Oo- Octopus

 

This week was a very busy one for us. It seemed like we had something going on just about every day. It always gets crazy around the holidays! I'm still trying to decide if we're going to take a break for Thanksgiving. So our school days were cut short a couple days this week and we didn't get as much done as I had hoped. One thing I've had to learn over the last few years though is to RELAX! It's ok to skip things bc you've had a stressful week. It's ok not to check off every box ( I'm definitely a box checker person! I would not survive as an UN-schooler!) It's taken a couple years for me to realize 2 boxes left unchecked will not effect my child's chances of becoming a successful well educated adult! It's even ok to totally throw out the day's lesson plans (gasp!), and spend the day instead learning to make cookies or chasing bugs (bc that's what my child happens to be interested in that day.) In fact I've learned that a child might actually learn more in a couple unplanned hours than in a whole week of book work. One thing I've come to love most about homeschooling is the freedom that comes with it. Freedom to make our own schedule; freedom to learn at our own pace; freedom to study whatever and where ever we want; freedom for my kids to just be kids, and have more time to play together and enjoy their day than they would if they were in a classroom all week...

Ok back to the point of this post....Our octopus week was short, but we squeezed in a few fun things. Boo's words to remember were "Even the octopus praises the Lord." "Octopus can't praise!" she said. We learned that octopus and all the other amazing creatures on earth show us how awesome God is, so in a way all creation praises Him. Psalm 145:21 says "Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever."

A lot of this unit was learning about oceans and lots of different sea creatures. I didn't get a chance to go to the library, so we used books from our own library for our story time. We used the internet for facts and info. Here's a pic of the books we used (note: the manatee book includes references to evolution that we had to skip.)We also watched this short video clip of a real octopus. Both girls concluded that they even though God created octopus they are ugly and gross!haha 

For our tactile letter activity Boo used Fruit Loops to trace the letter Oo. Then she ate them! We also played our letter sound bingo game for the first time this week.

 Boo and I made this counting octopus to help her with her numbers. I drew and cut him out. She glued him together. Then I wrote a number on the bottom of each of his arms. She had to glue the correct number of black dots above the numbers. Our house is currently decorated with 3's. For what ever reason she can't remember the #3!In a desperate attempt, I hung 3's in just about every room of our house to try to remind her. One sign you're a home schooler...your friends houses are nicely decorated with pictures and flowers your dinning room is decorated with a time-line and yesterday's science experiment as a centerpiece!ha

We looked at oceans on the globe and talked about the creatures that live there. Then Boo had to color the oceans blue and the land green on a map.


Instead of doing the octopus hotdog lunch we made an octopus string cheese with her sub sandwich. I wish I could say it's because I'm so creative, string cheese is so much more fun than a hot dog, and because we did the octopus hotdog thing when Sis was little. However, I choose string cheese because I happened to have some in the fridge, the baby was screaming, we were starving, and it literally took 30 secs to peel the cheese...close enough.

   

Instead of an ocean mural or badge we just did a quick "words to remember" craft we made a little hand print octopus. We traced both hands, cut them out, and then had to glue them so that only 8 fingers were showing. Then we glued our words to the bottom.

 On Friday Boo earned her 9th badge. Our cute little caterpillar is growing!