Thinking outside the mat--preparing a lesson

Around here we never seem to have what I would consider a normal week. I didn't have any extra kids this week to watch. We didn't even go to the library. I invited a playmate over for half a day instead on our Freeday. Everything seemed to be going smoothly when all of a sudden Lydia gets a head cold or a sinus thing (I never can tell the difference) at the beginning of this week. So much for that. So she has not been in the best mood, let alone, in the best frame of mind for lessons. So, I decided to ditch the mat yesterday and focus on getting them busy with me. There are a lot of activities kids can get involved in around the house to put activities they've learned on a mat into practical uses. Why else would the lessons be called "practical life activities?" Delores especially seems to have more fun doing things this way.

I needed to get things ready for a sound cylinder lesson for Delores I planned to present to her on Monday.

This is what sound cylinders look like traditionally and what they will look like if you chose to buy them for around $30 online. Or you can buy two packs of party favor bubbles from Walmart for around $4 and fill the bottles with things you have around the house. Which is what I'm going to do.

There is a little prep work involved though so I set the girls up at the counter and started an assembly line.


As a mentioned in a previous posts Lydia really enjoyed peeling eggs during our Easter Day and she has been peeling crayons, unwrapping cough drops and bullion cubes, and unfortunately picking apart board books lately with great fervency. So I put her in charge of taking off the labels.


And since she has been working on opening and closing bottles she was also in charge of opening the bottles. Thankfully there was a seal on those bubbles so I didn't have to worry about a mess.


I opened the seal and passed them onto Delores who used a funnel to fill up some of our other bottles of bubbles and then put the empty bottles into the sink.


After those bottles were filled I just gave her a pitcher to pour the rest of the bubbles into. After that they each rinsed the bottles.


And Delores placed the bottles on a towel to dry.


Then Delores poured the bubble solution from the pitcher to a milk jug.


And just for the heck of it we planted some strawberries, tomatoes and daisies (botany) to watch them grow in the window seal. I have the reputation of killing anything that is suppose to be green so we will see how that goes.


And of course after that we had to clean up the soil that got everywhere. Notice how happy Lydia is that she gets to help.



All of this took about 90 minutes, which is about 15 to 20 minutes longer than we normally do lessons and they wore me out. But it was worth it and I will be planning more mornings like this soon.