Autumn school work arrived

Ruth was so excited about her new lot of school work arriving in the post today. The theme is autumn to go along with the crafts we have been doing. By the end of the day she was already singing along with the new cd of songs she received.

She also did not want to waste any time in getting her poster made. So we got out the rest of the leaves we had pressed and then went walking around the garden looking for seed pods. The only ones we could find were Acorn. It amazed me to see how many Oak trees are around our home (and all different sizes). No wonder the place is called "The Oaks".

Finished product. It's lovely Ruth. Well done.

Another fairy done

Ruth did this 48 piece today and did so well. The colours make it a tricky puzzle to do (especially for a 3 1/2 year old). It's amazing to just look again and she has it all finished.

Autumn crafts

Last week we started collecting items from the garden for our Autumn crafts. The girls were so excited to start with something, so we got busy on the acorn cups. The coloured them in and I put clear drying glue in each one.

The next day we made pretty bangles out of them and the girls were so impressed with their creations.

That kept them busy while our leaves dried in the flower press. A couple of days later we got the leaves out and the girls made place mats.

Ruth's first design of just filling the page with different colours was by far the most popular and so Rachel, Ruth and I made another one each with in that style so we could have a set of 6. The girls were so excited about using them that night at dinner.

This week we got busy on our joint project. First we drew white wispy clouds with white crayon and then we painted over that with blue.

Using the girls fingers (biggest to smallest) to create our branches.

And then sticking on the leaves. First the green one, then the yellow one with leaves starting to fall.

And then the red one with most of the leaves on the ground. We are all thrilled with the results.

48 piece in one go

Ruth seems to be in a puzzle building mode again and chose to tackle one of Rachel's 48 piece fairy puzzles this morning.

She did such a great job and she did it in one sitting too. It's a lot harder than her 60 piece Winnie the Pooh puzzle because of the type of picture. Well done Ruth!

What animals Eat - Poster

Ruth really enjoyed getting pictures of food out of the newspaper advertising yesterday. So today we started sticking them on.

She has not used glue before - so with this one she just put the glue on and I placed them. It's amazing that I can ask her "So what are you?" and she immediately says "omnivore". She has learnt so much.

We had so many pictures that we separated the meat and veg / fruit from the others and then she stuck all the extra pictures onto the back of the poster. She did this all on her own.

And she did such a good job. Well done Ruth.

I laminated the poster for her once she was done so that we don't have to worry about any of the pictures falling off. So even if they only got a little bit of glue in the middle it was enough.

What animals eat - Part 2

What do dogs eat? Do puppies eat the same as grown dogs?

Ruth has seen lambs drinking off their mother and remembers Rachel giving milk to the lamb she looked after. So once she thought about that she could guess that puppies would drink milk too. She enjoyed colouring the puppies in different colours.
Lovely pictures of the mice and birds that our cats catch and eat.

I was going to find clip art to print and let Ruth colour in but was having endless trouble with Word and so decided to rather look for photos. I am glad I did as we had lovely ones and it helped Ruth remember.
I was surprised to see how many photos we actually had from our holiday. Ruth had fun sorting them into groups. I had to look up the Takahe on-line to see what it ate but Ruth and I also had fun looking at all the other photos on the on-line encyclopedia. We also read about mussels and I guessed they were omnivores as plankton is made from microscopic plants and animals - but was not sure if they were classified in these groups. But it was great to see such a big mussel - just slightly open for us to see the creature inside.

The extra two pages we filled with family photos. Ruth did a great job of sorting them into their groups.

What animals Eat - Part 1

Today Ruth started on her Correspondence School work about What Animals Eat. This is the book that she is going to make.

She has really enjoyed talking about it all and drawing and writing in her book.

The first page about what animals we have at home. I drew the shape of the cow's head to help her and I also did some tiny dots as a guide for the side of the chook's body (after she had done the head on her own). She did the cat completely on her own. I was really impressed with what she did. She also enjoys writing over the dots that I do for the numbers and words.

Then we looked at what these animals eat. Her cat food packet ended up turning into a cat I think - so that one was not too successful. She is having so much fun having her own "school work" and it's surprising to realize how much she already knows.