Time Out

I’m giving myself a time out, taking an indefinite break from posting.  I love writing here, recapping our homeschool moments and sharing tidbits of my life.  But I’m finding that it takes away from being present with my children; I’m constantly worried about when I’ll have time to update, when I’ll get a chance to work on pictures and make collages and write up everything we’ve been doing during the week.  Sometimes I get caught up with documenting the moments that I’m not fully enjoying the moment.  And since welcoming Adeline into our family I’m even more aware of needing to cherish those fleeting moments.

We will be continuing with our Five in a Row curriculum and hopefully the nicer weather will get us learning and exploring outdoors.  And we eagerly await the start of our camping season!  I have my six-week postpartum check-up this week and I’m scared to step on the scale; I really need to get down to the business of getting back into shape. *major sigh*  Wish me luck!

I leave you with some pictures of our wonderful Easter yesterday…

Can you believe it’s already April?  I keep telling Phil that Christmas is just around the corner.  Time’s a-flyin’.

FIAR – Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

We eased back into a more relaxed homeschool routine – for the time being, anyway – with Robert Frost’s famous poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

credit: Amazon.com

Geography/History/Social Studies
Obviously, the story takes place in winter so we discussed the seasons, especially New England winters, and located the New England states on a map.  I had the kiddos look through the book and tell me all the animals they could find, hiding in the forest.

Language Arts
Since this book is basically an illustrated poem, we took the chance to create some of our own poetry.  I gave the kiddos a simple definition of poetry and let them work on a few easy poems – a list poem, a “winter” acrostic poem and an animal-shaped poem.  Gwen was a bit more enthusiastic about the idea but she still got weary trying to make the words fit.

Talking about all those animals must have inspired them, because Josiah got out their Little People Zoo Playset, which they haven’t played with in a while.  I helped him find all the animals and match them up with the correct letters.

Fine Arts
We made simple snowmen pointillisms using black construction paper, white paint and q-tips.  We read Snip, Snip, Snow and made paper snowflakes; Gwen was so excited to unfold her paper and see the design!  I wanted to make edible snowflakes using wheat tortillas, but someone packed them for his lunch that morning – oh well! Instead I got creative with ingredients, making a snow-white snack with yogurt, coconut, white chocolate chips and snowflake sprinkles.

Science
We read a couple books – including Crinkleroot’s Book of Animal Tracking – and discussed animal tracks and how to spot them.  The kiddos played a couple matching games, trying to match up animals with their footprints.  I didn’t know that all cats – both wild and domestic – retract their claws when they walk, so you can’t see the claw marks.  I learn right along with them!  I had planned on making homemade play dough for footprints in the snow to go along with animal tracking but didn’t get around to it.

We attempted borax crystals a while back and I was so disappointed that they didn’t work. I was determined to try it again, and after letting the mix sit overnight, I was delighted to see that it worked this time!

Go-along books
Forest Child
Into the woods : John James Audubon lives his dream
The Snowman (and DVD)
The Snowy Day
Snip, Snip… Snow!
Falling Down the Page: a book of list poems
Sing a Song of Popcorn: every child’s book of poems
Crinkleroot’s Book of Animal Tracking
Tracks in the Snow

Resources
Activity Village’s winter acrostic
Let’s Explore’s list poems
Teacher Vision’s animal shape poems
Montessori for Everyone’s animal tracks cards
Enchanted Learning’s borax crystals

*See my FIAR Pinterest board for more ideas & inspiration.

FIAR – A New Coat for Anna

I have been putting off… er, taking a “vacation” from… homeschooling.  Since I expected Adeline to make her appearance mid-February (or earlier!), I didn’t bother planning anything after the first week.  Since she arrived, however, I’ve felt the need to start up again and be consistent with something.  I haven’t really wanted to, mind you – I could sit all day and stare at her tiny features! – but the longer I wait the harder it will be.  This week we’re doing Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, an easy little poem to get us back into the swing of things, but we ended February with A New Coat for Anna.

credit: Amazon

Geography/History/Social Studies
The story takes place post-WWII .  We looked through some children’s books about the war and did a few simple activities, like looking up Germany (and other countries) on the globe, making a little booklet with soldiers and types of military transportation, matching up allied and enemy countries.  I tried not to make it too technical for the kiddos but explained why – in the beginning of the story – the shops were empty and the economy was poor.

Since we capitalized on Germany, the kiddos colored the German flag, a traditional dress coloring page and a paper doll worksheet.  Gwen goes goo-goo ga-ga over the paper dolls, taking a while to color them with colorful patterns,  and I’ve been laminating them for her.

Language Arts
Since Anna’s mother doesn’t have any money, she barters for materials for a new coat – sheeps’ wool, getting it spun into yarn, having it woven into fabric, then having it tailored into a coat.  We talked about bartering/trading and read a bunch of go-along books.  Since it takes a whole year for the process, we discussed having patience; easier said than done!

We did a little activity to see if Gwen could remember the story from the day before, deciding which items Anna’s mother bartered at different stages.  She guessed ‘em all!

