Posted in Before FIAR book activities

 This is another Before FIAR title, chosen in honor of Ted’s birthday being this week. Red happens to be his favorite color, and rolling out the red carpet is a great idea for birthdays! (Alas, we forgot to do that actual part, but we had a blast anyway.)

We turned in our shoeboxes at church, and Ted has continued on with choir practice.

Monday we did our lessons and then Ted did another Cub Scout elective activity by selecting and preparing the snack for the evening’s den meeting (it was our turn to bring snack). Unfortunately the meeting plans changed … instead of six Tigers and their moms, it ended up being the whole pack plus siblings and parents … but Lysle said it stretched. (I asked him to take over, once I found out they planned to work on those crazy boats during the meeting.) They had a good time anyway, though Ted would have preferred more free time to play with all his friends.

Tuesday we did manage to go to storytime, which was all about baths. The pirate bathtime story was very cute. Afterwards Karen and her kids came over to eat lunch and visit, and though I think we ended up visiting longer than was good for their busy schedule, we had a really good time, and it was very refreshing.

Wednesday Maddy and I began to bake Ted’s birthday cake… I had thought he would want to help, but he insisted on being surprised … though he ordered a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and red lettering. And a number 7 candle. We had the cake mix and canned frosting, but not enough for red. That turned out to be a problem, as we were out of both shortening and powdered sugar…

Thursday we took the day off of lessons to celebrate. The kids decorated with red balloons and streamers, and Grandma (bless her heart!) rescued us with lunch. I say rescue because Maddy turned out to be sick, thus nixing all our possible plans for the day. She had been up ALL NIGHT the night before, crying and sniffling and watching movies. Lysle took most of that duty. Anyway, Grandma and Grandpa Glenn came bearing Captain D’s and gifts, and were much welcomed.

 Their gifts to Ted were a nifty solar system walk-on mat from Learning Resources, and a globe lamp that plugs in and lights up. Ted loves both. Grandma also brought a Play-Doh party kit, which we saved for the next day (a good choice).

For dinner, Daddy took the night off of overtime, and we had Ted’s chosen dinner of hot dogs and fries, eaten camp-style in the Cranium fort tents he’d built. (Maddy was napping at that point.) Then we gave him his big gift, a V. Smile Cyber Pocket. He had been wanting a handheld game system (he really wanted a Nintendo DS but we weren’t quite ready for such a big purchase for a 7 year old, though the FIAR mamas gave good advice about them). And we have a V. Smile system already, so have lots of cartridges. I wasn’t initially impressed with the handheld, but Ted loved it and it worked a lot better than it did when I tested it out. So it’s a hit! Yay!

Friday, since Maddy was still sick, we cancelled our Jennifer visit (she was sick last week so we missed that one too) and after lessons we did the Play-Doh kit. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and there are a lot of goodies left to share when we try it again with friends. A very cute concept.

Tomorrow is our big Rain Gutter Regatta … they worked hard tonight to finish up the boats, the final touches like decals. We shall see how it goes! Also the popcorn orders are supposed to be ready, so we will hope we did everything correctly…

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

 The Little Rabbit is a Before FIAR title. We did this one for Maddy, though she didn’t end up loving it as much as Ted used to. We enjoyed the go-along Rabbits and Raindrops by Jim Arnosky.

Sunday was another Cub Scout event, earning their Geology Belt Loop at the Gem Show. This one was pretty interesting, actually, though the activities didn’t work quite as well as they should have. The kids had a hard time labeling the black and white chart of the volcano (it would have helped for the kids to have a color chart to reference). Still, this field trip was free of charge for the boys, and they did love it. They did a play dough activity about the layers of the earth and how plates shift and move the layers, and an erosion activity involving sucking on a piece of candy. They also got a brief tour of some of the more fascinating exhibits, like rocks that look like food and some that glowed in the dark (radioactive).

Monday was the Tigers’ visit to the fire station. Daddy took Ted to this one. It was the same station we’d visited earlier this year, which was kind of neat. 

We did not have storytime this week, and we did have a doctors’ appointment, more a checkup to see how the kids were doing since it had been so long, and I had some questions too. We did all three of us at once, but for once there wasn’t a long wait, and it actually went well. I was pleased, because I like our family doctor, just not the waits.  

Another tooth of Ted’s began to be loose, and Ted read to us all by himself, Arthur’s Tooth, which is one of his new favorites. 

