Posted in FIAR book activities

This Patricia Polacco title is as good as all her others. We enjoyed reading the story, and tasting honey, and learning about bees. Maddy learned to draw hexagons.

Storytime was all about the circus, and they made cute little juggler crafts. Handwriting continues to go well enough, as does math... it'd be easier if he wanted to do the work, but he does like the programs we use and hates to stop in the middle as much as he hates to sit and work. So we keep on.

Science didn't go as well. Noeo uses Young Scientist kits for some of the experiments, and this one just didn't work out. The agar wouldn't set in the petri dishes till we put it in the fridge ... unfortunately it later liquefied again, thus ruining the test. The yeast wouldn't activate properly either, and by the time it did, all the cups were the same temperature, ruining the test. At least the bread came out okay. I don't know if we got an old kit, or what, but I wouldn't be inclined to buy any of their other kits after this one. Next time around, I'll buy some pre-filled petri dishes to use. (And, as a caution: While Googling to figure out what we did wrong with the agar, I came across some very helpful sites. They warned that after growing bacteria for this sort of experiment, the equipment REALLY has to be sterilized, soaked in bleach, or whatever, before it could be used again ... because you can never be sure exactly what you grew. None of these warnings were included in either the kit or the Noeo guide.)

Ted has joined the children's choir, and has been to a couple of practices. We missed the one at the end of this week, though. In another week they'll begin rehearsing for the Christmas program.

Thursday we changed up our plans a bit to pick up Grandma at the airport. Unbeknownst to us, that was the same time the Vice-President was leaving our area ... and we got stuck in traffic as the police blocked off the roadways to the airport. It was quite exciting. It would've been more exciting if we'd known he was being dropped off ... we thought he was coming that night and the cars were just going to pick him up. It was scary for my anxiety issues, but kind of funny otherwise.

Ted earned his tiger pawprint thing, the "Immediate Recognition Emblem" that they put their beads on. He's the first boy to earn it this year in his den, and he was SO proud about it! Just a few more things to memorize and he'll have that Bobcat badge, and they're well on their way to the Tiger badge.

Sunday we had over Lysle's family to celebrate his father's 65th birthday. Fun to see everyone!

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

This is a Before FIAR title, which we did for Madeline. We put our story disk on Australia, in spite of its not being a particularly Australian setting. We also pulled out some pocket aprons, which the kids filled with small stuffed animals and practiced hopping around in. It was cute! We tried singing Kookaburra and learned a bit about rounds. We read about marsupials in library books, and participated in storytime (all about the moon). We added some Sunday School items to our big timeline, and worked on some memory work for Cub Scouts. The first Cub Scout meeting was this Monday. Ted is so cute in his uniform! He's been working hard on the Bobcat badge requirements.

We did talk a bit about 9/11, and continued on with our regular math and phonics and science. We read about Pasteur and microbes. We had a playdate with friends, and music with Miss Jennifer, and the kids tried out what seems to be last year's Mathathon CD, found at a secondhand store. They both had a blast with it. Saturday was a Lowe's workshop, this time building a pirate ship. Hey, they even float in the water! And the gangplank is retractable. Definitely one of the cooler projects. Also Saturday was the Cub Scout hike and cookout, with the whole pack and their family members. Lots of fun, lots of excited boys. Great hot dogs. :)

Posted in FIAR book activities

We had a short week due to Labor Day, but it was a busy week! We went to the library, worked on our weather station for science, had extra play time with Daddy (who took extra time off), and even went out to dinner one night.

We build our own  "Geoppolis" to go with the story. First we drew roads on a large sheet of paper (packing paper from a box of books, actually) and then we used MegaBloks and other odds and ends for buildings. It was a pretty cool city! We practiced mapping by drawing the same roads on a smaller sheet of paper and marking where the buildings were.

