The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7

Yesterday I bought a big bag of M&M's and we played math.    We graphed them, and talked about who had more, how many there were of each color, and of course ate them! 

We also had fun with a new game I made, Tot Sudoku.  I explained the rules to Bop and she picked it right up!  I think she could do a four-square game.  CJ hasnt tried it yet, but I think he will like it too.

If you would like to make this, just make a 9 -square grid.  I used some math counters for pieces, but anything you have would work.

CJ played with fraction pieces while sissy was working.  He loves this game, and he likes to lay the fraction pieces on the 'whole' to fit it.

Baby Girl played with crayons and a jar. This lasted longer then most things, about 5 minutes. 

HURAAAAAAY!!!

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7

We have finished our study about wolves!  It was a lot of fun.   I asked Bop last week what she wanted to learn about, and she picked this, I was really surprised.  I have some pictures of it and I will add links for anyone who would like to try it!   We kept finding more we wanted to do, so it was a sqeeze to get it all in.

 Bop colored the cover, and I think it looks beautiful!

We mainly used mini books from Homeschool Share.  On the top we put a petal book, "how many..."  where Bop wrote in how many legs, ears, etc. a wolf has.   There is a "'w' is for wolf" book, a 'wolves' poem, and a small book with two Aesop's Fables.

The next level has maps for the US and World where we colored in wolf locations.  We also made a small book to compare our German Shepherd to wolves.  I used the 'vocabuulary' book from Homeschool Share, and just put a new cover on it.  The Triangle is a book about wolf diet, and beside it is our 'w' mini book. 

On the flap we put "The Wolf's Coat".

These are the matchbooks about anatomy from Homeschool Share's wolf book.  I had Bop draw the featured part in each one.  She really enjoyed this activity, and did a good job!

This is the inside of the "Where in the World Can I Find...Wolves" Book I designed.   I made it into a Word Template, so I could use it later for oher animals.

Hopefully some day soon I will figure out how the make PDF files and I will be able to share my work!  :)

Here is the link to Homeschool Share's Wolf Lapbook:

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/gray_wolf.php

And our 'W' book:

http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/learning-letters/books.htm

Sorry for my fuzzy pictures, our camera is on the fritz so I am using my phone.  :)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7

My fingernails have dirt under them, and my back is tired.  We spent the morning digging our pathetically meager patch of potatoes.  I have been letting them sit until the last minute before winter, knowing they will keep better underground while it is still warm outside.

We planted these potatoes in the end of March, carefully cutting them into two-inch pieces, sitting on the living room floor one still-cold early spring day.  Oh, how excited the children were, to see all of those tiny potatoes come out of the little brown bags.  "Mom, where are the seeds?  Oh, we plant the potatoes?  Thats funny!"   After a few days, when the cuts had sealed over and the sun was warm, we went out and began planting.

First we dug the hard ground, and then when it was all ready, we walked down the row, dropping in a piece every foot or so.  The kids loved it, and they dropped in pieces and then covered them with dirt.  This was a wonderful hide-and-seek game!  Of course, we ended up with several all together, and then none for a few feet, but I figured it diddn't really matter after all.   Baby Girl was only eight months old, and she sat in her seat and watched.  She got to sit in the dirt for a little while, but she found it much too tasty for Mommie's liking, so soon she had to take a nap. 

We had a few potatoes once or twice through the summer, just to see how they were doing and because we couldn't wait to taste them.   If you have never had homegrown potatoes, you have never really had potatoes at all.  We soon found ourselves wishing we had planted the whole garden to them, they were soooo yummy.    I did try to save most of them for fall, though. 

So today we started digging them.  It was slow going, because they had been sorely neglected.  Not enough water, too many weeds, not dug deep enough, not enough mulch.  But still, up through the dirt came tender, delicious thin-skinned golden orbs! The older children thought it was wonderful, what treasures!  They dug through the clods I dug up, and soon I heard shouts of "I found one!  Here's another!!".  Soon the boy, being a boy, tired of finding potatoes and started looking for worms. 

As we were digging, I slowly realized what the real treasure was.  I watched Baby Girl toddle from one dirt pile to the next, and happily sit down right in the holes to look at sticks and rocks.  She would make a new discovery, and start jabbering away to me in her excited baby talk, holding it up for me to admire.  How much has changed in just one summer! 

When she found her first potato, she promply stuck it in her mouth.  Somehow she knew THIS treasure was different.  Of course, it wasnt great because of all the dirt, but an interesting discovery just the same.  I thought back over the summer, feeling guilty that my wonderful plans for piles of potatoes had not come to fruition.  I thought about all the times I forgot to water them, and how I never did get to the weeding. 

But then I remembered the books that were read, the bugs that were examined, and all of the trips to the library and park.  The days we sat on the front step in silence, doing nothing but enjoying each others company.  I remembered hundreds of loads of clothes being hung on the line together.  I remembered the joy of watching many, many chicks hatch, and watching the way the mamma chickens, and even the roosters, cared for the little ones.

And it was then that I realized, no matter how poorly my potatoes grow, it doesn't really matter because I grew a prize-winning crop of kiddos this year! 

And besides, there is always next year..... and I am already planning my garden..... It will have a much bigger potato patch.  :)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7

We have finished with our pumpkin study!  It was fun, but hard to plan because I couldn't find many ready-made mini-books.  We read Pumpkin Day, Pumpkin Fiesta and Pumpkin Moonshine.   Bop's favorite book was 'Pumpkin Day', and CJ liked 'Pumpkin Fiesta'.

