The Story about Ping 8-15-11

Another great week with FIAR. This is now our 2nd row and we are loving it. We did not row last week. We did week 2 of "The world" and focused a bit more on the continents, oceans, maps, and globe. So now moving onto Asia we began our study of China this week. Ping became a fast friend in our house this week.

Monday- We had our first reading of the story. Placed our story disc on China, colored and labeled the map of China, found the Yangtze River on the map and looked at a book about China and discussed the different culture.

Tuesday- We did not reread the whole book today. We just went over some parts of it and discussed buoyancy. The float or sink experiment followed. We gathered all of our needed equipment and headed onto the deck. We logged our results on the chart from homeschool share and then added up the sink floats. They continued to sink and float things long after the actual experiment was over. Things got a little crazy out there.

Wednesday- We read the book. Looked at our Children's Atlas of China and found the Yangtze river again. We discussed the medium the illustrator used in the book and then Lucas decided to use crayons to make a water drawing and show movement with the wavy lines.

Thursday- Read the story and worked on our duck lapbook. That was our topic for science this week. Used our DK Animal Encyclopedia and some internet sites to learn about ducks.

Friday- We had our final read of the story and then did some math with the bean sticks we make last week for beginning to discuss place value. We used individual beans for the family members listed that were less than ten and the 10 sticks for the others. Then Luke traded in his singles of 10 for sticks and added up the total family members. Then we played a game from homeschool share. I had not make a generic game board yet so we just used our candy land game board and put our ping pieces on it. Note to self-----Make game board! I was amazed at how well they did at answering all of those questions. Earlier in the summer as I was planning Ping stuff I had seen that game and thought that it would be way too hard for them. I was looking back over things this week to make sure I did not miss anything cool on Homeschool Share and I seen the game again and thought it would be great. I am so glad I gave it a shot. Just goes to show you what these little ones are capable of. Sometimes I think I underestimate them but I am quickly learning NOT TO !!  After all of the fun we finished up our notebook. So sad to say goodbye to Ping. I know it is actually only "See you later!" :)

I had some more pics to post but blogger is being silly and won't upload them. So I can't show you all of the Ping notebook pages.  :(

Happy rowing,    Julie

World overview

These first 2 weeks of school will be getting an overview of Earth-- "our world". We read Me on the Map and did an activity to help the little ones better understand how they can live in so many places at one time. Earth, North America, USA, Illinois, etc. So I cut out circles which were labeled with our planet down to our house of decreasing size and then the kids glued on and wrote/colored the appropriate map or drawing. It is shown laying on the shelf in the pic above along with our FIAR book and library books. Luke also wanted to make a map of his room so I did a rough outline for him and let him fill it in accordingly. I do think this helped them put things into a "bit" of perspective. He also completed a couple of pages in his maps workbook which was on the earth and a globe and the similarities and differences. We also read Toot and Puddle.

We are studying ants these first 2 weeks for science since they pretty much live all over the earth (on land anyway). We read Ant Cities, Ant, and Insects (focusing on the ant content). We all learned many new things about ants this week. Lucas colored an ant picture while we learned the parts of an ant. We had a little experiment going on in the back yard. On a paper plate I sectioned it off into quarters and place a different food in each one- strawberry, watermelon, bread, and pasta salad noodle. They RAN from the pasta..stinky italian dressing :). Initially they were loving the strawberry and we watched them come and eat on it for a bit but when we came back out to check them after a while, someone had STOLE the strawberry so they had moved onto the watermelon. We learned that they like fruit and this proved to be true. We also made chocolate covered ice cream ants. They were not the cutest ants I ever seen, therefore no picture, BUT they were the tastiest (and only) ones I ever had! We used 3 small scoops of Choc chip cookie dough ice cream and covered it with the magic shell chocolate. Then we applied pretzel sticks for legs and antennae and mini M&M's for the eyes. Mmmmm Mmmmm Good!

At the end of the week we talked about animal classification and added our first animal to our wall chart.  Also we made a new Word Wall board for the new words Luke is learning. I made it out of repositionable letters that I glued on to a tri-fold project board. As Luke masters new words we will add them to the board of the words he can read!!!



I wanted to just touch on some of the fun things we did for this post but yikes it just keeps going and going. I think I am going to have to narrow the view a bit next week or these are going to be really loooong posts.

