Before Five in a Row ~ Jesse Bear ~ Preschool

 The little guy I nanny for is bright as a button. He isn't two until late January, but he is obviously ready for some preschool activities. So I pulled out my Before Five in a Row curriculum. We decided to start with Jesse Bear What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom.  I made him a teddy bear out of cardboard with paper clothes to dress his very own bear. He loves to be read to, and we have read this book together about 30 times over the last two weeks --  I kid you not. We followed the BFIAR curriculum and played I Spy, talked about loving relationships and how to show love and identified patterns and shapes. 

We also talked about foreshadowing (what do you think is coming on the next page?) in the book. For example, when Mother bear comes out and is holding Jesse bear's bib, you know that it is time for Jesse bear to eat and that is then depicted on the next page. 

This curriculum includes lots of rhyming games. He loves rhyming with made up words and initiates rhyming games. We also learned Wee Willie Winkie, Hickory Dickory Dock and Row, Row, Row Your Boat. 

Lastly, we talked about how tidy Jesse Bear's room was and how it is more comfortable to live in a tidy home. We played the clean up game (which I had been teaching him for weeks). He is much more interested in having a tidy home like Jesse Bear and his parents say he is now initiating clean up time before transitions. 

What a delight to work with this little guy. We are starting Goodnight Moon next. 

Neil Armstrong Young Flyer ~ Beyond Five in a Row

We are at the end of another five week unit. For the past five weeks, we have studied Neil Armstrong Young Flyer and learned more about the 1950's and 1960's (specifically, the Korean War, Cold War and the Space Race). We used Beyond Five in a Row and a lot of my own ideas. 

During Neil Armstrong's childhood, he was a Boy Scout and a very good student. We learned how to cook in an aluminium bag over an open fire, how to set three different kinds of campfires, and how to make two different kinds of knots.

For science, the kids learned about aluminium and how it became important to flight. We always love the periodic table videos put out by the University of Nottingham, which you can view by clicking here. We watched the aluminium video and a few others because they are addictive. The kids also made an aluminium boat and tested its buoyancy.

We then moved on to flight and built a wooden airplane. It came complete with a space shuttle on top. The kids had a great time learning how to catch the wind and get their airplane to fly successfully.

Of course, we had to build a rocket, too. We decided on a vinegar and baking soda rocket and purchased the kit from Rainbow Resource. It was a bit harder to put together than we expected, but that is probably just because we are not that handy at building rockets! It was supposed to fly about 100 feet. We only got it to go about 30 feet high. I am afraid most of our launches looked like 1960 on the NASA launch pad ~ crash and burn.

Here is a shaky video for your viewing entertainment. Little Red Riding Hood did the recording.

We also learned about the importance of rubber and did several experiments with rubber bands. We learned about the flexibility of rubber bands when they are cold vs. hot. We learned about the different uses of synthetic rubber versus natural rubber. We also made a "magic" roll back can with rubber bands which you can view below.

We will be having an end of unit celebration with friends on Monday. We plan on talking about Neil Armstrong's life and the challenges of getting to the moon. We will be listening to a live recording of the landing on the moon from our book, We Interrupt this Broadcast. We then will try out some Astronaut Ice Cream. Lastly, we will be presenting some of our findings about the moon itself. It should be a great review.

Resources ~ I found YouTube to be especially useful for this unit. We watched all of the relevant episodes on Bill Nye the Science Guy on YouTube.

• Planets
• The Moon
• Space Exploration
• Gravity
• Flight
• Outer Space
• Comets and Meteors 

We also found these great videos on how Rubber was made and an interesting documentary on Apollo 11.

Lastly, we did a crash course on the Cold War and the Korean War. We turned to the book, The Century for Young People and these two videos on YouTube for our quick overview of the Korean War, which can be found here and here. I really preferred the first video over the popular Crash Course History in the second video. The kids like the Crash Course series, but it goes too fast for them and they can never tell me much about what they have learned. They do better with the slow and methodical videos.

