Saturday, January 5, 2013

Very Last First Time

The book we're doing for FIAR this week is Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews.  It is a book about a girl who harvests mussels from under the ice by herself for the first time.



We explored pointillism.  I cut out some images from one of her colouring books and we used cotton swabs to make the dots.




In addition to playing out the story in our basement, she did more traditional things. She watched the Magic School Bus episode on mussels...several times.  She worked on writing her numbers and lowercase letters.



We took a "field trip" and grabbed the Go train to Union Station.  We went to the St. Lawrence market and purchased mussels.

We cooked the mussels using Jaime Oliver's recipe.  It uses smoked bacon, hard cider and crème fraîche.



She wasn't too sure about eating them.  She did manage to taste one, but then opted for the garlic bread.





We also recently did colour mixing experiments.  We filled clear plastic containers with water and then Rachel mixed various food colours.  As with all good science experiments, we learned from it not doing what we thought it would.  Our hope was for coloured blocks of ice we could play with in the yard.  However, we learned that food colouring (at least the kind you buy in our grocery store), contains propylene glycol. Then never totally froze.

I threw out the rest of the food colouring.






We also had a deer recently that came to eat bird seed on a daily basis.  We watched it through the front window.






Sunday, December 30, 2012

Beginning FIAR


Rachel and I have started FIAR.  I've tried before, but it was too soon.  She wasn't ready.  However, this fall we noticed lots of boredom at playschool.  Also, she seems hungry to learn new things, so I thought we'd try it again.

We started this week with Very Last First Time.  It took me a couple of tries to come up with a planning mechanism, but I finally landed on using a grid with days at the top and subject areas on the left.  I never schedule more than 45 - 60 minutes of "Learning" activities a day, and all of those can be done in ten minute chunks, done when they fit naturally in the day.

We are referring to our studies as "Ginger Kindergarten" because she misprounounced Junior Kindergarten, and since she is a red head, it stuck. :)

We also commemorated the start by giving her GrandmaBetts' old iPad and had the cover engraved with "For Rachel Clare, Keep Learning and Exploring".