First Grade - Third Day

Today was another really good day.  So I'm going to chalk yesterday's difficulties up to insufficient sleep.

We started off the day with breakfast and a bit of clean-up and then headed out for our little walk.  

The kids both enjoyed Circle.  Yoav is enjoying the finger movements more than ever before.  A new type of movement we do is clapping games - we're doing Pease Porridge where I clap my hands together and then clap against his hands and he's really enjoying it - he asks to do it over and over.  I added in a tongue twister (Peter Piper Picked a Pickled Pepper...) and both boys loved that, with Elie coming up with a new ending instead of the word Pepper (think potty humor and a 3-year-old male brain LOL).  That set the boys off laughing and spewing wackiness.

Yoav doing (and very much enjoying!)"Where is Thumbkin?" fingerplay

Yoav's favorite part of Circle is the games.  His favorite is the jump rope one, but he also loves the bean bag game - I sing, "Do you have a beanbag head?" to the tune of "Do you know the muffin man?" and switch around to things like, "Can you hop with a bean bag head?"

Yoav loving (and getting a little kooky) our beanbag game.

I guess Elie was throwing his beanbag - it ended up on the roof and I couldn't get it off...

One of the beanbags ended up on the roof :(

For Form Drawing, we followed Ernst Schuberth's "Form Drawing: Grades 1-4" for the third day.  We reviewed line and curve and then I drew a horizontal line.  I asked Yoav what was the feeling of the line (per the Schuberth book) and he said, "Like a warm cozy bed." which I guess is somewhat expected, because Schuberth says to call it the straight line lying down - the "resting" line.

Form for today (drawn on MLB paper) - "resting" line

Our Morning Activity was cooking - we made chicken soup. 

Making chicken soup

Our Afternoon Activity was Craft - we made Rosh Hashanah cards using potato prints with watercolor paint.  Yoav made a Star of David (he drew the star on the potato and I cut); I made an apple.

Potato print

We used thick watercolor paper cut into 4"x6" rectangles and we rounded the edges with our cool new corner rounder.

Yoav stamping

Yoav LOVE LOVE LOVED this craft.  He said a few times that he loved it and it was so much fun.  As an aside he had such a funny comment about a card he made for my in-laws.  He said, "I'm going to make this one for Saba and Safta because I love them so much.  They're the kind of people who love everything I make for them."  Then as he was painting it, he said, "Look how much love I'm putting in!  SO.MUCH.LOVE!"  :)

The craft took a little too long (for Elie).  He wanted it to be over and for me to stop helping Yoav.  It took us a bit to figure out a good method, how much paint, cutting paper, etc.  We ended up switching from thinner watercolor paper to thick watercolor paper when I saw that Yoav was painting the whole card rather than just doing the print.  Also I had the cards prepared as 8"x6" cards folded in half rather than 4"x6", but it just seemed unnecessarily to have them be folded cards once we switched to the thicker (more expensive) paper.  For next time, I'll know to mix the paint with minimal water for the print - Yoav was having fun squirting water into the blob of paint, but you really just need a bit of watercolor paint with one or two squirts of water (I didn't want a thick print).

Yoav painting around the stamps

Yoav's finished card

My finished card