As I mentioned before, we’re doing a unit on leaves right now with Natalie’s My Father’s World Kindergarten curriculum. And it just so happens that Day 5 of our October “In the Orchard” theme for Peter’s Mother Goose Time curriculum is on leaves! I love it when things come together!

So tonight we had a good time exploring one of the activities for Day 5 based around the Very Hungry Caterpillar story.

 

Surprisingly I couldn’t find the book in our local library system, but good ‘ole youtube came through again, and read by Eric Carle himself.

 

Then we headed into the school room, otherwise known as the kitchen, to make our own little hungry caterpillars.

 

These were the all the needed supplies provided in Day 5’s bag.

Both of the kiddos were quite focused on threading their beads onto the pipe cleaner to make their caterpillars.

Someone is getting a little excited about Halloween this year, so we pulled out the shirts early.

Once we finished our caterpillars, they started their snack lunch of leaf right away.

Peter though this was a blast! He enjoyed making the caterpillar pop through the leaf.

Natalie, slow and steady and precise as usual.

Daddy joined in the peek-a-boo fun.

Look at these sweet faces?! Seriously? This is considered school work? We had a lot of fun as a family enjoying each other while learning about critters and leaves.

 

Once our caterpillars had eaten enough leaf to their liking, we pulled out our “A” apples. We practiced with the three-hole punch making some more holes for our caterpillar to eat through.

Wheeee!

October has turned out to be a pretty full month for us – a visit to Nanny’s house to give us a change of pace during the ‘rain season’ of Hurricane Joaquin, a field trip to Disney on Ice,  a fun night at the fair – and it’s only 11 days into the month. This can leave things feeling a little crazy when it comes to trying to homeschool and keep up with consistent lessons for the kids. But with the two curricula that we have chosen this year for our kiddos, I’ve been so pleasantly surprised and thankful with how easy it has been to enjoy the flexibility of fun activities and opportunities as they arise, which is definitely an upside to being at home with the kids and getting to choose our own schedules. I’ve been able to do this because of how well organized and put together both of these choices are, which means that I don’t fall behind in planning when we do take an impromptu overnight trip to my mom’s house.

Mother Goose Time especially is SO thorough when it comes to organizing and laying everything out so that you can literally just pick up the Teacher’s Guide and a Day’s bag and go if you want to. For those of us that enjoy a little bit more pre-planning, it allows for you to quickly peruse the lessons and then if you want to, to add any additional activities or ideas that you may have. But if it’s been a full month, like ours, it is already done for you. I SO appreciate that as a new homeschooling mama whose main goal right now is the find a good rhythm with her kids and be able to enjoy each other this year. If we’re in this for the long-haul, I want us to have a good foundation because we were connecting and building relationships with each other, without me worried about planning or distracted by all the prep that I need to do. There may be a season when we opt for more of that, but for now, these two curricula are great fits for us and I’m loving it.

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