Friday we went to a game night with other homeschoolers. There weren't very many participants, but again I was struck with how well behaved they all were. The older kids let Teddy play along with their geography game, even though he couldn't read most of it (he won by accident anyway, the first round, so one of the kids paired up with him for the second!) and another girl played with Maddy with the train set. It was held at a local homeschool store, so after eating with the kids, I was left to myself to browse the books ... fun all around! I hope for a better turn-out next time, but it was a great evening for us.

Sunday was Promotion Sunday at our church, and the kids were assigned to their new classes. As a new first grader, Ted received his very own children's Bible which he'll use weekly in Sunday School. Already he's loving his new class and his fantastic new teachers.

Posted in FIAR book activities

From August 25^th to 29^th we focused on the FIAR unit Three Names. We looked up prairies on Wikipedia (and found that Ted was right, there really are prairies in Texas, where he’d originally wanted to place our story disk). There are some great national parks resources out there … one of the Junior Rangers programs focuses on a prairie park … the printables were fantastic but unfortunately required actually being in the park to find the answers. So if you’re near a nation park, look online to see what’s there! We also talked about hyperbole, one of the language lessons. Ted insisted that he “never” exaggerates, which had me cracking up. We wanted to try the game Fox and Geese (mentioned in the story) but weren’t able to find a good time. It requires a field of snow, or a prairie to trample down, but we’ve found that a large patio with a chalk-drawn diagram works pretty well too. We talked about how many feet were in a mile, and a bit about wind, which dovetailed nicely with our Noeo weather lessons.

For memory work Ted is working on the Cub Scout Promise, the Law of the Pack, and the Pledge of Allegiance. He’s getting better at them! His first meeting isn’t for a bit yet, but we want to be prepared.

We took time off to go and vote!

And we tried a roasted potatoes recipe to go along with the story too… Ted loves potatoes in just about any form!

The first week of our Olympic unit, we read Albert the Running Bear and Albert the Running Bear’s Exercise Book. We enjoyed the story, and tried out most of the tests and exercises in the second book. We learned we need more exercise! J

We started our first week of Noeo Science, and Ted really enjoyed it. It’s very few pages of reading per day, and each day is summed up on a report sheet, which can include words, pictures, or both. Ted prefers drawing, and then dictating a few sentences. We pulled out our globe and a flashlight to demonstrate the seasons as depicted in the book… both children enjoyed playing with that activity.

Here and there through the week we watched clips of the athletes, always very exciting. We also tried out some activities on our Wii Fit, and watched a video from the library, Mickey’s “Seeing the World”. We printed the Olympic timeline strips suggested on the HomeschoolShare unit, and placed them on our timeline.

Lysle ended up working overtime, so the kids and I took a PJ Run a la Kendall to take him some dinner and get early goodnight hugs.

Saturday, Toys R Us was hosting an event to show off the new Magnext magnetic building kit. It was supposed to feature a building contest, and each kid got to keep a sample pack. Ted ended up being the only child who showed up to try that hour, so he won! He was so excited. They even went the whole nine yards and announced him over the loudspeaker … wish everyone could’ve seen his face!

Ooh, and we got the Mario & Sonic Olympics game for the Wii, courtesy of a whole lot of saved up bonus points in the Scholastic Club catalogs! The shipping was quick, too … I was afraid it wouldn’t come in time to be used during the Olympics. It’s pretty cool, though a bit hard for me and the kids, but the art is neat and centered in the actual Beijing stadiums and arenas.

Our second week we focused more on China, reading Round is a Mooncake (another HSS unit), Yum Yum Dim Sum, D is for Dragon Dance, Happy New Year by Demi, and Dim Sum for Everyone. We tried out abacuses and played a “Dragon Parade” phonics game by Brighter Vision, handed down from an older cousin. We continued in our workbooks and added to our little weather station.

Saturday was a Cub Scout swimming party, which Teddy went to with Lysle, to meet the pack and register for the upcoming year. Sunday was the Olympics Closing Ceremony, which we also stayed up to watch.

