The Salamander Room, FIAR

(4/16 – 4/27)  We spent the last two weeks rowing The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer.  We had so much fun with this book, our studies that were centered around it, and our time outdoors in nature that we ended up needing almost two full weeks with it!  This was one of my favorite rows by far.  Not only did we all love the book and the sweet story of Brian as he uses his imagination to create a home for a salamander he finds, but we made some wonderful memories together.  The FIAR manual has so many ideas that stretch the imagination, evoke deep thinking and truly build memories learning together that will last a lifetime.  It is much more than a ‘textbook’.  It is a formula for lifelong learning that stems from the heart and builds a true love for learning not only academics, but the beauty of the world around you.  It is priceless.

 

While we rowed we:

• learned how to make lists
• studied the butterfly life cycle in depth
• took a five mile nature hike
• talked about our imaginations and how they can take us anywhere we want to go and what a powerful tool they are.  That it is important to use them and be as creative as we want to be without any fear.
• focused on the letter ‘B’ in our preschool
• used watercolors and oil pastels to create a butterfly picture

Jack focused all of his efforts on the letter ‘B’.  He made a butterfly ABC poster and we completed pages from Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Letter ‘B’ activities. His pencil grip is improving and I am so proud of him.  I am determined to make it a priority each week now to have real school work for him.  I love seeing him progress and he always asks for school and is eager to participate.  I put butterfly number cards on the floor and called out numbers at random and he would hop to the correct number card.  I used to do this with Joe and it was fun.  Jack liked it just as much!  He picked up on identifying numbers 6-10 within a couple days.  Up until last week he could only point out 1-5.  Yes, another of my boys that doesn’t like to wear their pants :-).

We played Elefun throughout the week and caught butterflies.

Jack worked on his preschool pack and Jesse had fun with learning toys and ‘read’ lots of books.

Jesse and Jack made coffee filter butterflies.

Joe made a butterfly picture using oil pastels and watercolors as suggested in an art lesson from Art Projects for kids.

Joe read a book from our Life Cycles set on butterfly metamorphosis, completed an activity on the butterfly life cycle and labeled the parts of a butterfly.  He colored the sheet, used sesame seeds for the eggs, curled pipecleaners around a pencil for the caterpillar, rubbed a cotton ball in green chalk for the chrysalis.  I sprayed the chrysalis with hairspray to harden it and let it dry before he glued it on.

Joe made a list of all the things he could remember that Brian used in the story for his room and then he drew a picture of his own salamander room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the course of this two weeks we watched our own butterflies go through a complete life cycle.  I ordered painted ladies from Insect Lore.  We enjoy watching our caterpillars go from tiny to big, then to butterflies each year.  I think it’s sweet that Hanna still enjoys this process just as much as she did the first time we did it when she was Jack’s age. I wanted to take the kids on a nature walk.  I thought it would be a fun memory to go along with our row. I took them on a five mile hike at a nearby national park.  It was perfect and they were all troopers!

There were lots of critters found by all the kids!  Hanna found this tiny snail, Joe and Hanna both found numerous inchworms, caterpillars, butterflies and lizards.  Jack found a turtle.  Hanna looked at it from the side and bottom and told us it was a box turtle. There were honeysuckles everywhere.  Hanna has loved honeysuckles since she was in kindergarten. The trail was beautiful.  It was so peaceful.  You forget living in all the noise of the city that the sights and sounds of nature are truly amazing.  Hanna wanted to climb down for a frog.  He got away, but not for her lack of trying :-)! Everyone ended up having a very good time when all was said and done! We are already having fun this week studying about frogs and pond life as we do a ‘Five in a Row’ style unit study with Song of the Water Boatman.

