Thanksgiving Mini Book

Has it really been a month since I updated my homeschool blog? More than a month? Really??? That's not good.

Let's see...what has been happening lately on our Journey to Ladyship.

~ We have found that a longer daily schedule does not work. We've cut out many of the extras I added into our curriculum so we do the bare minimum now. It works better that way. Chloe began dreading school and I just did not want that for her. I always enjoyed school and that is what I want for Chloe. I guess there is a reason Sonlight keeps their preschool curriculum short and sweet. (sometimes those experts really are experts)

~ We stretched the week back to five days instead of four. Cramming those couple of extra books in on day four was too much for us. This allows us to do an extra little project or two on Friday in addition to our workbooks. Pretty soon I will work up the courage to take Chloe on some field trips.

~We put the Japanese lapbook on hold. It was fun learning about Japan while our friends were there on a short term mission trip, but overall I think a Japanese lapbook was too intense for a four year old. We started a much simpler Thanksgiving lapbook this week. Chloe enjoys it more too. Here is what we made today.

A Thanksgiving Mini book.



Here are some pictures of Chloe making her mini book.





We took a creative detour and punched holes along the top of the book with my CropADial and I let Chloe add eyelets which I stamped into it. She loved working with Mama's scrapbooking tools. Word of advice though...we found the eyelets along the top inhibited the book from opening properly. Next time we will just sew string along the top and leave it at that.



I printed off some fun little projects to include in this lapbook. More on that to come soon (I hope). I just need to get my hands on a lamination machine so our creations will endure little hands and Father time.

Our Japanese Lapbook Project Begins

We finished our corduroy lapbook a couple of weeks ago and for some reason, I am unable to upload the video of Chloe presenting her project. Arg! Since then, we have started a lapbook on the country of Japan. One of my dearest friends traveled to Japan the first of this month with her husband as short term missionaries. They offer 5 minute English lessons to the people of Japan in train stations and at parks in order to strike up a conversation, friendship and eventually lead into a gospel presentation. I wanted Chloe to take an interest in their work and in missions in general so I thought it would be a good idea for us to study the country of Japan while our dear friends are over there.

This week I borrowed books from the library about various Asian animals. (Most of which probably do not roam the island of Japan, but hey...close enough, right?) Each day this week we focus on a different animal. Monday we chose elephants. I read a book filled with facts about elephants (most of which were african elephants) and we pretended to be elephants ourselves. Chloe adores these types of play exercises.





We drank water by sucking it up through our trunks and then spraying it into our mouths. We sucked up dirt into our trunks and sprayed it over our heads onto our backs to protect us from the sun. We rolled in the mud to cool ourselves off and we slept under a shady tree.

I thought it would be fun to learn origami while working on our Japanese lapbook. Its a Japanese craft, after all. I found a book at the library for preschoolers filled with origami animals. PERFECT! I immediately turned to the elephant section and we got to work. Lo and behold, I discovered that even a book for preschool origami proves difficult. I now present my feeble attempt at an elephant.



Supposedly, this elephant sits up. Mine flops onto his nose (trunk.) He needed a little help from the pencil box to actually sit up. I think I will practice some of the basic origami folds before attempting another animal. And I will most likely teach those same basics to Chloe too.



We then inserted a picture of an elephant with a few facts on the back into our animal pocket for the lapbook to finish off our day. What fun! Today we will learn about Rhinoceroses if there is time before ballet class tonight. I will have to show you some of the other things we've added to our lapbook previously. Its been quite fun.

Art Class

Sadly, with all that has been going on in our lives lately, I have not taken the time to update our homeschool blog. I am so far behind on everything so I am trying to play catch up today...with the house, with errands and with school. Yikes! What a task.

Anyways, I wanted to tell you all about a new class we added to our routine. Art. I checked out a book from the library with art projects ideas for preschoolers. Chloe picked our first project. Rice painting.

