"Fly Me to the Moon" is the theme for this class, as Alex and Amy become astronauts who experience their own rocket ship flight to the moon with a walk on the moon as well. Today is a review day, as we work with Letter A for Astronaut, L for lollipops, and O in moon. Once again, this class had a lot of planning involved but sometimes things just fall so easily together with the books that I already have helping me with a lot of ideas.
A new month begins, so we spend a lot of time discussing November as the last month of the fall season. We start with our "month" book which is the same one we have been using since the beginning, A Child's Year by Joan Walsh Anglund includes her cute drawings like this one for Thanksgiving. 
I catch this shot for you to see how into this book Alex is now. What I do is ask them "Is it January when it snows?", "How about February when we have Valentine hearts?"...until we get to the page of our month. They love answering "NOOOO!" for all the months that it's not, and Alex shakes her head vigorously. They love our routine, and doing the month is always a lot of fun. We usually end up only using the book the first couple weeks until they can remember and tell me on their own what month it is. 
This calendar includes little cutouts for the holidays. We first count to what day it is. And then we add any holidays and count to that day as well. This is great for getting them to count higher. 
Exercise today is an Eric Carle picture book From Head to Toe. We mimic the pictured animals. Once again the pictures are loading wrong but I tried to get a picture of Alex doing each move. The book is an interactive one, asking "Can you do it?" "I can do it!" 
Alex kicking like a donkey...
I catch this shot for you to see how into this book Alex is now. What I do is ask them "Is it January when it snows?", "How about February when we have Valentine hearts?"...until we get to the page of our month. They love answering "NOOOO!" for all the months that it's not, and Alex shakes her head vigorously. They love our routine, and doing the month is always a lot of fun. We usually end up only using the book the first couple weeks until they can remember and tell me on their own what month it is. This calendar includes little cutouts for the holidays. We first count to what day it is. And then we add any holidays and count to that day as well. This is great for getting them to count higher. Exercise today is an Eric Carle picture book From Head to Toe. We mimic the pictured animals. Once again the pictures are loading wrong but I tried to get a picture of Alex doing each move. The book is an interactive one, asking "Can you do it?" "I can do it!" Alex kicking like a donkey...stretching like a cat...
raising her shoulders like the buffalo...
Afterwards, we do our review bag with everything we have learned about in the last two weeks or so, it's the same game we used when we did our review on A and P, it's really a game of "Guess what am I?" So this time we are reviewing letters L and O. "This item starts with letter L, Mary had one that followed her to school, it's fleece is soft and white as snow, what am I?" This item starts with O, I can see very well at night, I am brown, I can fly, I say 'Whoo! Whooo', what am I?" Besides lamb and owl, we do this for library, octupus, legs and ladybug. Also included, some body part guessing, like "I help you give a great smile, food and especially candy make me dirty, I need to be cleaned with a brush, I am white and square shape, what am I?" "Ghosts don't have any, I help you run quick or slow, I have 5 toes, what am I?" "I help you listen to Hey Diddle Diddle, I can hang low and wobble to and fro." I also add the moon, spider, and night..."I am black all over, when I come out, you go to sleep." "I can be different shapes such as a circle or crescent." "I have 8 legs, I am creepy and crawly. I make my own home out of webbing." Alex enjoys this game immensely. I like to watch her think about it. She has trouble with night, and legs when she is guessing.
Alex has other plans after she gets her labels done. While I am helping Amy do her handwriting, Alex takes off to a corner with her books and begins to read them, the book fiend that she is like her mother. She is cute to watch as she keeps flipping to the front where her name is on her label.
In addition to practicing handwriting with our name, we review writing L. On our workbook page, teacher tapes a lollipop.
Those suckers are a huge hit and notice they do not take them out of their mouths for almost the entire class and this ends up being a problem.
I decide to use
for our story reading. This story gives me a lot of ideas for the next couple classes. Here are Amy and Alex giving their own "No mooon, no milk!" rendition. 
They are very happy sucking away at their lollipops, being playful with all smiles as they listen to the funny story. Amy is mooing with all her might, I make a mental note to start videotaping some of these classes so that Daddy can hear how much fun they are having.
