Bear and J-jo really love the book The Button Box.

We did some fun button activities to follow the book, like threading buttons, sorting buttons, carrying buttons around everywhere (for Mommy to find strewed all over the house).  We also glued buttons to make collages.

But a really fun thing we did with the buttons is make sun prints on special sun printing paper I bought with a coupon at JoAnns a long time ago.

 The sun turns the paper all white, then you “develop” the print in water to prevent the paper from being further exposed.

You may be able to do this with cheap construction paper, but you would probably have to keep the collage in the sun all day.

 Sorry for the lack of posts.  Our summer has been incredibly busy.

We’ll be studying the United States this year.  We’re memorizing the States and capitals for Classical Conversations.  Bear has bit the bullet and has already memorized them all!  All the credit goes to Kathy Troxel, whose States and Capitals Songs I purchased.  We’ve been listening to the songs all the time in the car to the point that I’m begging both Bear and J-jo to listen to something else! Even J-jo asks for “Nited Stays” as soon as he sees the car.

I set up our geography shelf with some United States work.

• First, I used 1+1+1=1’s (I thought they were Carissa’s but I am having a hard time finding them again to include the link) geography flashcards and printed them reduced size (select more to a page on your printer settings).  These small states are perfect for pin pricking, always one of Bear’s favorite activities.  Bear puts her finished ones into the baby food jar.
• The States flashcards are form the Target dollar section.  
• I also have the American president flashcards, but need to buy another business card holder to display them.
• There are two US landmarks from the Landmarks Toob.
• Lastly, a Target dollar section lift-the-flaps book of the U.S.A.

• an activity book (from the Target Dollar section).  It has dot-to-dots of each state and Bear loves those, as well as a line for practicing writing the names of each state.  She’s already half done the book in just one sitting!
• The Scrambled States of America card game.
• our North America box.  I later decided to only take out the postcards and other items that pertained from the States and display those and put away the box.

We’ll be watching 1+1+1=1’s USA Geography Power Point show too and I am hoping to win a copy of Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Road Trip USA to use as well for our study of the USA.

I asked Bear what she wanted to learn next and she said she wanted to keep learning about oceans, so here is some of what we did last week that I didn’t get time to post last Friday.

We were rowing Gramma’s Walk for Five in a Row.  The book went very nicely with our beach and ocean theme. 

This past week we rowed The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.  I’m going to do a separate post about the activities that went specifically with those posts.

Sifting ocean animals out of the rice to match to the cards.  This work was out last month, but adding the practical life twist to it has given it new life.  We tried it with the net-like spoon, and also with just our hands.

I turned this into a French lesson for Bear in which she had to repeat phrases to me.  I would ask (in French) “Did you see a ___________ at the aquarium?” and she would have to answer correctly in a sentence in French.  “Yes, I saw a __________ at the aquarium.” Or, “No, I did not see a ________ at the aquarium.”  Since she is a highly visual learner, I wrote out the sentences for her on a small white board and it helped a lot in her pronunciation of the words.

Coloring on sandpaper we cut into starfish shapes.  We did this after reading the Let’s Read and Find out Science book called Starfish. 

 After reading The Little Island, we made an island in our sandbox.

 Then we made a lake.

 After reading Gramma’s Walk (one of our selections for FIAR) we I made this barnacle pop up card.  Barnacles are very interesting.  They swim as larva, then glue their heads down on a rock or a whale and stay stuck the rest of their lives.

 We painted with ice cubes. Then cut the paper out using a seahorse template from Making Learning Fun.  I forgot to take photos of those seahorses.  That was to go with the book Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle.

 Even our 4th of July activities were kind of sea themed as we spooned and poured and tweezed star beads onto sea star bath things. 

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I love it when she comes up with these really neat ways to describe things.  I was unaware that she had figured out how to read silently.  Apparently she’s been doing that for a while now. And I never even realized:)