First we dyed the rice blue, red, green and yellow with food coloring. (She practiced scooping and pouring the rice into the bowls for an added learning exercise.)



I helped her draw a picture onto the poster board. She found the large piece of blank, white paper a bit intimidating so I gave her a few ideas to get her started and then she imagined her own creative picture. She wanted a tree with her Mama standing next to it. I drew a shape of a tree onto a smaller piece of paper to give her an example of how it worked and she came up with the larger scaled picture herself.



We painted watered down glue in sections on her picture and sprinkled the colored rice onto the paper. It took us a little while to get used to the idea that we needed to be quick before the glue dried. Mama was also forced to let go of her "clean floor" fetish and just allow the mess which invariably happens with creativeness.



Chloe added a blue flower before she deemed the picture complete.



So, I've scheduled art class for Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We will learn to sew on Tuesday and Thursday. Chloe spied a kidlet-sized sewing machine at Joann's the other day and just about drooled the entire walk through the store. She begged for it so she could sew her own doll clothes. How precious is that??? I thought about it for a couple of days and finally formulated a plan. I sat Chloe down, looked her in the eye and explained the plan. If she will work very hard and learn each step to sewing that I teach her during the next few months and IF I think she is ready...I will buy her the sewing machine for her next birthday. She agreed to this plan. So...I implemented sewing into our school day. More on that in another post though.

Preschool Fun

Have I mentioned that I love school? Oh, yesterday. Right. But I do. I really love it. I probably haven't mentioned before the fact that I have known since I was four years old that I would homeschool. Its true. I always knew I would and have dreamed of the day when I could. You have no idea how excited I am that the day is finally here. Now I don't have the passel of children I hoped I would have by now, but that's okay. I am enjoying teaching my one precious little girl.

Today we blew bubbles. That's right. For school. How cool is that? (I never got to blow bubbles in school, but then again...I never attended preschool or kindergarten, so that's my problem right there) Up until today, I never would have classified bubble blowing as "school". But it stated right in her curriculum to blow bubbles. We usually blow bubbles about once a year because that is how often I think to get the bubble stuff out of the cupboard. Goodness gracious, but its fun. We should do it more often.







I am really taking this physical education thing seriously. I write out in my curriculum notebook an specific "exercise" for every day that we have school. I vary it up too...so some days she jump ropes, other days we go on a walk. Today she rode her bike around the block. This was our second time doing so and I can't believe I never thought of it before. If ever I wanted to go on a walk, I would haul her heavy stroller out of the shed, buckle her down and push her around the block. I never gave the bike a single thought. My mistake.



After just two times of riding around the block (last week and this week), she can now get herself over almost every hump in the sidewalk. (and when I say hump...I mean hump. Huge cracks where one side of the walk rises a good 3-4 inches above the other side) Today she even started steering crazily to show off her skills.

I knew homeschooling would be fun, but I never knew it would be this much fun. And Chloe loves it too. I thank God every day for the opportunity to sit and teach my daughter about His world. It truly is a privilege and I am blessed.

Tomorrow we are headed on our first field trip of the year. We will visit a pet store and hopefully have the chance to ask them some questions and maybe even pick up a book on kitten care or a little toy for the rascals. I better head to bed now before I nod off on the keyboard. Have a wonderful night everyone.

I Love Learning

Oh my goodness, how I love school. Even while I attended school I enjoyed it. I even love the math and science portions, although those subjects are not my forte. (I am more of an English/Literature/fairyland kind of gal) Teaching Chloe this past week brings back alot of my own school time memories. I am the kind of person who could very easily attend school the rest of my life...that is, if money and time weren't such an issue. (I have five college classes to my credit) They say there are people who are addicted to school. That could soooo be me.