We also found the Focus on Middle School Astronomy curriculum to be very useful. We read about the moon and its affects on the earth. We then did waves and the moon and the lunar calendar experiments from the 21 Super Simple Astronomy Experiments. Both books are from the Real Science 4 Kids curriculum. Lastly, we had to see what Basher had to say about the moon in Astronomy Out of this World. My son LOVES all of the Basher books.

That about wraps up our study. We will be continuing with astronomy in our next unit, since the kids have caught an interest. It should be fun and it is getting warm enough to see the stars at night with the telescope. Happy Learning!!

Blessings, Dawn

Week 2 ~ Bookmarks and Petit Fours

We had another good week. It was a great week academically for the kids, but I took on more than I could get through and was a bit overwrought by Friday. If only the world would just let me concentrate on my true love of teaching and not demand that I do so many other things. Alas, I have many more roles to fulfill besides teaching and I must find a good balance. This week did not seem very balanced from my perspective.

The Saturdays ~ We finished the book and loved every minute of it. We can't wait to start the next in the series, The Four Story Mistake. I loosely followed Beyond Five in A Row with this book. We attempted to make petit fours. I must say, they did not come out at all like I imagined they would. I obviously didn't pick the right frosting. The kids loved them just the same and got lots of math and life skills out of the project. I will be keeping an eye out for petit fours in local bakeries.

The Lake ~ Like the children in The Saturdays, we also enjoyed a day at the "shore", otherwise known as our local lake with beach. Tom Sawyer made friends with another boy right away and had a great time. Little Red Riding Hood and dh spent much of the time swim racing across the swimming area.

Handicrafts ~ Our handicraft this week was making Scottie dog bookmarks for the twins' birthday. The kids traced a pattern, cut out the felt, and then used the blanket stitch for all of the edge work. Little Red Riding Hood did most of the blanket stitch part, since it was driving Tom Sawyer crazy. They came out really cute.

On the Blog ~ If you want to see what a typical day is like around here, I have our July post here.

All the Rest ~ Tom Sawyer and Little Red Riding Hood have been making improvements day by day in writing. They both wrote three paragraph book reports of The Saturdays and kept up with their journals daily. I am hoping to move them to longer paragraphs next week. I am pleased with Tom Sawyer's improvement in spelling. It really has been coming along in the last couple weeks. I am only finding a few mistakes in his work. Otherwise, we are hard at work with the multiplication tables. The eights are almost solid. Hopefully, we will have a better balance this coming week.

Blessings, Dawn

Week 10 ~ Cheerleading, Birthdays, and Lots of Learning

This week was filled to the brim with fun and exciting events. Between cheerleading, three birthdays and a return to our regular schedule ~ we were a very busy crew. We got lots of learning in, too. Of course, learning is happening all of the time.

Cheerleading ~ Goldilocks is on a special needs cheerleading squad. This week they cheered and participated in our local Buddy Walk for Down Syndrome. There are at least five girls with Down Syndrome in her squad. Goldilocks did great. She is learning the routine and got several compliments for being a good team member. I love it when she does well and gets positive responses!

Birthday Week ~ Our week started off with a Teddy Bear birthday party for Little Red Riding Hood on Sunday afternoon. She turned 10!! October is such a busy month for people. Our turnout was small, but she really enjoyed the five friends that were able to make it. To read more about it, go here.

The middle of the week found us celebrating Boomer's 3rd birthday. We aren't really sure when he was born since he was a rescue dog, so we celebrate the date that is 5 months earlier than the day we got him. He supposedly was 5 months old when we got him. I am so glad his puppy years are over. He is a wonderful dog and is the most well-trained dog we have ever had.

The end of the week was my husband's birthday. We surprised him by reorganizing his entire tool area. I am afraid it had become the dumping ground for everything that did not have a home. Incredibly, the "before" picture was taken after we had been working on the workbench for an hour!!! There is still work to do. However, I am so glad I got it this far!

BEFORE

AFTER

Our Learning ~ Besides all of the great learning gleaned from all of the events in our week, we did lots of book learning, too. We did the 3 R's each day.

• We are working our way through the Beyond Five in a Row book, Homer Price. We are loving this book and the great Beyond FIAR activities.