Here is our Won Ton recipe. It can be adapted to whatever you happen to prefer and have on hand, but this is the recipe as my mother gave it to me, and how I grew up eating it:

• 3/4 cup ground pork
• 6 large shrimp (cooked, chopped)
• 2 T green onions, chopped
• 2 T chopped parsley
• 1/2 t sugar
• 1 beaten egg
• 1 T cornstarch
• 1 T soy sauce
• 10 oz pack wonton wrappers

Combine all (except wrappers!) in skillet; fry till slightly cooked. Chill. Assemble: put a small spoonful into the center of each wrapper square, and fold closed, sealing with a bit of water (a finger dipped in water does it, and we argue over whether they should be triangles or rectangles when folded). Fry at 365 degrees till brown.

It should make about 4 dozen, but we start eating them when they get cool, while cooking the rest, so I've never actually counted. I expect it doesn't stretch that far, as we fill them pretty generously. Serve with more soy sauce for dipping. Yes, this is a time-consuming recipe (I prefer to prepare the filling the day before and chill overnight) but it is SO worthwhile! Mmmm! 

The beginning of the week was Ted’s favorite part, a sleepover at Grandma’s to wrap up the summer. Beforehand, we went to a nearby nature museum, which turned out not to be such a good idea … most of the display cases were taller than Maddy and so hard for both kids to view. But they had fun anyway. We picked up lunch and went back to Grandma’s house, and Ted got to stay the night. He had a blast, and is still talking about it.

We started back to school on August 6^th, at about the same time most of our local school systems started back. I know it’s not essential to have the same calendar, but it does make planning easier, and allows us to take advantage of things during PS holidays as well as other times.

We started off with a light week. First is our favorite tradition, decorating the binders we’ll store all our work in. Ted had already selected a red binder (it is SO HARD to find red binders with front sleeves, but I did find one with at least a red spine) and Maddy a purple one. They each took a sheet of paper and a pile of stickers and had a blast decorating. Ted got the added fun of decorating his science binder cover too.

We started off our math and phonics workbooks, and worked on a few of the practice lessons in the handwriting book. Maddy is just zipping through the ETC primers and having a blast.  For math and other fun, we got a big set of preschool workbooks (I Can Cut, I Can Paste, I Can Color, etc) from Sam’s and I pulled out every page relevant to any possible activity we might do this year… they’ve all been sorted into my planner. She’s doing some of those each week, and doing the math ones as interested. She also likes the Three Bear Family counters, and I draw out playmates on cardstock for her to play with and do number puzzles on.

Friday was the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics, so we made a big day of it. I printed out a Summer Olympics coloring book (I forget where I found it online) and stapled it together. We also made a story disk, FIAR-style, and placed it on Beijing on our world map, and another one on Greece.

We made a ‘torch’ out of a paper towel tube, and construction paper and crepe paper for the flame. Before the ceremony came on TV, we stationed ourselves throughout the house … back bedroom all the way to family room … and staged our own torch relay … the kids loved it. Our ‘torch’ stayed right above the TV for the entire two and a half weeks. Then we pulled out the sofa bed and all got cozy for the evening. Lysle had picked up Chinese food for dinner, and Ted and I spent the afternoon making Won Ton, so we had a great dinner to enjoy with the show.

Ted was allowed to stay up for the entire show, and then sleep out on the sofa bed, a treat he dearly loves. Thank goodness for the pause button on our DV-R hard drive! How did we ever enjoy TV before that? LOL. The show was absolutely amazing! The kids got to color in their coloring books whenever the show failed to hold their attention, which wasn’t too often… mostly during the parade of athletes. Maddy went to bed not too much later than her regular time, and was a good sport about it.

Saturday was another Lowe’s workshop, featuring a cute little locker kit. Sunday we got to attend the church potluck and watch the youth praise band … they’re not too bad!

Teddy is 6 ½ and in first grade this year, and Maddy is 3 ½ and doing preschool activities.

