C is for St. Cecilia, Columbine Fairy, Chickens, and Church

So, I really thought I had published this post last week... but apparently not! So, here it is, very soon to be followed by D week!

We finished C week last week with a trip to Calloway Gardens for a conference! Since we left on Thursday, I began C week the Friday before, and we breezed through it. Our saint for C was St. cecilia, who you see above. she is beautiful - I didn't paint her; Jessica did. And... my Cecilia seems to have carried her off and stashed her somewhere! I can't find her anywhere! ;( So, I didn't get a close-up photo of her... hopefully she will turn up!

~Work Activities~

Some of this week's activities included cotton ball transferring, "chips" (poker chips that they slide through a narrow slot on an old yogurt container), chicken and cow puzzles,...

...clothespin color matching...

...Clifford puzzle...

...Cinderella puzzle...

...and more clothespin color matching.

~Foods for C Week~

We enjoyed so many C foods, because there are so many of them to choose from! In fact, we are still eating some C foods this week because D does not have so many foods that I could think of!

Crumb Coffee Cake

Cheesy Casserole Bread...

...along with chowder...

Crab and Corn Chowder, to be exact!

cantaloupe

cupcakes

Chinese Chicken

Other snacks included Chickadees, cheese and crackers, and cottage cheese. Other meals included Country Captain, crock pot chili, apple chicken and carrots, chicken sausage, cheese calzones, bean chalupas, and dinner at the Country Store in Calloway. I also drank plenty of coffee at the conference! ;) Oh, and we made Critter Crunch for St. Francis's feast day on the first day of D week.

And we didn't even get to all the ideas... coconut, cream cheese, crepes, coleslaw, cranberry and apricot chews... so many options!

~Tea Time~

chocolate bunny crackers, Chickadees, and cherry tea

We read from the Catholic Children's Treasure Box series book 3 while enjoying the snacks and tea.

I didn't bake a special treat for tea time this week... that is where I planned to do the cranberry and apricot chews. We ran tight on time this week due to trying to get ready to go out of town.

~Circle Time~

Caroline and I made a clock this week to be used daily in Circle Time. We will have a "time of the day" and she will practice writing it on the dry erase board.

Caroline practiced the skill of making a phone call this week in Circle Time. We practiced how she might call our house from a neighbor's, from Gramma's house, on a cell phone, on a land line... also practiced calling 911. This is an unplugged phone. ;)

Circle Time Songs and Rhymes

Comin' Round the Mountain

There was a Crooked Man

Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar?

Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play

various fall fingerplays about leaves

~Letter Formation~

Forming letter C with playdough

She also wrote "Cecilia" with the dough

Since her name begins with C, Caroline practiced tracing and then writing it. We will continue to do this here and there for the practice of fitting the letters in between the lines.

Forming letter C in cornmeal

Cut and paste C collage... in the big C this week we have cats, comets, cloth diaper cover, Cinderella, and Caroline's self-portrait. Yeah, she got a little carried away - can't quite tell that it is a big C any more! And I have no idea why the tow truck is in there... car, maybe?

Punch Out the Letter - Capital and Lowercase Cc

~Flower Fairy for Letter C: Columbine~

Here are Cecilia and Caroline's coloring pages of the Columbine Fairy, along with Caroline's own illustration (and a random bird left over from the week before).

~Saint for Letter C: Cecilia~

Caroline doing her St. Cecilia poem copywork

Illustrating St. Cecilia

Completed illustration and copywork

~Book Baskets~

Science Theme: Chickens

This Little Chick

The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County

Liturgical Year and Religious C Books:

Our Guardian Angels

Angels, Angels Everywhere

Angel in the Waters

The Angels

Pascual and the Kitchen Angels

Peter Claver, Patron Saint of Slaves

Brigid's Cloak

Across a Dark and Wild Sea (St. Columcille)

Christopher, the Holy Giant

The Clown of God

St. Therese of the Child Jesus

Favorites for Letter C:

Corduroy

A Pocket for Corduroy

Charlie Needs a Cloak

Curious George Flies a Kite

Curious George Goes to the Hospital

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Caps for Sale

Cinderella

Crow Boy

Clifford the Small Red Puppy

~Word Box Work~

Interesting that Caroline chose both these words for the word box... and she is the one who noticed that they are virtually the same. She confused them briefly, which led to a discussion of what made them different and how they both used the exact same letters to form different words.

