Blueberries for SAL, BFIAR Pre K



We've been "rowing" (Before Five in Row) through Pre-K for a few weeks now and are settling into a routine.  Trying hard to balance simple with stretching and creativity. 

A shelf has been designated for our book/theme. 

It was fun to see the girls play with the bears and read through the books all week. 

It was a "this might actually be working" gut check for my doubting self. 



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Our next classic book was Blueberries for Sal, which is a favorite, and continued our bear theme.  

 

All of Claire's "work" goes in our wanna-be Montessori baskets. 

After reading the book every day, I show her all of her work baskets.  She then can pick the order that she does them. 

 

We scored with a library find of the book CD for one of her tasks.  

A fun task we started, but never finished, was painting blueberry hill.  Reality, peeps. 

Ain't no perfection 'round these parts. 

A wee bit of word work,

 

and some math with "blueberries" for Sophia.  Sometimes learning is easy and fuss-free. 

a counting book for our bear. 

 

 I also left out "berries" in tin buckets and canning jars for acting out the story. 

I had a Sal and a bear cub kirplanking and kurplunking berries all week. 

 

My brain was rolling with all kinds of "I could do x,y,z" ideas,

 but simple proved to be enough. 

Ma, Pa, Mary, Laura and Carrie...and Jack Too

It was love at the first chapter. 
The Laura Ingalls Wilder novels drew us in last spring
and didn't let us go until the end of the series.

Loving them as a child,

I was quite pleased to develop two new lovers
of all things Little House.

When we learned that Sophia's little hybrid school

would be studying the 1800s this year,

we knew a new little history lover would be born. 

And born she was.  

We found Little House picture books to continue
our reading spree, along with lots of other picture books to love.

Covered wagons became the subject of drawings
and our Barbies started travelling the Oregon Trail.

Seriously.  How cute are these two little lovers of history?

The local history center fed a need to "see" a little of the past.
Lucky us, we landed there on a school day and
had our very own tour guide!
“As you read my stories of long ago, I hope you will remember that the things that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.” 
~Laura Ingalls Wilder

Farm Fresh Fun

You can't read a giant stack of farm books without
heading out to the country for a farm fresh good time.


It was a bovine bonanza of calf feeding, cattle wrangling/milking demos and the purchase of grass feed beef (Wait, did I just say that?!).

 Three chicks on a hayride is some kind of special. 

Our morning at the cattle farm was packed with learning and udder fun!


Who was the first guy that look at a cow and said,
"I think that I'll drink whatever comes out
of those things when I squeeze them?" 
~Bill Watterson

The Giant Panda, Up Close and Personal



With all the Chinese New Year fun that we had,
pandas became our girls' animal of choice. 
The cool thing about homeschooling is that you can follow the lead of the littles and dig into what interests them. 
And dig we did. 

We read all kinds of panda books, found a panda show, journaled about pandas, colored pandas and made panda books (using this template).

Because real life trumps workbooks, we headed out on a Friday to learn about pandas in the way that we all learn best. 

We went to SEE and experience them!

We hit the zoo jack pot and were there on a morning with zero crowd.  All the animals were out, and the weather was cool but not at all cold. 

Best zoo trip ever!

With handy map in hand, we charted our course. 
Straight to the pandas! 
(Well after the flamingos, of course.)

Before checking out the big, lovable guys, we took a moment to write down where they are from.

Chengdu, where our little bear is from!

Books have made these Asian friends come alive for us. 
We lingered just a bit longer than we have in the past. 

As expected, we found them under a pile of bamboo, munching away.

Our panda met their pandas, and they were instant friends. 
When this cotton guy appeared on the glass,
the real deal actually gave us a good long glance!

And this is homeschool sweetness.
Life.  Up close and personal. 

And Claire Bear? 
She ran from panda to panda at full speed, over and over.   

After all this learning, we did what the pandas do. 
We headed to a comfy spot for a snooze!

Learning for Littles: Christmas Preschool

Home school preschool was lots of fun in December.

The most fun?  Taking lots of time off just to read stacks of Christmas picture books, color, play with the nativity set and bake goodies. 
We did do a few fun things to share. 

We use the grid games from MamaJenn all the time.  We made the reindeer one into a "Give Rudolph a Shiny Nose" game.  She drew a number, then passed out the correct number of noses.

Pattern block fun from PreKinders.

Most of our activities came from the 1+1+1=1 Nativity Preschool Pack.
We love this blog, and had fun making patterns with one of the downloads (in Mary costume, of course).

Finding a sight word to score an M&M is always a hit!

Kindness Stones: Learning and Living Scripture

Over the last few months, our family has been working on
memorizing scripture.  Along with our littles, we are trying to hide God's word in our hearts.  We stick with a verse until we feel like we have it memorized and fully understood. 

The goal; however, is not just to leave it hidden. 
If possible, we'd like to find ways to live it out. 

1 Thessalonians 5:11

Be kind to one another and build each other up.

To live out this one, we had a bowl of kindness stones. 
An act of kindness resulted in someone getting to throw a stone (river stones from the $ store) into the bowl.  When the bowl was full, we decided to have a family celebration over hot chocolate and Munchkins at Dunkin' D's. 

Stones proved to be a powerful motivator.  When one little got a stone, you could see the other brainstorming a way to score one herself.  Behavior in our home is NEVER, EVER, EVER perfect (oh, truly not perfect), but kindness certainly kicked up a notch thanks to
1 Thessalonians 5:11!

The original plan was to just give stones only to our family.  Then, a little boy shared his candy and a woman held the door at the library.  We soon realized that a deeper blessing would be to both BE kind and to SEE kindness. 

We've long since celebrated over cups of chocolaty goodness, but this little bowl of kindness made a major impact on our family. 

**I printed the scripture card from a website that I did not write down.  Kudos to them for making a kid friendly scripture card!**

Learning for Littles: A Cornucopia of Fun

A couple kernels of info about what we've been up to...

It seems as though I love a theme. 

One of the things I love about homeschooling,
is that we can base our learning around an experience or "field trip".

Knowing that we were headed to the corn maze, I jumped on the corn theme after seeing the idea on Little Wonders' Days.

So, we husked some corn, and got to work reading books like
Anna's Corn, (crazy sweet and sad).



Why just read about corn when you can paint with it,

and recreate it with bubble wrap?

Our artwork became ears of corn that we made into Thanksgiving cards. 

Learning for Littles: Leaves

It has been said that when you have a child, you become a new person.
This apparently is truth, as I have become a preschool teacher.
The beauty of it is that this gig is a joy.

Autumn color was in full splendor over the last two weeks,
so a little focus on leaves was in order. 

All of the fun started with a leaf hunt and sort,

and then a trip to the library.
Picture books make us happy
(me possibly even more than the girls).



Little fingerprints made this delightful fall art.
(We printed the tree from here.  Search for fingerprint tree.)


Leaves were counted

and identified. 



After seeing the idea here,
painting leaves on coffee filters quickly was placed
on our top ten art projects list.



These turned out beautifully, and now hang on our window. 

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. 
~Albert Camus