For Ted:

• Horizons Math, 2^nd grade
• Explode the Code 4 and then Beyond the Code 2
• A Reason for Handwriting A
• Noeo Science, Biology I 

For Maddy:

• Explode the Code A,B,C (the primers)
• Lots of cutting and pasting sheets

And for both, Five in a Row, with some Before Five in a Row and Homeschool Share units thrown in. (www.fiveinarow.com and www.homeschoolshare.com)

It’s more than we’ve done in one year before, but I think it will work. We already love FIAR and that’s not going anywhere. J The math is working well for Ted, and so is the phonics. The handwriting is new, because what we tried last year didn’t really work for us. I like it because it’s all centered around Bible verses so it counts towards our required Bible teaching too (our cover school requires Bible be taught). Noeo science is all based around real books (good ones!) and experiment kits to go alongside. I’m hoping it’s all reusable, though of course some experiment components will need to be replaced.

Each child is keeping a binder of worksheets and coloring pages and anything that can fit flat enough to work, and Ted is also keeping a science binder (Noeo has a lot of narration or writing, depending on what works best. He’s loving the picture drawing.)

Extracurricular: Ted is joining Cub Scouts and he is thinking about church children’s choir. Plus we are still attending storytime, with a new librarian this year (we will see how it goes). Once a week the kids get to play with a dear friend of mine while I get a bit of a break … sometimes they do park days and sometimes impromptu music lessons and sometimes something else altogether. Afterwards we eat lunch and visit. Very nice! Our cover school provides lots of field trip opportunities, and we’re part of a small co-op that has further activities.

  We had a super busy summer (as you can tell by the fact that we haven’t blogged any of it yet!). We participated in our library’s Summer Reading program (Theme: Bugs) and our church’s Vacation Bible School (Beach Party: Surfing the Word) … the kids are still playing the song CD and love it. Ted played chess and caught fireflies. We did several kids’ workshops at Lowe’s. Ted’s apron is nearly full of his patches, and Maddy isn’t too far behind. We even participated in a music class, which was lots of fun.

We got to go to the Botanical Gardens to see the butterflies, and we tried our hand at container gardening this year. The potatoes were good, but most everything else died off. We’re trying another round of potatoes.

On June 28^th we participated in the Great American Backyard Campout (http://www.nwf.org/backyardcampout/index.cfm). We played lots of outside games and grilled out and roasted marshmallows and caught fireflies and all the other fun things that you do when you camp. We even used some Crayola chalk paint (and then, of course, it rained). I think we camped out in the family room that night on the sofa bed … at least there were fewer mosquitoes that way!

Ted saved up, by doing extra chores, and purchased the game Bejeweled 2 Deluxe after working his way through all the sample levels available at Pogo.com. He’s now about memorized all the answers.

On July 22^nd Ted lost his very first tooth! It had been loose for weeks. I had no idea teeth could hang on that long. He was pretty excited about it, and I was sad … he’s growing up so fast!

We also participated in some programs at our local history museums, and purchased a year’s membership for the family. The activities were fun, but not quite as good as advertised … though the museums more than make up for it in themselves. One day was supposed to feature farm animals … but, as they told us later, the sheep (goat? I forget) ran away and the people loaning the animals wouldn’t let them keep the rest. LOL. They did have some dogs, from a Pet Therapy group, and Ted got a nice lesson on dog safety, and how to meet strange dogs.

And now we’re on to first grade … where has the time gone?

It's hard to believe we've completed a whole school year! We took this week to finish up Beyond the Code 1 and the last bit of the 1st grade Horizons math workbooks. We skipped a few of the last lessons and went straight to the final test, which Ted aced.

Our friend Karen gave us a couple extra "Me" posters and Ted and Maddy had fun coloring (or scribbling) on these. Ted worked especially hard to do his own writing when he could.

On Wednesday Aunt Tammy babysat so I could go to an appointment, and she spent much of the time painting suncatchers with the children. They loved it, and the suncatchers are still hanging in our dining room window.

We also spent some time practicing for Ted's graduation ceremony .. they selected Genesis 1:1 as the class verse and "Jesus Loves Me" as a song to sing. We 'finished' school on the 16th of May with over 180 school days.

