The Princesses And The Peeps

More baby chicks! Only this time the purpose is to put their eggs on the table instead of themselves.
Heidi is beside herself with joy, she can't wait to find out which are the girls and have them grow up so she can have the responsibility of collecting the eggs.
What? Isn't this what everyone does with their baby bathtub?
We got an incubator and hatched this batch ourselves, making for some great learning opportunities for us all.
This is probably old news for anyone with any knowledge of chickens, but I didn't realize that the chicks start peeping before they ever come out of their shells.
Or that it takes 24 hours from first little tap tap taps to baby chick.
I'm hoping we have lots of little egg layers in there.

Map Fun

Maps seem to fascinate Heidi. The other day while driving home from her friend's house, she asked if we could draw a map of how to get to all of her friends houses. I thought it a grand idea and we did so immediately upon returning home. We talked about compasses and directions and she began to drive her fingers from one friends house to another, telling me when she was turning East, West, North or South. That gave me an idea. I sent her to get her hot wheels and put a large piece of paper on the floor.
I proceeded to draw a very large, very not to scale, map of our area, including the homes of a couple of friends.
Heidi and Hannah spent the next couple of hours coloring it in (making sure our driveway looked very muddy) and driving their cars from one place to the next.

What a lot of fun from a couple minutes worth of outlining and instruction on my part!

Alphabet

Heidi's been interested in all things reading and writing lately, so for the past couple of months we've been working on an alphabet for the wall. We finished last week and I can now just direct attention upwards when she has questions about the formation of a letter. I love that she is constantly wanting me to spell things out for her so she can write them, and that often her writing is for others. She loves to write letters to her cousins!

What makes me laugh is the words she deems necessary to record:

"Momma, how do you spell document?"

"How 'bout eternal?"

"Grandpa and Grandma Wagenhoffer and Grandpa and Grandma Root?"

What a world these 26 little letters will open for her!

A Bit About Our "Schoolroom"

One of the benefits of living where we do is the ability to observe and appreciate God's creation right outside our door. It's a gift I'm already finding advantageous for homeschool. For instance, while on a walk a couple days ago, we found both fresh evidence of a visiting bear and this delightful deer skull. Heidi, fascinated, couldn't take her eyes off it and had to question me about every little detail, the tongue, the teeth, the eyes, everything.
Believe it or not, the conversation ended like this:


"Momma, is there meat in deer?"
"Yes, there is."
"Ooh, yummy, I'd like to try some sometime."

Not exactly my thought upon seeing a decaying skull.


On another note, it humors me how she can be so oblivious and observant at the same time. While running through the woods she ran smack into a tree (sadly she does this often as she's generally more interested in the world around her than in looking where she is going). Rubbing her head, she stepped back and proclaimed, "Oh, this is an OAK tree". Silly girl, doesn't see the tree, but once she hits it, knows what kind it is!

Children's Museum

Yesterday we went on our first official outing with our home school group [I use the term loosely as technically I have no school age children yet, there's only two other families in the group, and we've only gotten together once before this]. We went to the Children's Museum in the city and it was a BIG hit, especially with Heidi. As we were leaving at closing time she informed me, "I would like to go to the Children's Museum again tomorrow, Momma. And the next day and the next". Judging from my exhaustion level today, It's a good thing we can't go every day.

The girls enjoyed driving a car,

riding sea monsters,

being astronauts,

experimenting with air,

exploring a train,

being postmasters,

playing with gravel and water,

and operating a backhoe!

Some "Real" Reading

I wasn't sure if Heidi was ready for chapter books yet, but I decided to give it a try. Today, less than a week after starting "Little House in the Big Woods", Heidi was crying because she realized we were on the last page. Thankfully I had a whole series to show her and the tears turned to bliss. That love for literature I'm seeing makes it just a little more worthwhile to read the same children's book to Hannah for the twentieth time a day!

Interactive Calender

Seasons and dates have really captured Heidi's interest over the past few months and I've been wanting to take advantage of that and teach her all about them. Somewhere in March or April I made all the pieces for a calender and had Karl take them to school to get them laminated. Due to my, um... resourcefulness, I didn't want to spend money on a board to mount it all on. After a few months, my patience paid off and Karl brought home a piece of scrap board. I painted it white, did some writing and nailing and we had a calender!

Our favorite part is bunny. Heidi informs me her name is Heidi, and she has clothes we can change according to the weather. She only has a few outfits now, but I'm thinking her wardrobe may expand!