This week we returned to normal routines with school work stepping back up and Alexander doing a preschool program written by me - Dinosaurs. It was nice to have routine back and the kids did pretty well with the workload stepping back up again which was good. Alexander did lose a bit of motivation with doing some work - things like cutting and gluing he wasn't too keen on as the week went on, but overall he enjoyed different tasks that I had prepared for him which was good.
I pulled out all our dinosaur related books to put out on the table for the kids to have a look at during the week and for Alexander and I to read one each morning.
The week started with me heading out to donate blood. I'm trying to donate (well, plasma) every 2 weeks while in lockdown because it gives me time out of the house away from the kids, it helps others and they really need the blood with so many people cancelling because of Covid reasons). This left James at home with the kids to start the day with our fine motor skills and handwriting. When I came home the house was silent, the kids were engaged and on task. Maybe I should head out more often and maybe James should be the home learning teacher?? He headed back upstairs to do some work of his own and then it was into doing more screen time work for the big kids. Daniel and Eliza started to learn about procedures (always a fun subject to teach at school). Alexander followed a procedure to make his own dinosaur headband. It involved him cutting out strips of paper, then gluing them down and together and then we used sticky tape to help bring it all together. The headband was so so cute! And I loved that he kept pulling it out for different activities during the week.
He did a dinosaur dance with his headband on (and Eliza and a brain break to join him too).
He then did some dinosaur stamping with our stamping kit and made a setting using pencils. He had to include a volcano!
We found his growing dinosaur from Nana J and Boompa a few years ago that (then) hatched from an egg in water. We put it back into water and over the week enjoyed watching it grow. To start with Alexander kept checking on it every hour or so and then realised that it would take a lot longer for it to grow.
Eliza worked hard on some maths with counters.
After recess I had made a little dinosaur sensory bin for him to play with. It had sand and water in a tub and then he had different dinosaurs, a jeep, and little egg carton trees to play with. He loved having the dinosaurs get buried in the sand and then get washed off in the water. Eliza didn't want to miss out and when the boys were playing out the front at lunch time, Eliza was out the back playing with the dinosaurs and chatting away with them. I know I have said it many times but I do love her creativity!
Alexander also had fun doing some maths iPad games on the dinosaur train app and also enjoyed dancing with play school while singing some different dinosaur songs.
At lunch Daniel was excited to see that his letterbox at the art gallery had some letters in it! All 3 kids were excited to open their letters from Lachie, Emily and Flynnie. Thanks guys!
After lunch, Alexander did a drawing of a dinosaur (which was really cute) and Daniel did a perspective drawing (which looked great) while Eliza did some library work. We then headed outside for the kids to have a play and they were excited to spot a preying mantis in the garden!
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| My little dinosaur enjoying his dinner |
Tuesday morning we moved from dinosaurs to Teddy Bears for Mainly Music. We sang our songs and did our dancing and then made teddy bear headbands (which I accidentally only sent out 1 ear on the template. Oops!) Some families made one earned headbands and others drew the 2nd ear on. We drew a 2nd ear and I had my cute little teddybear. I also made a 2nd headband for me but my head was too big so I made it for Eliza instead.
Alexander and I then made some saltdough fossils for him to use later in the week. He had fun mixing, rolling and printing on them. He also was keen to make snakes again too (last year he made a snakey and he hasn't forgotten that).
While they cooked we then made one of Alexander's finger puppet dinosaurs that he got for Christmas. He chose the pteranodon. We rolled, pushed, glued moulded his little dinosaur and it looks so cute! There are 2 more to make so we will have to remember to do that another time.
I then took Daniel to OT while Eliza and Alexander enjoyed a teddybear's picnic outside. James said that they were very excited about it and it looked so cute.
One thing that I am really enjoyed in home learning is that you can see what the kids do for their work each day. Eliza needed to do a reflection on a happy memory and she drew this picture of us in Tasmania when she and Daniel enjoyed chatting with the black cockatoo and laughing at it. I do like that they still have memories of holidays - even if the memories come from us chatting about them.
In the afternoon Alexander made a triceratops from a paper plate and then drew one from Art for Kids Hub. It was a pretty tricky and detailed drawing so he did quite well with it.
Eliza wanted to get crafty in the afternoon so she made a halo headband for her to be an angel and also made her own pink dinosaur headband.
Tuesday night fun night we played a family game of Hungry Dinos. Munch munch munch.