On May 21st we got to visit a fire station with our playgroup co-op. It was very exciting. The fellow leading the tour shared how he got to visit the very same fire station when he was in 3rd grade and got to slide down the fire pole (back when such things were allowed), and now that very same fire pole is right beside his bed. Our tour was briefly interrupted when the team had to respond to a call, but they were back quickly and demonstrated all the layers of gear they have to wear. After the visit we fed ducks at the park across the street and then headed home.

Mommy and Daddy got to have a date that evening, going to see the new Prince Caspian movie, with Grandpa Glenn babysitting. It was nice to go out on our own, though I was disappointed in the movie and came home with a big headache.

Graduation was on the 29th, and the kids did wonderfully.

We also got to observe some baby blue jays (none of whom survived, sadly) and dig up some very tiny potatoes from our suddenly dying potato plants. I think they were eaten by bugs. Anyway, we've got some very cute little taters that we're going to cook up in a mini-meal one of these nights.

We spent the week after 'school' building a Lego city on the dining table, we're reading aloud a Robin Hood version by Ann McGovern, and we've started both VBS and Summer Reading this week. Busy busy! But lots of fun.

Posted in FIAR book activities

This was a nice title to lead up to Mother's Day. The kids enjoyed finding all the old-timey things in the pictures, and shuddered at the large snake. Ted picked a spot on the Appalachian Mountains for our story disk.

Storytime was the last one for the semester, with a Mother's Day focus and a cute flower planter craft.

Our curriculum orders came (yay!) and the kids had fun playing with our new bucket scale. We also had a lesson on safety and calling 911, to go with the story in our Beyond the Code workbook. Ted is annoyed ... he thinks it ought to be pronounced nine hundred eleven, or written with spaces between the digits. :)

The Lowe's craft on Saturday was a memory box. Teddy gave me the one he built, and Maddy saved hers for Grandma, who's recuperating from surgery. The surgery was Wednesday and went well. (I got to visit several times, which was very reassuring for me.)

Posted in FIAR book activities

We had a lot of fun with Mirette on the High Wire. Europe is getting pretty crowded on our map, but we managed to squeeze this story disk in too! And for a laugh, there was a picture in our newspaper of someone driving a car across two high wires in China. We practiced walking a 'tightrope' by following the pattern on the edge of our living room rug.

Storytime was the book Nothing by John Agee, and the kids made musical shakers. Afterwards we made a quick stop at a local playground to try out their balance beams.

Math and reading continue to progress.

This is an article from another source, found via browsing the web(http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2833838.html):

Tightrope trial

A Chinese man performed a breathtaking stunt by driving a car across two steel cables suspended 150ft above a river.

Liu Suozhu, 48, of Henan province, completed the 750ft journey over Miluo River in Pingjiang city, Hunan province.

Liu, who is nicknamed the Car King in China, drove the motor from a platform in front of tens of thousands of cheering spectators.

During his 30-minute journey, Liu communicated with the performance host via radio, which was broadcast to the audience.

"The cables are a bit shaky, not very stable... the slope is very steep," the showman said, to more cheers from the crowd.

Liu says the last few minutes were the most difficult and dangerous because the steep slope blocked his rear view. He stopped several times during the last section of his journey.

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

We continued our spring fun with the Before FIAR title The Carrot Seed. We also used a go-along from a Brighter Vision pack, Bear and Bunny Grow Tomatoes. We planted our own carrot and tomato seeds in big bins ... we're trying container gardening this year. (So far, it's much easier to keep watered and weeded, though the carrots never did sprout.)

We browsed YouTube looking at butterflies hatching, spurred on by a link posted on the FIAR forums, which was pretty cool. We missed storytime due to illness but still had plenty of fun.

Friday was the Webkinz Day celebration in stores, so we took a field trip with our friends Amy and Jennifer to our favorite Hallmark. (Unfortunately our accounts are still a bit messed up ... it was about two weeks at this point and has now been near two months.) But the activities and sales were great, and the kids each won some fun prizes, like animal crackers and a Webkinz mouse pad.

