School has started

I'm going to homeschool Wyatt until we move and get settled.

I got a lot of fun ideas from another Mom at play group who home schooled her son for Kindergarten.

So we started off with some fun lessons.

Today we talked about 2 of our senses.

Taste and Hearing.

I found this great website that gives you lesson plans for the five senses.

We did a diagram of the tongue and talked about our taste buds.

Then we tried a salty (pretzel), sweet (chocolate chip), sour (lemon juice), bitter (banana peel).

We made charts and put them into categories. I would have them taste it and then ask if they thought it was salty, sweet, etc. Wyatt kept telling me YUMMY, and Kailyn would tell me yucky or sweet, if she liked it. Then we made a chart of who liked what then collected our data and came to the conclusion that everyone liked the chocolate chips the best (surprise, surprise).

I had them stick out their tongues and look at it with the mirror so they could see their taste buds. Or as Wyatt now calls them "my tasting BUDDIES!!!"

We also did hearing.

We played the sound game, where they had to guess what sound I was making, ie. keys dropping, musical toy, clapping, shaking a box of pasta, etc.

Then I showed them a diagram of the ear and talked about it.

And to explain how we hear noise I had them touch the speakers on our little radio so they could feel the vibrations so I could better explain sound waves.

Then the idea I had from the Mom I said earlier was that she got butcher paper and traced her son and then they'd learn something new about the body and add it on. Since my budget for school time is zip, zelch, nada, none. I used our art/crafts table cloth (which was actually our real table cloth until I needed it for the previous said item) and traced him with fabric markers I had left over from Kailyn's birthday party. Then I cut out his mouth from scrap fabric I had and his tongue I cut out from one of my cleaning rags (which was bumpy like taste buds, clever I know). Now his ears I wanted to be smooth and floppy but not to thin since I was going for textures here too. So I cut up an old sock of Kailyn's, the ones with the thick elastic band on top. Anywho I know it looks creepy now but I think it will turn out pretty fun looking in the end (fingers crossed). And I know I wasn't as patient as I could of been during school time (it lasted over an hour and a half and Gus wouldn't lay down for a nap so I was having a hard time keeping him from distracting the older ones!) but Wyatt and Kailyn both said it was one of the best school times, because "it was so much FUN!".