Learning Through Books

As I was planning my kindergarten year for "G" I became very excited to plan this years Five in a Row (and other great literature) adventures. This has always been a favorite curriculum of mine. My plans began with finding ways to have fun with the geography aspect (a huge part of FIAR) and quickly snowballed into something a little more.

First, for the geography, I found this passport at Micahels in the scrapbook section. It looks very authentic. I used a 40% off coupon so it really wasn't much.

 I think I will use a picture of her on her first day of school in the photo area.

I am planning to use this world traveler stamp (pictured above) that I purchased in the stamp section a few years back for a different FIAR activity. (note-the link is to a different store. I couldn't find it anywhere else to share here) As we read through our books that take place in different countries we will stamp the passport and add these great stamps that Plano Area Moms FIAR Circle so generously shared. You can even edit the date within the stamp! I will have "G" add a country flag to the page as well. I found some here that I was able to shrink to the perfect size for the mini passport pages. For world travel we have this fun passport but I wanted something to track all the fun places within North America that we'd "travel" to. So I created a sort of passport/ travel log for that too. I used this one FREE from Teachers Pay Teachers. (I printed at a 60% scale in order to have this log be about the same size as the mini passport)

Inside this log We'll use these state flags and these state coin stamps. (This site actually has an entire printable passport, which I found after I already had mine). I still need to find Canadian stamps. I'm sure it won't be too difficult with all the great Pinterest resources!

Here is my snowball idea... I was thinking, while it's so great to focus so much on the geography fun of these awesome books, I should be focusing on all the great lessons and themes that each book offers in a more tangible way. So I created a very simple notebook for "G" to keep track of the things she is learning from each book.

I began with a simple binder

 And added many pages with themes. 

Here are just a few...

As we read each book "G" will add a picture of the book cover to the appropriate page(s) and we'll write a little bit about what she learned. I created this document with images from all the books we'll be reading this year. The amount of covers for each book is based on the amount of themes or lessons for each. (document link below)

I am sure there will be more themes that I will think of as we progress through the books, but we can easily add pages to the binder and quickly add book cover images. I think this is a good starting point and we are ready to go!

If you'd like to use any of these resources you can find the cover and pages for my binder here

The book covers for the books we'll be reading are here

and my themes list, by book, can be found here. A quick note regarding my notes in parentheses in this document; F&L stands for Fold and Learn. If you follow the Five in a Row Blog you will receive a link to free prinatbles to go along with many of the books. HS Share is for the website Homeschool Share. They offer free lapbooks for tons of books, themes etc. Those are just my personal notes to remember what activities I need to print. I left them in to hopefully help you as well. 

We are very excited to take off on our adventure through books! I hope you have fun learning your way through books too! 

 

Blessings,
Jen

Snatching Summer Moments

Ahhhh Summer; My most favorite time of year. Remember those great Country Time Lemonade commercials filled with images of joyful, relaxing summer days; family gathered in rocking chairs on the porch, children running and jumping off of a dock or swinging on a tire swing? Those commercials captured what summer is to me. Joy, relaxation, fun, a slower pace…

With each passing year my children’s lives become busier and my homeschool planning time grows as their school lessons become greater. Homeschooling is a full time job. Gone are the days of a clean-cut end to our school year and beginning of summer. They sort of blend together now. Just this year my high schooler continued through just about all of the summer catching up on a few subjects. These past few summers I have become irritated and frustrated that life will not give me that dream summer I envision in those commercials. This year I decided I had a choice to make. I could give in to the frustration that life won’t give me a break, and allow it to ruin my mood, or I could snatch up as many moments of summer as I am able and enjoy those moments as they come. God doesn't want me to be so busy with things that I miss out on special moments with my family, or quiet times with Him. He wants us to enjoy life not survive life! So while I didn’t have some long, stretched out period of time before me with beautiful blank spaces on the calendar, I did steal quite a few wonderful moments. Pieced together they have added up to quite a nice summer and I feel blessed for having experienced peace and joy in each one of those stolen moments. In addition to lingering snuggle time after sleeping in, a picnic or two, and some fun family outings we enjoyed moments like these...