Ideas, inspiration and printables for The Salamander Room can be found at:

• Five in a Row Volume 3
• Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Letter B Activities
• Art Projects for Kids butterfly art lesson
• Totally Tots Letter ‘B’ butterfly poster
• Evan Moor Great Science Resource Book – parts of a butterfly sheet
• Life Cycles Monarchs and Life Cycles Resource Guide
• Preschool Corner and 5K Too!
• Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-Up

The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Five in a Row

(4/2 – 4/6)  We had a very fun and busy week of learning here at home the week of Easter.  It also happened to be a week that one little one was getting over being sick and another little one got sick, so I’m glad I had so much planned for inside learning and fun.

I’m saying ‘sort of FIAR’ for this book because we didn’t really row any one book, but I did use many of the FIAR ideas from the manual for Peter Rabbit.  The two little boys loved the story of Peter and Mr. MacGregor and laughed out loud throughout my reading it each time—they asked for it.  I’ll be honest and say that this isn’t one of my favorite books and never has been—no particular reason why—and Joe wasn’t too fond of hearing it over and over again either, but the little boys—that was another story :-).

Joe and I completed an experiment on growing seeds using lima beans in a mason jar.  He had never done anything like this and loved it!  He checked on his bean seeds each day multiple times and was so excited to see them sprouting!  Jack enjoyed watching the bean seeds sprout too and was just as excited as Joe when he saw them finally growing into plants.  Joe took this a step farther and planted his own bean seed and some grass seeds in little pots and placed them in his bedroom windowsill.  He is still lovingly caring for them each day.  He has decided he loves growing things and wants to plant some things in the garden at Pop Pop’s :-).   **You can only see a tiny sprout in the last picture of our bean, but it grew all the way up out of the jar by the end of the next week.**

We read the book Jack’s Garden and my Jack loved the fact that the boy in the book shared his name.  Jack worked on pages from the Garden Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations.

Since it was Easter week and eggs are in abundance, I also prepared a few activities for Jack on the letter E.  We read lots of ‘E’ books, used a letter ‘E’ play doh mat, made an ‘E’ is for Egg picture, we hid plastic eggs around the house for an egg hunt—I’d placed pictures of things that began with the letter ‘E’ inside the plastic eggs—and he played a lowercase egg matching game with the plastic eggs.

Joe and I read books about the parts of eggs, an egg from the very beginning to a hatched baby chick, looked at all of the parts of a real egg, and then he completed a worksheet on labeling the parts independently.

Joe made an Easter egg using painter’s tape, cardboard egg template, watercolor paper, a white crayon and watercolor paints.  He used a crayon resist technique and it turned out pretty.  He thought it was cool to watch the paint slip over his white crayon lines and leave the designs he’d drawn.

I made handprint bunnies with all the kids for a cute Spring themed picture for our bulletin board.  I love anything with their sweet handprints on it.

In addition to the things we did to go along with our books, Joe worked on his daily journal entries, Language Lessons and Math.  He finished Singapore 1B a few weeks ago so I had him resume working to finish Daily Word Problems Grade 1 (Evan Moor).  He has now finished it too.  We will begin Saxon Math 3 shortly.  Joe has actually wrapped up all of his 1st grade texts and is on break before we begin his 2nd grade texts. 

Here are a few samples of what he’s done the last few weeks:

 

And, before I wrap this up, Jesse was with us last week even though he hasn’t made an appearance in this post yet :-).  He read with us and played with lots of different learning toys I have on our shelves like puzzles, several Guidecraft sets, play doh, lacing cards and so forth. 

Next up we are studying nature critters and butterflies as we row the Salamander Room.  My printer and desktop PC have been down for nearly two weeks :( so we had lots of hands-on activities during this row.  We got outside lots and it was so much fun!

Ideas, inspiration and printables for this row can be found at:

• Homeschool Creations Garden Preschool Pack and letter ‘E’ play doh mat
• Inner Child Fun Handprint Bunnies
• The Chocolate Muffin Tree crayon resist Easter eggs
• Spell Outloud’s letter ‘E’ activities
• Totally Tots letter ‘E’ is for Egg craft
• Egg parts printable
• Usborne Science Activities Volume 1, pgs. 50-51
• Preschool Corner and 5K Too!
• Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-Up