When Does Your Family Take Photos? "Everyday"

This month we are traveling around the world with Mother Goose Time's "It's a Small World" theme.  Today is day 4 and we are learning about cameras!  I mean, what would a trip around the world be with out a camera to capture it all. 

I asked Peter the first discussion question, when does your family take photos?  "Everyday!" was his reply.  When I asked the question I had a sneaky suspicion I might get a non traditional answer.  Being a blogger, I have my camera out on the counter and we take pictures almost everyday.  So Peter was spot on.

As the boys ate breakfast we got started on making a camera for the lesson Camera Prop.  Mother Goose Time provided this awesome paper punch out that you folded up to make a camera.  They provided paper cups for the lens.  They also provided pictures of some of the wonders around the world, for them to cut out.  The pictures slid into the back of the paper camera and made it look like it was the photo on the back screen of digital cameras.

Next I got out our new book this month "Wonder around the World".  This book has photos from around the world.  You start at the great sequoias and end at Ayers rock in Australia.  The boys had photos for their cameras of about 5 of the stops.  They had fun putting the corresponding photo in their camera as we were reading.  They would pretend like they were there because you have to be there to take a picture, right?

 Here I am reading to them the page on the pyramids. 

 Lachlan is explaining to me the things he saw on his trip to the Egypt.

 Here he is pointing out the details of his picture.

Peter is telling me about where they sat to have a picnic when they were at the pyramids.

Next we traveled to Italy to see the Leaning tower of Pisa.  The book asked, how far can you lean before you fall over?  Lachlan promptly hopped up to give it a try.

 Oh man, he fell over.

Peter's turn!  You can see they are wearing their I am Loving friendship bracelets.  We didn't have time to do that lesson yesterday, so we squeezed that in today.

Next we moved on to Photo Shapes and got out our shape manipulatives and our shape design mat.  These shape design mats are new to MGT, we have had them the last couple of months now.  I love them!  It's a great way to have the kids figure out patterns. 

I gave this task to Peter and he got right to work.  He did some of their patterns and some of his own.

Meanwhile, Lachlan was counting to 100!  He is a pro at this now.

When Peter lost interest with the hearts I sent him on the Sightseeing Scavenger Hunt.  Mother Goose Time gave us a list of items you can find around your house that start with the letter g.  I sat at the table with Lachlan while shouting out the words.  Peter would run, go find the object, bring it back to me if it could be brought back or just point to it if it couldn't be moved.

Garbage can!  Peter really threw me off on this one.  I thought he would run to the kitchen and point to the cupboard under the sink.  But he started running all over the room looking for something.  When he brought back our toy garbage can from our garbage truck set, it finally all made sense.  Adam really enjoyed the new find.

 Green!  He didn't want to be in the picture so he turned his head.

Gold! He shrugged his shoulders, "I am not going to be able to find gold around here."  Then I pointed out my wedding ring which is white gold.  Then he was happy.

 Gloves!

 Globe!

 Glass!

With a slight tip of his head he says "I can't bring this to you though" as he points to the glass door.  It is glass, I promise, even though you can't see through it.  :)

At this point Lachlan is all done counting and needs to get some writing practice in.  So I had him get out his My Little Journal and turn to the g page.  He practiced writing both the big and little gs and then I had him draw a picture of something that starts with the /g/ sound.  He chose to draw a goat and he did it in great detail.

Girl!

It turns out I am the only girl in this house.  Except Mona.  I teased Peter.  I think there is one more girl in this house.  She is small, has a tail and fur and barks a lot.  Mona! He exclaims.

 It's just you and me Mona.

Here is Lachlan's finished goat and on the other g page he decided to draw a picture of someone galloping!  Brilliant boy.

Lachlan didn't want to do his workbook pages but Peter really did.  So we switched things up.  First he did the math page.  We used the link manipulatives from last month to help work through the problems.

 Meanwhile, this was going on on the other side of the table.  Lachlan had tipped upside down and Adam took full advantage, "kissing" his face and shoving toys in his face and fingers in his mouth.  There was a lot of giggling going on and baby squealing too.

When the fun was over Lachlan finished his day with some reading.  I had him read from this Hooked on Phonics book.  He was learning "at" words and after many months of repetition he got them down pat.  I didn't push him, we just casually read through them over and over.  He would look up at the alphabet chart, sing the alphabet song to see what letter the word started with, look at the picture on the alphabet chart to come up with the letter sound and then put that sound together with the "at" ending to come up with the word.  This is honestly how he learned most of his letters and their sounds.  He never has liked just looking at the letters and memorizing them.  I am not a big fan of that either.  So he kind of learned his letters by learning to read.  Quite different than the way it's suppose to go, but that's what I love about homeschooling!

Once he was able to read through the words with out looking the letters up on the chart we moved on to the next set of words, the "an" words.  Now that he has really mastered the first set of words and the sounds they start with he is cruising through this second set.  It's fun to him.