Tot School Yellow Week

    We recently wrapped out our yellow week of our color themes.  As with the boys, my goal is not for her to learn her colors. You can see my tot school goals here.

Juniper was 17 months

Juniper's little area on our wall. I put up her color poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I put out some yellow themed books and sight words for her, although she wasn't really interested this week. 

Coloring

I'm introducing her to Montessori 3 Part Vocabulary Cards with some color cards. She's not ready to do them independently, but I'm modeling for her and eventually she'll get it. She does like trying to help put the word card on the picture. Sometimes she does it correctly, sometimes she doesn't, and sometimes she knocks all the cards on the floor.

Lots of playdough this week! I got out the little bee playdough kit I made for Archer a couple of years ago. She really seemed to like stamping with her insect rollers.

Working on a puzzle. She really seems to like the sound puzzles.

Attempting to split her cutting apple with a fork.

Peekaboo with her playsilk.

Yellow sensory bin

Yellow toy son the light table. She enjoys putting the cubes in her wooden house.

Playing around outside with shapes.

You can check out our other Color Theme posts here:

Northern Europe Week

This week as we continue our Around the World Homeschool Units, we did Northern Europe, so Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. We tried to read a little about each country, mostly in our Spines, but then also focused on the Northern Lights. Since we were leading into Thanksgiving and I had to be out of town for a day, it was a lighter week.

Books:

Here is what we read in addition to our spines: 

The Lights that Dance in the Night

A Search for the Northern Lights

The Tomten

Oaken's Invention

The Magpie's Tail

Activities:

I didn't catch a picture, but we do use our learning globe every week.

Mazes from Around the World Mazes

Recipe:

I had happened to make a trip to IKEA this week, so I brought back some Swedish meatballs, jam and soda to try. Everyone but Archer liked the meatballs.

We also made Icelandic Plokkfiskur, which is a fish stew. I didn't really expect the kids to like it, but they all did. We decided it will be a recipe we keep.

Read Aloud:

This week we read The Children of Noisy Village. It is a story about children living on a farm in Sweden. While a lot of the story is universal issues like sibling rivalry, I will say the story is a bit dated. On the one hand, it was a good glimpse into how children lived, but I also did have to change a few words and terms now and then.

Art:

Since we were focusing on the northern lights, Archer used some chalk pastels to make a landscape. He drew some mountains in white and then used cotton balls to blur some streaks of color in the background.

Videos:

 

See other Europe posts here:

Tot School Brown Week

   We recently wrapped out our brown week of our color themes.  As with the boys, my goal is not for her to learn her colors. You can see my tot school goals here.

Juniper was 16 months

Juniper's little area on our wall. I put up her color poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I put out some brown themed books and sight words for her. 

I tried to give her a chance to use different media for her little brown coloring book pages (free here). She used crayons, markers and Do-a-Dot Markers. She also just did some regular coloring with markers.

I'm introducing her to Montessori 3 Part Vocabulary Cards with some color cards. She's not ready to do them independently, but I'm modeling for her and eventually she'll get it. She does like trying to help put the word card on the picture. Sometimes she does it correctly, sometimes she doesn't, and sometimes she knocks all the cards on the floor.

This week's sensory bin had some kidney beans and little construction vehicles.

Gingerbread play dough with shape cutters. She also wrapped up our wolf and pup figurines.

Stickers on brown paper.

Playing with brown math cubes.

Bin of brown items.

You can check out our other Color Theme posts here:

Europe Activities and Resources

As we go through our Around the World Homeschool studies, I thought I'd share some of the resources we used. Here are some of the things we did for Europe. I will post the individual country units as we do them.

We started out with various books on Europe.

Europe page in the Barefoot Books World Atlas Sticker Book

Europe Spread from Beginning Geography

North American page in his Flag Sticker Atlas

We also looked through the European pages in our various atlases (you can see which ones we use here). This spread is from the Lift-The-Flap Picture Atlas

Maze from Around the World Mazes

Both of my younger kids play with animal figurines a lot, so I got out our European animals (regular size, not Toob size). We have a bear and cub (should be brown, but we have black), moose, red fox, wolf and pup, wolverine and bison.

Europe Continent  SaltArt. I printed an outline of Europe onto some cardstock. He traced it in glue and we shook on salt. Then we used liquid water colors for him to color it.

Europe tray puzzle and Europe GeoPuzzle. He got out some little flags he cut out to put on the countries.

Biome map from the Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth

European Page from A World of Gratitude

European Countries Units:

Northern Europe

British Isles

France

Central and Eastern Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria)

East and Central Europe (Hungary, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland)

Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal)