Our Next Row - "Lentil"

I am so excited for this week because GMan's Five In A Row book is "Lentil" by Robert McCloskey. I have no doubt that Miss B will also benefit from the week's activities as well. The story is so engaging and there are just so many points to take off from and explore! We tried something new tonight - reading the book at Sunday dinner (so dad can hear, too) and talking about it as a family before we really immerse ourselves in it this week. By the way, we have these placemats of the United States for the kids to use at dinner so we can always be talking about geography!

Here are some of things we have planned to go along with the book:

• getting out our harmonica and learning to "play" it
• activities about Ohio - lapbook elements from Homeschool Share.
• math word problems - also from Homeschool Share
• experimenting with the science of sound
• singing "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain"
• exploring our sense of taste, particularly sour lemons! (I am so excited about this because we are making a lemonade layer cake for dessert one night this week and inviting my husband's father for dinner. He grew up in a small town, much like the one in "Lentil". He also plays the harmonica and is a veteran. If you know the story, you know how perfect this will be to have him share some activities with us!)
• making homemade lemonade for snack one day
• talking about what life was like in a small town in the mid 1900s versus what life is like now/lots of Social Studies connections

Once again, the FIAR teacher's guide has tons of great suggestions, and once we read through the book my kids even brought up things that we could study as well. I'm looking forward to this "row", and I'll let you know how it goes!

Have you rowed this book? Let me know if you have and what you loved about it!

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Five in a Row - Storm in the Night

Last week we "rowed" our first Five In a Row title. If you aren't familiar with FIAR, it is a wonderful literature based approach to learning for the young ones in your homeschool. Five in a Row also offers resources for children 8 and up in their Beyond Five in A Row book as well. I just noticed that there is something new on their site called Above and Beyond Five in a Row for the older set.

The Five in a Row teacher's manual is laid out with a calendar in the back. In volume 1 it has books assigned to each month. You don't have to follow their time suggestions, but I thought being a newbie I would pretty much stick to what they suggest at first. We dove right into the first title, Storm in the Night, by Mary Stolz. The whole idea with FIAR is that you read a book five days in a row, and each day after reading it to your child you extend it in some way, whether it be through math, writing, art, music, geography, etc... The suggestions given in the teacher's guide are great.

According to the School Library Journal, this is what the book is about:

PreSchool-Grade 2 Paintings in icy blue-white, black, and brown illustrate this story of a young black boy, his grandfather, and their cat during a fearsome thunder storm. There is a power failure, so that there is nothing to do except talk. Whatever fears the boy has are quelled by his grandfather's wit, understanding, and a comforting story. This is a picture book of contrast the raging storm without, the calm within as the grandfather shares the fear he had as a youngster during a similar storm when he accidently left his puppy outside. Stolz' poetic language is powerful, packed with vivid imagery and onomatopoeic verse from the ``thunder like mountains blowing up'' to the ``ping'' of the living room clock. The balance of the text is comprised of relaxed, unhurried dialogue. The pictures contrast the strong use of dark shadows and the soft light which illuminates the warmth in side the house. Best read aloud, but don't wait for a storm. Marianne Pilla, Long Beach Public Library, N.Y.

Here is our lapbook we completed.

Notice my son's eyes looking sideways in the picture - this was an activity we did one day that was a HIT! We learned about illustrators and the different techniques they use. In the book there are beautiful facial expressions, so we drew faces and made their eyes look different ways. We did a different element to go with the story each day - one day it was Quilt Math, the next day it was vocabulary, the next it was art (facial expressions), the next it was science (sources of light), and we also extended with having G Man dictate a story to me illustrating the use of quotation marks.

A lot of these activities were directly from the FIAR manual, but many of them came from Homeschool Share. Most FIAR titles have lesson ideas and lapbook templates posted on this site. It is a wealth of information! I have printed out the lapbook templates for many of the books on our schedule, and put them in large Ziploc bags so they are ready to go when we get to that book.

Back to Storm in the Night: one of the vocabulary words was "mandarin" (the cat had shining "madarin" eyes), so we had to have a special snack of Madarin Soda.

And walking outside over the weekend, I picked up a branch that had fallen from one of our trees and Grant said "Did you get that bough, mom?" Yes, bough had been one of our vocab. words, too!