Saturday we did a Lowe's activity, and I got to attend a curriculum fair ... bought some fun materials but not anything major, as we'd pretty much decided what we wanted and it wasn't there.

Posted in FIAR book activities

We hopped back over to England to enjoy Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car. We also worked some more on our Webkinz Stargate script for Script Frenzy (yep, this is Teddy's story!) and enjoyed a storytime of the rather odd story Hey, Al. Over the weekend cousin Joey came to spend the night, which was fun for our kids. Also Daddy mixed up cement and drilled new holes in our swingset frame and we got to anchor the set and hang new swings on it. MUCH safer now, and nicer too. We'll wait till next summer, or later, before investing in newer playground equipment... it's so expensive to get a really nice set, and they all seem to be a bit grown up for our three year old. So we'll wait another year or so. Our toddler and young kid swings and our plastic climbing playsets and slides will do for now. (Gotta love secondhand stores and yard sales!)

Posted in FIAR book activities

Our next spring title was Miss Rumphius. We enjoyed this book, especially talking about making the world more beautiful.

Storytime was Swimmy by Leo Lionni, and a fishy craft that didn't quite float right in the tub, but which the kids loved anyway.

We were introduced to the "Eagle Cam" at http://chil.vcoe.org/eagle_cam.htm by a mom on the FIAR forums, and had fun watching that over the next few weeks. Once or twice we even saw the eaglets being fed!

Over the weekend we started our Script Frenzy project (www.scriptfrenzy.org for adults and http://ywp.scriptfrenzy.org for students), and made stepping stones with jewels (which later fell out) for our garden. There was enough in the kit for each one of us to make an individual stone. Not real impressed with the kit overall, though, so won't post the brand here.

Maddy started working hard on writing letters, and Ted and I had a big bedtime discussion on oxygen (and why we shouldn't wrap our heads in blankets to sleep!) ... went well with our plant parts lesson, at least. LOL.

Posted in Other book activities

To kick off April, we read My Spring Robin by Anne Rockwell. It's not a FIAR title but a sweet little book anyway. And as a bonus, most everything pictured in the story can be found in our backyard or neighborhood, which makes it a perfect spring title for our family.

We did more Brighter Vision pages, progressed further in math and phonics, played with some other workbooks, and tried Usborne's I can draw people for fun.

Storytime was a book called Pedro the Brave, and Miss Mary helped the kids make a medal to wear.

We watched Peter Rabbit some more, and also some Magic School bus videos. They love these!

Miss Jennifer took them to the park, and they tried to play tennis. :)

The kids really loved this book, and now they have added a whole slew of imaginary pet bunnies to the collection of imaginary friends. :)

We had some nice coloring and sticker books to go with it, as well as a nice British animated movie. And Maddy started really getting into doing schoolwork, so we pulled out a lot of old Brighter Vision workbooks and let her do those.

Storytime was a book about seasons, and some Wind activities.

We had fun with gardening, and planting more potatoes, and filling our bird feeders yet again ... the birds have a tremendous appetite! We also tried doing more nature drawings, but we're not very good at this yet. (On a later note: I've now discovered Jane Lambert's nature studies, which have nice worksheets for the kids ... wish I'd had them sooner! They're available at ww.fiveinarow.com with the other digital items.)

Ted added a new playmate ... the grandson of our neighbors spends his after school time at their house, and has taken to coming over here to play. The kids love this.

On a health note, Ted had a dentist appointment early in the week, and then ended up with a pretty bad case of pinkeye later in the week. That was rough to treat, and he hated every eye drop, but finally we got through it.

We had a pretty busy Holy Week and spring break. Storytime was a picnic theme, with Miss Patsy instead of Miss Mary ... very different styles but fun either way.