All of the other things will just have to stay put in my brain and planner for future reference. Oh how fun this week has been. I think that is why I am so anxious to write so much. I sure hope we keep up like this for a bit anyway. Yeah I am realistic. Not everyday will be a ball of joy in the realm of homeschooling :).

Blessings to all,  Julie

How to Make an Apple Pie and see the world

This was our first week of school and our first FIAR book. It was great. We had lots of fun and learned a lot also. I am so glad all of my planning was complete. It sure made things move along nicely. Our FIAR planning is matched up as best as possible with GTG (Galloping the Globe) and with the science schedule for the year. Our FIAR schedule for the week is as follows:

Monday- Story disc, Social Studies

              We focused on the geography of all the places traveled to gather the ingredients for the pie. We mapped the trip as we read along and then did a matching game after we were finished reading. They matched the location with the mode of transportation to get there and then what the ingredient was she got. This was great for recall of the story. Both kids enjoyed doing this. We placed our story disc in the middle of the ocean since she was back and forth. For the notebooking of the countries and state we used Homeschool Shares mini books for Where in the world is......?

Tuesday- Science

               We did the saltwater evaporation experiment and used the lapbook component on Homeschool Share. It took a couple of days to get the salt and then we used it when we made our pie. We also discussed the importance of eating fresh foods to keep healthy. Not a new concept to my fruit and veggie loving kids but reinforced the concept anyway.

Wednesday- Art

                 We discussed how the last page of the story showed that they were having fun (humor) and what the illustrator did to make us think that. Lucas also did a drawing and painting of a street scene. He is the one who loves to draw and color and Sophie not so much. She doodled a little picture for her dad instead :).

Thursday- Language arts

                  We discussed what pantomiming is and they acted out the different things she did in the story (milling the wheat, grinding the cinnamon, milking the cow, etc.) Then we come up some fun things on our own to act out. We discussed again some of the words in the story that were new to them like elegant and accent.

Friday- Math and Activity/Meal

                  Apple pie baking day!! First we did the subtraction problem using apple cut outs and showed the written problem of 8-3=5 which Luke did in about 2 seconds with no explaining on my part (amazed me). Then I had them do a count the seeds activity where there was 1-10 seeds in the apples and they had to place the appropriate number on that apple. Luke does not like doing that kind of math. I think he thinks of it as just busy work and not interested in that at all. Sophie likes doing it but this one was a bit difficult for her due to how the seeds were placed on the apples. After naps in the afternoon we made our apple pie and the kids really enjoyed it. Luke asked me every day during the week if we could bake the pie that day. He LOVES cooking and baking. He is the lil' chef in training. We worked on our fractions as we always do while measuring out the ingredients. And most of all enjoyed sharing and eating it!

While I was planning for the year I had my mind set on focusing more on geography with GTG than with our FIAR books. I thought they would just be a supplement to our main core. After this week I now realize that our FIAR book with the unit study approach taken  is SO MUCH MORE than I thought it would be and I just love it. I  know that from now on our FIAR book with lead the way and we will venture out from there. There is an enormous amount of learning that can be done from just one book.

I hope everyone has as great of a first week this year as we had!

Julie

             

First Day of Kindergarten and K-4

Accompanied with a lot of hype and uncertainty (on Luke's part). "So what am I going to be doing in Kindergarten anyway?" { puzzled look on his face} Today we began the journey.

We have been doing pre-k at home since last fall so the kids are used to doing their schoolwork so he was just not too sure what Kindergarten was going to entail. So after talking about the things we were adding and going to be doing differently this is the description he came up with-- "So I am going to be learning and getting smarter and learning about animals(listing off a few)  and having fun and (with a big ole smile!!) BEING HAPPY!! Oh those two words just melted my heart. WOW.... ! I could not have put that into words better myself. Being able to raise AND teach my kids just makes my heart sing. Aside from a loving GOD and awesome husband is there anything greater?! Not in my eyes.

Even with this only being Kindergarten I just feel this huge sense of responsibility. Like I really need to step up to the plate. I just want to raise up these little ones to be the best people they can be. The fact that God and their Daddy are allowing me and trusting me with this great privilege is humbling but how could I ever not succeed with them on my team!!

Here are my beautiful babies in the front yard before school this morning.

So much more to come.

Julie