We added a little cactus to our plant table in the front window, to go with our science reading of One Small Square: Cactus Desert. And Maddy enjoyed a video we found secondhand, “Backstage at the Ballet.”

Saturday, due to some random web game searching, Lysle stumbled across a little gem called Crayon Physics (http://www.crayonphysics.com/ is the new website with a for-sale version, and http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/ is the blog Lysle found it and other games on). The kids were fascinated, and now it’s one of Ted’s favorites.

Also this week was a local science fiction and gaming convention. Lysle and his buddies declined to attend this year, due to high prices and not enough fun gaming. However, for once they were hosting an author whose works I actually like, so I decided to go, and meet some of my friends there. It was a disappointing experience. The author and her husband were both outgoing personalities, with a lot of humorous anecdotes to share, but many of the anecdotes were disdainful ones about annoying fans they’d had … which led to comments about fans and amateur writers in general, which was, when you think about it, pretty insulting to the assembled audience, most of whom were both fans and amateur writers. It made me think rather less of this particular author. However, having a weekend to do something totally frivolous just for me was rather fun. In spite of everything.

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

 Sunday, Ted performed for us (Daddy and I) a ‘Rain Dance Play’ that he’d been working on for some time. Maddy was an enthusiastic co-star. The idea for the play was based on the rain dance episode of Little Bear, one of Ted’s favorite shows and book series. He went all out, making up a dance, and memorizing the words to the song, and even creating an enormous backdrop of blue construction paper squares for a sky and white construction paper clouds. (This was taped outside to the wall.) During his preparations, which were several weeks in the works, it came to light that Ted thought his rain dance would truly cause it to rain. This led to an interesting discussion, and an explanation that only God could make it rain, but that Ted could certainly pray and ask. So he ended his rain dance with a prayer, and then we went and turned on the sprinkler so the kids could run around in our impromptu ‘rain’ … they had a blast!

That evening the children’s choir had a ‘listening party’ with snacks, to listen all the way through the chosen Christmas pageant program. Teddy liked it, and decided he wanted to participate. (My rule is, he can do choir if he likes, or not, but once they start rehearsing for a program, he must choose and then stick it out till the program is over.)

For part of our Corduroy activities, we were going to learn to sew buttons (a Tiger Cub elective), but this ended up being postponed. Our schoolwork was pretty straightforward. Ted had a dentist visit, and then another to fill a cavity. We went to the library twice, once for our regular storytime (about squirrels), and once for Jumpstart’s Read for the Record event, featuring Corduroy this year. (www.readfortherecord.org)

And another thrill for the kids, Jennifer brought over some of her music equipment and let the kids record CD’s of them singing songs.

October also began the Pizza Hut reading program, BookIt!

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 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 Before FIAR book activities

I Am An Artist was our focus book of the week. I initially read it to the kids while they were sculpting with playdoh, and they liked it. We talked about some of the items in the illustrations, what colors we saw and what lines and shapes.

Later in the week we went to the neighborhood playground and took a nature walk, finding lots of 'treasures' like dandelions and leaves. Madeline had such fun contributing to our collection! Then, that night, we tried to draw what we saw, using lines like in the book. Ted wasn't content to leave them on the page, and insisted on cutting out each one and gluing it to another sheet. He's really into scissors these days ... and pasting things down. It took some work to convince him that paste was for sheets of paper, and that TAPE was for putting things on walls (he loves to hang up his cut-outs). He's better now. :-)

Both kids have been doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles, and Maddy continues to wow us with her growing vocabulary. She can actually read the numbers 1 through 10 now, out of order, and though she doesn't count groups of objects yet, she did count a sequence of repeated movements on a computer game. It was so cute! Her computer skills have really been taking off now. It kind of hit a critical mass ... she'd finally had enough practice with the mouse to 'get it' and now that she can use the mouse, we're more willing to let her play, so she keeps on improving. Ted enjoys standing beside her, teaching her his favorite Noggin and Nick Jr. games.

They've also had LOTS of outside time this week. The weather is all spring-like, so I filled up the water table and let 'em at it. They love that. Today, after Communion and Sunday School, Ted and I went to Lowe's and starting our spring purchases. We got some lettuce plants (last year's best crop by far), a couple of tomato plants (hope springs eternal), and some pansies (Ted's favorite). Also some bulbs to plant later ... I LOVE bulbs. They seem to thrive on my neglect. Our daffodils have been blooming through the frost for weeks now.