What I really loved about this story (and I have a feeling the other FIAR titles will be the same way) was that it drew my daughter in as well. Each morning after devotions and calendar we would read the story together. Throughout the week she could talk with her brother about the book (we also did a science unit about weather, so this tied in perfectly!) and point out what stormy clouds looked like, etc...

To cap it off, last night (around 1 a.m.) we had horrible thunder and lightning storms. Grant came into our bedroom and hopped in bed with me. I said to him, "It's kind of like Storm in the Night, isn't it? He said yes it was, but that he was afraid, unlike Thomas (the little boy in the story) who declared he wasn't "afraid of anything". I then quoted back the Bible verse to Grant from our lapbook,

"Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed, for I am thy God." Isaiah 41: 10a

What a beautiful gift this book had given us, to depend on God when we are afraid because He is with us. I'd say this has been a great "first project" for homeschooling with Grant, and I look forward to many more!

Homeschooling TWO

These are the two reasons I homeschool - Miss B (Anna Banana) and GMan. Before I was a parent, I never knew I could love children this much. My life hasn't turned out at all like I had thought it would when I graduated from college 17 years ago, but I think it's actually turned out better than I could have imagined. I am blessed.

On to today.... Although it was a very "light" schooling day, it was our first official day with both my eight and five year olds. Having my five year old at home with us has been so much fun. If you know him, you know that he has an amazing zest for life. His enthusiasm is infectious. His love of learning is what really excites me, though. He is constantly coming up with math problems on his own and really thrives on order and organization. I have to admit that I'm actually nervous about homeschooling him because he's hard to keep up with!

My daughter and I were in a great rhythm last year. She was doing so well with all of her homeschool work, and it was just so EASY having her at home by herself. My son was in an exceptional preschool, so I knew he was getting a great education. But, when the time came to decide on public school kindergarten versus homeschool, there really was no contest - homeschool it was!

On Sunday evening our family sat in the schoolroom and filled out the beginning of the year sheets from the Old Schoolhouse Planner. We weighed and measured each child for their "Beginning of the Year" sheet. They wrote their "signature" and a goal they each had for the school year. My daughter's goal was to "learn to like math more". WOW. My personal goal for the year (which I had not shared with her) was to "learn how to have Anna enjoy math more". My son's goal was "learn to write cursive". In Kindergarten, really? I helped him make his goal "learn to have beautiful handwriting". My husband then went over the ground rules for the school year and we played board games to end the night.

SO, this morning arrives and everyone was very eager for school. Our devotion was about how we can be God's hands in the world, and how our small hands can do BIG THINGS to glorify God. I hadn't planned it, but we rushed upstairs to the schoolroom and traced our hands and cut them out. I then talked with my children about ways to help others and left them alone for a few minutes to decorate their hands and write one way they could help others on each hand.

HOW DO YOU THINK THEY DID?

Ten minutes after I left the room my daughter came to get me, and she was UPSET. She took me into the schoolroom and said "Look at what Grant is doing with his hands". When I looked at his cutout hands they all said "I love the Braves" (the Atlanta Braves baseball team that is). Right now he's just a tad obsessed with The Braves.

My first instinct was to get a little stern with him, but after I stifled my laughter we talked AGAIN about what helping hands were. I KNOW he knew what I meant, but he was just testing me. He gave me a hug and said "Sorry mom. I'll do new hands". And what did the first new hand say? "Bring your mom breakfast in bed". What a little stinker! When I looked at my daughter's cutout hands, they had been beautifully adorned with rings and nail polish, and each hand had a very thoughtful note on it. My favorite was "Go to the nursing home and help them play Bingo" (which she did last week and loved it!). I love my children so much!

We then proceeded to our current Five In A Row book, Storm in The Night, which kept the attention of both of my children just beautifully. We began our lapbook (post of that to came later in the week) and did a little handwriting. I'm still singing the song about starting your letters at the top! My daughter read almost half of her current read alone book, completed a handwriting assignment, practiced piano and updated her timeline book. Each child also had a swim and tennis lesson today - looks like the PE requirement was met!

Tomorrow we will add in math games and more music time. I'd also like a big chunk of time to start our current Sonlight read-aloud. What I'm discovering is that learning needs to be FUN -- and we all need to learn more like children do in preschool - through games and play. Children of all ages love to have fun, don't they? Probably the biggest thing I took away from today was what an awesome task I have in front of me. Yes, I'm a little intimidated, but I love a challenge, and I love my children even more!
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