Christmas tree!

My husband is officially done with the fall semester! Yay! This past Saturday we went to look for a Christmas tree. This year, we didn't cut it, but we found a cute small one at the small farm near our house for only $10.
This time, I had my eyes on cutting a few different varieties for our smelling jars, and was happy that they had cuttings right on the snow for me to take home. Can you believe that the pine needles from last year's Christmas tree still smells? If you do have trouble finding the tree's scent, one trick I learned from a tree farm is to take some of the needles and rub it between your thumb and index finger and then smell the crushed needles. It should be easy to distinguish between the different scents this way.

And the perfect book to go with a Christmas tree is Christmas Farm. It goes through the time span of several years from saplings to finally Christmas trees and the lady and the young boy that grow up together with the trees. I love how the boy is five (Koko's present age) in the start of the book and he is ten by the end. And at the last page is a growth chart that can estimate the age of a Christmas tree. Koko and I had fun measuring our Christmas tree and finding that it's roughly eight years old! Plus I am sure my mathematical friends will enjoy that there's a little math (counting by dozens, subtraction, addition) in the book, too!

 

Measuring Penguins

Usually, Koko is only interested in what these penguins eat and where they live. But today, I pointed out their heights and out came the measuring tape and soon Koko wanted to measure out how tall each and every penguin were compared to her!


It was good practice with reading two digit numbers and so much fun for Koko! She found out that she's taller than most of the penguins! She's also reading the speed limit signs while we're on the highway, but then sometimes when she's looking at page numbers in books, she gets stuck. But she's making progress at her own pace, and we like that here.

This Week

I started using this 9000 layout cards to do daily calendar work. However, I realized there is a problem with using this material for this purpose. It works for the present year, but when I demonstrated when I was born, 1978 reads as "nineteen seventy-eight"instead of one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight which can be problematic. But I suppose I could just read 1978 as one thousand, etc.


This estimating activity is from Family Math for Young Children, but I was reminded of it by this post from the lovely Min. We use the 9000-layout cards for this, too.

This is the snowman Koko made from clay inspired by "Chubby Little Snowman" that can be downloaded from The Wonder Years and is also included in her post. That red creature is a rabbit trying to eat the snowman's nose!

We started circle time and it went well as long as I was able to wake up at a decent hour. Sometimes I indulge in extra sleep especially since Eggy wakes up a lot at night, but I am going to try to do circle time at least three times a week during the winter. Along with "Chubby Little Snowman," we did "I'm a Little Snowflake" sung to "I'm a Little Teapot" (lyrics here) "Lady Wind" and "Snowflakes" (Music Together-Bells) and "Go-duh-rum" found here. I try to sing one Korean hymn during breakfast until we master it. Currently, we're on "Holy Holy." Interesting factoid: The Korean hymnal seemed to have made several revisions over the years. The "Holy Holy" my mom knew is different from the version my husband knows.