The Kimball Art museum was just finishing a Picasso exhibit when we did this “Hands and Flowers” lesson so we took the girls to see it. This is one of the great things about being in an area with so many wonderful museums.

I LOVE this mixed media family portrait!

We got the Autumn Treasures unit study of Amanda Bennett’s site, unitstudy.com, and it took us much longer than usual due to our busy month, but it was great. I started by getting about 15 books from the library and printing some extra activities from Homeschool Creations. We learned a lot in this study just like our past ones on seashells and robots. We started with Do a Dot pages to get warmed up and start our discussion about fall (even though it was still pushing 100 in these parts)

Just like the other units there were a lot of fun videos to watch including how candy corn is made and how an apple press works. We learned about Johnny Appleseed and his travels – Nadia enjoyed all his crazy hats, especially the cooking pot. I have already done blog posts on the monarch butterflies and apple pie bites that we made, but here is a little view of the rest of our unit.

Nadia is working on her fall tree in this photo.

A puzzle for the back of her lapbook.

Learning the life cycle of a pumpkin – here she is with the pumpkin she picked out at homeschool day at Mainstay Farms.

Families are encouraged to go on a nature walk each day and collect items. Then enter the highlights into your unit study work book. Here are some of the things Nadia found along the way.

Leaf rubbings from our nature walks.

“Fairy” Amelie and Nadia on a nature walk.

Amelie was saying, “art art art art” over and over while I was working with Nadia so I went to see what she wanted. Then I realized that she was drawing “hearts.” Pretty cute!

We got the idea for one of our other cooking projects from the Mama Jenn site.  These were messy and fun to make and tasted yummy!

Last of all, here is her completed lapbook.

This is what we started with.

The unit is set up to be a 5 day learning adventure. We took a lot longer than 5 days because Nadia is at the low end of the age for these and I wanted her to enjoy it, not feel like it was information overload. Each day has book suggestions and videos links built in. I ordered about a dozen books from the library and we set the laptop on the table each time.  There are family fun suggestions included and craft ideas. Each day had a “shell” of the day and Nadia liked some more than others. Each day also had a country of the day that was featured and Nadia would find them on the world map and color them in. My friend Cynthia from church brought Nadia a shoebox full of shells for us to use and then when she found out how much Nadia loved them she gave her the box full. Nadia was totally shocked, “MOM! Did you know that she gave me the whole box? Can you believe that?”

Looking at all the shells through the magnifying glass.

Spelling out vocabulary words with our tiles. Nadia is now hooked on pointing out things that are “transparent.”

The girls watching videos. Then Amelie showing me her shell while yelling “SEEEESHELL” (her variation of the word)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_RfgvIETEY

Nadia’s favorite video of the week was one we actually clicked through to from one of the unit study videos. We watched it at least 20 times and Nadia would say, “NO don’t eat me!”

Very glittery crafts! One for Cynthia with a lot of rhinestones for giving her the shells.

The last photos show her finished lapbook. When we got done she said, “Mom you are really fun to do this with. It’s like a party with you!” And at least 10 times today I heard, “I am so excited for our vacation. I want to find some shells!”

I think these units are really fantastic – I learned a lot or perhaps learned again things from when I was little I love that it’s broken down day by day and you can do as little or as much as you want based on the age of your child. The videos and other links being built into the PDF are a huge convenience. We will buy more of these to use in the future.

This is the big turtle in front of the museum school entrance.

I love this super cool chair!

Nadia and Mrs. Ware from the Raccoon Room. Nadia is very excited to be signed up for next year!

Right before the egg hunt – Nadia was freaked out and didn’t want to do it. (Click photo to see the whole album)

Miss Elaine trying to encourage Nadia to participate.

Now she’s excited.

Nadia’s class after the hunt.

They had an adult contest for picking up jelly belly’s with chop sticks. I found I was really fast doing this and now I think I should eat all bites of Chinese food smaller to actually be able to pick them up. It was a fun little time.

On Monday my friend Tricia brought Elliott and Jude over and the 2 big kids immediately headed upstairs. Amelie was following Jude around unsure of what to do with this little baby. She was also busy trying to get food from Tricia Tuesday was our first visit with the social worker to see how Amelie is doing so we didn’t do any school that day. Mike took Nadia with him to the gym Wednesday morning so she could play with her buddies there. Thursday Linda and Reagan came over and the girls had a blast! They had not seen each other since the week before we left for China and there have been tears in both houses asking for a playdate. Friday was museum school and Good Friday. Whew!

Here is what we did squeeze in.

We made a mini book about the Days of Creation.

This is a random workbook I found in my stash. Nadia liked the “color by letter”. We should finish this book next week.

Kumon Workbook – Capital Letters. (On a side note, I took all the large Kumon workbooks apart and dropped them off at Office Depot to be hole punched. They did the entire stack for $4 and I will be able to reuse these for Amelie. And when Nadia needs to do something again we just erase and go again with the dry erase marker)

This “map of America” puzzle was a gift from Reagan. Nadia put a lot of work into it and was very proud. She didn’t want me to take it apart the next day either.

Amelie has decided that she does NOT like to be left out of school. So here is what I did to keep her busy this week.

Pretty impressive with the cast I thought.

The puzzles are a little ahead of her, but she did have fun using the drum stick on them.

We also did some work out of our Critical Thinking Pre K curriculum, but I didn’t take any photos since we do that every week. She is half way through the Pre K bundle. We highly recommend the Critical Thinking stuff for building logical thinking skills.

Nadia has been in Chinese Language school this fall and her last day was Saturday the 18th. They had class for 2 hours and then an open house with all the classes doing some kind of performance. In the middle of the semester when they had the speech contest Nadia was the only child in the school that refused to say anything so I was not holding out hope even in a group setting. She told her teacher she was not doing anything unless I was with her. So I went up with the class and sat on the floor behind her. In the beginning she had a death grip on my hand but by the last song she had relaxed enough that I could move back to my seat.

She knows all the songs and loves to sing them at home, but in front of the crowd she was a lot quieter.

Here she is with most of her class and her wonderful teacher Miss Elaine.

Here she is on the first day.

She’s in the raccoon room.

It was rabbit day with a REAL rabbit and this is Nadia showing her bunny hop when I picked her up.

Today was Opposum Day which Nadia really enjoyed. Here is the Opposum she made.

And it’s babies!!! So cute.