Gist Academy for Gifted Youngsters

 This week we have been concentrating our studies on Butterflies. Because Danielle got her caterpillars in from her birthday butterfly house! For the life of me, I can’t seem to get a good pictures of said caterpillars, and they are in their pupa stage  now, so the picture would be rather boring

Of course, all of this was in addition to Danielle’s regular studies. In Social Studies we are talking about maps, globes and our place in the world. In Science we are studying how living things meet their needs. She is rocking math, with the less then and greater then alligator trick. Reading lately had been 50% her regular reading lessons, and 50% working on her butterfly lapbook. Spelling and handwriting bring up the rear with some eye rolling and tantrum throwing, but it gets done, LOL!

We decorated our own butterflies
Jack LOVES using the glue stick, too bad I didn’t’ get the picture of him with tissue glued to his fingers, LOL!

 
Shraddha made a very symmetrical butterfly.  
Finished Butterflies, hanging to dry.  We also talked about Chickens, because September is National Chicken Month, and Shraddha brought us some shells from her chickens for show and tell!

Everyone colored their own chickens 
Then we named them, and decided what color eggs they layed (since not all chicken eggs are brown or white!)  
We also colored pictures of chrysalis to commemorate our caterpillars transformation :) 

(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 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 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!