Our Letter of the Week is E.  See if your child can make out  the E in the image left. <g>  Our theme is the Egg, the shape is oval, the color white (it is too a color – Tomie De Paola says so ; )), and the number is 5.

ASL E and egg

Lit:

Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones – Ruth Heller  This is a great book which teaches about all the animals which are hatched.

Horton Hatches an Egg – Seuss

From Egg to Chicken

Just Plain Fancy is Patricia Polacco’s sweet story of the dilemma an Amish girl faces when her hen hatches a very unusual chick.

Five Little Ducks (who also lay eggs) If by some misfortune you don’t have Raffi’s musical version do treat yourselves to that! Some of my fondest motherhood memories are Raffi songs blasting on the van radio when my big boys were little. I had to sing this book. It just seemed right. : )

The Eagle and the Beetle (Aesop) a nod to classical curriculum. This story involves eggs as well.   Aesop’s Fables are a marvelous addition to any child’s education. Older children can use them for copywork and composition ala IEW.  We are all about multilevel learning. : )

The Elves and the Shoemaker – Grimm  Free online or any illustrated version

Theme unit for Chickens Aren’t The Only Ones.

Discovery Bottles – Static Electricity

Montessori trays: use egg slicer on boiled eggs this week. Use an oval stencil (metal insets) to complete this egg minibook. An extension is to make lines with colored pencil filling in the ovals like this. If you don’t have insets you can make a stencil from a plastic container lid and an exacto knife. Make E’s and 5’s from playdough to cover letter card. Match patterned plastic egg halves. If your child is ready you can put an uppercase letter on one half and a lower case match on the other.

Snack/Practical life work:  make egg salad sandwiches, deviled eggs, scrambled/fried/poached, and omelettes.

Math – match these eggs by number of dots. Put jelly beans in egg cartons with the spaces labeled with 1-12 (or use a half dozen carton with just 1-6) Match these by pattern or print multiples and use them to make repeating patterns. You can glue your patterns to be recreated onto a control card.

virtual games: I don’t recommend many of these but if you need 10 minutes to make  a phone call you can tap these resources.

Art: lots of options. The obvious would be to dye the eggs. An extension of same would be to explore pysanky egg art. Patricia Polacco’s book Rechenka’s Eggs is excellent here. If that is too ambitious there are printable pysanky eggs found here. Cover the E template with eggshell collage. (use the shells saved from those boiled egg dishes)   I love this string art project. Very multisensory and by golly the finished project will, drumroll please, fit in a binder. <g>   Did you know that egg yolk makes an interesting paint technique? Scroll down to Maryann Kohl’s submission. Her books are must have’s for art instruction.

Movement: tape off the floor into a curvy path and have children push boiled eggs along. Walk the line – make an oval tape circle and have the children walk the line carrying the eggs on spoons.

Verse: Humpty Dumpty (craft project on link and here)

Saints/bible heroes: Esther and St Elizabeth of Hungary  Decorate a crown shape (or make one for the child to wear!) with sequins and include in binder with the children’s retelling of one of these queens’ stories. 

Enjoy!

…’cause I just don’t get that much sleep. ; )   Occurred to me I didn’t type up all our stuff.

If you already downloaded the plans for D please recheck that link.  I added the Montessori Dropper tray, duck duck goose game, a letter sort, and links to the saint/bible hero of the week: David.  Remember we won’t do these all at co-op. There is plenty to do the rest the of the week so pace yourself and enjoy just a couple things each day.

If you are following the Funschool posts in your homeschool and blogging about it please leave your links in the comments section so we can visit!

The Letter of the Week is brought to you by Flickr : )

D is for Dental Health.

D template  filled with paper dots.  Kids can use the hole punch for fine motor practice and then glue their dots onto the template.

ASL D and Dad

Letter sort – b’s and d’s.  Save frozen juice cans and make the letters on craft sticks. Put a corresponding letter on the can. Great visual/perception game

Trays:  Playdough, dots (punched). Intro the Montessori dressing frames if you have them.  If not, then gather pieces of clothing with zippers, buttons, and snaps and allow the children to try to tackle them independently.  Dropper and suction bottomed bath mats. Mix up some colored water and have children very carefully squeeze one drop onto each little suction cup. Include a small sponge and he can absorb each little cup when finished. This will occupy a preschooler for a looooooong time.

Math:  diamond shape, dimes, diagonal lines.  Have children sort the diamonds from the other cards in a playing card deck. Sort dimes from pile of change. Discuss how many other coin combinations make up a dime. Make diamonds of different dimensions (hey, alliteration ; )) on the geoboard. Look for diamonds in clothing (argyle) and rug patterns this week.