 Playing in the rain. 

When the first 6 weeks of summer are rainy you just have to get out in it!

Prayer time on the porch in the mornings

A garden party with friends

Blueberry picking, a time...

...or two!

ahhhh the bounty!

Simply enjoying the flowers

Lesson plans from the porch

Because the weather (after all that rain!) was too gorgeous to stay inside!

 

A quick trip to the beach

There are just under 4 fleeting weeks until Labor Day. How will you snatch up some moments before they are gone? I have many school plans to do still but for now I am off to enjoy some time outside with my kiddos.

Preschool Corner~ Wild Horses of Sweetbriar

 Since the beginning of our school year I have hoped to start posting our preschool happenings in an effort to keep my sweet little one's godmother in the loop of her little world. Here we are in May and I'm just now posting something. Life! What can I say?! No matter how much I desire to blog I won’t let it take me away from my family too much. So here we are…I suppose I can begin now and work backwards! I will still try to post things we have done throughout this school year because we simply love our Five in a Row book studies. 

Five in a Row (FIAR) is a literature based curriculum. (here is why it's called FIAR!) I have used it over the years with my kids from Before FIAR to Beyond FIAR. About 5 years ago a few ladies in my homeschool group created a “FIAR Club”.  We read the books at home and met monthly for some fun activities together. The memories of those club days are so special to me and my now 11 y.o. This year I have tried to recreate some of that fun with my 4 y.o. It’s been a blast! 

Last week we read Wild Horses of Sweetbriar as our FIAR book and My Chincoteague Pony as an extra to go along with the same theme. I like to add extra books that have the same theme as often as I can. There are so many great titles, there is hardly enough time to read them all!

I have been doing a mix of FIAR and Before FIAR titles this year. Some of the FIAR books “G” has not been quite ready for. For those we only read once instead of all 5 days. Sometimes she couldn’t even get through that. Others she would sit through many more times than the 5!! 

At times the activities to go along with the books were too advanced for her. Wild Horses of Sweetbriar was one of those, however I couldn't pass on this book because in my home horses and the beach are heaven to just about all of us!! I was part of a book club in two different homeschool groups and in each one I led the meeting for the book Misty of Chincoteague. The activity I created for the children to put together was this mini Chincoteague in a jar. “G” is a little young to create this so I went with a bigger version that she could actually get her hands into, a beach island sensory bin. She absolutely loves sensory bins! 

To do this I gathered these supplies

 

*Sand (from the floral section at Michael's. I chose this over play sand in the craft store b/c it was non-toxic and made in USA. Sadly the kids sand did not say non-toxic))
*Greenery that looks like sea grass (.50 cents at Michael's)
*Play horses from the girls toys
*Blue glass beads (for water) from Michael's
*Little seashells Also available at Michael's (we had some leftover from the last project for Misty)
*Play sand pail from the girls American Girl collection
*Plastic bin-I use the lids to those disposable pans. I always seem to have those on hand.
*Fence- I had a little fence from our Peter Rabbit's Garden sensory bin so I used that as well. It looked beachy!

Here is the finished product. Super easy! 

 

And let the fun begin!

 

 

 

  

Here is the pony swim!!

"G" had so much fun using this sensory bin. 

We still have it assembled so she can continue to play with it.

Here are the two books I used for this unit this past week. You can see all the books I have used for my wild ponies units in the below links.
Both of these books are out of print, but usually a local library will have them.

 

Here are my previous units on island ponies and Misty of Chincoteague
Island Ponies Pt. 1 (Misty)
Island Ponies Pt. 2
Places to see wild ponies on the beach:
Assateague Island, MD
Chincoteague Isalnd,VA
Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Various North Carolina Islands
Cumberland Island, GA
Payne's Prairie Preserve, Gainesville FL 

"But in my heart, I knew I would only need wild horses and the wind from the sea." ~Wild Horses of Sweetbriar