Busy. Life is just so busy...both in the everyday normal (laundry, cleaning, feeding, cooking, errands...all the stuff), and even in schooling (especially public school- I speak from experience).
To slow down means I have to make a conscience effort to stop, listen, and observe the world around me...especially watching my kids learn.
There are treasures all around us... many that I neglect to see due to busyness.
This week we looked into the Sights and Sounds of the outdoors with Mother Goose Time. Even though it might seem that there isn't much happening during the winter outdoors, there is so much beauty if we just slow down to see it and take it in. I learned this lesson the hard way on ICE day.
Not gonna lie. Ice day was HARD- because teaching with a curious hands on 1 year old who hates to take long naps and be contained in any way possible makes teaching my 4 year old girl difficult. Therefore our ICE day was split into 2 days.
Sanity is more important than a lesson plan. Always.
Using an eyedropper and white glittery paint, Avaleigh squirted and dripped paint to resemble icicles while Everett schemed ways to get his hands on her work.
In the end, it turned out beautiful. But seriously yall, in the moment pictured above I was about to lose it (I had already listened to him scream/whine for at least an hour)
However, as I look at this picture I captured, I see the look of wonder in his eyes and although the moment was difficult, there's sweetness in it too. I wish I had slowed down then to see it instead of getting so frustrated. Maybe I'll remember that next time...
On Ice Day round 2, we completed a really neat science experiment!
Down here in Texas, we hardly get snow, but we do have ice occasionally.
This experiment teaches how salt helps melt ice,
Although Avaleigh's string did not have ice cubes actually come off with the string like the illustration depicts on the card, she could feel that the string had become frozen to the ice due to the salt melting the ice. I had her draw in her journal the experiment and label it. Then she told me what happened and I wrote it down.
Oh and that picture on the right is a whale with hurt fins, and some kind of animal (octopus I think) helping carry it. What can I say? Her favorite show is Octonauts. ha!
We finished our Ice Day by making Egg shakers, which was a STEAM station mentioned in last week's MGT materials. I made egg shakers a few years ago, which you can read about here, the only altercation I did was actually hot glue the eggs together.
They are my son's new favorite toy. And for $0.88 who can beat that?
Here's a little 1:20 video of them enjoying the shakers together.
How can you tie the winter outdoors to egg shakers?
Use items from the outdoors to fill them, or try to mimic sounds we hear outdoors with a certain egg shaker sound. Lately, it has been raining constantly here, and an egg shaker filled with sugar matches the sound of the rain outside my window.
I know we are all busy- especially at Christmas time. If there is anything ICE day taught me, it's that I have to slow down, breathe, and savor the sweet moments I get with my kids even if these moments are disguised in chaos. I have to choose to see it- I have to look actively look for these moments otherwise I can miss the beauty. Just like we all can miss the beauty of the Sights and Sounds of the Winter Outdoors.
Happy learning!