The Sunday School is back on the workshop rotation model again, for the kids, which Ted enjoys. My class is still working our way through Max Lucado's topical study on the Lord's Prayer, based on his book The Great House of God. The study is good, but our class is really digging into the discussions, and that's fantastic. I'm also reading Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, still, though I've yet to make it to one of the ladies' group meetings that's doing it. However, Children's Choir has just resumed for Ted, following my Emmaus small group and at the same time as the ladies' group, so I might get to go. Or catch up on my work in the church library. Either will be good!

My NaNoEdMo attempt is not going so well, mostly due to the lack of identifiable plot in my manuscript. Well, I'll keep plugging away on writing stuff anyway, while everyone else is, just to get stuff done. I'm also enjoying the Barnes & Noble online book clubs, one of which is discussing writing science fiction. Some interesting discussions there.

So this is what we've been up to. Hope everyone else's week went well too!

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

I haven't blogged about Christmas yet, though I've got some cute pics of the kids and our doings! One big hit was the gingerbread house ... it was a bit of a last-minute decision, so the stores were out of the pre-made kits. Yikes! We'd spent much of Advent sick (and spent most of Christmastide sick as well) so I was not in the mood to make up gingerbread myself ... the smell gets to me. I must be the only person who actually truly dislikes gingerbread! Anyway, the stores did have rolls of gingerbread dough, so I got that. I drafted Lysle to help, and he and the kids measured and rolled dough to make the sides, roof, etc. The scraps were shaped and cut by the kids, and baked in the toaster oven (we have a whole lot of kid sized cooking implements, and the cookie sheet is perfect for the toaster oven!). The next day we made egg icing to hold the house together (not to be eaten, and it's known as Royal Icing, I discovered when trying to find a recipe!), and once it had hardened I made safer buttercream icing for decorating. Lots of candy-nibbling, finger-licking fun ensued as we all got into the spirit and added touches to the house.

Now that Christmas is officially over (we celebrate through Epiphany), the kids have gotten to EAT their creation! They've had a blast. I missed a great photo op when Maddy stood on her chair, leaned over the table, and nibbled the eaves of the house! It was so cute...

We planned January to be our Snow month, using Before and V. 1 of FIAR. We spent last week reading The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. This led into a discussion of crystals. We used www.popularfront.com/snowdays to design virtual snowflakes, colored a Dover Stained Glass coloring book of Snowflakes and hung them on a window, and used a littlecrystal-growing kit in our new science lab (formerly known as Ted's bathroom, LOL). This was followed by a real desire to do more science experiments, so we've got colored sugar water sitting in the kitchen, waiting to turn into candy crystals. That'll be yummy! We also got great printables for the winter from www.learningpages.com (register, it's free!) and from www.abcteach.com (this one is not free, but it's been well worth it, more so for me than Enchanted Learning was). ABCTeach lets you design your own worksheets along with the stuff it's already got pre-made ... you can even make Sudoku puzzles. I've used it to create word lists for our Word Wall, a new addition this year. Maddy helped color snowflakes and tried to trace a letter S, and will no doubt help us eat the sugar crystals we grow! So she's been an active participant too.

Over the next couple weeks we'll be reading Very Last First Time by Ian Andrews, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost and illustrated by Susan Jeffers, and possibly Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Burton. Ted's preschool class is proposing to build an igloo out of milk jugs, so whichever week they do that, that's when we'll read Very Last First Time. Scholastic has a build-your-own-igloo kit with trays for freezing the ice, so we'll have lots of fun with that.

Coming up January 16th, we'll be participating in Westward HO! Check out http://www.cyberbee.com/wwho/index.html for more details about that. It looks like fun, though I will be simplifying to bring it down to Ted's level. Several of us from the FIAR forums have decided to try this, and we've created a Yahoo group for us to swap resources and coordinate efforts. If you are interested in tying in FIAR-style learning (www.fiveinarow.com) and Westward HO!, please check out our group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/westwardhocampfiar/ ... registration is open right now, but will be changed to moderator-approval if we start getting spam and such.

That's what we're up to right now! Pictures to come as soon as I figure out the new changes around this website.

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

This week we focussed on Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, featured in Before Five in a Row. Maddy loved it! We had to read it at least three times each sitting. She loved pointing out some of the things in the story, especially the red balloon and the little mouse in his gray circle. She would even point to the bunny in bed and say "Night night".