Fine Arts
I often have glorious plans for learning the elements from a story – like creating a sewing basket or learning how to finger knit – but thankfully there are times when I know my limits.  Still I was able to find some fun, simple activities for the week.

I found a neat idea for construction paper weaving, and while Gwen got a little impatient with it, she seemed to get excited once she saw it coming together.  She used the finished piece as a placemat for a while, until it got too dirty. :)

We all got in on the act for yarn block prints.  I have a whole bunch of scrap wood blocks Phil cut for me; we randomly wrapped them in yarn, painted the yarn then stamped it onto construction paper.  Gwen noted that my pattern looked like horses.  This was so much fun!  We ended up using a couple finished pieces as colorful wrapping paper.

The kiddos also enjoyed making their own coats by gluing red yarn to a picture.

Math
I bought some beets for the science part of the week and decided to make a beet bundt cake, since Anna and her mother celebrate over the holidays with a bundt cake.  The kiddos helped me each step of the way, measuring and mixing.  They got excited when they saw the bright pink of the beet puree!

Science
I was really excited about our experiment with yarn dyeing, but since we didn’t use  wool yarn the color washed right out.  Oh well – the process was fun and the kiddos enjoyed it!  We used the beet peels and stems, which turned the water a rich burgundy and elicited oohs and aahs from Gwen and Josiah.

We read some stories on sheep and harvesting their wool and the kiddos made their own little sheep craft.

Extras
We had a little Valentine’s craft party with some nearby friends to end the week – what fun!  We gave away our suncatchers and made peanut butter pretzels as Valentine gifts.

On Valentine’s Day I gave the kiddos their gifts, dropped them off at Meme and Pepe’s then spent the day with my honey.  We had dinner at Our Place – Arturo Joe’s.  I kept pointing out that Valentine’s Day would make a nice birthday for Adeline, but she didn’t make her appearance till the following week.

Go-Along Books
World War II
America in World War II
World War II for Kids
The Carrot Seed
Arthur Loses His Patience
When Will It Be Spring?
The Great Tulip Trade
Fleas!
Market Day
Noodle’s Knitting
The Weaver
Weaving the Rainbow
Extra Yarn
Charlie Needs a Cloak
Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep: a yarn about wool
Hooray for Sheep Farming!
Red Berry Wool
Berry Smudges and Leaf Prints: finding and making colors from nature

Resources
Education.com’s German Traditional Clothing Coloring Page Worksheet
Education.com’s German Paper Doll Worksheet
Whip Up’s yarn printing
construction paper weaving inspiration
The Healthy Foodie’s  Truly Healthy Beet Chocolate Bundt Cake
Pioneer Thinking’s making  natural dyes from plants
Homeschool Share (they have since removed their FIAR resources)

*See my FIAR Pinterest board for more ideas & inspiration.

FIAR – Katy and the Big Snow

I love Virginia Lee Burton’s books and they’re always appealing to the kiddos.  The story of the persistent, personified tractor who plows out the whole town is an endearing one.

credit: Amazon

Geography/History/Social Studies
Katy is from the town of Popperville, a fictional location.  I showed them the map pictures from the book, explained a little bit about what a compass is and what it’s for, then had them decorate their own town maps.  I was surprised how much Gwen enjoyed this!  She drew two fire stations, houses, a railroad track, etc.  I asked her where she would go if she had to plow on the north side of town, on the south and so forth.

Just as in Mike Mulligan, this story mentions community helpers around the town, so we took out our community helper matching game, which the kids enjoy.  We like to capitalize on the fire department, since Daddy’s a fireman, and I took out some of the fire resources from our W is for Water (the four elements) week from last year.  There were simple shape matching cards and number clothespin cards, among other things.  I also took out some of the worksheets from our T is for Transportation week – spelling cards and worksheets, identifying which item is different, street signs, etc.

Katy was very dedicated to her job plowing the snow, so when a big snowstorm hits Popperville she plows everyone out – in essence saving the day – even though she is very tired from her efforts.  She doesn’t give up till the job is finished!  We talked about perseverance, not giving up even though you may be tired, taking pride in your work.

Language Arts
The kiddos cut out some pictures that rhymed with “snow” and pasted them on a sheet of paper.  They also worked on a fun truck-and-snow themed matching game, trying to figure out which words ending in the letters “ow” sound like “snow” and which sound like “plow.”  They wanted to play it a few times and got better each round.

We’ve gone over personification before and we did so again, pointing out how Katy has eyes, gets attributed with feelings and so forth.  Since there are a few sound words in the book – “chug chug chug!” – we sang our onomatopoeia song.

Fine Arts
I made some snow sensory dough and let the kids have at it in trays with a bunch of Josiah’s toy tractors.  Of course, they pretended to be plowing the snow.  Messy, sensory activities are always a bit hit!

Math
The story mentions that, as the snow falls, it’s four inches deep… then ten inches… then one foot… then three feet, etc.  We made up some snow paint with shaving cream and glue, measured out four inches on construction paper, then painted the appropriate amount of snow.  We did the same thing with ten inches, covering most of the paper.  For the larger amounts I drew lines on the chalkboard and showed them how they would be buried in that amount of snow!  They thought that was pretty fun.