On the top flap, we have their pumpkin books, which they used to record information about their pumpkins.  Next there are three books I made, Parts of a Pumpkin Plant, Pumpkin Songs, and Pumpkin Rainbow.  Right below that we glued our Pumpkin Growth Cards pocket and our pumpkin shape book.  On the last flap we put our letter 'p' pages and mini book.

Pumpkin Growth Cycle Cards, From Kidzclub:

http://www.kizclub.com/Topics/food/pumpkin.pdf

This is one of the books I made, Parts of a Pumpkin Plant.  I used a tab book template, and added pictures I printed off, and then added a little bit of info about each part.

The other book I made was a graduated book, Pumpkin Rainbow.  I added each color at the bottom and the kids cut out pictures of different colored pumpkins from an Heirloom Seed catalog.

Here are some of the other books we used. 

Pumpkin Shape Book, from Enchanted Learning:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/types/pumpkin/shapebook/

I used this to make a simple fraction book.  You can't dowload it unless you are a member, so I just saved the thumbnail, and then enlarged it in Word.  I printed four of them on one page, and then made 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 divisions in them with a marker.

My Pumpkin Book:

Ok, I cant find the link right now, but I am sure it was a link from one of the other pumpkin lapbook blogs.

This has places to record information about your own pumpkins.  How many seeds they had, what they looked like, etc.  You could have an older child draw them, but we mounted pictures inside.

'P' is for Pumpkin, from First School:

http://www.first-school.ws/t/alpha3_pumpkinbw.htm

I folded these in half the long way, and then used an accordian fold so they would fit compactly in the folder.

Itsy Bitsy 'P' book, from DTLK:

http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/learning-letters/ib-book-p.htm

I love these letter books, and I try to make one for each of the lapbooks themes.  Even though Bop already knows her letter sounds, they are fun and great for 'reinforcement'.

Here are some links for a couple of other pumpkin lapbooks I found

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jaminacema/408719/

http://devildogfamily.blogspot.com/2008/10/pumpkin-lapbook.html

http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2007/10/pumpkins-lapbook.html

http://www.albright-news.com/lapbook/pumpkin-lapbook.html

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7

Sometimes you wonder if you should do several things halfway, or one thing really well.  As moms, it seems like there are always more things demanding our attention then we can possibly finish.  But do we pick one or two things and leave the rest, or do everything haphazardly? 

I have a pile of papers on my desk in the dining room, piled up in front of the computer that doesnt work anyway.  I have been wanting to get them organized for a week now, and still they sit there.  I have chosen to do other things instead.  Read stories.  Fix snacks.  Hang laundry up to dry so Hubby has socks tomorrow. 

I always want to get everything done everyday, which obviously doesn't happen.  But it seems when I try to do something really well, like clean out all my kitchen cupboards, that I end up cleaning up after that for a week!  I have dishes and laundry that need caught up on, boxes of storage to go to the basement, and cleaning supplies to put away. 

I guess that is why Fly-Lady talks so much about baby steps.  It seems to be the way to go in all lifes endeavors.  I am such a perfectionist I really dont do something unless I can do it right, and I dont want to stop until I am done.  But that only gets in the way of the real life happening all around me.  Baby steps work so much better, and last so much longer. 

As for Stellaluna today, we learned about 5 different kinds of bats that live in Colorado.  We put the locations on a map, and also found the location of Fruit Bats. 

For math we played Math Bingo, and we also measured the five Colorado bats and graphed them.  we put all of the information in minibooks for our Stellaluna Lapbook. 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7

Yesterday was a busy day.  We had to go to town and only got a little "school" done.  We did get to go to the library book sale, and also checked out some books on bats.

We are learning so much about bats!  This morning we read Stellaluna (of course)  and then we did some worksheets on the letter "b".  We did a little math, and then got to work on our bat studies.  First we looked through the bat books, and then we did a mini book on nocturnal/diurnal animals.  After naps we are going to learn more about some of the kinds of bats that live in Colorado, and do some graphs on them. 

Tuesday is Movie Day, so I found a Magic School Bus video about bats for them. 

Some bat facts:

Most bats are loving mothers, and they normally give birth to only one baby at a time.  They leave them in 'nursery' caves, or carry them on their stomachs.

Bats are very clean creatures, and spend much of their daytime 'resting' hours grooming themselves.

There are almost 1000 different species of bats, more then any other family except rodents.  Bat species account for 20-25 % of all mammal species.  There are 41 different kinds of bats in Colorado alone!

Fruit bats are the largest kind, and the biggest, Flying Foxes, can have a wingspan of up to 6 feet! 

Fruit bats do not see using echolocation, (like insect-eating bats)  rather they actually have really good night vision.  Fruit bats also do not have the huge ears of insect eating bats.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.Proverbs 1:7

I have spent the last few days online a lot, learning more about lapbooking and getting a lot of links for different resources.   We did a short lapbook last week about the book "Stone Soup", and the kiddos loved it.  I am just so excited to do it!   Today I am going to work on making a sample folder with different mini books in it as a reference.  The 'men'  (hubby and son) went antelope hunting today, so we skipped Church to have a girls day at home.