Marvelous magic marshmallow monster poop for Letter M Day!

Home school took up most of our day today. Actually, today was filled with a lot of playing, laughs, creativity, exploring and other fun stuff.  With each activity we did, it was followed by a lot of imaginative play, cooperative play and just plain play. I was a little surprised but I just rolled with it.

Monster Poop has ALWAYS been a favorite of my boys. I started doing it about 2 years ago. Basically, it's just shaving cream and green food color. When Austin saw it he said "it looks like monster poop" so the name just stuck. 

We have a book called Huggly Gets Dressed. It's about this cute little monster who's interested in how people wear their clothes.  My boys thought this story was so cute....so {maybe} about a year ago, I decided to leave the boys a present in the bath tub and a note from Huggly taped to it. He had come to try on all their clothes and said thanks, but he needed them to clean up his poop he left behind. Gross...but my boys think poop is hilarious, so I won :)

Today I asked my boys {since it's M day}, "what do you think would happen if a monster ate too many magical marshmallows?" Lucas shouted "He would POOP out magic marshmallow poop!!!"  ....and that's exactly what happened in our shower today...for Art.

MARVELOUS MAGIC MARSHMALLOW MONSTER POOP

You need: 
Shaving cream

food color
Optional:
containers {if you want...I sometimes just give them a can of shaving cream in the shower and let them go crazy}
little spray bottles to clean the shower when they are done
rags
sponges
googly eyes

All you do is squirt shaving cream in a container and add drops of food coloring. That "magic" part is swirling it and seeing the color come out. if I would have thought about it, I should have put the some shaving cream down, put color down and then more shaving cream so they had to dig for it. I didn't do that.
I dropped some googly eyes on top. 

They played in this "poop" for over an hour.  I then had to turn the water on to rinse them off and they stayed in there playing for a while longer. This freed me up to get whatever I needed done.

 

This really is a fun activity.  If you don't mind messy clean play {who would} give it a try :)

This ends our Letter M day for today!

Crystin

Handwriting practice with dry erase boards

This seems to be my kids favorite way of writing. They each ask me throughout the day if they can use their dry erase boards.  Since today is Letter M day, I put some three letter words on Austin's dry erase board and Lucas just got a lot of practice making his "Mm".  Austin did end up writing all the words out, then erased them all and started sounding out his own words. He sounded out and spelled box, momme {mommy}, fox, mit and a few others.

 I got these dry erase boards and markers at the dollar store a while back.  

Enjoy
crystin

Letter M

This is our morning white board, this is the first thing we do in the morning. I go over the list of activities to do and the letter of the day. I circle the activities we have done and see what we have left to do. The words in blue are the words that we have talked about during the day that start with the letter "m". When they say a new letter "m" word we write it on our board. The first activity is always our workbooks (I choose that) and then I let them choose what the next activity will be. They always choose science.

The marvelous letter today is Letter M!  While the boys take a break from school, watch Monsters, Inc. and eat *moon mix I wanted to update on some of the activities we did this morning. I have a few more activities after snack, but here's the short list we did this morning.

 *Moon mix is just trail mix and marshmallows. I was just going to have them snack on marshmallows and found this trail mix next to the bag of marshmallows...hence the name "moon mix".

SCIENCE: MAGNETS AND HOW THEY WORK

Sorry the picture of this one is dark, the sun is right to our backs at the table in the mornings.  

Today we talked about Magnets and how they work.  We learned that things magnets are attracted to iron, steel etc. We learned the magnet has two poles, the north and the south. I taught them how the north pole is only attracted to the south pole and visa versa. We talked about the words "attract", "repel", "magnetized".  I tested them verbally by asking what the poles names were, what happens if the poles don't attract etc. 

 The boys wanted to figure out what had "iron" in it and what did not. They loved finding items that were magnetic. 

We brought out the rest of the magnetix we have and just played around with them.  The boys thought my cookie sheets might be magnetic and WERE.

 Austin tested this biscuit pan to see if it was magnetic, it was not, but the cookie sheets and muffin tins were.

This is a magnet maze I made really fast last night.  If you've ever played with magnetix, you know you get the balls and the little sticks. I just attached the stick to the back and they had to use the stick to control the ball where it needed to go.

READING: MADDOX THE MOON MAN  (plus activity)

I came up with a story about Maddox the Moon Man. He lives on the moon and is very lonely. He needs to find Moon Treasure so he can make a wish to get his friends to come live on the Moon with him. The boys loved it and listened really intently. I would ask them questions and let them guess at the answer. I would ask "why did Maddox have to put on a special suit and mask when he would go out on the moon surface." Lucas actually answered "because there's no air", which surprised me.  Anyway, so Maddox walks through the squishy sand of the moon following a map that he found 2 weeks earlier.  I asked a lot of questions when we were done "listening" to make sure they got all the information. They were like sponges!

The activity that goes along with my story is Moon Dough. If you've never experienced Moon Dough, I suggest you let your kids play with it. I love it and so do my kids. 

MOON DOUGH

8 cups flour

1 cup baby oil

themed items (for this activity, I used Maddox-an imaginext space guy), an imaginext alien, a few "friends", star stickers, a construction paper "map", space masks, googly alien eyes, and moon treasures. 

