4 Little Bugs: School Day

Since we've had our only school day this week, I figured I'd go ahead and wrap the week up :) We're leaving tomorrow and will be gone for 10 days. We made it to the school room yesterday for just a few works, but we've done some fun things outside of the school room that are worth mentioning.

Since we've got a lot of leaves falling around here, I thought it might be fun to get Link a child sized rake and let him go at it. I also got him a garden hoe. Little did I know, the hoe would be all the rage and the rake would get no attention at all. Apparently little boys really like to whack on things, especially clods of dirt.

Monday was our school day. Link chose to do all of his sound boxes. Its time to switch the b and c boxes out, but it'll have to wait until after Thanksgiving. Then he wanted to try the new push pin activity. He really liked it and wanted to show his whole family what he'd made :)

This is the activity I tried making while he was working on other things, but he ended up joining me by cutting up a ton of felt. So, of course, he decided that one of the brown strips needed to be smaller, and he had to cut it up before he could pin the pieces. He was quite proud and wanted to have me take a picture after they were all in.

This may sound like a silly question, but I wonder with activities like this if I should go back later and take all the pins out and "reset" the activity, or let him do it next time? With the golf tees and Styrofoam I just leave them because he still has plenty. But with this, he's about out of space, push pins and shapes. He doesn't really like taking his stuff apart and would probably just add to it. But, I think if it was a clean slate, he'd get more use out of it. I guess I'll have to wait and see if he will take it apart :)

Once he was finished with the push pin patterns, he asked about something new I'd added. I made a bag of 20 blocks, 10 cubes and 10 rectangular prisms. I used one of Daddy's winter hats as a "blindfold". I tried starting the presentation, but had to stop in order to answer questions about why I didn't want to see. Then, once I started again, he noticed that I was feeling the blocks the same way we do the geometric solids and decided to pull them out. I am pretty sure I didn't handle his diversion correctly. I really wish I knew how to handle things like this, I never know if I should redirect him, or just let him go. Anyways, I asked if he'd like to do the geometric solids or if he wanted a presentation. He decided to put the geometric solids back, but then didn't want to sit through the presentation either. He decide he wanted to do some stamping. That lasted about 1 minute, because he needed to go to the bathroom. While he was in there, he noticed the step stool I'd moved to the room so that he could reach the water. He immediately wanted to do some activity which required him getting water :) Since I'd just added a whisking activity, I suggested that one. For some reason, I didn't get any pictures of him whisking, just some of him drying his tools when he was finished.

No, the ladle was not part of the activity.
He saw it and decided he needed to make soup and pizza.

That was all we did in the school room. However, during lunch he did get another practical life work in. I pulled out a small pitcher and a shot glass for Bumblebee to drink water at lunch and Link decided he needed to help. He would pour his brother some water, then wait for him to drink it, so he could pour some more. It was so sweet :)

Since he seemed to enjoy pouring with the pitcher, today I pulled out the one I was using for rice not that long ago. I was thinking of using both with water, but he saw the rice before dinner and wanted to try it.