H is for Halloween

Spider picture made from Lily's hand prints and a ghost made from her footprint

Making of the spider mask

The finished spider mask

Lily's pumpkin patch picture - She drew each of us picking out a pumpkin (and Grandma of course)

Our Halloween-themed calendar for October

Cutest little student working on her H's

Playing hopscotch on a beautiful day

G is for Geography

Since Lily started school again, we are doing fewer activities and going at a slower pace with our learning activities at home. I didn't want her to feel like she is constantly doing adult-directed activities, but she requested that we keep doing our "school" at home. So, over the past couple weeks, we talked about geography, or mainly where we live. We read books and discussed our country, state and city. We did not do a lot of hands-on activities with this theme so I don't have any geography-related pictures. But, I did get a few of the G-related activities that we did.

Lily decorated a "G" with glitter and glue.

Lily also made a paper garden with green grass.

Finally, we made some green goop together. It didn't turn out quite right, but luckily Lily enjoys the process way more than the product anyway.

F is for Fall

We did a lot of crafty activities for the Fall/Autumn topic. We also did some leaf/tree identification with the trees in our yard. We focused mainly on trees due to time constraints, but we will "study" the fall harvest this weekend when we go to a farm for some apple picking and pumpkin patch activities.

Making a Fall tree. The trunk and branches are her arm and hand. The leaves are her fingerprints. Carl liked this one so much that he took it to work to proudly display at his desk. :)

This version of a tree reminds me of the rising sun. It has a certain Zen-quality that I like.

This was a simple art project in which Lily added torn paper "leaves" to a tree form.

This picture shows a couple of the projects we did with leaves that we collected on a neighborhood walk. Behind her is the "stained glass" leaf college that she made. She arranged the leaves within a construction paper frame on one piece of wax paper, then we covered it with another piece of wax paper and ironed it together (steam setting).

The second project that she is holding is a face that she drew on a paper plate and then added leaves for hair. She also made a picture of our family (including baby brother) using leaves as bodies; I just didn't get a picture of it.

Lily came up with this project all on her own. She painted one leaf different colors and then pressed it on paper and repeated the process several different times. The leaf impressions really turned out quite pretty. I then cut out the leaf shapes and arranged them on the construction paper.

F Activities

This was a Feeling game in which Lily felt inside the box, tried to guess what she felt, and then took the items out one by one and sorted them into groups based on whether or not they began with F.

Lily made a Fan and decorated it with Flower stickers.

We had a lot of fun painting outside one day. We painted Lily's fingers and foot, and she wrote the words. She is really coming along with writing letters. We did the "e" and "s" together but she did the rest entirely on her own!

Practicing writing Fs and playing in "Fairy dust" (baby powder)

In this video, Lily sings "5 Green and Speckled Frogs" with a prop that she made.

E is for Earth Science

Earth Science is a broad topic that encompasses many different areas of study. We chose to focus on caves and volcanoes for the week.

Making the Earth by squirting blue and green colored water onto a coffee filter

Exploring different materials to make the letter E

Lily's Cave Animals book

Painting lava coming out of the volcano

This experiment was supposed to show how magma comes up through the Earth by dropping a small jar of red hot water into a pitcher of clear cool water. The red water dispersed too quickly though, and I think that this would have worked better with red oil dropped into clear water.

This video shows our volcano experiment. It was simple, but Lily really enjoyed it - so much so that we had to do it a few times!

Meramec Caverns Field Trip

On Sunday, we went on a family field trip to Meramec Caverns to support our Earth Science week. It only took us 30-40 minutes to get there, and I loved being able to show Lily some of the great things that Missouri has to offer.

There is evidence that Jesse James and his brother actually hid out in this cavern. Of all the information given on the tour, the one thing that Lily remembers and still talks about is that the "cowboys" (the James brothers) had to leave their horses behind in the cavern to escape in the river. She concluded that they had to be very sad about that and has inquired where the horses are now.

