a is for apple (year 3, week 1)

The kids have been begging me to start "Mommy School" for weeks.  I've been holding them off as I've prepared and to build the anticipation.  At last, the time has come.

Monday

This week, we started gymnastics.  All three of the kids are in the same class.  They all wished that they could do gymnastics every day, and have been very good at practicing what they learned.

Tuesday

Daddy had an extra day off so we gave ourselves an extra weekend day.

Wednesday

Wednesday was our first day of school. We started with some carpet time, then moved to the table to work on our notebooks.  Dragonfly colored a booklet of the world's continents, while the boys colored a letter A with pictures of words that start with short "a."

 We ate green and yellow apples and talked about the parts of the apple and the tastes sour and sweet.  After naps, we took first day of school pictures!

We practiced laying out our rugs for carpet time and rolling them up again.  One of my children is showing perfectionist tendencies about his rug.

Thursday

We had a rotation this morning with different activities that each child got to try.  They practiced their scissor skills and strengthened their fingers with play dough, which they rolled into snakes and cut.

They also played with a cinnamon-scented sensory bin.  The substrate is oatmeal with a big sprinkle of cinnamon.  The red pompoms were for counting, and the letter "a's" were used for practicing "ahh" sounds.

Dragonfly practiced spelling her CVC "at" words with me, which she did very well at.  She felt very empowered to see that "at" always made the same sound but changing the beginning sound changed the word.  The CVC word cards came from Miss Giraffe.  The letters are from Amazon.

During their "work with mom" time, the boys played with the Bucket Balance and counted "green apple" glass stones.  They enjoyed the feel of the stones and the pouring and dumping aspect of the activity.

While we were doing school, our free toys from Safari Ltd arrived.  While I did my #HowiSafari photo shoot, the kids enjoyed turning through the catalogue.  There was so many good conversations and "reading" happening!  I think every item in the book is now on their Christmas lists.

Friday

One of our Back-to-School traditions is to make apple pie.  Today was the day!

Dragonfly got to use a knife for the first time to cut apples.  She was very happy about the opportunity.  She did great- and there was no blood.

Other Apple Posts
- homeschool year 2
- homeschool year 1
- apple theme pictures/posters
- apple scented writing tray
- wormy apple busy bag
- the Big Apple 3-part cards

Apple Printables
- apple vocab poster
- roll and pick math game
- apple tree alphabet match

More Apple Ideas
- apple ring donuts
- orchard sensory bin
- apple experiment