 

We were going to do lots of art, but it didn't happen. I printed off the Goodnight Moon coloring pages from this Link but the kids weren't interested in coloring them. We also have an Artpac set, and Lesson One was a cute goodnight prayer page, but they didn't do much with that either. Oh well.

 

Our library's storytime theme this week was actually Bedtime, so we got to read some cute go-alongs! For the craft they made little moon-and-star mobiles, which we currently have hanging from the dining room chandelier (replacing our Japanese lanterns from when we read A Pair of Red Clogs).

 

This week was also to be Ted's monthly pajama party with Daddy, but instead of the pajama party we have his cousins visiting for the weekend, Jimmy (5.5) and Isabel (almost 7). So far it's gone pretty well ... they've been really good and everyone has had fun. Lysle thought it would be a good idea to take all four kids to Chuck E. Cheese today for lunch ... Saturday, at lunchtime! It went pretty well, though. It's the first time I've ever played skeeball and had, in three consecutive games, balls leave other people's lanes and score (or not) in MY lane. Sigh. Other than that, pretty fun though.

 

Thursday afternoon we met our friends (Karen and Aden and Micah) at the Botanical Gardens to check out the new children's garden and the butterfly house. It's been open all summer but it was too HOT to want to go. Of course, it ended up being pretty hot when we went anyway, but it was fun. They had mazes for the kids, and places to dig, and a rainbow garden with prisms, and a 'treehouse' loft, and all sorts of nifty things. Lots of fun!

 

Friday Ted, Maddy, and I went to Lowe's in spite of the rain to pick out our fall flowers. We got a bunch of mums, and Ted and Maddy decided they wanted petunias and snapdragons for Teddy's garden. We got pansies for them also. Feels like fall now, with all the pretty bright flowers!

 

I figured out the secret to raising smart kids, too ... have no patience! LOL. Ted keeps asking what's 16 plus 16, for example. He's good with his addition facts up to ten, and with a few loaner fingers can add things up to 20, but more than that has him stumped. (Which is fine, as he's not even five yet.) But I got tired of answering, so I made him bring me a piece of paper and a pencil, and we had a lesson on writing numbers down and adding the columns. When guided through the process, he does very well. His writing is too shaky yet for him to do this kind of math on his own, but he knows how now, at least, and it's a lot more fun to help him work out the answers than to be always giving them. We filled a whole sheet of typing paper with problems, till I got tired of it. LOL. So that's the secret!

 

Oh, and Ted had his first dentist appointment this week. Right after that he got to watch me get a filling, my first in years (and boy was I nervous!). Probably just as well that he got to see it, because he's going to have to get one too, poor kid. Other than that, his teeth are fine and he behaved really well. He got to pick a toy out of the prize box, a small set of generic GeoMags.

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

This week we focused on Blueberries for Sal. As usual, the kids wiggled through the first reading but adored the book by the end of the week. For go-alongs, so far we've eaten yummy blueberries and turned some of them into freezer jam. Ted knows we're "saving it for next winter" just like Sal's mom and Little Bear's mom. We even watched the cute Scholastic video of Robert McCloskey stories, which has a few Sal stories. We might do some "blue" art later.

 

We've also made it to story time ... this week's theme was Babies, so there were lots of hugs! Madeline is really getting into storytime, and loves all the music. She won't sit for the stories but she loves the rest.

 

This weekend the library had a special "Down on the Farm" day. They had a petting zoo bring animals to visit, and there were crafts and food and all sorts of neat thinsgs. The best part was at the end, when the baby sheep decided to Baa over and over again. Very loud for such a small critter!

 

Ted still loves numbers, and is still working on simple addition. The other day he and Maddy were playing, and Ted called out, "What is 5+6?" He'd just done 5+4 so I told him to figure it out. He thought and thought and studied his fingers, and then said, "Maddy, stop playing, I need your finger!" I cracked up, and let him count on my fingers instead, and he reached the correct answer.

 

We'll be going to a friend's wedding this weekend, which means a long car trip with the kids. Ought to be interesting!

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

I was going to wait another week to start school ... our Mother's Day Out program began on the seventh and I wanted to wait a week after that to settle into our routine. But Ted really wanted to start, so two weeks ago we began our school year.