Number 4: make a page for the notebook with the numeral and a set of four things like 4 seasons, the four sides of a diamond, four limbs on a person, 4 gospels etc. Discuss 4 operations – add, subract, multiply and divide – informally by dividing a sandwich in two, giving two cookies to three friends, combining your legos with your brother’s etc.

Snack:  Veggies and dip or doughnut holes

Music: drums – make your own with empty oatmeal box.  Consider reading about Drummer Hoff.

Game: Duck, duck, goose

Dental Health – there are LOTS of fun activities here. We liked cutting out a large tooth from yellow cardstock and painting it white with our brushes to model thorough brushing. The painting with dental floss would be fun too. More dental printables and crafts here.

science project -(from same site) what are cavities?  Take an apple and poke some large holes in it with a pencil or kebab.  Let it sit for several days til the holes turn brown. Use as an object lesson.  Lots of links at the above site for brushing charts and more.

Some lit:

Whose Teeth Are These?

Going to the Dentist

Teeth are Not for Biting

George Washington’s Teeth  – a funny book in rhyme detailing our first president’s dental woes

Diddle diddle dumpling

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John
Went to bed with his stockings on.
One shoe off and one shoe on,
Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John.

Practice the rhyme when dressing this week. Rolls off the tongue. <g> My oldest two boys used to sing song this nursery rhyme whenever a baby lost a sock.

Saint/hero:

King David – there is a very very cute book to make based on these pics. (would make great notebook pages) And there are more page ideas here.

Thought I forgot about C didn’t you? <g>  Busy week here but we are set for tomorrow.

C is for caterpillars, Very Hungry Caterpillars, and the collage art of author/illustrator Eric Carle, who cooperates by supplying us with a number of C books.

ASL: C   and  cookie

C template, glue on popcorn kernels or cornmeal

Lit:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar  (by Eric Carle)

The Little Cloud

The Very Clumsy Click Beetle

Have you Seen My Cat?

Eric Carle’s ABC

Ten Little Ducks

Character:

OH!!! Hopefully Bloglines doesn’t get this posted before my postscript addition here. We found the most incredible book this week.  It’s called Cookies, Bitesize Life Lessons. Trust me, you WANT this book! The author uses cookies as her medium to explain abstract concepts like modest – as in, "you don’t run around telling everyone you make the best cookies, even if you know you do." or respect, as in, "respect means offering the very first cookie to your grandmother."  I love it. Absolutely love it.

Saint:

Christopher, the Holy Giant by Tomie DePaola (dramatize by carrying a baby doll on shoulders)

Trays:

cutting with templates, corn/spoon transfer, clay, Oreo cookie Matchin Middles puzzle, crayon resist and rainbow crayon coloring (3crayons taped together), chalk on dark paper, paper chains

Snack:

We will make cookies from pre-rolled dough and frost them green. We will arrange them in the form of a caterpillar for fun. Cooking with children is an obvious extension this week. The Mom and Me Cookbook is a lot of fun.  It is full of the outstanding photos and clear instructions for which DK is famous. Mollie Katzen’s Pretend Soup is another good bet.

Math:

intro coins – use them for the crayon resist, match them, discuss their value. Print the page linked and add to the binder.

Calendar – hang up a large wall calendar and begin noting the date each day. (we will add to this each week)  Additionally (or instead of!) print these pages for the preschool notebook and note them at the beginning of each learning time.

Shape:

Cylinder – more accurately a geometric solid.  Most of our kids know their basic shapes so I am digging out the Montessori solids. Look for can shapes this week to ID as cylinders

Art:

Collage! There are so many possibilities here.  We will start with something small and not messy : ) Take a sheet of clear contact paper and peel off the backing.  Lay sticky side up on table. Place an 8×11 piece of colored cardstock cut into a 1inch border/frame on top. Fill the center of the frame with torn tissue paper in various colors. Top with another sheet of clear contact paper sticky side down this time. Easy Peasy. <g>

For more ideas see these Eric Carle inspired projects which can be used for older children as well.

Song:

C is for Cookie (Cookie Monster’s song)

C is for cookie
That’s good enough for me,
C is for cookie,
That’s good enough for me, C is for cookie,
That’s good enough for me.
Oh Cookie, Cookie, Cookie starts with C!

