Storm in the Night (part2)

We are still working with the book, Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz. After reading it again, we discussed the sounds that a storm make and I wrote down what J said on a chart.

As you can tell from the chart, her favorite storm word was BOOM! She kept asking me to add it again but write it bigger. We also took that idea a step further and created a project with an umbrella.

She painted the umbrella and the raindrops and I added the sound words that rain makes (onomatopoeia words) on raindrops. We hung the raindrops from yarn underneath the umbrella.

J is working on her handwriting and here she is tracing a quote from the book. She likes to skip around when tracing, her favorite part being the line with the period.





The book takes part during a storm when the electricity goes out. So we discussed different sources of light. J cut out come light clipart and glued them to a light bulb for her lapbook.

We also discussed analizing the pictures from the book to see where the characters are looking. By using your eyes, you can tell which way they are looking.

J practiced looking right, looking left, looking up and looking...

down. J colored a mini book which had a surprise ending called, It's Raining.

Here is her umbrella and here is...

J all decked out in her rain gear!

I leave you with Kaleb, always trying to keep up with J. He loves her!

Storm in the Night (part 1)

Our new book of the week is Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz. It is a story of a grandfather and grandson stuck in the house during a storm. The power has gone out and the grandfather decides to tell a story about how he was afraid of storms when he was younger. Here is how our week has gone so far.

Our first activity of the day consisted of rhyming words - what words/pictures rhymed with the word cat. She placed the pictures cards under the cat picture. We are also working on recognition of sounds and trying to put those sounds together to read. I found a learning mat where one would read the word, build the word with magnetic letters or tiles, and then write the word. The build a word mat can be found here.

J decided she wanted to make the word cat from the capital letters as well as the lowercase magnetic letters. You can see my table-top pocket chart with our rhyming word cards.

She then wrote the word cat. I laminated this mat so we will be able to use it over again. Since we had the magnetic letters out, I asked her to separate the letters into capital and lowercase on her magnetic white board.

This took some time and some of the letters we had to compare visually but she finished it. J calls the capital letters - mamas and the lowercase one - babies. So she asked if she could reunite the letter families when she was done.

She was ready to reunite them when she finished. For Social Studies, we are still learning about the symbols of America. This week's symbol was the bald eagle. We watched a video of a bald eagle hunting and we read some facts and a mini-book about why it was chosen for our national bird.

She colored a sheet and we discussed that the eagle was holding 13 arrows to represent the original 13 colonies as well as the 13 leaves on the olive branch (which represents peace). I found a quarter and we made several crayon rubbing of the eagle on the back and she brought out her magnifying glass to look at the eagle (and the man she said) closely.

We traced her handprints and footprint to make this eagle from colored paper.

The final product and she was wondering if she had a cheesey smile...

I found some clipart and we discussed the symbols that we have learned so far and added them to our chart. We wrote some facts about each symbol - the only one we haven't done is the Statue of Liberty (next week).

The game of the week just happens to be one that I found in a thrift store for a dollar. It was too cute to pass up. It is The Sleepy Princess and the Pea. Wow, I just found it on Amazon and it was $22! It involves some skill because you have to keep adding the parts of the bed without toppling them over. It comes with a little wooden "pea", four sets of bedding, and a wooden princess. There are two levels of play and we just played the simple one. After we played the game, J wisked it upstairs to play with the princess and the bed. Whenever I look at games, I always try to find ones that can be downsized into baggies and easy to bring. This one fits right inside a ziplock and is squishy, so it could fit anywhere in my suitcase. It was worth my dollar, I think.

We have many activities planned this week for our book, see you soon.

Monday's Discovery

Today's discovery is a very simple thing - a gift bag full of wooden blocks. I noticed this bag on my counter and wanted to let Kaleb explore. So this is what he did.

He looked inside....

he reached in and pulled a block out.

Now, he's trying to put it back in. Putting them in was a little difficult because of the handles but he eventually got the hang of it.

This was very serious work for him, so no smiling. After he put all of the blocks into the bag, he began to look for more. So I dumped them out and let him do it over again. He liked this activity and kept putting them in and taking them out.

And then he noticed me taking pictures....

and came after me. He has a slight cold and he is cutting his molars, so he is having a rough week. But we will get through it. I love those blue eyes.

The Rag Coat (part 2)

We are still working with the book The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills. We are working with our shapes and I brought out our magnetic shapes board for J to create pictures on while I read.

As our daily read-aloud, I began Raggedy Ann and Andy - A Read Aloud Treasury by Johnny Gruelle. In addition to our daily reading of our FIAR book, I also read aloud from another. I chose this one because in The Rag Coat, Minna makes her own cloth doll from scraps of fabric and stuffing.

We also have been learning about how we breathe. In the book, Minna loses her father because of the Miner's Cough (known as Black Lung) and I thought it would be a good idea to learn about how we breathe. I found these paper models from a Scholastic book that I recently purchased for a dollar in their Teacher Express store which allows you to download all of their great books. Every now and then, they run an awesome sale with soo many resources for a dollar each! The book is Easy Make and Learn Projects: Human Body by Wynne and Silver. (the dollar sale has been extended until 9/24)

We also made a breathing vest from some craft paper (we don't have large paper bags here). I helped her color as she will only do so much.

and here she is uncovering her heart....

