Archive for May, 2009
Posted on May 28, 2009 - by
Year 0: Week 31
Our school days are Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 9:30am, when we return from dropping off Ethan at Mother’s Day Out. Each bullet point is a 5-15 minute period of time.
This is our last week of school before we take a break for the summer months. Although we are ALWAYS learning (and will be going many places, including the Cockrell Butterfly Center!), we will not be doing ‘formal’ lessons for the next couple of months. So, I wanted to use this week to wrap up our lapbook and then do an end-of-year evaluation with Kate to assess where to start again next school year.
Monday:
- Mommy’s book club
- Errand, cleaning day
- Observe caterpillars and milkweed.
Tuesday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekly schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
- Continue copywork of The Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti. (Handwriting)
- Paint My Butterfly Symmetry. We found that the paint needs to be watery and wet when you fold over the butterfly to make a print on the other half. Our first attempt was too sticky and wound up tearing the paper.
- Lunch (1hr)
- Read first two sections of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, retold by Naomi Lewis.
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Wednesday:
- Story time at the Library (11:30 am)
- Turn in old and check out new books (12:00 pm)
- Lunch (1hr)
- Outdoor Play (1hr)
- Literature: Library Books
Thursday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekend schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
- Finish copywork of The Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti. (Handwriting)
- Cut out and paste on the Symmetrical Butterfly.
- ASSESSMENTS:
- Reading – Phonetics and Comprehension Test
- Reading – Decoding
- Math
- Lunch (1hr)
- Read Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent by Lauren Child.
- Read Hansel and Diesel by David Gordon.
- Read Cowlick by Christin Ditchfield.
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Friday:
- Nature Walk
Posted on May 28, 2009 - by
Year 0: Week 30
Our school days are Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 9:30am, when we return from dropping off Ethan at Mother’s Day Out. Each bullet point is a 5-15 minute period of time.
This is our third week creating a lapbook about butterflies from homeschoolshare.com to contain all the new things we’re learning. If you’d like to know more about what a lapbook is, please visit this post where I included helpful links that helped me learn more about this great way to present a unit study.
Monday:
- Mommy’s book club
- Errand, cleaning day
- Observe caterpillars and eggs on milkweed in backyard
Tuesday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekly schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
- Read The Butterfly Boy by Jeanne M. Lee. (Literature)
- Read My, Oh My–A Butterfly!: All About Butterflies (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Tish Rabe. (Natural History)
- Add lizards to complete the Predators mini-book.
- Read From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman. (Natural History)
- Complete the Life Span of a Butterfly mini-book
- Observe caterpillars and eggs on milkweed in backyard and add to mini-book.
- Complete Butterfly Math mini-book.
- Lunch (1hr)
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Wednesday:
- Story time at the Library (11:30 am)
- Turn in old and check out new books (12:00 pm)
- Lunch (1hr)
- Outdoor Play (1hr)
- Literature: Library Books
Thursday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekend schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
- Continued copywork of The Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti. (Handwriting)
- Glue butterflies into Butterfly Math mini-book.
- Read The Magic School Bus: Butterfly and the Bog Beast by Nancy Krulik.
- Read Watch Me Grow: Butterfly by DK Publishing.
- Put together double lapbook! (A single file folder lapbook was too small to glue ALL the mini-books we did!)
- Lunch (1hr)
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Friday:
- Nature Walk
Posted on May 19, 2009 - by
Year 0: Week 29
Our school days are Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 9:30am, when we return from dropping off Ethan at Mother’s Day Out. Each bullet point is a 5-15 minute period of time.
This is our second week creating a lapbook about butterflies from homeschoolshare.com to contain all the new things we’re learning. If you’d like to know more about what a lapbook is, please visit this post where I included helpful links that helped me learn more about this great way to present a unit study.
Just another note: Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Our family tradition for the past few years has been to plant flowers in our backyard to celebrate this day. Part of our research on plants that attract butterflies was put to good use as we shopped at our local garden shop and picked out some milkweed and zinnias to plant. Within an hour of planting the milkweed, we already had a Monarch butterfly flitting around checking it out. On Tuesday we noticed that she had actually laid eggs! We’re so looking forward to watching a butterfly’s life cycle up close and personal in our own back yard!
Monday:
- Mommy’s book club
- Errand, cleaning day
Tuesday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekly schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
- Started copywork of The Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti. (Handwriting)
- Read Butterfly Fever by Lori Haskins (Literature) a cute story about a little girl who lives in a town that Monarch butterflies migrate through. Great way to incorporate science within a fictional story.
- Add Tarsi (feet) to the Butterfly Diagram.
- Add the words larva and pupa to the Life Cycle Diagram
- Add ‘gathering in groups/bunches’ to the Defenses mini-book.
- Completed the Butterfly Diet mini-book.
- Studied the migratory map of Monarch Butterflies included in the book.
- Read Fancy Nancy Bonjour, Butterfly by Jane o’Connor (Literature)
- Lunch (1hr)
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Wednesday:
- Story time at the Library (11:30 am)
- Turn in old and check out new books (12:00 pm)
- Lunch (1hr)
- Outdoor Play (1hr)
- Literature: Library Books
Thursday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekend schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
- Kate and I noticed that there were lots of butterfly eggs on the undersides of the leaves of our newly planted milkweed. And a teeny tiny caterpillar had already hatched, too! We quickly put together the Butterfly Observations mini-book so that we could record our findings.
- Read Butterflies in the Garden by Carol Lerner. (Natural History)
- Cut out and study Butterfly Cards of the United States.