Taken with the stalagmites and stalactites

A picture with daddy in front of the "wine table"

After 3 weeks of different topics, we are doing a review week. I'm not going to post pictures from review weeks so there is no post for last week. We have moved onto Fall this week. Hopefully, I'll be a little more on top of my updates and have pictures for this week posted by this weekend.

D is for Doctors

For week 2, we decided to focus on doctors, or more specifically, medical doctors and dentists. These are broad topics so we narrowed our discussions to: types of teeth, parts of the teeth/gums, healthy eating, a doctor's job/equipment and touched on anatomy as well.

Art project: Painting a yellow tooth white. I had planned for her to use a toothbrush to paint, but she was not interested. The white paint is mixed with corn syrup for more sheen.

Working on her food pyramid using clippings from magazines and grocery store fliers.

Classifying the food into the major food groups

This was one of my favorite activities (and Lily's too). We took various healthy foods and tested whether or not they would sink or float in water.

Lily made her predictions beforehand, and then we charted the results. I could not believe that she only got one wrong! I would have done far worse.

Science experiment #2: Examining the effects of unhealthy foods on teeth. In order to demonstrate this point, one boiled egg was submerged in cola and the other in vinegar. The first egg (in cola) shows what happens to teeth without brushing them. The second egg (in vinegar) shows what happens to teeth that are not cared for over a long period of time.

Lily was fascinated with the process.

The next day, we took the eggs out in order to see/feel what had happened. The shell (representing enamel) completely broke down in the vinegar. It was discolored with the cola.

Lily used toothpaste to clean the discolored egg. It actually works! You can kind of see the difference in color between the picture above and this picture.

Art project: Making doctor bags

While making her doctor bag, Lily said, "You know what would REALLY make them [the patients] feel better? Cotton candy!"

Vocabulary words: Cavity, food pyramid, dairy, grains, prediction, sink, float, stethoscope, thermometer, blood pressure cuff.

Vocabulary words for exposure (not mastery): Incisors, canine, premolars, molars, enamel, crown, root, gums.

"D" Activities

Decorating "D" and "d" with dobbers

After making a "D" in the shaving cream, Lily decided to decorate herself with shaving cream.


Putting "frosting" (glue mixed with pink paint) on the donut. The "sprinkles" were added after, using white glitter.

Science Center Field Trip

For our Doctor theme, we visited the Science Center's Discovery Station. They have both dentist and doctor areas set up in the room. Lily checked out the dentist area first.

Brushing away

Showing off her pearly whites

Testing the baby's wrist reflexes :)

They have a very cool anatomy computer program. Lily did an excellent job placing the bones and organs in the right places.

Our second field trip was to "daddy's hospital". We mainly visited his colleagues and had lunch in the cafeteria, but Lily is very comfortable with doctors and the hospital environment in general due to continued exposure which I think is a good thing.

C is for Camping

Art project: Making a campfire

Roasting marshmallows with daddy later that night

Cooking project #1: Making trail mix


Cooking project #2: Ant cookies


Math & Science activity: Fishing with a magnet "fishing rod"


Sensory table activity: Pond animals (1 frog, 2 ducks, and 3 fish) in the water. A net was provided for scooping out the fish and foam lily pads for the frog to hop on. Concepts such as least and most were also explored.

Animal sort: Animals sorted into categories: farm, forest, and zoo

Lily and I went over the letters "A" and "B" over the summer. And for some reason, Lily kept saying that she wanted to go to camping school. So, we started the year off with the letter "C" and a camping theme. It was a lot of fun, and I was amazed at the projects we were able to do with mostly things found at home.

We started the week off by putting up the kiddie-sized tent from Lily's Grandpa Deetz in her preschool room to set the scene. I then packed a bag full of items that one would take camping, and we went talked about the uses for each item. We reviewed these items and their uses later with a fun Camping Trip Song. Above are pictures of some of the activities that we did throughout the week. Overall, it was a very successful and fun week.

Vocabulary for the week: canteen, lantern, hike, trail, binoculars, compass