Hands on Learning Is Best

We had a rough morning of tears and frustration.  After trying repeatedly to engage all of my boys in learning I decided we just needed to take a break.

So, of course my boys occupied themselves and showed me, once again, that hands- on learning is best.
 

Ian was "plowing" his math facts and Evan was reading.  Building on Evan's sight word road block game, we drew up a road of math facts for Ian to practice and covered them with corn starch for his plow to uncover.  I observed silently from the sidelines and just let them be on their own.  I was happy they were doing work and content to see what else they would do.  I was impressed with how fast and how well Ian could recall many of the multiplication facts on his sheet and the strategies he used to come up with those answers he didn't know.



   
 Alec started playing Beyblades and the next thing I knew they all were giggling, laughing, and having Beyblade battles.  They experimented with what happens if someone holds the stadium? What if the stadium is rocking?, etc.. for quite some time. 

     
Alec wanted to play with his animals in some "fluffy stuff" that we had made before and I asked him if he'd like to try something else I found on pinterest last week.  Reading about this fake sensory snow I just knew we had to try it.

We combined 6 cups of baking soda and 1 cup of hair conditioner (I had white/ coconut) and we came out with fake snow! 

It was white, cool to the touch and fluffy, but if you smashed it together you could make a snowball out of it.  Other than smelling tropical it really looked a lot like fluffy snow and they loved it.  I made a double batch and that was just enough for all three of them.




Alec and Ian decided they wanted to make ice cream for snack and looked up the instructions in their science book!  They got out all the ingredients and measured everything out.  I was impressed with  how well they all got along once they were left to play their way through school.  

Homemade ice cream was the perfect way to end our day!  

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