Poems and St Patrick

We have been doing some fun things at Gerlach School lately! We read "Tangerines and Tea, My Grandparents and Me" which has beautiful poetry and wrote an acrostic poem using the girls names. 

We are also learning about St Patrick and St Patrick's Day. This holiday is a great time to teach about making green out of blue and yellow, things that are green, things that aren't and of course about the Patrick the man who shared Jesus with much of Ireland in the 5th century. So this month will be full of shamrocks, things that are green, and maybe some St Patrick books. We are also part Irish so maybe we'll throw that in to, but I'm not sure how. I might even bust out some corned beef and cabbage on March 17th in the name of our kid's education. 

Shaving Cream with green food coloring--yes it was a mess to clean up! The girls went from straight from here to the bathtub because their hands and arms were all green!

Tomorrow we are going to the retirement center for card making with the residents which should be a lot of fun. We've been to the center before and the seniors can't get enough of little kids!!

Of Presidential Things

My favorite president is Abraham Lincoln. I remember learning about him in kindergarten around this time of year because of President's Day. We learned mostly about Lincoln and Washington from what I can remember. Since then I've loved reading books about President Lincoln and I have a copper bust that I've always had on my desk or bookshelf. Right now the bust is Amelia's bookend and Caley likes to look at it because it's right at her eye level. She knows who Abraham Lincoln is too. Last week in church preschool I taught about Abraham in the Bible, and Caley got him confused with Abraham the president. 

On Friday we had a busy day planned so we didn't do school as usual. Instead we just read books and Caley wanted to read this one about President Lincoln. This beautiful book, "Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln" blends Lincoln's own writing with a biography of his life, set to beautiful paintings of scenes of the time. There are paintings of Lincoln as a boy, slave workers in a cotton field, war-torn America, and a half-finished Capitol building as it was when Lincoln was inaugurated as president. Caley was surprisingly interested in the book and I was happy to teach her. I pulled out her United States map placemat and folded it in half (East and West) to show her that when Lincoln was president, there were less states than there are now. She is very interested in "where do we live" on the map so I told her that when Lincoln was president, there were less people in our country and out in Washington there were lots of trees. Then when the book started to explain the Civil war, I again folded the map in half (North and South) to show her that the country was divided because people didn't agree. Surprisingly, she seemed to understand a lot of what I was saying, but I did simplify things. Obviously, there's much more she can learn and understand as she gets older, but it was really fun to have a mini-history lesson, totally unplanned by me.

Since yesterday was President's Day, Caley watched this video I found on the blog MommyLife. She laughed at the silly morphing of the president's faces, and she recognized Lincoln! 

Prepositions

My friend Ashley suggested a fun way to teach prepositions by using stickers! I drew a house and flowers on paper and asked Caley to place the stickers next to, on, above and below the objects. When the paper got full, we moved onto putting stickers on, above, below and next to our eyes, noses and mouths. Thanks Ashley!

We all look tired, and are still wearing jammies but that's the way we're most comfortable...the best way to learn!

Caley is still plugging away at her reading book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We are on Lesson 22. Here's a recent lesson Caley read. We had already read through the story a few times, so it's familiar to her, but still she's doing a great job decoding and gathering information!! Nice work girlie.

My 4th birthday in pictures

I [am] 4. My favorite part was eating cake and wearing those dresses [at playgroup].

This is what my 4th birthday looked like.

Caley bought gummi bears with her allowance money!
At the library, choosing this week's movie and playing with puppets.

Happy Birthday Caley!!

Is there a doctor in the house?

Caley loves going to the doctor, either for herself or Amelia. At the doctor someone always gets a shot and stickers, that's the best part. We're going again next week for the girls 4-year and 18-month appointment. Caley recently practiced her doctor skills on Amelia, the cooperating patient. 

Yay!

She's also been doing some open heart surgery-kind of. She is working on Valentines for her friends.