Science – cotton ball clouds  and caterpillar life cycle (ck out the second life cycle link and scroll way down to the project – way cool and can fit in a page protector. My favorite ; ))  You can also be discussing healthy snack choices with reference to the Hungry Caterpillars digestive woes.

Ok, that’s more than enough to keep us hoppin’ this week. Time for bed!  Have a great week y’all!

Is it even worth it to make up a daily schedule? How close to perfect should life get before we begin our school year?  These are among the questions tossed around by my homeschool buddies over the past couple of days. Those are questions with few definite answers. Loaded words in those questions: perfect, "school" year, and life. 

I was thinking back to an article Kathy Von Duyke wrote some years back.  It SEEMED like it was just a few years back but when I found it online I noticed that it was nearly a decade ago. Time flies when you are having fun. <g>  And we HAVE had fun.  Lots of fun. A cursory glance back over those years should have turned up more memories of struggle and frustration. We have lived in five different homes and three different states in that time. My husband was deployed, one son had major emergency neuro-surgery, same son was later flat on his back for an entire year while recovering from a different surgery, I had a surprise homebirth and then a solo one.  We lost my husband’s father. We battled the elements on the prairie. The dog died. I could go on. But why?  Those things all happened but they did not define us.

What I remember most from those years are sketching crabs by the ocean, a yellow baby blanket meticulously crocheted by my then ten year old daughter, chicks that fit in your hand, climbing Pike’s Peak, and the sound of Allen’s voice reading Narnia to the children while I made dinner. I remember the look of triumph on three little faces as they each began to read for themselves. I recall the very morning one little boy tied his shoes the first time. And another evening when his younger brother, with no instruction at all, announced he could do the same. I remember driving away from hospitals with Colin, yes, but I remember dropping him off at the college campus as well. Despite the challenges they have always, always been learning.

So what does Kathy Von Duyke have to do with all this?  She used a term way back then that struck a chord with me – guerrilla homeschooling. In a perfect world we could strategize, plot a course, and expect that with a reasonable amount of diligence we could run that course to the finish with few interruptions.  (insert peals of laughter…..; ))  In the real world, particularly a world that includes nine children, the picture looks a bit different. You might well stumble over that impressive teacher’s manual as you reach for the phone book to schedule a Dr’s appointment after yet another sleepless night with a croupy baby. You might kick it out of the way as you carry the laundry up the steps. It gets paint splattered by eager artists. It gets batter spilled on its cover from your kitchen helpers.  But hey, it’s ok because that manual makes a good booster chair for a little person who can’t reach the counter yet.

Do those manuals serve anything but utilitarian purposes?  Yes, if you take Kathy’s advice to heart they are meant to teach YOU. If you are tied to a scripted lesson plan you are handicapped. You will not be able to teach beyond the confines of your tether. You will not be able to wash, fold, stir, drive or rock while you learn together. You will be with your manual.  Good luck.

As the article points out:

"Children ask questions about their schoolwork at the most inconvenient times. In the world of guerrilla homeschooling, this means answering algebra problems from the changing table; stating the order of the planets while cooking, or counseling a frustrated child through a writing assignment; and still retaining a cool enough demeanor to deal with the squabble over toys that suddenly arose in your midst."

In the words of my teen boys – true that.

She advises moms to try to choose a subject each year in which to become an expert. Furthermore, she says the best way to do this is not to burn the midnight oil with dry volumes of teacher training materials but rather to read through the simplest children’s books on those subjects.  I have to agree. The best part is that you can read them aloud and kill two birds with one stone. Children’s books cover the basics in clear, colorful ways. You get an outline of the vital information which you can flesh out over time.

For the language subjects like math, phonics, and grammar your best bet is to get a handbook for yourself. I really like the "Everything You Need to Know About" series for the elementary years and the "Easy Way" series for high school.  Once you are up to speed you can ‘drop tutor’ as she describes. Meaning: you can tutor at the drop of a hat, as opposed to dropping everything to tutor. 

You don’t need a perfect world to teach well. You need a perfect strategy. You need a strategy that does not involve manipulating events that are largely out of your control. Each year I have discerned "what" we need to accomplish. We make checklists to help us stay on track and cover the necessary ground.  The "when" of it varies but it always happens and surprisingly well.  Real life and real learning are unnerving to those who are wedded to absolute control. With faith and a fun loving attitude you can roll with the punches and thrive. It just requires a bit of thinking outside the box. : )

Joanie sent me a note the other day which led me to her blog. She happened to have just linked to Mrs Newingham’s Classroom site.  Wow! Plethora of resources there.  Most intriguing to me were the pics of her classroom library. You can see more here.  The woman may just be the container queen.   