Science
Since it’s Winter, and our story is about snow, we talked about the weather and water freezing.  We filled an ice cube tray with all sorts of ingredients around the kitchen – water, coffee, applesauce, yogurt, flour, cereal, crackers, vinegar, soap, etc.  After a while we checked to see which items had frozen and what their textures were.

This was a fun, laid-back week – nothing too heavy here!  There were a few other things I hoped to do – like pine-needle painting, creating your own online city and some cute traffic light cookies - but just didn’t get around to them.  Too many other things going on!

Go-Along Books
The Construction Alphabet Book 
Diggers
Tractor
Fire Trucks
Curious George and the Firefighters
Police Officers
Policeman Lou and Poliecwoman Sue
Block City
Maisy Goes to the Library
Weather
Weather Watch
50 Below Zero
What Makes the Seasons

Resources
Fiar Circle’s Land of Make Believe map
This Reading Mama’s Snow-Themed Word Sort
The Imagination Tree’s homemade snow dough
measuring activity inspiration
Kitchen Science inspiration
Borax crystals and the science behind them

FIAR – Very Last First Time

This was a fascinating story of a young Inuit girl from northern Canada who takes her first trip under the ice to collect mussels.

credit: Amazon

Geography/History/Social Studies
Even I was trying to figure out how someone can realistically walk on the seabed, under ice!  When we watched a BBC video clip of two Inuit doing exactly that, the pieces came together… and you could sense the trepidation as they hurried to gather the mussels before the tide came back in.  Fascinating!  You can understand the excitement and fear that Eva, the little girl, feels on her journey under the ice.

We located North America on the globe, then pointed out Canada and northern Canada.  The kiddos colored Canadian flags and Eskimo coloring sheets and we read a neat Canadian alphabet book which has something about the country for each letter – like hockey, maple syrup, mounted police and so forth.

Since we did a unit on Eskimos last year I had a few other resources that I was able to use again, including an arctic animal file folder game and an inuit statues shadow matching game.  The kids enjoy talking about animals – especially polar bears and penguins – and after reading a number of books about the wildlife they got to play around with a little arctic sensory tray I put together for them.  Later in the week we watched a couple “Planet Earth” episodes.

Language Arts
In addition to making a list of various vocab words – those pertaining to things under the sea, Inuit, or words Gwen didn’t recognize – we talked about story titles.  I asked her if she knew why the story was given its title and we talked about it for a bit.  Kind of confusing at first but then you get it.

Fine Arts
The illustrations in the book are beautiful.  I explained how the pictures had many different colors throughout and we discussed warm vs. cool colors and they painted pictures after identifying which colors came from which spectrum.  We also did a little study on pointillism, observing how some of the pictures seemed to be made of lots of dots close together, making our own pictures with q-tips.

Gwen’s favorite was salty watercolors, which we’ve done before – but didn’t go over as I’d hoped the first time.  This time around, she oohed and ahhed every time she touched the paintbrush to the glue and salt mixture, watching the colors seep and spread.  It’s really a fun process!  This is a keeper in my stash of craft ideas.

Science
We read a number of books about sea creatures – mussels, mollusks, starfish, etc.  I didn’t realize how many of them are in the mollusk family – like squid!  They just don’t have shells like many of the other types.  They wanted to watch the BBC video over and over!

The kids always enjoy the science experiments and we did a couple involving frozen water.  First, we filled two cups with water, adding salt to one of them.  We observed which one froze first – the plain water – and talked about how saltwater freezes more slowly than fresh and why we salt the roads in winter.

Next, I had them gather snow from outside.  We filled three bowls – one with light snow, one with tightly packed snow and one with ice.  We observed which ones melted more slowly; it wasn’t as obvious as the saltwater experiment so I read the explanation in the book.  Apparently, ice melts more slowly in comparison because there isn’t as much air surrounding the water molecules.

I tried having the kids make paper snowflakes, thinking they would love it, but they got really fussy and impatient over not being able to cut the paper the “right” way.  We’ll save that for another time!

Go-along Books
M is for Maple: a Canadian Alphabet
My Arctic 1, 2, 3
The Inuit
Arctic & Antarctic (DVD, too)
Arctic Ocean
Polar Animals
The Ice’s Edge: The Story of a Harp Seal Pup
Nutik, the Wolf Pup
The Polar Bear Son: an Inuit Tale
Snow Bear
All About Snow and Ice
Sea Life
Kitchen Science
Mollusks
Mollusks and Similar Sea Creatures
About Mollusks: a Guide for Children
Sponges are Skeletons
Starfish
Star of the Sea: a Day in the Life of a Starfish
“Planet Earth” DVDs

Resources
Homeschool Share’s Very Last First Time resources
Education.com’s Niagara Falls coloring page
Education.com’s Multicultural Coloring: Inuit Worksheet
Misc. resources from our I is for Igloo week
Youtube’s “Race Against the Tide” video
pointillism inspiration
salty watercolors inspiration

*See my FIAR Pinterest board for more ideas & inspiration.