Joyful Learning in January

We took it kinda easy in January. The first theme was winter/snow which I loved. And it was perfect timing because we had a big snowfall right at the beginning of the month on one of Craig's off days so he took her out to play while I stayed inside the nice warm house and made "just right chocolate" for us all to drink.

We had a blast...

Making maple syrup candy like they did in this book

 

  Talking about ways to stay warm and trying on winter clothes

Making a quilt from felt and fabric glue. It now resides on baby's bed.

Making a quilt fort and reading books inside. A few of our favorite winter reads are Winter Days in the Big Woods (but can't wait for her to be a little bit older so we can read the real one!), Owl Moon, The Mitten, White Snow Bright Snow, The Snowy Day and for anyone who things underwear is funny - Froggy gets Dressed.

Playing in the snow both outside

and in. This was the biggest hit of the month I think. She played with her bucket of snow for almost an hour and only gave up when it become slush.

Painting with shaving cream/white glue "snow paint." She had containers to make round prints but wanted a brush and then eventually move to finger painting. The texture of shaving cream is just irresistible even for a non-mess lover like Lucy.

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Making snowball cookies. (Note: If you make the recipe from the hubbards cupard website, decrease the honey by a lot to start out with, a reduced it by a little but these were still way too sweet!)

Having a snow ball fight with sock "snowballs"

 

- and then counting how many went into each basket and figuring out which basket had the most and which had the least. 

I don't have pictures but we made snowflakes to decorate our living room windows. I cut them out but Lucy loved watched me unfold them and then she taped them up.


The second theme was grocery store and none of the activities really appealed to me. I've got a confession to make - last week was the first time I had been to the grocery store since Jonah was born and I didn't even have Lucy with me then. I make the menu and the shopping list but Craig and Lucy have been going on his day off, it's their thing. So I skipped that theme and replaced it with some other activities we'd done before but forgot about or things I had wanted to do with her for a while but hadn't gotten around to and since we ended up getting sick and having a 4 month regresssion cranky baby week, it worked out  and we still had lots of fun.

Playing playdough with these fun printable mats (and I got to try out my laminator ). Lucy got a playdough pizza set for Christmas from grandma and grandpa L and between this mats and that, she played with playdough for over an hour at a time every day in a row. It was great!

The salt box/tray is a classic montessori activity. I used a old hanna anderson box and lined it with a piece of construction paper for contrast. I only set out a few of the easier sandpaper letters for her to copy (i, t, o, b, l and c)

She really loved flipping a new one over to see what it would be

and shaking the box to start over again.

Neighbor J and I were talking a little while ago about how the homeschool mentality can lead to pack rat behavior because you see thing and just know there would be a fun activity lurking in them somehow. This is a perfect example. I found this piece of floral styrofoam when I was sorting though boxes in my dad's garage. Knowing that he was very unlikely to do any floral arranging in the near future, I snagged it and finally threw together an activity. The hammer is from a plan ball hammering toy that she normally keeps with Eeyore (in case his tail needs re-hammering) and the golf tees were from another activity we did a while ago. The tray kept it from being too messy.

So that's what we did this month. What about you?