I truly believe that I will thoroughly enjoy homeschooling Chloe. Whatever I didn't get the first time around, I have the chance to try a second time. (and hopefully this time it will stick)

I wanted to share with you a few things I learned this past week with Chloe. (and somethings I learned outside of teaching her too)

1) Men in Japan wear Kimonos
2) Kimono means "clothing" in Japanese
3) There is a difference between a rhombus and a parallelogram. (had you asked me prior to last week I would have suspected you were speaking to me in a foreign language)
4) Chloe doesn't have very good attentiveness skills. Neither do I. I suppose that is where she gets it from. We are both working on it this week.
5) a week without television does a body good (we haven't even entered the basement except to do laundry since James left)
6) Dulce la Leche coffee creamer does not taste good in Caribe tea.
7) Many of the nursery rhymes I have memorized are a lot longer than I remember. (did you know that Mary's little lamb got kicked out of school for causing a ruckus amongst the kiddos?)
8) Chloe actually hears and understands most of what I tell her...she just pretends not to hear me. (can you believe I didn't know that before?) Now I ask her to repeat what Mama just said and every single time she repeats it verbatim...even when I think she was visiting la-la land while I was speaking. She is one smart cookie who had her Mama fooled for the longest time.

And the best thing I learned this week is that I can make a lapbook myself. Yes, I can. I am so excited. Our next lapbook (we are still finishing up Corduroy) will be on Japan. Then I think I will make one on tea. A whole research project on tea...how cool would that be?

Anyways, I better sign off for the evening and check some emails. I will hopefully have a finished lapbook to show you tomorrow.

Lapbooking

My dear friend Melanie planted the idea of lapbooking in my head the other night while we chatted away over the internet. She figured it would be something I would probably be interested in and I have to tell you, she couldn't have been more accurate. It took me a couple hours of google research to finally figure out exactly what a lapbook was and what it was for, but in the end I knew it was for me.

We began our first lapbook Saturday evening while I was scrapbooking. I printed off some pictures for Chloe to color that didn't require much "work" or "teaching" with them so she could sit and color while I worked on my own stuff. We chose to do a lapbook about Corduroy. (the book written by Don Freeman) And before our first lapbook is even complete, I now have ideas for the next 100 books for us to make. Oh goodness gracious, but Melanie was right. I LOVE lapbooking. I even have ideas for lapbooks I want to make myself! Is that weird?

For those of you who don't know what a lapbook is, let me try to explain it in a way that makes sense for me.

A lapbook is like a scrapbook about a topic of your choice made from information you gather when you research your subject.

We have friends heading to Japan for a month long mission trip and so our next lapbook will be on Japan. It will certainly be interesting to learn about the place they are while we are praying for them.

Tomorrow we should be finishing up our Corduroy lapbook and then I will take some pictures of it (and maybe some video) to show you all what it is. So definitely, more information to come about lapbooks!

School Schedule

So, today we started Day 3 of our homeschooling and we are beginning to feel some sort of routine with it already. I am seeing how things flow best and adjusting and tweaking the curriculum a bit to fit our own style.

Today, I thought I would share with you our routine. First, we start the day with prayer and our Bible lesson (complete with Bible verse and character trait.) We sit on the couch for this portion of our school day.



This is also where we read our storybooks and rhymes. Then we head over to the kitchen table for our school work.



We do our workbook and our science here.



Then, we head outside for our physical education and our gross motor skills activity. (the activities vary so sometimes they are indoor projects instead)





I thought that was a pretty cool picture. I tried teaching Chloe to jump rope for physical education and I caught her mid-jump. We realized quickly that it would be easier to jump rope without her pinafore on so we took it off and that helped her get the rope over her head easier. After physical education and our activity, we head back inside for one more reading and then Chloe enjoys working with her shape blocks.



Sometimes we add an art project in there like painting or something else. For music I have borrowed a classical cd from the library and we play that during breakfast. If she finishes eating before the cd is over, I allow her to dance around the living room before we start our chores. Chores are always finished before we begin school for the day. It helps Chloe to get out her energy too before we begin.

So, this is what our school day looks like so far. We will see how it goes for the next couple of weeks.