We went to the Maundy Thursday service but couldn't quite manage the Good Friday one. Sunday, however, we attended church as a family, and the kids had an egg hunt during the children's part of the service. I got to go to sunrise service all by myself ... it was cold but good. We also played with our set of Resurrection Eggs. At home, we had our own egg hunt, and Grandma and Grandpa Glenn and Aunt Karen joined in.

Saturday's project at Lowe's was a wacky golf game, which the kids had fun with.

Posted in FIAR book activities

This past week we read Wee Gillis. The kids didn't like it as much as I did, but I think they'll enjoy it next time around. Of course, we snacked on shortbread cookies while reading! And we placed our story disk on Scotland.

This website has some nice snippets of bagpipe music: http://bagpipes.com/music.html

Storytime was Night Cat, and afterwards the kids made cat-ear headbands. Miss Mary even painted their noses and painted whiskers on their cheeks ... my kids were cats for the rest of the day. Miaou!

Yesterday was going to be a mini-curriculum fair at my house, for our play co-op, but illness and other reasons caused several families to cancel. Since we woke to pouring rain and my plan had been to have the kids all play outside, this was probably just as well! Not sure what happened to the other families, but only one mom and her kids ended up coming. We had a lovely time, though, and got to share what we each use. I know I got some good ideas, and my kids had a blast having playmates over.

Next week is officially Spring Break around here. We'll probably focus on Bible stories and church over the week, and pick up lessons again the next week. We're not going to be doing the Reading Rainbow contest after all, but that would probably have to be mailed soon.

NaNoEdMo is going on ... I'm behind so far, due to laptop dying and internet constantly crashing, but I am struggling to make up the hours! And I'm definitely making progress on my book. Much better than last year, in that respect, even though this year has been ten times as frustrating.

A FIAR mom posed the question regarding first grade math, about whether the kids knew even/ odd, and whether they could correctly tell how many pennies were in $20. For fun, I asked Ted about the pennies (he's done even/odd for a while now). Astonishingly, he was able to work it out, and said two thousand rather than twenty-hundred (which I had expected). Yay Ted! I actually took longer to think it out than he did. LOL.

Posted in FIAR book activities

Our first unit of March was Make Way for Ducklings, always a favorite. We have the book and the Scholastic video, which was a nice change-up. We put our story disk on Boston. Coincidentally, the newspaper had a story this week about the Old North Church, so we looked at those pictures and then saved the article for when we do Paul Revere.

We got an email from Grandma in Hawaii, very exciting! And more dear friends, Tim and Karen, had their third child, a boy named James. Welcome, James! Two new babies to cherish ... very exciting. The kids can't wait to play with them. We got to see baby James at the hospital, visiting very briefly after storytime.

Storytime was Jerry Pinkney's The Little Red Hen, accompanied by butter making. She had two large jars of cream for everyone to take turns shaking, and then bread to snack on with the butter, after. Yum! We've also been checking out Magic School Bus videos from the library; this time the kids picked the one on Bees.

Friday was a t-shirt decorating party for our play co-op. A little chaotic but fun. Ours didn't get properly ironed (I was hasty, as there was a line) and I've learned a valuable lesson ... do not put wax paper over it to iron it down further at home ... the wax paper gets glued to it. A few trips through the washer helped the paper come off, but the lettering isn't as good as it should be, now. Oh well.

Over the weekend was another Lowe's workshop, this time building a periscope!

Posted in FIAR book activities

This was a fun book! We really enjoyed this week, so much so that we ended up spending two weeks on it. Ted's on a New York City kick, so he loved doing a story set there. Not only did we read The Little Red Lighthouse, but we also tossed in some go alongs. One big hit was a very old easy reader called The Secret Three by Mildred Myrick (I think). It involves boys on vacation who meet a boy living at a lighthouse, by solving his secret code message in a bottle. Since then, we've been doing a lot of secret codes here. Even a kindergartener can handle the 1=A, 2=B sort of code. Ted loves it. We also read Beacons of Light by Gail Gibbons; her books are always a nice addition to a unit study. Friday we downloaded the Fold-N-Learn (a lapbook) from the FIAR site and tried to assemble it. Maddy had fun cutting and randomly pasting, but Ted tried to do his more deliberately. It took us most of the next week to finish. It was nice, but a bit over Ted's head, and the map currently in it is inaccurate (they are going to fix it).

