July Day 12 - Sunflowers - Vincent Van Gogh

On this day I got Falco's nest out and had Peter look for the right feather.  It was supposed to be the green Contentment feather but he picked out brown first, I helped him narrow it down.  He thought this was pretty cool today.  I hadn't realized but on most other days Lachlan had beat him to it.  We read the scenario on the back.  Today I just said "wow, it seems like Falco was content, he was happy with what he had.  Isn't that great?" 

Next we went over to the Easel Poster where we placed the green square.  I gave the boys their paint brushes and hand them go over and tap the green square.

Today for our Game we picked flowers.  MGT had me make a square on the floor with making tape.  Then inside the square put obstacles to crawl over, around and under.  The boys were so intrigued by what I was doing.  It was hard to hold them back.  Wait, wait, I have to put the flowers out!  Next I laid out the sunflowers around the square for them to gather as they went through the course.  This was a big hit.

For Art today we made Sunflowers.  We took the same sunflower cut outs we used in the Game.  I mixed paint and glue together and they painted it on the flower and sprinkled real sunflower seeds to the flower.  Next they cut out a flower pedal and stem for their sunflower.  I handed them the green paper and scissors.  I let the little ones cut away.  I figured eventually a little piece would fall off that could be used as a leaf.  Lucy actually had a perfect little leaf fall off.  Then I took the scissors and continued cutting from one of her little fringe cuts all the way up to make a stem. 

While we were at the counter with red paint I had Lucy paint one of the craft sticks red to start on the Flag of Holland Around the World project.  The flag of Holland has red, blue and white stripes.  I don't have white paint!  So this is as far as we got.  I really need to go shopping and stock up.  I bet there are some good early back to school deals out there. 

I was excited to see the "Flower Grow Song" was the song for today.  This is my kids favorite song on the CD this month.  They love to act it out and we have already done it quite a few times this month as well as showing family and friends when they come over. 

Better to Spend or Save?  That is the money question for they day.  I asked Lachlan which money action is most important?  Spend, Give or Save.  Lachlan melted my heart and said "I want to give something to someone."  I told him that it was great that he wanted to Give.  A little later I explained to him that it is also important to Save and Spend and to use all 3 equally.  If we save our money then we can have money to Give. 

To extend this lesson we were supposed to try to build a bank, like the one on our poster.  But first we give them all circles, for Spend, and ask if they can build a bank with just circles.  Next give just triangles.  I asked if Lachlan wanted to build a bank and he was not interested but Peter was.  I will!  He exclaimed.  I figured I could adapt it a bit and I am so happy with how it played out.  He took the circles I gave him and matched them up with the circle on the poster.  So I decided that I would build the bank with all the shapes and let him find the matching shape on the poster.  I built the bank and he took each shape off of the bank and laid it on the coordinating shape on the poster.  As he broke it down, it showed him that it takes all the shapes to build the bank!  So a little different but ultimately showed him the same concept.