Pumpkin and I are involved in a very fun homeschool kindergarten co-op this year. There are four families involved. The moms take turns hosting/teaching the group. (There are actually five students b/c one family has precious kindergarten twins.)
The co-op meets twice a week, on Mondays & Wednesdays, from 9am until 1pm. It's the perfect length of time. And it's the perfect number of days each week. (Can you tell I love our co-op? Oh, and by the way, Pumpkin loves it, too!)
Before the semester started, the moms had a planning meeting, and we decided to take a thematic approach to our year.
The last time I taught, I chose a color theme. One of my favorite parts of our week was when we colored homemade play-dough with food coloring. (I used Wilton Icing Color Gel. That stuff is awesome. And a tiny amount goes a really long way.) The kids loved the kneading process and watching the color work its way through the dough.
Another one of our activities was mixing paint (fun!) and painting craft sticks. We then used the painted sticks to make a "ten in the bed" craft project. We had so much fun singing the song together and letting our craft sticks "fall" out of bed one at a time.
(This project is really easy. Just use a stiff white envelope for the bed. Then glue felt onto the envelope for the blanket. I got the idea from this book: Kathy Ross Crafts: Numbers)
In the above photo, Pumpkin took a little break from rollerskating to hold up her finished product so I could take a picture. And I'm glad she did, because it also gave me the chance to ask about the drawing she did on our white board easel.
This drawing was very intricate, so I knew it must have a great story to go with it.
I was right.
The story involves a home, a playground, a city, the North Pole, and the beach.
There was a little drama at the beach. Unfortunately one little child pushed another child, which was very sad. There were tears.
But then, Pumpkin tells me, there was reconciliation.
A happy ending. :-)
