preschool.

Friday is baking day.  We are going to be making pumpkin bread since I can't get enough pumpkin.

Well, that's about it.  The adventure continues!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Little Disciples

As I've been learning more about Charlotte Mason and her methods, I've been thinking especially about what she means by "Education is a Discipline."  As I was reading her thoughts on discipline from her Homeschooling series, I was particularly struck by the following quotation. Discipline is not Punishment ––What is discipline? Look at the word; there is no hint of punishment in it. A disciple is a follower, and discipline is the state of the follower; the learner, imitator. Mothers and fathers do not well to forget that their children are, by the very order of Nature, their disciples... How Disciples are Lured ––He who would draw disciples does not trust to force; but to these three things–– to the attraction of his doctrine, to the persuasion of his presentation, to the enthusiasm of his disciples ; so the parent has teachings of the perfect life which he knows how to present continually with winning force until the children are quickened with such zeal for virtue...
7 comments
Read more

Styrofoam Tray Shrink Art

Making styrofoam shrink art was one of those fun childhood memories I have from being a kid.  My mom would clean off the meat or veggie trays from the grocery store, give it to us kids to draw on, then we would watch in awe as our creations shrunk before our very eyes in the oven. I really wanted to do the same thing with my kids so I (silly-me) tried to find a tutorial of the sort on the Internet.  I did this mostly because I didn't know the temperature the oven needed to be or how long it should be in there.  Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't find one!  The closest thing I found was this website , but there were no pictures or anything.  I decided to wing it - it couldn't be that hard, right? And, yes, this craft is super easy.  First, I gave the boys a clean tray and a bunch of markers for them to draw with. I had to convince them to color a lot  since they were only making small markings. We put their creations on an aluminum-covered bak...
4 comments
Read more

A Brand New House

Another major thing we did while my parents were here last week was a major room change in our house.  It feels like a brand new home!  We have a play room, the boys are now sharing a room, and Phil and I have moved into Button's old room (which was really the library/office/nursery/catch-all room).  I am so excited!!!   I finally feel settled into this home since there is finally a place (or at least a room) for everything.  The boys seem to really love sharing a room, and they are actually going to sleep better than they were when they were separate.  It's fantastic. By far, I'm most excited about our play room.  This room comes right off the kitchen, and it used to be our master bedroom.  Now, we have our books and toys in it which keeps our living room so. much. cleaner.  This room will eventually become our homeschool room with some minor improvements in a couple of years.  In the meantime, we are enjoying the extra space to play ...
3 comments
Read more