• We also finished The Island of the Blue Dolphin this week. Goldilocks will be doing some activities associated with this book next week. We are also watching The Voyage of the Mimi on YouTube. This was one of my favorite PBS shows when I was a kid. It is about humpback whales and a grandfather and grandson that get lost at sea for a little while. It sneaks in all kinds of science and math!
• We also did art with Grandma. We learned about Jacob Lawrence with Meet the Masters and then Grandma led the kids through making a city skyline with tissue paper and liquid starch.

Tom Sawyer

Little Red Riding Hood

Goldilocks

• We got in the mail an advertisement that happened to have stickers of different countries attached. I decided to have the kids find the countries on our world map and then figure out which continent each country belonged to. Then the kids added the stickers to our continent boxes. This led to much exploration of our continent boxes which we hadn't looked at in several months.

My kids continue to love to learn in stairwells. They did a lot of learning in stairwells at our old home and tend to migrate to our stairwell here in our new home as well. I am not sure what that is all about. However, I love the learning wherever it takes place.

Blessings, Dawn

FIAR ~ Night of the Moonjellies ...

A few weeks ago we enjoyed the book, Night of the Moonjellies. It is a sweet story about a boy who spends the summer with his grandma at the sea shore. She runs a hot dog stand. One day he finds a moonjelly and brings it to his grandmother. After a hard day of work at the stand, they spend the evening out on a boat releasing the moonjelly.

We really had fun with this book and did several activities. They are listed below:

• Watched two Imax movies ~ Into the Deep and Tropical Coral Reefs
• Used chalk pastels to create a picture of the ocean at night
• Ran our own hot dog stand complete with hot dogs, French fries and milk shakes
• Made a lapbook from Homeschoolshare.com
• We dissected a frog, perch and a clam
• Visited the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta

We loved seeing real moonjellies!

Tom Sawyer did not want to use the boat I cut out. He made his own.

Goldilocks loves to use pastels.

Little Red Riding Hood really wanted her moonjellies to stand out.

Blessings, Dawn

Week 15 ~ Another Celebrated Dancing Bear

On My Mind ~ It is so nice to have an entire week that concentrated on hearth and home and school!!  I am hoping to continue this trend for the rest of December.  I didn't get any painting done this week (big surprise ~ LOL), but we did get our favorite contractor on board and he starts work next week.  Maybe having renovation work going on around me will get the painter in me to work ... maybe.

Our School Week ... FIAR ~ We had a great week.  We enjoyed the FIAR book, Another Celebrated Dancing Bear.  This is a sweet fictional story about two bears in Russia before 1917.  One is a famous dancer and the other a doctor.  The doctor becomes jealous by his friend's fame.  They resolve this issue in a wonderful way.

• We used the lap book from Homeschool Share.
• We learned about the freezing point and boiling point of water.
• This led to exploration of the freezing point of all kinds of household products.
• We watched YouTube videos on St. Basil Cathedral, Russian dancing styles, Russian Orthodox high church music, the Russian ballet, and a tour of Moscow.
• We had a tea party.
• We played All Things Russian Bingo and Russian Vocabulary Lotto.
• We played with nesting dolls.
• We studied Russia on a map.
• We learned about onion torrents and made our own buildings with them!
• We listened to lots of Tchaikovsky. ♪♪

Our favorite activity with this FIAR book was going to a tea room in our city and trying some unique teas.  We picked the seating on the floor in what I would call the India room and looked through a whole book of teas to choose from.  There were more than two hundred choices!  We chose Plum tea, a plain, hearty black tea from India; Golden tipped tea, which tasted a little like chocolate; and East Winds herbal tea, which smelled so good.  Everyone received their own tea pot.  They also carried lots of gluten-free and grain-free tea cakes, so Tom Sawyer was able to have lots of lovely treats.  We will be going back again!  We were able to have Grandma along for the field trip, which added to the fun.

