Goodnight Moon

I know, I'm a little behind in blogging about our book reading, I mean rowing.  We had company over this past week and we weren't able to do any of our preschool work, so we went a few days over into this week finishing up the activities I had planned for this book.  It was a simple book, but surprisingly both kids really loved it.

They love doing Do-A-Dot painting, and we hadn't done it in awhile, so I got some printouts of the letter "M" and they went to town painting the letter. 

They also did a poke pin page of the letter "M".

Abby got a new pencil box from Grandma and she's addicted to the glue stick.  It's purple, and she's in love with it.  Here she's not really gluing anything...just "painting" with the purple stick.  Oh, and that Mod Podge in the corner?  Oh yeah!  I found the neatest craft, pinned it on my Pintrest board, and actually did it.  I know, I know...you're aching to see it, but that craft has nothing to do with moons and the letter "M".  You'll have to wait for another post.  

I struggled with finding activities for this book, so we learned about the different phases of the moon.  Since finding activities that corresponded with this book was hard, we did more work in his Abeka K4 book and his Kumon workbooks. 
***********************************************
I know you all are wanting to know about the worms.  It was brought to my attention that they are probably not tomato worms but tobacco worms.  I agree.  Either way, they like eating tomato plant leaves and stalks, and within hours their little habitats that we set up for them were completely bare of foliage.  What remained were humongous piles of frass.  (That's scientific language for "poop".)  By my calculations they were going at a rate of 1-1.5 PPH.  You know, Pellets Per Hour.  I won't even go into how bad they smelled, after only several hours (and many, many pellets later!).  Simply put, they are gone.  To worm haven.  And I don't think the kids have even noticed. 

Tomato

Yes, I said tomato, singular, because it would be a bit dishonest to make the word plural and imply that my garden has actually been producing them at a normal level.  Nope.  Not here.  I think I read somewhere that everyone is able to grow tomatoes, but apparently no one has meet me yet.  My plants are huge, folks.  Huge.  I pruned them a bit a few weeks ago, thinking that all their energy has been put into making new foliage, but that didn't help a bit.  I still only had one tomato.  Teeny and tiny.  I, however, put that thing right into my relish I made not too long ago, because I wasn't going to let it go to waste. 

That brings us to today.  I went out with the kids to water and I bent down to pull some dead leaves off the humongous zucchini plant.  A tomato stem bopped me on my head and I brushed it aside.  When I stood up I almost passed out.  There, on that scoffed off branch was the largest tomato worm I had ever seen.  Once I regained my composure I of course called the kids over to take a look at it.  Well, I know better than to let it stay on my tomato-less bush so I cut it off and disposed of it.  I quickly ran into the house and googled it.  I found the neatest picture of it's, um, waste, and quickly realized that those little square green things in garden box #4 were not something that I wanted in there.  I followed the trail of poop (is worm waste called that?!?) and sure enough, there was another one....and another one....and...okay, you get my point.  My tomato plant was full of them.  While the kids played tee-ball I disposed of them. 

But not all of them.  You really didn't think that I'd snip all of them in half with my trusty blue kitchen scissors now, did you?  You are reading the ramblings of a born and bred homeschooled gal who has two littles who find these things awesome.  These worms are making for an incredible science lesson. 

 They are SO large that you can see even the finest detail on them.

Well, if you are in the area feel free to come over and take a peek at them.  These beauts are sitting right on our kitchen counter.  

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be heading to the store to buy me some Bt. 

Update:  their poop is called frass, for anyone wanting to know. 
You're welcome. 

Angus Lost

The last two weeks have been spent on the book Angus Lost.  I'll be honest.  I'm not sure why it is is such a highly recommended book.  Maybe I'm just tired from all the heat we've been having, but after such a fun row with We're Going on a Bear Hunt I found this book a tad dull.  The kids did enjoy the book, and I was able to pick up several other Angus books, Harry the Dirty Dog books, and other fun dog books.

This dog sorting activity proved way too easy for him, so Abby soon took it over.

Both kids did this pets activity page.  Abby loves her glue.

 She also loves pink marker.  And this was after I washed her face off.  Washable...whatever.

In the book Angus follows the milkman back to his home.  So we learned about the milk-making process.  We even watched a Reading Rainbow video of how milk and cheese are made.

I made dirt cups for the kids' snack one day.  A favorite book was Dirty Harry so I thought this was a great tie-in!  Oh, my creativity astounds me some days!

 

They were a huge hit with the kiddos! 

The last two weeks were quite busy, with preschool activities (again, I'm forgetting to take pictures of a lot these days, however their Before Five in a Row lapbook binder is quickly filling with some really cool activities!), a trip to a neat park to explore the lake, a trip to the beach, a birthday trip to Disney, canning English relish, canning pickles, and some fun backyard projects.  I'll more more about that later.  Good things are happening over here!  

Happy weekend everyone!

Overheard

William and Abby chat together all the time while riding in the car.  Yesterday, John and I heard the following conversation...


William: Abby, it's getting dark outside.  Say, "Yes, Abby."  (They have always been instructed to say "Yes, Mom" when I ask them to do something, etc. so William now thinks that applies to him as well.)
Abby: Yes Abby.
William: No, say "Yes, Abby."
Abby, laughing: Yes.
William: When it gets dark it means the sun is going down.  At night the sun drops into the ocean and it goes out. That's why it's dark.  Say, "Yes, Abby."
Abby: Yes. 

Hmmm...might be time to pull out that outdated globe, at least for illustration purposes.