Our story is about Martha the cow who wants "to do more than cow around in a pasture" all her life. Martha refuses to be milked until she gets to go to the moon. With funny lines like "My great-great-grandmother jumped over the moon. If she can jump it. I can walk it." Perfect since we have just learned the Hey Diddle Diddle rhyme. Martha's owner, Rob, responds, "But I never promised you the moon!" This book is full of good word play. Trying to appease the cow so he can get his milk, Rob takes Martha to a Crater Lake National Park, but Martha grumbles that "craters on the moon are much more mysterious." Next, he tries to satisfy Martha with a trip to see the Rockettes, but Martha wants to know where the rockets are. On each page, Martha exclaims "No mooon, no milk!" Completely fed up with her owner, Martha takes off and happens to stop in front of a science "moooseum". Rob catches up and Martha finally gets her wish to be a "cowsmonaut" at the lunar replica display. A guard catches them and shouts, "Cow on the moon! Cow on the moon!". The cutest story ever, really.
This book gives me the idea to review letter A for astronaut, so I search and find a handwriting page online with an astronaut. This book, basically from here on out, is what leads to the rest of the activities for this class as well as the next one. The moon and stars and space are perfect for learning numbers, shapes and letters, not to mention some great science. We are still slurping and sucking, that is the background "music" for most of this class as we work. Although Alex's face is much cleaner than Amy's right now.
The picture of the cow on the moon with the American flag gives me another idea to use our flag for some teaching. So I review letter A again by having her write more As for "A is for America" that I have penciled in, using some white computer paper as the flag. I make one for each of them, but Amy is missing in action for this one. 
So this flag works as a simple coloring craft for today But coloring stripes is a little complicated. This will be two parts, and we will do the stars for next class. Alex is working very hard on the stripes. It's a new concept so I explain or try to explain that is, how to do stripes. It must work, because she does them very good, she is even taking her time on the coloring part, and she gets to do every other row red, honestly, I don't have to correct her once, she skips one row for white, paying attention with each stripe, pausing to see what she should do next.
I have the book opened to the page with the flag so she can refer to it as she colors. We have some discussion about what this flag is all about....and I try to explain how we live in America and this is our symbol. I explain that people from our country have actually walked on the moon and placed our flag there. A couple days later, Alex runs up to me and bursts out "I saw one, Mom!" "Saw what?!" "I saw that thing, the stripes that are red with the blue and stars, it was on a picture in that store!" I can tell this means everything to her, and her brain is putting it all together. I congratulate her on recognizing our flag and tell her to keep her eye out for plenty more as we are very proud of our country."...or something like that is what I say, anyway. So she scampers off with this proud purpose. Gosh, it feels good to see that this learning is really affecting her, she is eating it up faster than I can dish it out. This flag is probably one of only a few coloring projects that she has worked really hard on the coloring part - most the time she scribbles fast to get it done, but not with this one, she stays in the lines and fills in the stripes completely without me having to coax her to do it. I am so happy to have thought of this! She loves it!
raising her shoulders like the buffalo... Afterwards, we do our review bag with everything we have learned about in the last two weeks or so, it's the same game we used when we did our review on A and P, it's really a game of "Guess what am I?" So this time we are reviewing letters L and O. "This item starts with letter L, Mary had one that followed her to school, it's fleece is soft and white as snow, what am I?" This item starts with O, I can see very well at night, I am brown, I can fly, I say 'Whoo! Whooo', what am I?" Besides lamb and owl, we do this for library, octupus, legs and ladybug. Also included, some body part guessing, like "I help you give a great smile, food and especially candy make me dirty, I need to be cleaned with a brush, I am white and square shape, what am I?" "Ghosts don't have any, I help you run quick or slow, I have 5 toes, what am I?" "I help you listen to Hey Diddle Diddle, I can hang low and wobble to and fro." I also add the moon, spider, and night..."I am black all over, when I come out, you go to sleep." "I can be different shapes such as a circle or crescent." "I have 8 legs, I am creepy and crawly. I make my own home out of webbing." Alex enjoys this game immensely. I like to watch her think about it. She has trouble with night, and legs when she is guessing.We do our alphabet followed by a review of L is for library. We discuss how we can tell when a book is a library book by the label in the front of the book that has the library's name on it. After picking out three of their own books, I tell them they can have their own library at home with their own names labeled in their books. With printouts from the web, we practice writing our name three times for our three labels.
Alex has other plans after she gets her labels done. While I am helping Amy do her handwriting, Alex takes off to a corner with her books and begins to read them, the book fiend that she is like her mother. She is cute to watch as she keeps flipping to the front where her name is on her label.
In addition to practicing handwriting with our name, we review writing L. On our workbook page, teacher tapes a lollipop.
Those suckers are a huge hit and notice they do not take them out of their mouths for almost the entire class and this ends up being a problem.