Wednesday morning Alexander made pictures from shapes for his fine motor skills. I then challenged him to make a dinosaur out of them. After first saying 'It's too hard' he then had a go and surprised himself. He made the body, added spikes down it's back, gave it feet, eyes and teeth and then at the end included a green tongue. I'm really proud of him for giving it a go.
Daniel read procedures for origami and was keen to try some of the procedures, but he didn't get around to making them. Every few seconds it was 'Mum! Look at this!' 'Mum, did you know you could make this out of paper?' Maybe this weekend we can sit down and do some origami.
Alexander and I coloured in some little dinosaurs to make into talking peg dinosaurs. It was nice to sit and chat with him while colouring in.
Daniel and I then did a game of saying steps to fill a bookcase with toys. If the steps were clear then we would have the same picture in the end. As you can see, the steps weren't clear. Daniel got better as it went on, but when he started with the instruction 'Put the clown on the bottom shelf, then move it 2 levels up and in the middle to the side' I got quite confused by the placement. He was surprised that we didn't have the same pictures but as we spoke about the instructions he started to understand why.
Alexander checked on his growing dinosaur and thought it was cool how big it had gotten but wanted it to stay in ever longer to see if it would get bigger.
He then played with the play dough kit I had put together. Most kids this would keep them occupied for hours! But not my boy. He wasn't too interested in making some scenes with it and with playing and pretending. Instead he buried most of the dinosaurs and the car and then dug them up. The rocks he barely touched. Oh well. It's good to give it a try and give him the option to play more.
Eliza worked hard on her sharing/division and I loved that she got out her scrapbook to draw the pictures in to work out the problems.
Eliza had powered through the lessons so I asked if she wanted to join Alexander in doing some dinosaur yoga for her pe lesson today. She was keen, which was great because it made Alexander more keen. They loved making a full rainbow together and doing the different movements.
Eliza also added a mask to her dinosaur costume which was pretty cute. She then wanted to do her pe lessons too. So active! This week they have learnt soccer skills and so it has become the thing to play outside together at lunch and in the afternoons.
Daniel designed his sustainable playground using nature pieces which was pretty creative. I don't know if he did it right but as he said, they didn't say to draw it. They just said to design and make so he did it with pieces from the garden.
For a difference I made some mini lasagne cups for lunch which everyone really enjoyed! Alexander wanted to sit outside as a dinosaur so I said he was going to eat like a dinosaur - being a carnivore when eating his lasagne and a herbivore when eating his veggies. He then cheered and said 'Yay! Mummy said I can eat like this' and proceeded to put the tomato on the lid of his veggies container and eat it off the top without using his fingers. Ha. Then all the kids ended up eating their veggies like this. Eliza then embraced being a dinosaur by getting her made and headband.
We all had finished work for the afternoon so headed out for a little bushwalk together. It was nice to get out together and enjoy the sunshine. It was also fun playing eye-spy together. This lockdown eye spy has become a bit of a favourite game for the kids to play.
Thursday morning was a hard one for me to get going. I was so so tired and just didn't have the motivation for the day. My throat was a little bit scratchy so I headed out to get a Covid test. James decided to take the day off but after we spoke about it we decided that I was fine and would just push through and he would go to work. Good thing too because his work day ended up being really busy. We started with our fine motor activities and then did some handwriting. I am so impressed with Daniel's handwriting. He has really come so very far! He was keen to start doing some joins in his handwriting so I have started to incorporate that into his morning writing.
Alexander found his Dinosaur activity book which I got for him for our trip up to Hervey Bay at Easter. I never knew that it would come in handy now. He had a great time flicking through the pages and choosing which tasks he would do - spot the difference, who pooped page, etc.
I then taught him the importance of laminating. I do love to laminate things (a teacher love I'm sure). He coloured in some eggs for us to laminate and then play dinosaur egg hide and seek. While they cooled down we then cut out and made some dinosaur pop up eggs. Because we had to glue them together we had to wait for them to dry before we could play with them. As an aside, I'm really grateful for all the craft things I purchased pre lockdown just for use on a rainy day because they have come in handy during this lockdown/home learning time.
While the dinosaur pop up eggs dried we cut out the laminated eggs and I headed outside to hide the eggs in our front lawn. Alexander then came out to try and find them. It was nice to just sit in the sun (because I was feeling so tired and flat) and have Alexander find the eggs. We played this a couple of times. After finding the easier ones we then played hot and cold to try and spot the other eggs. He would pause to count how many eggs he had, we'd work out how many more he needed to find and then he would go on the hunt again.
