August 21, 2007
First food, first art and first lapbook
Posted in school
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First, I must say, this is quite an accomplishment for me: three blog posts in four days!!! (Okay so the last two were a tag and an award, but at least I was blogging, right?) So, as my title proclaims, it's been a week of firsts around here! Last Wednesday, Ethan had his first solid food (except of course the tiny bite of Jell-O Daddy gave him...) I fixed about a tablespoon of rice cereal, making it extra thin and, boy did Ethan love it! He had been showing interest in food for a couple of weeks, going so far as grabbing Brady's cup of Jell-O (thus the bite...).  Don't let the wide-eyed look fool you, he really did like it. See?  Yes, that is cereal all over his chin. He wore more than he ate this night (and the next, and next and next. But who's counting, right?) Benjamin and I started a new preschool program two weeks ago. It's a Letter of the Week program. We started with an intro to the alphabet week and then moved on to letter A. We have a bulletin board that we work with daily, books about words that start with our week's letter. I also use a puppet to help teach and we make snacks to go with our letter. We also learn a poem and a song and do lots of coloring and lots of crafts. One of letter A's crafts was to color a large A and large a, then cut them out and glue them onto an apple print frame. Benjamin and I painted an apple cut in half with red paint and stamped it onto construction paper to make our frame. He loved painting with the apples so much!  For letter B this week, he made a "stained-glass" butterfly with tissue paper scraps and LOTS of glue!  And finally, Braden and I finished our first lapbook of the year. (For those clueless about lapbooks, they are a teaching tool that utilizes file folders and lots of paper and construction paper and imagination.) We read Charlotte's Web as part of our Core 1 studies. We decided to lapbook about spiders. (Not my favorite subject, but Braden LOVES them!) Here is a pictorial description of what we did: Braden w/ his completed book:  A close-up of the cover (Braden drew the web, then outlined it w/ glitter glue. I printed the spider, he colored it and we glued it on so the legs are 3-D):  The inside:  The left top is a picture Braden drew of Charlotte:  Bottom left is a mini-book that describes how spiders spin a web. Braden drew the pictures (using a library book for inspiration) and copied the description form the same book:  Middle top is a flip-open file that shows a spiders anatomy and gives descriptions of each part. Braden labeled the parts and colored the picture. (Worksheet downloaded from Enchanted Learning.  Bottom middle is a game. There is a picture of a spider on a pocket. The opposite pocket has pictures of different items (6 insects and 6 other objects, like a flag, an ice cream come, etc.). The point is to feed the spider the insects by putting them in the pocket and leaving out the things a spider would not eat.  Top right is a comparison of a spider leg and the bones of a human leg (in the book, Charlotte tells Wilbur that humans and spiders have a lot of the same names for their leg parts):  Bottom right is an accordian book telling the life cycle of a spider:  And finally on the back is a book about spiders that Braden completed (again downloaded from Enchanted Learning):  Whew! I'm tired and the baby's crying because he wants to eat. I guess now you'll have to wait a month or two for another entry! J/K! If CrossView has her way, I'll be blogging every day!  |
August 1, 2007
First Day of school
Posted in school
My new blog friend at CrossView Academy let me know the other day that I hadn't updated my blog. Would you like to know the reason why?!? Well, it doesn't matter if you don't, it's my blog and I'm going to tell, er, show you! So here is my reason for abandoning my blog for such a long time.    Don't you just LOVE all those shelves of books?!? A teacher's dream. SO there you have it, I've been spending all of my free time the last few weeks getting ready for school. I've gathered my books, organized my instructor's guide and gotten myself as organized as I'll ever be! So all of this prep led us to start school on Monday! Braden is now officially a first grader! Here he is fresh from bed on his first day of school. (Please take note that this is not your typical "all-dressed-up-with-a-shiny-new-backpack-on" first day of school picture!)  For Braden's first grade curriculum, we're using Sonlight Core 1, which is an introduction to World History. We're starting in Ancient history and we'll make it through Ancient Rome by the end of the year. Our day went well, even with the typical first day delays. I am trying to do a full day of school with Braden while keeping Benjamin entertained and Ethan fed and clean. It's not as easy as it looks. Here's a few more shots of Braden on our first day: Reading his first read-alone reader, Clara and the Bookwagon:  Doing Wordly Wise:  And adding Maryland to our markable map:  I'm planning on doing a letter of the week preschool curriculum with Benjamin this year, too. My plan was to get a couple of weeks done with Braden so we could establish routine, then add in Benjamin. However, he wasn't having it. As soon as he saw what Braden and I were up to, he wanted to know, "Where's my 'Cool,' Mommy?" So, i dug up a worksheet I had on hand from the library's reading program and did "cool" with Benjamin. We worked on color patterns on the worksheet and then used Braden's pattern blocks to do more patterns. He loved it. Here's Benjamin doing school. Placing his pattern blocks into a green-green-orange pattern:  Later he sorted a handful of blocks into colors. He's so proud!  And what was Ethan doing all this time? Just chilling! He's been so good. He eats and hangs out with us. He'll nap in his swing or sit in the bouncy or sit with us while we read. It's been going well. And here's the little stinker on the first day:  And I just have to share these few pics of him taken today, the cool dude!   Well, I better get back to making sure everything is ready for school tomorrow! |