The Rest of School ~ We also enjoyed an Advent book each day.  The kids' favorite books this week were The Legend of St. Nicholas, complete with waking up to shoes filled with new socks and the book, Amazing Grace, leading us to set up our nativity.  My favorite Advent book was The Last Straw. We started our Jesus character Advent and did a drawing page in Draw to Learn: The Life of Jesus.  There was plenty of math and reading going on as well.

Places We Are Going ~ Besides going to the tea room, we attended a special library program about card making.  We had lots of fun making cards.  The kids also did shoe boxes for Meals on Wheels this week. Everyone had dance this week, and Tom Sawyer tested out a ballet class.  He is hoping to add it to his schedule this coming spring.

Family Health ~ There is a tummy bug going around our family.  It hasn't stopped most of us in our tracks but is making us feel a bit yucky.  Timothy is feeling much better and now is just itching all the time.  This is part of the healing process and should pass soon.  He started back to his special needs college class this week.

What a complete week.  There is actually more going on, but I think that is enough for this wrap-up.  I am joining Homegrown Learners.

Blessings, Dawn

FIAR ~ Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car in England

We just finished a week of studying England.  To go along with our studies, we read Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car.  What a fun story about a drive in the countryside of England!  There are very few words in this book, but the illustrations are wonderful.

For art we studied the illustrations and learned how to give a textured look by using checkered lines and circles.  We practiced different techniques on a coloring sheet of the tower of London.

For science we studied clouds and what clouds teach us about the weather.  I made laminated cards (found here) that we could keep in the car to study the clouds we see when we are out and about.  On the back of each photo card is the name of the type of cloud.  We also made clouds by placing Ivory soap in  a microwave and setting it for 2 minutes.  This is a fun and impressive project (see photo of puffy cloud)!

We had several English meals during the week.  I think the kids enjoyed Bangers and Mash the best.  They were pleasantly surprised to find out that Bangers and Mash was really sausage and mashed potatoes.  Another night we had Bubbles and Squeak (mashed potatoes with left over vegetables).  We finished off our English dining with a Fry Up (large English breakfast).  I was shocked to find that much of the food in England is fried.  We decided to make the Fry Up very small portions for health reasons.

Our puzzle of the week was a small village that reminded the kids of Black Beauty  (which we read last summer).

We enjoyed many books during our study of England.  We read books about castles, Mary Anning (a fossil hunter), stories of queens and of London.  The photo shows are our favorite books from the week.

Lastly, we enjoyed a cartoon version of Great Expectations and a travel show about England called Travel with Kids London and Travel with Kids the United Kingdom.  You can find much of the Travel with Kids series on You Tube.  We really enjoyed our week of studying England.

I am joining around the world in 12 dishes.  This is a fun group of families that is following the journey of Phileas Fogg from the book, Around the World in 80 Days, through 12 different ethnic dishes. 

Blessings,
Dawn

Five In a Row (FIAR) ~ Three Names

We just finished rowing through Three Names.  This book is a perfect fit with our Little House on the Prairie unit study. 

We did all kinds of fun activities with this FIAR book.  We focused on tornadoes and tornado preparedness, one room schools, and what prairies look like.  Below is a list of what we did.

• We went on a picnic with an authentic prairie meal.  Our metal lunch pail had a carrot, ham slices, baked potato, dried fruit, and water. 
• We compared and contrasted homeschooling to a one room school. 
• We measured a distance of 3 miles with the car.
• We took a long walk (about a mile) with our lunch pail.
• The kids climbed many trees.
• We made a tornado lap book.
• We finally made an emergency tub for the basement.  In the tub is a blanket, two bottles of water, some candy, a hand crank flashlight, a multi-purpose tool, Band- Aids, dog leash, dog dish, and hydrogen peroxide.  This is a bare bones kit.  Even in a worse case scenario, I would not expect to be in the basement for more than an hour or so.  The likelihood of a significant tornado in the mountains is unlikely, although we had a small one in January and actually had a small one destroy our backyard a few years ago.  We have moved to the basement for safety three times in the last 10 years.  We mostly get high winds and hail around here.
• We bought and set up a Red Cross weather radio.
• Each child wrote a few sentences describing our backyard.

I am joining Read, Learn, Explore.

Blessings, Dawn