L is for Ladybugs.

ASL L and Ladybug

L Template holepunch and ‘lace’ around it

L tracer pages

Colors – red and black

Shape – circles

Literature/Science:

The Grouchy Ladybug – another Carle favorite

The Very Lazy Ladybug

Ladybug Ladybug – the familiar verse

The Ladybug and other Insects – be sure to get some life cycle books like this

Ten Little Ladybugs

Ladybug Moves Home

Are You a Ladybug

Listening Walk – L is for Listen too

L is also for Love which makes this the week to be sure to read Love You Forever.  If you don’t cry before it’s over then we can’t be friends. ; ) You really must own this one. Another classic is Guess How Much I Love You   You know, I have to add an aside here. My second son has been reading the Funschool posts (he lives in an apt) and was saying he enjoys these most of all. He said it reminded him of growing up and all we did. That makes me happier than I can say. They WILL learn to read, write and do math eventually. Make sure you are making happy memories along the way. : )

Montessori trays:

L is for Landforms (pic from site).  These are models that demonstrate complementary pairs such as island/lake, peninsula/bay. You can make your own using flat square Ziplock plastic storage containers and self hardening plasticine. Traditionally the land is painted brown and then blue water is used to pour into the trays by the student doing the exploration. Alternatively you can print the cards and/or make a more kinesthetic set by brushing glue over the land parts and sprinkling sand over.

Flashlight – preschoolers cannot get enough of this one. Get an inexpensive plastic flashlight and disassemble it.  Keep the parts in a large plastic box. Self-checking – the students have succeeded when they can get it together and shine the light. LOTS of fine motor and critical thinking involved here! Throw a blanket over the table and allow them to make shadows when they finish.

Light/heavy – sort cards of light items like toothbrush, feather, sock and heavy items like bricks, car, oven into appropriate piles.

Lacing cards. Another early childhood mainstay. Easy to make by laminating old calendars or cards and hole punching the outside edges. Provide shoelaces.  Christmas cards of the Holy Family are especially nice.

Art/Math:

L is for Landscape.  Landscapes by Scholastic is a children’s introduction to this classic art form. This little book is spiral bound with plastic covered pages that lend themselves to lots of handling. Transparent overlays add a way cool dimension.  Very simple text introduces famous artists and some of their landscape paintings and asks some engaging questions.  I really enjoyed this one! Don’t limit your children to ‘crafts’. Be sure to include fine art in your lessons.

Make a ladybug – trace and cut out two circles, one in red and one black. Cut the red circle in half and spread it apart slightly before gluing over the black. Glue googly eyes and black string for antennae. Double this craft by using it with black beans for…..

Ladybug Math-  It is important to provide lots of opportunity and incentive to practice the basic math operations in a very noncoercive, no-stress manner in the early years. This week, use black bean counters and place varying amounts on each ladybug ‘wing’ and add them together. A small chalkboard such as from the craft section of Walmart or a craft store is ideal for these games.

Alternatively your Funschooler can paint large dry lima beans red and use a black marker to make dots and a line on each. Cut a large leaf from green cardstock and count how many ladybugs land on the leaf. Take some away and recount. 

Be sure you are mentioning LEFT and RIGHT when putting on shoes and socks and pant legs etc. Reviewing songs from past weeks like the Hokey Pokey is another painless way to bring in this concept.

Songs/fingerplays:

London Bridge (Peter Spier has a book by the same name that works well this week)

Looby Loo

Ladybug Ladybug fly away home, Your house is on fire and your children all gone. Coloring page for this verse here.

Five Little Ladybugs

Five little ladybugs, climbing on some plants,
Eating the aphids, but not the ants!
The first one said: "Save some aphids for me!"
The second one said: "These are tasty as can be!"
The third one said: "Oh, they’re almost gone!"
The fourth one said: "Then it’s time to move on!
The fifth one said: "Come on, let’s fly!"
So they opened their wings and flew through the sky.

Snacks: lemonade, licorice, Ladybug Rice Cakes – spread rice cake with red jelly and add raisin dots

Bible/Saint:

This is a good week to learn or review the Lord’s Prayer. There are Catholic and Protestant versions here with lots of nice manipulatives to make puzzles and mini-books for the notebooks. Tasha Tudor has a beautiful little book called Give Us This Day which is perfect for this lesson.

We are reading about St Louis as well. In addition to our Alphabet of Saints we are checking out Amy Welborns Saints book.

L is for Library – be sure to visit with your child this week : ) 

L is for Lapbooks

This is a good week to answer some of the lapbook questions I have gotten in recent weeks. First off, what IS a lapbook?  Its a file folder that is opened flat and refolded to look like a closed set of window shutters. Inside, a series of small folded booklets are pasted to the folder. They are usually built around a theme. They provide a 3D presentation format which is appealing to reluctant writers and hands on kids. Especially nice for science fairs and other table top presentations.

You can find how to’s here, here, here and most especially here at the Lapbook Ladies site. Dinah Zike was an original designer of the lapbook concept. Tobins Lab ran with it and eventually copyrighted the term. There are lapbooking egroups at Yahoo with photo share files to peruse.

