Class is now in session!

School may appear to be out for lots of kids, but we finally got organized enough to attempt a weekly themed preschool program.  We had a great time learning all about COWS this week... I was inspired by the preliminary program from a website called Brightly Beaming .  The lady that put all these resources together has done an amazing job and made them available for free!  It was the extra umph that I needed to gather my thoughts and run with something (and it turned out to be something great!). 

The boys doing their table work... playing with shapes, coloring & cutting! 

This is the backbone to the program... It is shows what we are learning for the week and I put Velcro on each category to easily change the topics. 

We ordered several books from the library... I never used a hold before- Awesome, I just placed a hold on them and then I picked them up when they were ready.  I already have the books for next week's theme "Jungle".

Our hands on science was to make butter out of cream...  Just take whipping cream and pour it into a jar or container with a tight lid.

Shake for about 10-20mins in simple outward thrusts, for most of the shaking time there will be a creamy film on the jar.

Josh was a good shaker... for the 1 minute that he shoke, guess who got to shake for the other 15?  I have a sore forearm to show for it!

Once the film starts to look blotchy, then you are almost done and can stop shaking.

If you open the lid, this is what it will look like.... The butter (fat) has separated from the butter milk.

Pour the buttermilk out and use for a great baking recipe. Then add a little bit of cold water to the butter and shake a little bit more, it gets the buttermilk residue off the butter.

Pour the water out and scoop the butter to a dish... salt if desired!

Back to the fun stuff...  We did a scavenger hunt to find all the cows in our house, this is what we came up with!

We also sang songs, read a cow poem, talked about 'Bessy' the cow that we saw at the Herritage Farm last week, learned how a cow is milked and how that milk is turned into cheese, cut out cows, colored cows and learned a lot of cool facts about them like how they have 4 stomachs.  It was a good week of staying home :).  Next week our house is going to become a jungle... stay tuned!