We then headed inside to do some dinosaur ice egg excavation. Using a dropper Alexander used cool, warm or hot water to help melt/crack the egg to release the baby dinosaur. This was an activity that did last a while with Alexander. He worked out that the ice melted faster using the warmer water than with the cool water. He was surprised that the water under the dinosaur egg was so cold, even though he used warm water to go in. He did a great job with the dropper (Eliza even commented that it was a good fine motor activity and she was exactly right!). He realised that the smaller dinosaur egg would melt faster than the larger one so he focussed on that one for a while. He also enjoyed the ice sliding in the container like it was iceskating. He even had the idea of boiling hot water because that would help it melt even faster - he was right but I also spoke with him about needing to be safe and he could get hurt with boiling hot water so we wouldn't use that. It was cool that such a simple task could help Alexander investigate and learn so much!
Daniel spent his morning outside at Grayma's table drawing a treasure map to then write a procedure to get to the treasure. His little mind does amaze me how it works because this task could be quite a simple one, but he did over complicate it. He wanted to make it a treasure map at our house but to still use different locations that aren't at our house. Eg. the lemon tree would be the mountains, the stairs would be the river, etc. In his mind it made perfect sense, but for anyone else it was just too confusing. He even was getting caught up on the compass rose needing to point north. I told him just to have north pointing up the paper. He wanted north to point the direction that north is for our place. It just got quite confusing. He then learnt that he needed to write locations for the directions because he started with steps but I showed him that 5 steps for him is very different to 5 steps for me. But to his credit he made the needed adjustments and made it work. When Daddy came downstairs he needed to follow the directions in the map and make his way to the treasure. And Daddy made it! Winner.
Alexander then was really keen to do his fossil dig. I hid his fossils in the sandpit and Alexander used his digger, the spade and then brush to find, clean and identify the different fossils that we made. He really enjoyed it like last time. He managed to find most of the fossils and then I needed to help move the sand around to find the last couple. After a bit of digging on the side of the sandpit he asked if he could sit in it. I told him that was fine and he was quite excited. It was nothing like the sandpit at preschool and the dinosaur activities that they could do there but it was the best that we could do at home.
We checked on the pop up dinosaurs and they were all dry and ready to play with (for 5 seconds).
We then used paint to make some handprint dinosaurs. Again it was a task that we started and then it needed to dry to be finished.
Our legend of a postie kindly told the kids that he would put any letters into the art gallery letterbox to be collected and he followed through on the idea. I love that joy he gives our kids. He also drove along looking at the artworks.
After lunch Eliza was keen to make the banana bread that she learnt the procedure for in the morning. The task she did in the morning was to write out the steps of the procedure by watching the video of one of her teachers making it. She did a great job with writing it up. So after lunch I pulled out the ingredients as the teacher had listed them and thought it was a bit odd to have 2 lots of milk being added but we followed the procedure as it was written. As Eliza was mixing all the ingredients together I realised that I saw castor sugar in the video but it wasn't in the ingredients. We quickly watched the video again and sure enough, it was 1/2 a cup of castor sugar, not 1/2 a cup of milk. So our banana bread was going to be extra runny. Oh dear. We added in some more flour to try and thicken it up again. The rest of the procedure worked out fine and I did love having Eliza tell me 'It's ok Mum. It will still taste great'. And it did end up fine, but I think I prefer my recipes more. Ha.
Alexander made some paper plate dinosaurs and then watched a cartoon to learn about pteranodons. He and I then learnt how to draw a cartoon pterodactyl. It was fun sitting and learning how to draw one.
We then finished off our dinosaur handprint paintings with triangles and goggley eyes.
We then had a bit of play with the pop up dinosaurs with Eliza too. Daniel did his get active for kids. He is so tech savvy he managed to get his seesaw video beside the website to be able to watch and video himself to send into his teachers. So like his Dad.
Eliza cut her banana bread for afternoon tea. It was very crumbly because of being so warm.
At nighttime we read a couple of the dinosaur books together on the couch with out dinosaur crafts. Then at bedtime Alexander found a dinosaur puzzle which he put together before hopping into bed for sleep.
Friday morning the kids got dressed into their Bookweek costumes to send in for a display next week from school.