I decide to usefor our story reading. This story gives me a lot of ideas for the next couple classes. Here are Amy and Alex giving their own "No mooon, no milk!" rendition. They are very happy sucking away at their lollipops, being playful with all smiles as they listen to the funny story. Amy is mooing with all her might, I make a mental note to start videotaping some of these classes so that Daddy can hear how much fun they are having.Our story is about Martha the cow who wants "to do more than cow around in a pasture" all her life. Martha refuses to be milked until she gets to go to the moon. With funny lines like "My great-great-grandmother jumped over the moon. If she can jump it. I can walk it." Perfect since we have just learned the Hey Diddle Diddle rhyme. Martha's owner, Rob, responds, "But I never promised you the moon!" This book is full of good word play. Trying to appease the cow so he can get his milk, Rob takes Martha to a Crater Lake National Park, but Martha grumbles that "craters on the moon are much more mysterious." Next, he tries to satisfy Martha with a trip to see the Rockettes, but Martha wants to know where the rockets are. On each page, Martha exclaims "No mooon, no milk!" Completely fed up with her owner, Martha takes off and happens to stop in front of a science "moooseum". Rob catches up and Martha finally gets her wish to be a "cowsmonaut" at the lunar replica display. A guard catches them and shouts, "Cow on the moon! Cow on the moon!". The cutest story ever, really.
This book gives me the idea to review letter A for astronaut, so I search and find a handwriting page online with an astronaut. This book, basically from here on out, is what leads to the rest of the activities for this class as well as the next one. The moon and stars and space are perfect for learning numbers, shapes and letters, not to mention some great science. We are still slurping and sucking, that is the background "music" for most of this class as we work. Although Alex's face is much cleaner than Amy's right now.
The picture of the cow on the moon with the American flag gives me another idea to use our flag for some teaching. So I review letter A again by having her write more As for "A is for America" that I have penciled in, using some white computer paper as the flag. I make one for each of them, but Amy is missing in action for this one. So this flag works as a simple coloring craft for today But coloring stripes is a little complicated. This will be two parts, and we will do the stars for next class. Alex is working very hard on the stripes. It's a new concept so I explain or try to explain that is, how to do stripes. It must work, because she does them very good, she is even taking her time on the coloring part, and she gets to do every other row red, honestly, I don't have to correct her once, she skips one row for white, paying attention with each stripe, pausing to see what she should do next.I have the book opened to the page with the flag so she can refer to it as she colors. We have some discussion about what this flag is all about....and I try to explain how we live in America and this is our symbol. I explain that people from our country have actually walked on the moon and placed our flag there. A couple days later, Alex runs up to me and bursts out "I saw one, Mom!" "Saw what?!" "I saw that thing, the stripes that are red with the blue and stars, it was on a picture in that store!" I can tell this means everything to her, and her brain is putting it all together. I congratulate her on recognizing our flag and tell her to keep her eye out for plenty more as we are very proud of our country."...or something like that is what I say, anyway. So she scampers off with this proud purpose. Gosh, it feels good to see that this learning is really affecting her, she is eating it up faster than I can dish it out. This flag is probably one of only a few coloring projects that she has worked really hard on the coloring part - most the time she scribbles fast to get it done, but not with this one, she stays in the lines and fills in the stripes completely without me having to coax her to do it. I am so happy to have thought of this! She loves it!
We follow up with one last workbook page that I have found in our piles and piles of workbooks. After tracing some Os in "moon" and As in "Annie the Astronaut" that I have written at the top, we follow the directions at the bottom, to find seven rocketships hidden in the picture. She colors beautifully for these, too. I give her a rocket sticker for a job well done.
Snack time is beginning to cause a lot of excitement. I have a lot to live up to everytime, as they are always curious as to what I have for them. Today, it is so easy for a change! I bake up some crescent rolls, and I thank my hubby for this great idea to go along with our moon learning. Alex points out here that it looks like a letter C. 
Lately she has letters on the brain! Everywhere we go she discusses what letters she sees, or she will make them on her plate with her own food. She is writing a lot more than we have "officially" learned in class, and I realize that just by showing her how to write and by giving her the confidence, she is venturing forward on her own. It was she who wanted to write her full name. and she just could not figure out the X so I worked and worked with her on our "off" days as she was determined to figure it out. Now she is seeing X's everywhere she looks. I am just so proud of her, and I can see it has brought in her a lot of life, she is just so happy everyday, she points things out on the TV, in her books, even as we are out shopping. I can tell she is not only telling me, she is telling herself ("See, I know things, this isn't so hard to figure out.") I see so much more energy and excitement with her, and that light in her eyes only comes from learning (every once in awhile I catch it in her brother when he comes home excited to tell me about something he learned or did at school), it never goes away, that excitement, even for me, there is still so much I want to learn about, you should never stop learning, and I pity the person who thinks they already know it all. I wish I could capture here what I am seeing but I hope that describes it somewhat.
