Weekly MissEd - Enrichments

Time for our week in review (finally starting to implement this!)

We've been overhauling the house (as per past posts) so have stopped our unit studies and anything else we had going on.

But heres a few activities we have done in the past week:

- Checked out some Ipad/Iphone Apps

- Volcano Play - We used the Pocket Volcano from Mad About Science. First I filled the chamber with baking soda, and the kids took turns pouring vinegar into it. Then once the bottle of vinegar was used up and all in the bottom of the tub, I poured it into two seperate bowls, and added Blue Food Colouring to one and Green to the other. I then filled the tub with baking soda, and they played with that for a little bit. Once that got boring, I gave them spoons and let them pour the coloured vinegar onto the baking soda to create wonderful fizzles. For a little while, Atlas commented it looked like earth. Then they had glorious fun upending the bowls into the tub and watching giant eruptions everywhere. They then used the spoons to stir it into a thick gooey mess and spooned that back into the bowls. It probably would of been fun to then do some sort of painting with it, but we didn't have time.

- Science Tub Play - We got out some new toys from the science place (Sticky wall bugs, stretchy sticky octopus and a Magnet Set) The girls had fun throwing the Bugs and the Octopus at the windows and a couple of times onto the ceiling. Chaos was blissfully unaware of the goings-on as he was very much into his new Magnet Set (he loves magnets). We spent a good hour playing with these, and then I brought out the Caterpillar (winds up, then moves similar to a real caterpillar) the kids had fun trying it on different surfaces, Chaos was upset it wasn't magnetic (lol) and tried to follow it with his magnets and the girls took turns putting their bugs on the back of the caterpillar for a ride.

We also found this new site:

We Give Books
 - You can read free (good) books online, from DK Books to Picture Books to Madeline.

Heres a little bit about how it works:

We Give Books is a free website that enables anyone with access to the Internet to put books in the hands of children who don't have them, simply by reading online.
Simply choose the charity you want to read for and then select the books you want to read. For each book you read online, we donate a book to a leading literacy group on your behalf.
The more you read, the more we give.

So you get to read free books, and help out others! Amazing. We've signed up and have our own little library going on.

hmmm.....my tea's ready! Catch you next week

xxx
Miss E,

Lit/Books List

I would of posted much sooner, but I have been moving stuff around (I currently have multiple projects going on) and I can't find where I put my camera! There's a wonderful lot of photos just waiting to be made into more posts, but until I find which basket/drawer I had it in, I cannot do anything!

I just finished skimming back out literature list, so this is a good a post as any :) I was originally going for 1 picture book & 1 chapter of a long book per day, but when "fleshing" out the rest of our stuff, I figured we have enough books in place (DH also reads to them of a night).

Our new plan is 1 Picture Book & Related activity a week, and a couple of chapters of one longer book. If I don't have time/kids aren't in mood for it, then I'll either scrap the activity or do it on the weekend, and insert the book as one of DH's nightly books.

So, here's the final List! (Sorry no links, I'm too lazy today!)

Picture Books:

The Golden Kangaroo - Valentine
Fraser Dingo - Jill Morris
Wombat Stew - Marcia Vaughn
The Kangaroo played his Didgeridoo - Nigel Gray
Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie
Guess how much I love you
Warren & the Great Carrot Race
The tale of Tom Kitten & Jemima Puddleduck
Farmer Schulz's Ducks - Colin Thiele
The Bunyip in the Billycan - Mavis Scott
Moving on - Penny Matthews
The Big Book of Love - Trace Moroney
Red Tractor - Sue Graves
Burke & Wills - Roland Harvey
The Willy-Willy and the Ant - Cecilia Egan
The Secret Garden
Firefighters (eyewitness readers)
Bright Star - Gary Crew
Tom Tom - Rosemary Sullivan
The Whalers - Bronwyn Bancroft
The Rainbow - Felicia Law
The Great round-the-world Balloon Race - Sue Scullard
Ottoline at the British Museum - Sally Craddock
Possum Magic - Mem Fox
Commotion in the Ocean - Giles Andreae
A Bad Case of Stripes - David Shannon
Imagine a Day - Sarah L Thomson
Imagine a Night - Sarah L Thomson
Grandad's Prayers of the Earth - Douglas Wood
Flat Stanley
Love you Forever - Robert Munsch
All About Ping
Where the Wild things Are - Maurice Sendak

Chapter Books:

Alice in Wonderland - 12
Through the Looking Glass - 12
Charlottes Web - 22
The BFG - 23
Wizard of Oz - 12
The Magic Faraway Tree - 26
The Hundred Dresses - Eleanor Estes - 7

All books are ones we already have, I collect books whenever we go into our nearest town, since at that particular Charity Shop, most of the books are 99c each. I think the only ones I have purchased new from that list are Roald Dahl Books (we have a couple more of them) which I get every now and again from Kmart. I managed to pick up Dr Suess and a couple of Roald Dahl's from Charity too!

As you can see the list is a little higgledy-piggledy. I have to include a wide age range (Grade 1 - Toddler) We are mostly focusing on Australian Stories & Childrens Classics, but there are a few silly, fun ones there too. Two of these books are re-told versions. Wizard of Oz is a re-told picture Chapter for under 8yrs. Secret Garden is a summarised Picture book.

xxx

Miss E.