 

Our first book was from Before Five in a Row, We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. Ted and Maddy both enjoyed this one. We pulled out our sheet to put on the dining table, and had our bear cave. Add a few stuffed bears, and it's instant adventure. Then we cut up a box to make a mini bear cave, and added a tiny Pooh doll. The scraps from the box became the trees, river, mud, and so on. The bear puppet from Storyplace (browse through the preschool themes to find it) was a nice addition to their notebooks. Some bear pages from an old Sesame Street magazine completed our notebook.

 

This week we stayed with Before, and read Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear by Nancy Carlstrom. I have two secondhand little wooden bears with the clothes to mix and match, a girl and a boy. Maddy really liked these; they were well within her puzzle ability, it turns out. Jesse Bear is a nice springboard for talking about body parts, which Maddy is trying to add to her limited vocabulary. My niece ended up in the hospital this week due to asthma etc., and added to our little science lesson. (Sorry, sweetie, but it was great timing!)

 

Also in Ted's notebook are some copywork pages from Simply Charlotte Mason. They have a lot of neat resources. We're working on the Doxology, which he's trying to learn for church.

 

We've done all of Lesson One from Explode the Code Book 1 for phonics (several pages .. it takes a while to do a whole lesson) and we've done about eight lessons in his Horizons Math kindergarten book. He really likes the math pages, probably because they're too easy for him right  now. Well, it's good practice.

 

Our first day of Mother's Day Out went well. Maddy accepted that she was to stay in the nursery, and only cried when I had to go in and out to help them with lunch. Ted loves his class, and his teachers asked if I didn't want to enroll him for more days. (There is only a three or five day option this year, and I didn't want more than two days. So my kids are only going on Mondays, when I teach.) The kids are excited about computer, and my library class looks eager as well. So we seem to be off to a good start so far.

Posted in Before FIAR book activities

We've been playing around with the v. 1 books lately, but today ended up being a Bear Hunt day for us. It was such a nice example of what Before FIAR is all about that I thought I'd share. (I posted this over on the FIAR forums too, so I apologize if you're reading this twice.)

For starters, Ted decided to play 'cave' today. He was using the knee-space of the desk in his bedroom for his cave, and we used one of those plastic-covered foam kindergarten nap mats for the doorway. Baby was climbing up on the bed next to the desk, and since she likes to bounce and stand on it (it's a toddler bed so she can get on it by herself) I stayed with them to supervise.

Now, Ted's desk needs a bit of explaining. LOL  It was a vanity when my sister was little, painted white, with a mirror attached. I don't know where the mirror currently is, and we repainted it when Ted was a baby because it looked too girly for a boy's room. We used it as a changing table then. I had a nesting moment and painted it all over ... mural-style. The front is jungle and jungle animals, with stickers and cut-outs of things pasted on. One side is dinosaurs, the other is more forest and mountains. The back is underground .. treasures, pyramids with archaeologists, etc. The top surface is sky with stars and planets, and the knee space is painted like underwater scenes. Can you tell I couldn't pick a nursery theme?

So it was this Ted used for his cave. Since I was in there anyway, it seemed a nice time to read. We decided to read a 'cave' story so I grabbed our board book of "We're Going on a Bear Hunt". "Angus Lost" has a cave too, but this was closer at hand.

Ted had a blast finding the things on his desk that matched the elements of the story ... swishy swashy grass, thick oozy mud, and so on. Baby loved the story and enjoyed playing with the book when we were done. At the end, of course, I chucked his teddy bear at him and then we 'escaped' from it at the last pages.

It was a fun reading time for all three of us at once, something we don't do nearly enough, and I thought that was the end of it. Nope!

Later we went to a friend's house to play. On the way back he noticed the highway we were on is cut on a mountain top through lots of trees.

"A forest, Mommy, a forest, just like in the story!" He was so proud to make that connection.

We've also been reading "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (from v. 1) thanks to Celia's sharing the snowflake website www.popularfront.com/snowdays with everyone. So that ties in too, with the blizzard page.

He also pulled out his periscope (from the Wallace and Gromit kids' meals back around Halloween) and had fun with that. Now he's building telescopes out of the tubes from his marble track.

It's not really that exceptional a day, but it really brought home to me why I like this style of learning. I took off from what he was playing, caves, to read a story, then he took the story and made connections later in the day.

THIS is why I want to keep them home with me! These are the days and moments that make it all seem worthwhile. I needed this today.

Anyone else hunting bears right now?