Wikipedia has a nice article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Lighthouse for pictures. It really shows the scale of the lighthouse, which I thought the book had to be exaggerating. Apparently not!

Over the weekend and also this week, we have been finishing up a science kit we got at Target some time ago, "My First Science Experiments" or something like that. It's all colors and light and water, very simple but fun. The equipment it came with is pretty sturdy, too. And for phonics, we've still set aside the Explode the Code workbooks and are using Beyond the Code book 1 ... Ted has really enjoyed the change of pace. He likes the stories and the worksheets, especially the art ones (completing the illustration and then coloring.)

Tuesday, Daddy took off work to be with us. In the afternoon was our cover school's ice skating party. It wasn't quite what we expected ... we didn't know any of the other families there ... but the kids had a surprisingly good time, in spite of the fact that neither can ice skate. Daddy and I got thoroughly worn out, as a result. That morning, though, the kids and I went to storytime, where we heard Frederick by Leo Lionni and made mouse finger puppets.

Saturday we had a real treat of an opportunity ... picture book author and illustrator Denise Fleming was speaking at our main library. In spite of much confusion over the tickets and the suggested age ranges, we ended up attending the afternoon showing, which was supposed to involve hands-on art. If you want to see how she actually creates her picture books (it's an amazing process), check out www.denisefleming.com for the details. Anyway, the event started off with a puppet show by some branch librarians, a very exciting adaptation of In the Tall Tall Grass, and then several slides by Denise Fleming which included childhood art (and discussions of possible story ideas from them, and how anyone obviously can grow up to be an artist, LOL), pictures of the nature in her backyard and of her pets (who give her much inspiration), pictures from the books, and lots of very funny anecdotes. Well worth going to see. The group art ended up being a giant mural, construction-paper collage. Very cool. We also got to speak to her personally, and get books signed. (I was actually in line too long, while Ted was finishing his art ... one of the librarians had just gone to check on him, though, and he was brought to me before he could get too upset... poor guy. He knew where I was, but forgot, and I was just out of his sight.) Here is some of Ted's art:

(The rest of the pictures came out blurry. I got a video of the whole mural but am not sure how to do those.)

The next week we continued with the lighthouse book. We also played around with compasses and stuck a potato in a glass of water to see the eyes turn into leaves and roots. (We've since planted the potato in a bin of dirt and are curious to see how it grows.) We also got a good art lesson out of Beyond the Code. The instruction was to draw another cup or two in the picture, to show the ones Zack the dog knocked off the shelf. Ted didn't know how to draw a cup, so I suggested he draw a cylinder. Amazingly, that simple instruction worked, and he was SO PROUD he learned how to draw something. He's not much for realistic art. Then he learned how to draw a cylinder rounded at the bottom to make a teacup.

For storytime, the librarian read the pop-up version of Horton Hears a Who. The pop-ups are quite impressive, but the story was too long for most of the children to sit through. She then let them make Who-Horns, out of individual soda and water bottles with the bottoms cut off (all thoroughly washed). They decorated them with foam stickers.

Wednesday it actually snowed again, so the kids got to enjoy that. And we started reading out of the first CLP Nature Reader. Those are nice simple books, but it was more about wasps than I ever wanted to know. We haven't picked it back up again yet, but we will.

Thursday we took some of our work and went up to the church, to see if it was possible for me to accomplish my job as church librarian with kids in tow. They handled it for a little while, then got antsy. But we hit on the idea of taking a stack home each week to work on, and bringing them back all nicely labelled and pocketed to swap for another stack. This may work.

Friday the weather was nice again and we started planning our gardens. The weather is completely nuts. :)

Oh, and some of our dear friends, Greg and Anna, had their first baby, a boy they've named Eric. Welcome to the world, baby Eric!