Homeschooling stuff

We've been doing a LOT of decorating and Christmas themed projects lately, but here are a couple that are just school related.

We read the "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" book while the girls had the right magnet letters climb the palm tree (that I'd just quickly cut from construction paper.) I've actually read the book so often over the years that I could recite it while the girls played with the letters and I made lunch. Super handy!Also, earlier in November I'd been looking for a good way to start teaching them about calenders and the passage of time and so on. Every thing I found though was just way too complicated. Lots of great ideas, but I didn't want to put that kind of time into it. So, here's what I came up with. I had a few magnets leftover and so I just cut some paper to glue on them with the words "yesterday" "Today" and "tomorrow" on them. Yesterday is red because it's over (stopped) and Today is yellow because sometimes we have to slow down or speed up through out the day and Tomorrow is green because it's ahead (and you've got to "go" forward to get there.) Anyway, I just put a magnet for each on the back of the paper to move individually. Some day I'll have a full magnet sheet on the back so I don't have to fiddle with each individual one when I move them, but it's not really that big of a deal. Lily likes to cross off the days when I move the magnets.
This is helpful when counting down to a holiday since the kids are always asking me when "such and such" is going to happen. The other thing I did was add the red strip of paper at the top with the names of the week abbreviated and written bigger than the original dollar store calendar's were. I might actually add stickers or other indications for what is going to happen on which days. Wednesday for instance is always when we go to the library and I think it helps the girls to look forward to certain things.
I also made a little flip book (just with cheesy sketches) of different types of weather. Lily likes to change that each day too. Today she flipped it to "foggy"...