Snack time is beginning to cause a lot of excitement. I have a lot to live up to everytime, as they are always curious as to what I have for them. Today, it is so easy for a change! I bake up some crescent rolls, and I thank my hubby for this great idea to go along with our moon learning. Alex points out here that it looks like a letter C. Lately she has letters on the brain! Everywhere we go she discusses what letters she sees, or she will make them on her plate with her own food. She is writing a lot more than we have "officially" learned in class, and I realize that just by showing her how to write and by giving her the confidence, she is venturing forward on her own. It was she who wanted to write her full name. and she just could not figure out the X so I worked and worked with her on our "off" days as she was determined to figure it out. Now she is seeing X's everywhere she looks. I am just so proud of her, and I can see it has brought in her a lot of life, she is just so happy everyday, she points things out on the TV, in her books, even as we are out shopping. I can tell she is not only telling me, she is telling herself ("See, I know things, this isn't so hard to figure out.") I see so much more energy and excitement with her, and that light in her eyes only comes from learning (every once in awhile I catch it in her brother when he comes home excited to tell me about something he learned or did at school), it never goes away, that excitement, even for me, there is still so much I want to learn about, you should never stop learning, and I pity the person who thinks they already know it all. I wish I could capture here what I am seeing but I hope that describes it somewhat.Alex digs into the crescent roll with no hesitation, I am surprised at first. as we don't have these things very often. The whole snack thing is making her a less-picky eater. Instead, she is now curious and excited to try what I present to her. Check out Amy's red lollipop face and chin. She is ticked and pouting, as I have just taken the lollipop from her. She will have nothing to do with this crescent roll. 
Our weather today is partly cloudy, so we decide to go outside for a change.
We discuss the last part of fall as we walk the trails noticing all the leaves down on the ground and the bare branches up high in the trees. We rake one giant leaf pile to jump in. 
The weather continues to be beautiful through the weekend and we are able to come back to our same pile a few more days, raking and jumping over and over again. So simple and so entertaining, no child should experience fall without a leaf pile. 
Back inside, we are off to a trip to the moon. First we read a couple cute books, our "manual" or "directions" I tell them, these books will help us figure out how to get to the moon.
And what we need first is a rocket ship. I give them their own finger puppet rockets that I have taped and cut out the night before, following some directions online. I write a countdown on the paper rockets and following the book, we shout out, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blastoff!"
Our weather today is partly cloudy, so we decide to go outside for a change.We discuss the last part of fall as we walk the trails noticing all the leaves down on the ground and the bare branches up high in the trees. We rake one giant leaf pile to jump in. The weather continues to be beautiful through the weekend and we are able to come back to our same pile a few more days, raking and jumping over and over again. So simple and so entertaining, no child should experience fall without a leaf pile. Back inside, we are off to a trip to the moon. First we read a couple cute books, our "manual" or "directions" I tell them, these books will help us figure out how to get to the moon.
And what we need first is a rocket ship. I give them their own finger puppet rockets that I have taped and cut out the night before, following some directions online. I write a countdown on the paper rockets and following the book, we shout out, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blastoff!"
Using red cut-up straws taped together, Alex adds some fire to the end of her rocket, and boosts it into the air by blowing into the tubes. 
It is a hard and difficult journey... 
but we finally land those rockets onto our own crafted moons from the week before. 
We can't walk on the moon without a spacesuit, so we put on some moon boots, really Alex is slipping her feet into some squishy cleaning sponges that I have cut a hole in for her foot.
They look so comfy I almost wish I had a pair. 
This is a four-dollar purchase but I reason the the purchase will be worth it for the use I will get out of them. For the next few months the girls can pretend play as astronauts and even use them as slippers, and then after they have had their fun, those boots will return to sponges and sit on the shelf with the cleaning supplies. Amy takes her first step on the moon.
I love youtube, so we watch the 1969 broadcast of our walk on the moon. It holds the girls' attention for a few minutes, but they go back to their own moon and boots since that is more real to them than the one I continue to watch on the computer. I realize I have never watched the whole thing really, and for me it is a magical moment as I listen, wondering what it would have been like to witness such an event in history.