We have made several in our day. We do more notebooking than lapbooking at the moment but it served us well with some of the kids who took longer to warm up to writing. We have adapted the Lapbook techniques to work on notebook pages.  Specifically – we enlarge a miniature book fold to 8×11 size and use it alone on a notebook page. You can find some of our lapbooks here.

Lapbooks can be made independently by older kids or by mom for youngers. They can be a representation of info learned OR they can be used as a teaching tool to relay information.  Dinah’s subject specific books are ideal for the latter purpose. The best purchases to get started would be the Ultimate Lapbook Handbook and Dinah Zikes Big Book of Books and Activities. 

Ok, off to shop for wheelchairs! I will post the rest of Funschool L on Friday. : )

K is for Kite

ASL K and Kite

K template – sprinkle Koolaid powder over glue painted on the letters  OR let child apply lipstick and cover the K with kisses – this may result in peals of uncontrollable laughter….

Lit:

Spot’s Windy Day – extension activities here

Kipper’s Kite

Henry and the Kite Dragon – true story set in 1920s Chinatown. Gorgeous illustrations, even more important lessons in problem solving, creativity, and peacemaking.

The Story of Kites – these kites chase birds off the rice fields.  Gotta love a kid who thinks to use homework paper to make the kite….

The Tiny Kite of Eddie Wing – "…run along now boy, I feel a poem coming on." This one stirs the heart.

Ben Franklin and His First Kite

The Emperor and the Kite – lesson plan for this classic folktale here

Montessori trays: 

Keys! Provide various sizes of key locks and a key ring with the coordinating keys on a tray.  Very absorbing task! If you have a copier you can also copy various old keys onto an 8×11 paper and match the originals to the copies.

Taste/Smell Test – use your koolaid to make taste bottles. This is a one time use game but good fun. You could use the powder concentrate to make the smelling bottles as well.  That way, you don’t ingest so if you are a food purist there is no red dye to deal with.

Art:

Finger paint with the Koolaid powder

Make a kite.  Painted kites make REALLY nice additions to the school room ceiling when not in use.

Make a kite wall chart.  Construct a kite with construction paper and add a very long string for a tail. Hang on a wide wall and tack the tail horizontally. Add kite tail "ribbon" markers labeled with any academic thing you would like to track such as names of letters learned, books read, memory verses mastered, and so on. Watch that kite tail fill as the semester progresses!

Kaleidoscope – make your own here

Coloring pages: here, here

K worksheets for Kindergarten

Science:

Ben Franklin and His Kite: Check out this unit study.  This is ideal for spreading the study to include older children.  Another unit here.

Music:  Kazoo anyone?  Easy to play. Instant gratification. The Natural Structure folks actually recommend kazoos as a first music exploration option.

Snack – Kix, Koolaid, Kites (make kite sandwiches by cutting bread into diamonds and ‘paint’ cross bars with food coloring before toasting OR make them from graham crackers and frost – thank you Louise!) Kangaroo Pockets – stuff halved pitas with your choice of filling.

Games/PE:  Kickball. Our kids can play with two to a team if necessary. Where there is a will there is a way.<g>  If space is tight have a kicking contest with a balloon instead. Or a game of Keep it Up – see how long they can keep the balloon in the air without it touching the ground. (snatch up balloon bits immediately if it bursts)

Songs:

Lets Go Fly a Kite

Kookaburra – not a kite but a classic.  It will stuck in your brain for days – sorry. ; )

Thank you all for your prayers.  The little ones had a better day though Brendan’s pulse oxygen levels were still not ideal. They both slept REALLY well last night though – which means mama slept too.  Woo hoo!

We have made some hard decisions this week and I wanted to share them here because of a comment that was made by one young mom. She expressed disappointment, and perhaps a bit of resentment, over Funschool and all that we do. I try to present a fair survey of our lives here though obviously this blog isn’t the sum total of our existence. It is important though, especially as you begin the homemaking/homeschooling journey, that you have a realistic understanding of what your fellow moms are actually accomplishing. As a rule, it is going to be less than you have built up their production to be in your mind.

Funschool co-op ran pretty smoothly all fall. It was extremely gratifying personally to me to have those little faces shine back so enthusiastically. I found there are drawbacks to the co-op setting though. Most obvious is the fact that while home education can happen under wide, varied circumstances, group instruction with children from other families can only happen at set times requiring a significant amount of preplanning. Life in a large family, particularly with members who have health challenges, does not lend itself to inflexible schedules. Things happen. Even if each member has a need only once a month if you do the math that means a third of our month is eaten up. Fortunately homeschooling continues without missing a beat most often.  You are rarely sick enough to need to stop reading.  Avilian notebooks travel well. Guerilla homeschooling fills the gaps. We have a framework for WHAT we plan to cover daily/weekly/annually but we are flexible about where/when those goals are met each day and can adjust to the challenges the day brings.

