Cherished Child of Mine: My New Classroom...

This summer we have enjoyed learning through several different hands on projects/experiments. The girls have LOVED them and learned so much along the way! We created a worm habitat and compost bucket and enjoyed feeding the worms, watching them build tunnels and learning about how worms are beneficial to the soil and ultimately us. We have also been observing and learning from the mommy bird that laid her eggs in the girls' birdhouse they decorated. It sits on our front porch right at the door so we get to watch her take worms and other goodies to her babies all day long. She's a busy bird. It often reminds me of how God instructs us to live. We are not to worry and fret about tomorrow, instead we should rest assured that our Heavenly Father will take care of our needs as they arise just as the mommy bird provides for and protects her babes. It is literally all she does. I guess that's the lesson I've learned while the girls have been learning many other things about nature. Our latest activity was making 'frozen sand'. My intentions for this fun activity were just that, FUN. Oh how it was so much more. The mud lasted for several days of fun and once they had made several shapes and molds from it, Rachel decided she wanted to freeze the mud. I quickly learned that when I told her we were making frozen mud, she thought of frozen as in temperature and it was Frozen mud as in the movie Frozen. She invented a whole new activity which was much more fun! They froze all the molds and would wait to see how long it took for them to to thaw. We learned some new vocabulary words, defrost, thaw and a little about irregular verbs when we learned that it is correct to say frozen or freeze rather than frozed or freezed :) We talked about WHY the mud freezes when you put it in the freezer and that it takes more than just 2 seconds for that process to complete. Therefore they ultimately learned patience while they waited for what seemed like eternity to them. The girls practiced sharing and divided all the mud in half so each would have their own mud. They were very precise on the measurement of half. Life must be fair at 4 and 2 years old. It's always neat for me to watch how different Rachel and Sarah are. They are pretty much opposites in every way. When we do 'school' kinds of things it's interesting to see how they are completely different students. At this point, Sarah seems very studious and serious about her work. She is a very careful and attention to detail worker. She will sit to paint a picture and stick with the same picture for a very long time (especially considering her age). Rachel needs movement and hands on manipulation. She is very creative and likes to invent and create things. She doesn't like to color in the lines and stick to the original plan. She likes to veer off course and create something new and exciting. The verdict is still out about Hannah but I have my predictions :) I'm so excited that this year my classroom will be my home. I'm going to truly enjoy teaching my girls and watching them grow. Hopefully I will have time to blog a little along the way so that one day we can look back on these days and recall the days of adventure we had together.