- Discuss pollination and complete the Butterflies Working mini-book.
- Read Butterflies and Moths by Nic Bishop. Beautiful photos of butterflies, moths, caterpillars, and eggs.
- Completed Moth/Butterfly Venn Diagram.
- Add birds to the Predators mini-book.
- Lunch (1hr)
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Friday:
- Nature Walk
Posted on May 18, 2009 - by
Milkweed and Butterflies
For Mother’s Day we have a tradition of planting in our garden in the back yard. The kids help pick out what we want to plant while we’re at the nursery, then enjoy digging holes in the garden to plant their favorites.
(Continue reading this article…)
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by
Year 0: Week 28
Our school days are Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 9:30am, when we return from dropping off Ethan at Mother’s Day Out. Each bullet point is a 5-15 minute period of time.
This month we are trying a new activity. We will be learning about butterflies and doing a lapbook from homeschoolshare.com to contain all the new things we’ve learned. If you’d like to know more about what a lapbook is, please visit this post where I included helpful links that helped me learn more about this great way to present a unit study.
Monday:
- Mommy’s book club
- Errand, cleaning day
Tuesday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekly schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
**Just a note: We did WAY more today than I ever would have expected us to do. But, Kate was THRILLED with all the hands-on and learning and couldn’t get enough. We probably would have done even more, but I finally got too tired to keep going!
- Wrote down the things that Kate already knew about butterflies in this mini-book (Handwriting)
- Read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (Literature)
- Completed this circle mini-book for the life cycle of a butterfly (Natural History)
- Read Becoming Butterflies by Anne Rockwell (Literature)
- Filled in caterpillar diet mini-book (Natural History)
- Also filled in one difference between butterflies and moths on this Venn diagram mini-book (Natural History and Handwriting)
- Read Springtime Addition by Jill Fuller and did the math included (Math)
- Lunch (1hr)
- MORE Butterfly Lapbook
- Read Angelina and the Butterfly by Katharine Holabird (Literature)
- Read Are You a Butterfly? by Judy Allen and Tudor Humphries (Natural History)
- Complete Caterpillar Questions Flap-book and Butterfly Diet mini-book (Natural History)
- Kate was fascinated by the butterfly in the illustrations, so we pulled out the National Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies to try to identify it. (Natural History)
- While we were in the Field Guide we saw a diagram of the different parts of a butterfly and decided to go ahead and label our diagram mini-book, too. (Natural History)
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Wednesday:
- Story time at the Library (11:30 am)
- Turn in old and check out new books (12:00 pm)
- Lunch (1hr)
- Outdoor Play (1hr)
- Literature: Library Books
- Kate and I decided to draw a large butterfly outside using sidewalk chalk. I told her that she would draw half, and I would copy her half on the other side like a mirror. She knew that is called ‘symmetry’. We had fun not only discussing symmetry, but also using the anatomical names we have learned like fore wings and hind wings, antenna, proboscis, etc. She had a blast coloring with Mommy while also reinforcing things we had already learned about butterflies.
Thursday:
- Pledge
Weather: Record temperature, outside conditions
Calendar: Write out weekend schedule - Butterfly Lapbook
- Read Bob and Otto by Robert O. Bruel. Cute story about an earthworm and a caterpillar who are friends, until one day Bob wants to climb a tree and Otto wants to dig. Great way to differentiate caterpillars from ‘worms’. (Literature)
- Read Born to be a Butterfly by Karen Wallace – an early reader about the life cycle of a butterfly. It even includes a picture glossary at the back for those ‘hard’ words like tongue and chysalis.
- Read The Butterfly by Diana Noonan (Natural History)
- Complete the mini-book on defenses based on pages 8-9.
- Watch the life cycle of a Pipevine Swallowtail.
- Read pg 25 in A Backyard Flower Garden for Kids by Amie Jane Leavitt to learn about the types of flowers attract butterflies. (Natural History)
- Also read about specific plants for attracting butterflies in Houston.
- Lunch (1hr)
- Complete the Favorite Flowers shaped mini-book.
- Independent Reading/Rest Time
Friday:
- Nature Walk
Just another note: This Sunday will be Mother’s Day. Our family tradition for the past few years has been to plant flowers in our backyard to celebrate this day. Part of our research on plants that attract butterflies will be put to good use as we shop at our local garden shop. Looking forward to planting some great flowers this weekend and then watching to see what we’re able to attract to our little garden in the back yard.
Posted on May 1, 2009 - by
Lapbooking for Dummies
Have you heard of lapbooking? While it’s a very common method of teaching lately, especially amongst homeschoolers, I’m just now dipping my toe into this gigantic ocean of possibilities.I’ve decided that I want to focus on butterflies for the month of May, and I’d love to have a lapbook as our final product for all that we’ve learned. So, now, I’m off to figure out exactly what is a lapbook? and how do we make one? and how long it will take? and what is a mini-book exactly?
So, for your learning pleasure, I’ve decided to document my researching trip into this new land of lapbooking. And, PLEASE, add your favorite sites to the comments below. I’m definitely the Dummy needing to learn LOTS more!!
Enjoy!
What is a lapbook?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lap_book
http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking
http://lapbooking.wordpress.com/lapbook/
How do you make a lapbook?
How long will it take?
http://www.squidoo.com/faq-lapbook#module9400578
What is a mini-book?
http://www.squidoo.com/minibooksWhat are some easy mini-books that I can make?
http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking#module2314521
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.phpStarting Lapbooking and what to avoid…
http://simplest.lapbook.ever.com/
