FIAR: Lentil

Considering Lentil is about a little boy and music I was extremely surprised that Bubby didn't care for it.

We didn't spend a lot of time on FIAR this week because we were really busy doing other things. I didn't do a very good job prepping materials either so we didn't have many activities.

He did put together our floor puzzle of the US, and we did other miscellaneous activities that didn't really have anything to do with Lentil.

We did read a number of books. He really liked The Scrambled States of America. It was a very enjoyable book and gave personalities to the states which helped him remember a few.

       

We also began our lessons in The Ordinary Parent's Guide To Teaching Reading which are going well. We buzzed right through the first section of lessons which focuses on letter sounds since Bubby knows all of these.

He has also been working on his first batch of sight words using printables from 1+1+1=1.

 

On This Week's Bookshelf

We read a lot in our household. We are always reading out loud, to ourselves, or listening to audio books. Bubby has been especially drawn to Shel Silverstein lately. He has listened to our audio version of A Light In The Attic about forty times.

If you haven't read the Froggy books, I would suggest trying them out. Bubby LOVES them! I don't like to read them out loud because there are a lot of sound effects. Our library has a whole series of them available with audio cd's and the reader does a great job.


This is technically a video but it is basically animated versions of a few books. We read The Scrambled States of America to go along with our Lentil row, and the library happened to have this sitting on the shelf so I snapped it up.


I know Skippyjon Jones is a big deal for a lot of kids. I have never read any of the books until now. I can't say I am a real fan of it. Mostly it just seems really weird to me. However, this particular one included a lot of Spanish words and phrases and we'll be starting our Spanish lessons soon so it was kind of fun. The Mister read this to the boys as well (I just can't translate as well as he can) and he agreed with my thoughts of the bizarreness of the book. I would be willing to try some more Skippyjon Jones, but I think we'll be ordering these in audio versions. I think the general silliness appeals to little ones.

He read Curious George with his aunt this week, and we spent a couple of bedtime readings with Bartholomew and the Oobleck.

FIAR: Madeline

We had a really great time exploring Madeline and France in general.

HomeschoolShare.Com has this fantastic accordion book printable depicting all of the famous sites that you see in Madeline.

One of the suggested focuses in the FIAR book is to talk about healthy habits. I found a great food group sort here and Bubby and I talked about different food groups as he sorted the items.

I also printed out this picture of the recently instituted "My Plate" so I could explain to him how we are supposed to eat a certain amount of food from each group to keep our bodies healthy. Mari-Ann at Counting Coconuts made this fun food pyramid for her son a while back. I made a copy and laminated it back to back with the My Plate printout so we could reference it while talking about healthy eating.

Another idea in the FIAR manual is to use some type of manipulative and practice grouping. I used twelve marbles (because there are twelve girls in the book) and made flashcards using white cards and scrapbooking stickers. The cards represent the ways you can make twelve (2x3; 1x12; 3x4). I wrote them in reverse as well so Bubby could see that 3x4 and 4x3 are the same.

We colored the French flag. Which I apparently didn't get a picture of. I think my phone is eating pictures....

Once I started searching our library for related books I couldn't stop. There were so many that looked good. I didn't get to pick up our books until later in the week so I plan on reading more of them, these are some of the ones we actually got to.

      

Halloween art

When I recently rearranged our bookshelves to create our school room I opened up a giant wall of nothingness. It's a long white wall that is the first thing you see when you walk in our door, or when you're sitting at the diningroom table.

Right in the middle of the wall sits this cute shelf/shoe bench thing I picked up a while back on CraigsList. I have plans to do something with it at some point, but that's another post. Right now it just sits there looking messy.
Anyways, I've been wanting to do a picture collage on this wall for a while and finally got around to it. I already had misc. frames, that I may at some point paint all the same color, for right now the black and white fits the room, so whatever.

 I found some Halloween subway art online that I loved and printed them out. Then I used my Cricut to cut images for the other frames. The large piece of subway art I made last year using a piece of 1/8" plywood we had laying around, paint, Cricut images, and modge podge. The tree in the middle is cut from vellum and I love the way it looks.

What do you think!?

Obviously this won't stay Halloween always, I'll change things out for different seasons/holidays. On top of our shoe bench I have these two apothecary jars. One always has some type of seasonal candy in it, the other is waiting for the right brainstorm. I scored these wood scrabble tiles and holders at our local thrift store this weekend for a mere seventy cents, thank you Visiting Nurses!

FIAR: The Story About Ping

We started by finding China and the Yangtze river on our map and talked about what types of transportation we would use to get there.

I made some Trace It, Build It, Write It sheets again to go along with this book. Bubby is doing really well with his handwriting, and he's enjoying it, so I'm trying to give him lots of opportunities to practice without relying heavily on workbooks (though he enjoys those too).

I'm not a huge fan of lapbooks. I've found that Bubby is typically too old, or too young to fit a lot of the activities, and they generally include loads of cutting for me because he doesn't have the dexterity, or patience, to cut out hundreds of small objects.

I did find some fun "lapbook" ideas through HomeschoolShare that we included in his notebook.

We put together this little flip book of different types of ducks. (I cut, he colored and glued). We inadvertently mixed up all of the ducks and their names so I showed him the page online and he went through and matched the pictures with their titles.

I cut out the "Where Does Ping Live" square and then we labeled the Yangtze River.

I found this Flag of China through Activity Village . They have some great printables for various topics.

We practiced writing numbers in Chinese. I found this great 1-10 printable also at Activity Village and laminated it.

We tried doing some Tangrams which are ancient Chinese puzzles meaning "seven pieces of cleverness". I found the pictures and puzzle pieces on Activity Village.

We did a "Float or Sink" science experiment using a printable from HomeschoolShare.

He had a great time with this. We included our predictions and then tested each item. Eventually he was throwing in all sorts of things to test them out. He discovered that wood items generally float and that things made from metal sink. I swear I have a picture on the sheet with his prediction but now I can't find it.

We both really enjoyed the book. He was very curious about the barrel tied to the little boy and we discussed this at length. He wanted to know how it stuck to the boy, why he wore it, what the rope was for, and why they would throw him in the river. I explained that it was used like a life jacket and that the rope went from the boy to the boat so his family could pull him in. Bubby has been doing a lot of fishing with his grandpa lately and stated flat out that he would not like to be thrown in the water, or tied to a barrel. :)

We read lots of books relating to China and ducks. I tried to include some fiction and some nonfiction to keep things interesting.

          

Bubby showed some interest in trying to eat duck. We will get around to it at some point. However, the Mister and I cooked a duck a few years ago and it was mostly just expensive and really really greasy.