I'm blue...

Last weeks color was blue, and boy did we do blue right! From start to finish we lived, breathed, ate and drank blue. Our PBL is "Starry Night", here's a look at what we did! 

This was my bin of blue goodies, every week, I gather everything a put it into my bin, create a daily project and put all the supplies into ziplock bags and label them. Makes life so much easier. 

I also gathered up some blue items for them to explore. It's how I introduced the color of the week. 

Colored sand kept her busy for hours... Literally hours!

We practices out cutting and gluing with the blue fish.

Before lunch we painted the sky, after nap she glued the Cotton balls and rain drops. 

I cut strips of blue things out of magazines and she cut them up and glued them. The hard part was working with her to make sure the blue side was up. 

This was lunch on blast off day of our Starry Night PBL. 

Hope you enjoyed our Blue week recap! 

Books I used in my curriculum development

I've been working on taking all my notes, pins, lesson folders and post its and putting them into a printable version of my curriculum for my readers. My journey started with a few pins on adapting ideas and concepts the older kids were learning in school. Then it turned into full fledged ideas to teach the concepts. When my husband and I decided we were going to move forward with home-schooling the younger girls, I set out to learn everything I could about the methods used across the globe. I settled into a comfortable relationship with the Reggio and Montesori methods. After much thought we integrated these with traditional ways and a focus on STEM.

There are a few books I used in my planning, and I wanted to share them with you. I purchased them [I like to highlight my books:: color inspires me], however for a more economical solution you could order them for your library and take notes as you go along. Sometimes I'll use the genius scan app on my phone to take a picture of a page in a book, then print it and highlight for reference.

Bringing Reggio Emilia Home

Teaching Montessori in the home 

I'm a huge fan of home libraries, so I typically try and buy my books if I know I'll reference them again, these books are already well loved. 

Lets learn colors & the power of light!

 I love the concept of a light table, it's an idea on a long list of to-do's for the hubby. We're converting an old train table into a massive light table, so both girls have plenty of space to imagine. So until this becomes a reality, I needed to find a way to show Scarlett how light illuminates the world.

Ideally I would have translucent multi-colored wooden blocks to go with that train table, but instead we had recycled water bottles, and food coloring. I also realized that those fun neon and pastel colored dyes are gorgeous on 100 cupcakes for school, not so much when you're aiming for primary colored learning tools. So I managed to mix and match and pull out a beautiful, emerald, ocean blue, red, orange and violet. I filled the water bottles 90% of the way, played with the amounts of dye until I got the colors I wanted. 

I used two methods to show Scarlett how the light, lit up the bottles. First was at night with white twinkle lights tucked behind the bottles, it made them glow. The next was on the window sill with the early morning sunshine peeking in at us. She was amazed, and would take them down look at them, put them back in the window and yell "ON". 

We also used them in matching games, with toys of the same color.  I cut hearts out of construction paper, and had her put the bottle of the same color heart. These bottles can be used in 100s of different ways to teach colors & light. Have fun exploring! 

The calling was heard and the decision was made...

       It started with a glimmer of possibility and pins [gotta adore pinterest]. I've always loved teaching the kids at home, then building on what they were learning in traditional school. Now I have the opportunity to sprout Guinevere & Scarlett up from babe [8 months] & toddler [24 months], to a home grown pair of geniuses. Our older kids have no shortage of brains either, we've never even had a C on a report card, let alone a letter further in the alphabet.  Our oldest takes honors classes, and it prepping for PSEO [post secondary enrollment option] at the high school to earn college credits. The middle three are in the STEM [science, technology, engineering & mathematics] school in our district. We live in the largest suburb of Cleveland, Ohio and there are only 240 kids in the STEM School, and 3 are ours!

       Before I even decided whether or not I was going go full bore on this, I decided to get my feet wet.  This meant countless hours of research, digging thru books, learning supplies and taking inventory of what I had at my disposal. Much to my surprise my stock and resources were about 75% of what I needed to be fully functional. I made a list of what I still needed and then the famous WISH LIST.   I searched pinterest for DIY ideas for what I didn't have... and can you guess what I found? Yep, I had most the supplies to make what I wanted for the first few weeks!  I still have a wish list on amazon, and I spent about $35 on misc. items, and 3 books I wanted. Its going to be journey...but we are ready! Coming soon will be the home center reveal!!