Pencil solution and more!

Do you guys struggle with pencils everywhere? Pencils, markers, rulers, etc...drive me nuts! So we came up with this solution. I have seen one of these on a larger scale and without duck taping the tp rolls on pinterest. We used a little box and duck taped it and then duck taped the tp rolls (makes them more durable). You squish them all in there tight and then place your markers and pencils in there and voila! We set very strict rules about these as I could forsee them becoming a fun distraction. We don't rearrange them during school and we don't play with them. And of course the little boy is not allowed to touch them ;-). 

So far they have  been working out great! 

KK is coloring a Dd page I made her. I do not care if she colors it or traces it. My goal is that she recognizes that its a Dd. 

We did more Spielgaben Dd's. 

Today I said Dd was for Dinosaur. I gave her the Spielgaben pieces and let her make her own dino. This is what she came up with. ;-) I can see it has a head and legs. hehe. Again our objective is Dd and its sound and making it fun. So I didn't care what her dino looked like. 

These three pics KK was being a dinosaur. I love doing multi-sensory activities. I think it is very important. 

She really got into it. 

The two big girls did the 4 leaf clover activity sheet. 

Its interesting to me how each one puts the pieces. I usually do not show them the picture of what they are making, because I want them to use their own creativity and thinking to come up with what to do. I do give them broad instructions, but do not tell them exactly how to put each piece. 

Buddy found a cotton ball and toothpicks and put them in and said SPIDER!! I let him free play for a while, when I was working with the older two. 

He has really been into lining things up. 

The girls decorated their four leaf clovers. They both put roots on theirs. I branched off and we talked about why the plant needs roots. So many moments are teachable for these little ones. Spielgaben provides so many opportunities and moments to expand their minds. 

KK and Buddy are going to do a food chain activity sheet. I felt like it was a lot so we just played and talked and read books today. We will complete the activity another day. We talked about producers, consumers, and decomposers. The first pic of KK is her doing consumer motions. 

Here is our producer motion. 

Buddy tried hard to do the motions. 

This was the favorite book by far!

We also flipped through this one. We talked about carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores too. We have already mentioned these words to the little two so this was just more reinforcement. My desire is that they will be familiar with these words and maybe remember the terms. I am not really concerned with them knowing the definition. 

These last two pictures are how I ol. rganized our books for our Spielgaben lessons. We have books in their rooms and books in the living room, but I needed to separate these books out so we could easily access them during our lessons. This seemed to work well. The big girls did steal some of them out and we ended up reading them at other times, but isn't the goal to have your kids love books!? 

This last picture is how we spend the rest of our time (when its cold outside at least), just playing! I recently read an article on how great it is for kids to just play. How do you spend your homeschooling day?