Alexander did some more of his bookwork before we did some more hand dinosaur artworks. One was to made his own puzzle using his handprint on popsicle sticks. He then painted the rest of the dinosaur on it. While that dried he then painted his hand to make some more dinosaur pictures.
Daniel watched a video about Ken Done and was excited to share his picture of his artwork inspired by Ken Done with Mrs Fearnside.
Alexander and I played a few games of dinosaur memory together and he did well to beat me 2-1.
We then made Alexandersaurus footprints using coloured paper and sandpaper claws and he then made a brontosaurus paper plate dinosaur.
Now that his puzzle had dried he put his puzzle together. I loved seeing his excitement at getting the pieces in the right spots.
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| Love the little 'yesss' that he did when it came together |
Then to finish off the day he drew an Alexander brontosaurus and then finished off his dinosaur picture.
For lunch the kids had dinosaur sandwiches with veggie trees and chip ground. A bit of fun to help end Dinosaur week.
After lunch the kids helped to make dinosaur fossil and dinosaur cookies. It was nice having a slower paced Friday to try finish the day a bit earlier and that way the kids could play together and do their cooking. Alexander brought out his plaster painting dinosaurs to watch the cooking because it was dinosaur week.
Alexander took out his dinosaur and loved how big it had grown.
We ended the week with giggles on the couch and cuddles too with each cheeky kid doing big eyes to spoil a nice photo together.
Daniel helped take out the dinosaur fossil cookies (first time taking something hot out of the oven. Then I made them a dinosaur plate to celebrate the end of week 6 home learning. It had a dinosaur cookie, a fossil cookie and a couple of lollies there. We also had Nana pop around with some treats for us all - 3 apricot bites, Oreo minis and a gingerbread man for each of the kids and a slice from James and I. Thanks Mum and Dad! The kids enjoyed eating the apricot bites while playing out the front in the afternoon and also had a FaceTime with Poppy.
We also finished off with a movie night watching A Land Before Time together where the kids enjoyed their Oreos and James and I enjoyed our slice. I remember this movie from when I was a kid so it was nice to watch it with my kids. Although they did have many many questions about many different things - Scar Tooth - is he really dead, why couldn't he swim, how do we know he is dead... What happened to Little Foot's mum? Where did she go? She will meet him at the end though? Who was with him in the end? Wasn't it their mum? And the questions went on. Ha. But it was ok. They enjoyed the movie and that was good.
I also finished off the dinosaur puzzle from Mum and Dad - it was a tricky one!
How have I been going this week? This week I have been sad about what Alexander is missing out on by not being at preschool. He is missing out on seeing his amazing teachers and great friends. He is missing out on playing with his friends. He missing out on the great environment that preschool provides to grow and learn and explore. But even more, he is missing out on learning with his friends, doing activities because others are doing them. I noticed this week in things like the dinosaur yoga, he wasn't keen to do it until Eliza joined him, then he was more than keen. Playing with some of the activities, he wasn't keen to do until Eliza, Daniel or I sat down with him to play it too. Even drawing some of the dinosaurs towards the end of the week he wasn't keen to do unless I was sitting beside him. What he is keen to do is play games on the iPad because he sees Daniel and Eliza on the iPad for most of the day. I have been really sad (to the point of tears) because I know what he is missing out on. But I also need to understand and remember that Alexander doesn't realise what he is missing out on... and he is also getting a lot of time at home which the other 2 didn't get. It's hard. This year we should be going on adventures on Thursdays and Fridays to places before he starts school, we should be having 1 on 1 time, but we aren't really. It's just tough. Anyway, this week has been a week of sadness for me with what he is missing out on and also not knowing if he will get to go back to preschool this year. I hope he does, but I don't know if he will. I hope he will get to go back Term 4 and I hope that we can celebrate him and his class face to face but I don't know if we will. It's not how I thought we would finish up our time at preschool. But I need to just put the future into God's hands and know that he is in control and also know that besides missing his friends, Alexander is enjoying his time in lockdown which is why I put in all the effort I do for his weekly tasks.
This weekend we enjoyed watching a Science Live zoom session which taught us about dry ice. It was so cool and the guy hosting it had the kids engaged and giggling lots through it. We came across this because Mary, our neighbour, passed on the information for it. So grateful for that!
I also had a lovely delivery from Amelia which helped boost my attitude and made me feel a bit special.
During church the kids drew quail (which looked too cute to eat!) when they were learning about Passover and God providing food for the Israelites when they were wandering the dessert.
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