The same is true for our cleaning schedule.  We can’t budge on that. With a large family you MUST clean your fridge, mop your floors, empty your vehicle, and order the clothing drawers at least weekly. Vacuuming/sweeping, bathroom cleaning, bed making, laundry,dishes and exterior kitchen surface cleaning must happen daily.  Actually I hit our main bathroom twice a day. (And I am not Martha Stewart.  It just would be gross otherwise. I have a lot of boys) Now some weeks I can’t stick to the prearranged focus day list and we have to double up another day. That’s ok. It is not ok to skip though or you really compound your mess.

Somewhere in your year you have seasonal/annual jobs that are flexible but can’t be put off indefinitely – closet cleaning, seasonal clothing swapping, oven cleaning, light fixtures, yada yada. We have found that while it would be lovely to set aside a week to do those things it never pans out unless you have secured a nanny to entertain your children. No, it is better to sneak in those jobs here and there. Children left to themselves bring shame upon their mothers….  Therefore I try to tackle a couple yucky jobs every week like emptying the bathroom door organizer which is this weeks goal.

I am rambling.  My point is you have to be a good steward of your time. The more kids you have, the more health issues you have, the less wiggle room you have. I live by a few slogans. One is that there is always enough time to do God’s will.  There is rarely enough time to also do your own agenda. I have found God to be economical. He always provides for our needs. Not always so with our ‘druthers.  When pressed for time and or when energy is depleting I have had to step back and ask again, what of this is God’s will and what is my own?  Clearly SOMEthing is my agenda because while God does not promise to make me supermom He does promise me I can carry my yoke with His help.  That does not mean I can carry ANY yoke I choose, only the one He has designed for me.  This is where I run into trouble.

Rebecca made a comment in an unrelated conversation yesterday that has stuck in my mind since. She said we often confuse the DESIRE to do something with the CALL to do it. Truer words were never spoken.  Take them to heart as I am. Most often in life we must make the hard decisions and let go of the "good" to attain the "best" for our families.

I let go of support forums this past year which was a
wrenching decision. I was faced with the choice to be a faithful friend to a
few women or to slack on my responsibilities too often while attempting to keep
on top of message board discussions. The choice seemed obvious when standing in
front of a closet that needed sorting but on a practical level it meant
removing myself from daily comraderie. I realized afterwards just how much I
relied on that positive feedback. It is much easier to motivate oneself when
you get applause here and there.

There was a lot of positive feedback from Funschool co-op.
One little girl whispered into my ear a few weeks ago “Thank you for being our
teacher!” Another asked the other day
when they could come to my house and learn letters again. Sigh. You have no
idea how sweet they are, nor how much fun it is to work hard when you have such
an appreciative audience. But the reality is time stops for no (wo)man. This lifestyle
requires a decent amount from us. To be responsible you have to make hard
choices. You can’t do it all. I know. I have tried. So, bottom line – another difficult decision –
I will continue to post Funschool plans here and hope everyone enjoys them at
home as we do but we won’t be hosting the real life co-op.

I also cancelled my speaking contract for this summer. Another VERY difficult decision. I like to share. I like to see people given the tools to effect positive change in their homeschools. Reality is my family doesn’t have the hours required to do justice to a conference presentation this year however. Perhaps it is my overgrown sense of responsibility but I believe when people pay their hard earned money they deserve a well-constructed, thoughtful presentation in return. If I allocate my time to assure that then many other things would suffer here. My first call is to do well at living this message. I want to be sure I am giving my all to that. Right now I can’t live it well AND present. This isn’t my season.

I often bring to mind an experience as a conference attendee many years ago.  The speaker began her talk (about how to be a good mother) by asking us for prayer for her baby who was howling in another room.  She spoke louder to be heard over the crying. : / It made a huge impression on me. I realize it would have been a career killer to have walked out on us, her full house audience, to go attend to that baby.  Still…

Reading blogs should encourage you, not demoralize you. If it sounds too good to be
true, assume it isn’t true. If you are
working hard and can’t fit in another thing then those other things are not God’s
will for you. He gave you a specific set of circumstances. Those are handpicked
for you. They won’t look like mine or anyone else’s. That is ok. You will have to make hard
choices. Do you want to do hands on history? Fine. You won’t likely get to do hands-on everything else AND scouts AND
have a vegetable garden. Are you having babies every 18months or more
frequently? That IS your task for this season in life. You may not get to
participate in online groups or have a weekly date night. You get unlimited
hugs and kisses every day – and night often – instead. In the end it is a lot
more to hang onto than a science fair project.  Be sure you are asking your husband, sincerely, how HE feels about your commitments.

Whatever circumstances you have been gifted with strive to
make the most of them. If you have a home, take really good care of it. Many
people are not so lucky. It may not be a mansion but for this time, now, it is
yours.  If you have a husband, take even
better of him. Similarly, many are not so fortunate and we don’t know how many days we will get to be a blessing to him. Don’t take that for granted. If you have children, turn off the computer and go join them. Don’t
worry about what the rest of us are doing, and be assured NO one is doing it
all. Everyone is making choices and many are making choices you would not be
happy with in the end.