Lesson plans, 3/9 - 3/16, 2009

For indoors activities: We will probably get some more work done on the alphabet project we started this week - coloring letters, cutting scrap paper while FatherBear cuts the actual letters out, and then gluing them onto brightly colored construction paper.

Another great activity that I want to do more next week is folding laundry with the girls. MonkeyGirl and I did this today, and I could see her improving her sorting skills, motor skills, listening skills, AND her ability to follow a multi-step process, like folding washcloths, on her own. Not bad!

For outdoors activities: I will probably do at least a little gardening with the girls. Well, MonkeyGirl, at least. FairyGirl shows no interest in getting her hands dirty.

We are also considering building a sandbox next week, depending on how my interviews go and if / when I start work. The work involved is:

• - Remove the fish from the pond and put them in our little fountain-tub until we can find a new home (girls can't help, but should have lots of questions from watching us).
  
• - Remove the water from the pond. The girls probably can't help safely with this either since the pond is pretty deep. However, when I started the process last week, MonkeyGirl was very interested in watching and had a lot of questions.
  
• - Clean the pond. The girls can probably help with this, but I'm not sure that they will both be interested.
  
• - Put the sand in. The girls can help with this.
  
• - Put up the tarp and weight the ends.
  
• - Remove the barriers around the pond so that the kinds can easily get in and out.

It's a nice medium-sized project. FatherBear is probably the best one to work on this anyways, and the girls are getting old enough that they can play on their own outside if they get bored.

We've been talking about setting up a little swing for them, so maybe we'll do that first to keep them entertained a little more.