*I doubled this recipe because I was making two batches.... these were sensory tubs so I wanted each boy to have their own amount. So I used 16 cups flour and 2 cups baby oil)

(I buy the 2lb bags of flour at the dollar tree and the baby oil there too. This activity was about $5. I have used expired flour before as well and veggie oil and they worked fine)

 The moon treasures are those balls you see in the picture. I just put a "jewel" inside and smooshed dough around it to form a ball.

Checking "maddox the moon man" out and putting on his space mask

 MOON TREASURE!

 I asked Austin to read what was on the outside of the map.

 He has to count his moon treasure because Maddox found 9 before he could make his wish.

Lucas got sidetracked with a worm... He named it Moomie...and it's now somewhere in our house.  {ugh}

Well that's our morning so far. These boys are bursting with energy so I am going to shoo them outside to play for a while. Maybe it's because they had moon mix ;)

Crystin

Letter S

Letter S was actually a fun letter to work with.  Since I have to teach both boys who are at different levels, I had to find activities that work for both of them. I think I did a pretty good job today of keeping them engaged.

So here is what we did today. 

I started the day with this little white board. I asked the boys "what is this letter" and they both said "S".  I gave some examples of words that start with S and asked if they knew any other words that start with S. I wrote them in blue on the board next to the S.

 We did our Phonics work in the workbooks and put stickers on those.  They love the sticker idea and feel compelled to try their very best if they know they get to put stickers on the completed pages. I have them do their book work before we actually do any activities. That's also an incentive to get them going on their book work.
I asked the boys what they wanted to do next {all the subjects are on the white board} and they chose SCIENCE!  That's my favorite subject as well.

Before we started, I asked them what they do with their noses. "smell" and "sniff" were their answers. I told them it's called the "sense of smell" and we are going to explore that today.

Science: Sense of Smell with Spices!

What you need:
Spices
construction paper (if you want to cover the spice jars so they can't peek at the spices
little cups or containers to put the spices they are sniffing in

 For Lucas I used Onion Powder, Nutmeg, bay leaves and cumin.

For Austin I used Cinnamon, garlic powder, cloves and thyme. I tried to divide them up so the smells didn't smell the same... Like thyme and basil...I didn't want to confuse anyone. I wanted each spice to have a very distinct smell.

 By the way, cumin tastes and smells horrible. Austin was not a fan.

 He also said cinnamon was "too spicy, but it smells sweet in the jar".  If you are working with anything edible, your kids will try to eat them. I did make sure they were only taking small pinches or just putting a finger in each.

 Austin and Lucas trying to figure out the smells

 Needless to say, Lucas thinks cinnamon is "too spicy" as well.

Taste testing bay leaves. {yuck}

They really enjoyed this activity. I will be doing this again...also adding taste and other stuff in. 

Reading was next on the whiteboard so we went and got our robes on, blankets and pillows.  

I wrote a short "S" story which you find here. {I really suggest you read it. It's really really cute} I made an interactive story board on my white board with markers, magnets and construction paper.

READING: SALLY SNAKE'S STRAWBERRY PATCH

All I can say is that they loved loved loved this story, especially when I introduced two Soldiers named Sir Austin Sillypants and Sir Lucas Soggybottom.  They laughed and asked me to tell the story 3 more times.

The story included counting when we had to return all the sixteen strawberries back to their sorted spots... it included a lot of "s" words and a sweet Sally Snake who just happens to love strawberries.  They celebrated their "superior work by making a pot of strawberry soup, singing songs and sipping soup til sundown".

Lots of fun with this one and it didn't take me as long as you might imagine.  

COOKING: SALLY SNAKE'S STRAWBERRY SOUP POPSICLES


I had some frozen juice concentrate in the freezer that's been in there for a while. I asked the boys if they knew how to make Sally Snake's Strawberry Soup into Popsicles. They just looked at me like I was crazy... So we went and made some.

 This activity was really good for them. They stirred, measured, poured, tasted.

 ...and of course sipped the strawberry soup popsicles that we put in the freezer from cups :)

 To finish off our Letter S day, we did some Art. Lucas really loves art. He loves any sort of drawing, coloring, cutting {mostly cutting} and gluing. Austin is "so so" on the arts and crafts.  So I had to make it fun for both of them.  We made Toilet Paper tube Super Heroes!  What a fun activity. The boys ate it up and are still whooshing them through the house and rescuing captured imaginext characters.  

TOILET PAPER TUBE SUPER HEROES

What you need:
toilet paper tubes
construction paper
cape drawing/mask drawing skills {heehee}
imagination
markers
glue

 This is Lucas' hero complete with awesome mask and cape

 The cape makes him able to whoosh and stuff {that's a quote}

 ...here's Austin's, complete with goofy "Austin picture"

That's it...that was our morning. All these activities took a little planning, but nothing was overly time consuming.  It only took us about 2 hours to get through Home School summer fun this morning and the boys were completely involved and loving each activity.

I gotta say, this is such good practice for me when August rolls around.  We are staying on a morning schedule of 9:30 school starts and after it's over, we get to play, go outside, go to the park....whatever we need to do.

I am enjoying all these activities just as much as they are... I love how their little faces light up when they "get something" I am trying to teach.

Enjoy!
Crystin