a baby doll & an archeological dig

Both kids finished up Unit 20 today in an attempt to get back into beginning & completing one unit each week for the remainder of the school year.

K glued stars (her choice of colors: yellow, pink & flower pattern) onto a chunky "Q" and she decided to put them on a certain way...patterned for the slash, pink up one side and yellow up the other side.  She was proud of her completed letter, though wouldn't pose with it. ;o)

We read about Simeon getting to meet Jesus and she acted out the story by holding one of her own baby dolls wrapped up and gave thanks to God for sending a Savior.  She loved this acting part!

For D's math today, we played with "high-flying kites" to match up his facts (I got the idea from a file folder game I saw online).  I cut out 7 kite-shaped pieces of foam in various colors and wrote one number between 6-12 on each kite.  I cut smaller bow shapes from the same colors of foam and wrote addition facts to match the kites.  Each kite has 3 "bows" that go underneath it.  To play the game, we divided up the kites (D had 4 and K - with my help- had 3) guess I need to make one more to make it "even" playing!   D picked a bow from the pile in the middle of the table that would match one of his kites.  Then K would pick one and if it went to one of D's numbers I'd tell her to give it to D but wouldn't tell her or him the answer so D could find it.   He was stumped by a few of the higher numbers but is slowly making progress learning the facts.  He ended up "winning" so he was happy.  :o)

D's story was about Ponce de Leon exploring Florida and D learned Florida means "land of flowers"  and learned that the Indians led him to a spring for drinking water (not that Ponce de Leon was in search of the Fountain of Youth...).  Anyway, to go along with his story we set up a mock archeological dig in a baking dish.  Apparently, Ponce de Leon left a silver helmet and stone cross near the spring and years later they were discovered.  D learned about an archeological dig (just the basics) and then he and K dug up a cross (yellow foam shape) & helmet (marble) with q-tips.  The baking dish had a smaller bowl with water to be the "spring", cornmeal was the "sand" and then we used yarn & tape to construct the grid lines for our dig.  After each object was found, D marked the location his map of the dig site.  He LOVED this and asked me to hide the objects a few times which explains why we have more than one cross & helmet marked on the grid (pic on right).   At the end, K&Drew hid the objects and had me "dig" them up.

We had a fun morning!  :o)