~Picture Study: C is for Cat~

Using the book Museum ABC, Caroline works on her illustration of this bizarre painting, Joseph Interpreting the Dreams of His Fellow Travelers. I had seen this painting way back in Art History in college, but Caroline noticed something I never did... the little oval-shaped thingies that I once thought were pictures hanging on the wall are actually supposed to be thought bubbles, showing what they were dreaming. Takes a five year old to interpret art for me. ;)

Here's her illustration with the original underneath. Probably a pretty hard painting to draw... lots of details.

~ABC Virtue of the Week: C is for Compassion~

These are virtue coloring sheets found here. Using the great idea of another Catholic homeschooling mom, I am reading Caroline a relevant story from this sweet little book full of stories with morals to them. I am choosing a story from Devotional Stories for Little Folks that reinforces the virtue for each week. We read a story this week about a girl who felt badly for her younger sister and acted on that feeling to make her a handmade gift to help her with the situation.

~Science: C is for Chickens~

We have our own subjects in our back yard! I didn't get around to having Caroline sketch them in her nature notebook, but perhaps I will remember this week. We made a Venn diagram comparing the two breeds of chickens. Since we only have one Australorp, it was a bit difficult for Caroline to understand that we were comparing the breeds and not the individual chickens. Is there some kind of Venn diagram for comparing five different things, maybe that looks like the Olympic rings or something? ;) I prompted her on some of the similarities and differences, and she came up with others totally on her own.

~Arts and Crafts Projects: C is for Castles~

I found a recipe for sand clay in a Family Fun magazine. The recipe didn't work quite as it should and I had to add more sand and cornstarch. But eventually it formed into a perfect consistency.

Caroline working on making a castle

Cecilia enjoyed sticking toothpicks into her sand clay.

Caroline with her finished product... I helped her with the turrets.

~Arts and Crafts Projects: C is for Clothespin Dolls~

Our craft store started carrying wood clothespins for doll making... last time I had looked, they didn't sell them. So when I saw these, I bought them for a future use. So we made clothespin priests and nuns to have in our afternoon prayer time box. First, the girls and I painted the clothespins... no photos of that because acrylic paints require close supervision!

After they were dry, we put white piece of felt on the priests for their albs.

Here is Caroline holding her completed St. Therese, whose feast day was at the end of this week.

Cecilia wanted her priest to have a black chasuble... great, he's all ready to say a funeral Mass, as Caroline announced!

Caroline holds two of the completed priest clothespin dolls. Yes, she is wearing a black cone hat and a grey dress over her shirt. She was dressing up as "the baddest witch in the world" after we had read that chapter of Ramona the Pest the night before...

Here are all the clothespin dolls, except the priest with the purple chasuble who had gone missing at the moment. We also have another nun who is awaiting a habit... it takes a long time to hot glue their clothes on, and we were running short on time. Caroline says the last doll will be Celine, who was a sister of St. Therese and also a nun.

and a close-up of two of them... I made mine with the whites of the eyes showing, but Caroline wanted hers to just have blue dots for eyes. Their arms are a piece of pipe cleaner with a small wooden bead glued on for each hand... their hands are almost as big as their heads, ha ha.

~Cooking Project: C is for Cupcakes~

We made cupcakes on Wednesday morning for the feast of the Archangels... devil's food cake cupcakes, specifically, since Michael the Archangel is the one who kicked the devil out of heaven.

Very goofy face from Caroline as she helps pour ingredients

licking yogurt off the spoon - the best part of cooking!

~Outdoor Activities for Letter C~

No photos, but the girls did some chicken-chasing and chalk on the patio. I wanted to play charades at some point, but we didn't get to it... I also wanted to do cabinet cleaning for our chore of the week, but we didn't get to that. Tomorrow though, we will be doing dusting and decorating for D week for sure! The fall weather this week has been gorgeous, so it is time to get out a few fall decorations and candles!