Joanie recently posted pics of her own homeschool room which is exceptional as well. (with a library organized like the one above) Take a look at both.

V is for Virus and vomit and such

We figured they wouldn’t appreciate much

Sharing our germs when they came here to play

So we will revisit ‘B’ when we see them Wednesday.

We issued a rain check for Friday Funschool yesterday due to queasy kids. Therefore there will be no new letter this coming week and we will resume the next. God bless!

Twining Oaks has a post today that says volumes about teaching through example.  We can be expert lesson planners. We can instruct til we are blue in the face. In the end they watch more than they listen. They are observing first and foremost.  What am I modeling?  Am I being persistent?  Am I willing to work, "really work at something until I mastered it. To completion. Without giving up. WIthout whining, sulking, or throwing things."  Am I demonstrating that "self-mastery only comes by developing sound learning habits and putting in the requisite time, energy, and effort."

Honestly?  Not every day and not as well as I would like. But my little ‘audience’ of eager learners motivates me to wake up daily and keep on trying.  This may be the best lesson we can give them. To get up every morning and keep on trying to do a little better than the day before.  : )

Here are our plans for this week’s co-op(it won’t all happen in class!):

Letter B  (intro Montessori sandpaper letter B this week)

ASL Signs: B,  bee (ck out the video demo of the word)

Letter sort:  Paper plate with a pocket made of half paper plate and stapled down the center to form a divider. Sort cards with As and Bs into the pockets

B template : glue beans to letter B.  Can also make with bubble wrap : )

Walk the line: Masking tape on the floor will be in the shape of the week (hexagon).

Number of the week 2:

The Two Brothers (Grimm)

2 notebook page – use two paper clips attached or two beans or two bee stickers or make a dividing line from corner to corner and draw a pair of contrasting things in each section (ie sun/moon, two brothers, two natures of God – God/man, 2 testaments of bible)

Color – yellow

Shape: trace hexagons (with pattern block or download block template from net) on yellow paper. Color some in with light brown to show them full of honey just like the beehive. Sort hexagon blocks from other shapes.

Trays:

bean pouring, bean sort, playdough, A and B sort/match

Biscuit and honey for snack.  The children will make biscuits from a tube for snacks. Serve with honey and berry juice. Optional this week – bananas, broccoli, black jelly beans

My favorite bee book is Bees by Deborah Hodges.  Its a Kids Can series book with lots of large graphics that lend themselves to reproduction in notebooks for olders. From this book we are making a model bee from small, med, and large sized stryrofoam balls painted yellow. The small ball is cut in half for the head. The half ball is stuck to the med ball which is stuck (with toothpicks) to the largest ball to make the 3 body sections. Black pipe cleaners make the legs and antennae. Wings are made from wax paper.

This is a big-ish project but very tactile and involves a lot of fine motor skill work as well as providing a good teaching model. You can tape labels to toothpicks to make this a hands on teaching model for elementary kids.

Make a beekeeper’s outfit with large white shirt, rubber gloves, straw hat, and a remnant of netting from fabric store. Use a small window screen for the hive tray.

Fingerplay/song: Baby Bumblebee

Here is the Beehive

Here is the beehive. Where are the bees?
(hold up fist)

Hidden away where nobody sees.
(move other hand around fist)

Watch and you’ll see them come out of the hive
(bend head close to fist)

One, two, three, four, five.
(hold fingers up one at a time)

Bzzzzzzzz… all fly away!
(wave fingers)

Poem:

"How doth the Little Bee" is one Isaac Watts’s didactic poems for children that Lewis Carroll parodies in Alice in Wonderland:

How doth the little busy Bee
     Improve each shining Hour,
And gather Honey all the day
     From every opening Flower!

How skilfully she builds her Cell!
     How neat she spreads the Wax!
And labours hard to store it well
     With the sweet Food she makes.

In Works of Labour or of Skill
     I would be busy too:
For Satan finds some Mischief still
     For idle Hands to do.

In Books, or Work, or healthful Play
     Let my first Years be past,
That I may give for every Day
     Some good Account at last. [1715]

Lit:

The Honey Makers  (note to self – never do a lesson without Gail Gibbons)

The Bee Tree

King Solomon and the Bee (Aidan says, "I LOVE this book!")

Gran’s Bees having just visited my Gram, it was moving

St Benedict or St Brigid

Preschool B activities for later in week

B book

Bee unit with elementary activities