It is a hard and difficult journey... but we finally land those rockets onto our own crafted moons from the week before. We can't walk on the moon without a spacesuit, so we put on some moon boots, really Alex is slipping her feet into some squishy cleaning sponges that I have cut a hole in for her foot.They look so comfy I almost wish I had a pair. This is a four-dollar purchase but I reason the the purchase will be worth it for the use I will get out of them. For the next few months the girls can pretend play as astronauts and even use them as slippers, and then after they have had their fun, those boots will return to sponges and sit on the shelf with the cleaning supplies. Amy takes her first step on the moon.
I love youtube, so we watch the 1969 broadcast of our walk on the moon. It holds the girls' attention for a few minutes, but they go back to their own moon and boots since that is more real to them than the one I continue to watch on the computer. I realize I have never watched the whole thing really, and for me it is a magical moment as I listen, wondering what it would have been like to witness such an event in history. Our one and only moon in the sky wants in on our lesson, for the neighbor stops that same night, and mentions how big and bright the moon is tonight. I dash outside with the girls, excited for them to see this, and I try to catch it in this picture. That little dot is actually a harvest moon, full, bright and oh so "beautiful!" in Alex's words, but I wait too long to take the picture. Alex does not like standing on the rail as I try to get her as close to it as possible.
We end our lesson with a Laurie Berkner moon song from her dvd. A goodnight lullaby, we play it again that night before the girls go to bed. C.J. is laughing hysterically as I try to take pictures when we play it at night. One thing I don't mention is how annoying it is to try and get pictures of them doing the stuff to show on the blog. The digital cameras are so slow, and I am cussing up a storm, C.J. jokes what a bad teacher I am, and he is not far from the truth, as it is always not as rosy as I portray it, as Alex is whining when I have to "redo" the picture! Finally, after bopping my son in the head to shut up his laugh, I am laughing too, now, because we both know this is no moment we want to share, as I am cussing the heck out of the stupid camera, screaming at both C.J. and Alex and Amy who are not cooperating, but finally we really do end up enjoying the hand motions as they sing along to the peaceful song, which finally relaxes me so that I am almost falling asleep as I play it over and over again. So glad it is time for bed.
We end our class with a counting puzzle. We will now be counting 1 to 20, and this puzzle will introduce some teen numbers for us. I do purchase this online a couple weeks before for five dollars. 
Alex loves this puzzle, and I think it may be her funnest activity for the day. She is laughing so hard as she adds each numbered feather to the owl.
_______________________________________________________________
Naming the bugs and counting them...
Bugs UNDER the rock and IN the tree.
We also work on other pumpkin pages, drawing triangle eyes and in this picture, square teethm Alex did these herself...
At the end of her bug book is a certificate for being a bug expert, I found a great border printable that helped me write this up for her..."Are you feeling bug-eyed? And you say you are seeing spots everywhere?..." 
I include some stickers for her to place on each page as a reward for doing a great job on this huge packet.
We end our lesson with a Laurie Berkner moon song from her dvd. A goodnight lullaby, we play it again that night before the girls go to bed. C.J. is laughing hysterically as I try to take pictures when we play it at night. One thing I don't mention is how annoying it is to try and get pictures of them doing the stuff to show on the blog. The digital cameras are so slow, and I am cussing up a storm, C.J. jokes what a bad teacher I am, and he is not far from the truth, as it is always not as rosy as I portray it, as Alex is whining when I have to "redo" the picture! Finally, after bopping my son in the head to shut up his laugh, I am laughing too, now, because we both know this is no moment we want to share, as I am cussing the heck out of the stupid camera, screaming at both C.J. and Alex and Amy who are not cooperating, but finally we really do end up enjoying the hand motions as they sing along to the peaceful song, which finally relaxes me so that I am almost falling asleep as I play it over and over again. So glad it is time for bed.
We end our class with a counting puzzle. We will now be counting 1 to 20, and this puzzle will introduce some teen numbers for us. I do purchase this online a couple weeks before for five dollars. 
Alex loves this puzzle, and I think it may be her funnest activity for the day. She is laughing so hard as she adds each numbered feather to the owl.
_______________________________________________________________Instead of doing another class this week, we finish up some homework pages. Our bug book is finally done. Here are a few of the pages that Alex has worked hard on.
Bugs UNDER the rock and IN the tree.We also work on other pumpkin pages, drawing triangle eyes and in this picture, square teethm Alex did these herself...At the end of her bug book is a certificate for being a bug expert, I found a great border printable that helped me write this up for her..."Are you feeling bug-eyed? And you say you are seeing spots everywhere?..." I include some stickers for her to place on each page as a reward for doing a great job on this huge packet. 
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