Gist Academy for Gifted Youngsters

Hopefully I did that right, and I uploaded a Word Doc with our weekly schedule. The squares with balloons filled in, we don’t do that subject on that day. I do reward Danielle, but not just for doing the work. She has to have a good attitude and not throw tantrums or cry in order to get a sticker.

I’d like to give credit to the author of this wonderful song http://nataliesnexus.blogspot.com/  You ROCK!

(not sure what that phrase actually means, might have to research that, LOL!!) And things went as well as can be expected. There was much whining, tantrums, eye rolling and general dissent among the troops, but mostly we got it done. Danielle fights tooth and nail against school in general, doesn’t understand why she has to do it, thinks it’s all an evil plot on my behalf to make her life miserable. I try to explain to her that ALL children go to school, but she’s not buying it.

Today we had an impromptu unit study on dinosaurs, thanks to Tina and her new contest at Fresno Family to win tickets to Walking with Dinosaur. I printed off her clues (and a list of the dinosaurs that could be possible answers) and we pulled out all our dinosaur books. The favorite was the Research Guide for Dinosaurs before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne! We had fun talking about herbivore vs carnivore, guessing which ones would eat brother and such. We guessed how many daddys or sisters tall each one was. We sang with Laurie Berkner while drawing dinosaur pictures (Jack drew cows, LOL!!)

This week we made a Thomas the Tank Engine Tot Book. Jack LOVES it!

We visited the zoo and discussed different animals.  We even played animal follow the leader on the way out

Jack got to paint with water on his magnet board, and played with different magnets shapes.

We worked on our signing, and Jack did a perfect sign for more cereal!

Excuse the lack of pictures, it’s been HOT, and so clothing has not been on the top of our to do list, LOL!

(I saw this one someones blog, but with my internet issues today, I didn’t get a chance to grab the URL to credit.)

This year I hope to achieve the following goals for Jack-Jack’s education:

1. Learning his colors
2. Learning his shapes
3. Learn to recognize numbers and letters
4. Learn animals and the sounds they make
5. Simple songs and finger plays

Made the trek down to pick up Danielle’s textbooks for this school year. It’s always fun to get them, and flip through the pages. Time to start making plans and schedules. School officially starts on the 20th!!

I have a few pictures for Tot School this week

We painted egg cartons with our friend Shraddha.

And we colored All About Me books, thanks to Kyler for the idea ;0)

When our egg cartons were dry, we used them to sort our colored stones into the correct cup.

Perfectly sorted!

I know, most people would shudder at the thought of having worms in their kitchen, but mine are infact invited guests!

For the SpiralScouts gardening badge, scouts have to construct a Worm Tower, which is basically a high rise apartment for worms to live in. And those little worms will create compost for us! It’s kinda a neat thing for them to observe, food scraps go in, and compost comes out! Plus, each tower has a nice mint plant growing on the top, to add to the usefulness of the whole contraption!

Now, I am not so sure how long I am going to want to have worms in my kitchen, but for now, they are kinda neat to have around!  Plus, it teaches Danielle some great lessons about how things grow, how worms make compost, and how things work together. We are going to study the anatomy of a worm (no dissection!) and try to track what kinds of foods the worms seem to like best!

I have to laugh, I discovered Tot School a while back, but have yet to be able to post a report, why you ask?

Because most of our school work is done while the kids are in their undies, LOL!! It’s so funny, I do put clothes on them, but some how they magically disappear!!

So I going to make an effort to keep at least my little one dressed long enough to get some good pictures of him “doing” school, for next time

But, with out pictures, I’ll tell ya’ll what Jack-Jack as been doing this fun week!

We played with Sister and our friend Shraddha with our Discovery Toys Busy Bugs set. We really enjoyed matching up the bug colors and trading bugs around.

We also read a great book about Starfish, and made starfish necklaces.

We watched fun videos about firemen and of course, our all time favorite subject to study, TRAINS!

We played in the fountain at the mall, and enjoyed figuring out where the water would come from next!