I love Scholastic books! Any chance I get, I bring games here from America. I take them out of the boxes and put them in ziplock bags for easier transport. The reason I bring games as they are extremely expensive here and I believe that kids can learn from playing them. My last trip to 'Merica, I came across a game from Animal Planet that was marked down at Toys'R'Us. I couldn't pass up the deal and I bought it. J loves animals and this game - Creature's and Features was all about animals.

I paid a small amount and she loves it. The way you play is that you choose an animal from the pile and have to place markers on what features this animals has - such as does it have...teeth, fur, feathers...does it lay eggs...is it awake at night? For every correct answer, you move your token up the board. We have learned quite a bit about animals and it was well worth the money.

I have been trying to pick one different game a week to play with J. This way we aren't always doing "book" stuff for school and it helps us to have fun. I will be bringing this one out again. Now, if you look closely in the picture, you will see two fabric pumpkins. They are small so you might have to look hard.

They are silly looking things but I found this post today on Fiskars and the weather was just a tad chilly, I was feeling like fall. I made these in about a half hour. J stuffed them for me. The only missing is the brown thread stem which I don't have the starch for or possibly the ribbon. I will work on that. I think they turned out cute for a quick sewing job. I also don't have the cute fabric but I used what I had on hand. I am thinking about making a bigger one and then using them for a centerpiece for the table, maybe with some candles and such. I won't be using then for a pincushion and I really think J is eyeing them to play with. She has requested a family of them! Here is a close up of one -

kinda cute, an extremely easy project. I leave you with my Kaleb....

He was busy reading his books and playing with his toys while we were doing school.

The Rag Coat (part 1)

The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills is the book for this week. It is a story about a little girl who lives in the mountains and wants to go to school but doesn't own a coat. Her family is poor and her father just died so there is little money to go around. Her mother and the other quilting mothers put together their scraps of fabric and make Minna a coat. She loves this coat because it is full of stories of the people around her - each piece of fabric has a story attached. But when she wears it to school, the kids make fun of her. But she is determined to tell her story and the story of the coat.

One interesting item of this book, when I was reading it to J, she became very sad because of the death of Minna's father as well as the sadness of Minna when she was being teased. We talked about those feelings, J was alittle upset. I can't say that this book is her favorite but we are continuing with it anyway. It has alot of items in the pictures that show what life was like without electricity and cars. We also worked with shape recognition because of the quilts mentioned in the book. I had found a geoboard here with some rubber bands and J created different shapes with the rubberbands.

We created a quilt block made from some fabric scraps like Minna's coat. Each piece of fabric had a story behind it. One was a piece of her cape, another part of her quilt, one from Kaleb's hat, etc...

J glued the pieces on card stock with white glue mixed with water. Here is our final quilt block...

For our Social Studies, we read about the Liberty Bell and created our own Liberty Bell with a cup and some tissue paper.

She cut the tissue paper into pieces and glued them onto the cup. We added a bell and, once it dries, J insists we add a crack.



Okay, so it is not bronze like the original. Of course, J wanted a multicolored bell just like coat in The Rag Coat book!

Night of the Moonjellies (part3)

This is the last installment for our book of the week - Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha. For our fun time, we decided to open a seaside stand that served hot dogs and hamburgers. J was the waitress and I was the short order cook. I made hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, and ice cream sundaes. J seated our customers and took their orders with a special guest check that I created. She could circle the items that the customers asked for without having to be able to write. She also served them their food and drinks. Here is a picture of the family eating the ice cream - I was soo busy making the food that I didn't get a pic of J being a waitress!

We were going to have our diner on the balcony but it ended up being a really hot day. So we ate in the living room with the klima on. J wanted to be a princess waitress in case you were wondering.

Keke is being funny and she is holding the menu we made. J made the prices and drew the pictures. I think the bill for DH was twenty dollars, according to J's prices.

We finished up our week working on writing a capital letter B with our mini chalkboard. We worked on the life cycle of a jellyfish.

And we played a review game with questions from the book. I found this game at HomeSchool Share.

We watched some videos on youtube of jellfish and moonjellies in the ocean and we played with our sea creatures in a bucket of water. That was our full week of Night of the Moonjellies.

Here are some ideas for the book....

HomeSchool Share has a lapbook for the book.

Family Fun has a jellyfish costume idea if you really want to go all out. (maybe later haha)

Creature Cast has some videos of comb jellies.

YouTube has a video of comb jellies.

Family Crafts has a cute egg carton jellyfish to make.

How Stuff Works has the life cycle of a jellyfish.

Disney Family has directions for a jellyfish made with a paper plate.

National Geographic another video of jellyfish.

Walking by the Way had some fun ideas for a crab shack co-op.