Workboxes are Working for Us

I wanted to drop an update on the workboxes in our homeschool. They are working for us! Here is how we have tweaked the idea for now:

Each night I fill BigGirl's boxes with her work for the next day. Today the boxes were:
1. Spelling - she had a list I jotted down and her dry erase board with markers to practice the words a few times.
2. Health/Science - a note to get mommy for a lesson on the food pyramid. PyramidPal taught her all about the things on the pyramid, we talked about food groups and details of the pyramid, and she colored and labeled her own pyramid.
3. Cursive - a dry erase book of cursive letters with a note to do all the lowercase letters.
4. Writing - today was editing day for her rhyming poems she wrote last poetry lesson. She fixed spelling and punctuation, used the dictionary to find a few words, and complained about the fact that the english language doesn't follow the rules! (The word "could" should really be spelled cood according to her).
5. Pioneers Unit Study - the book Little House in the Big Woods with a note to gather the family and pop popcorn for a snack while we read a few chapters.
6. Moving West Notebook - some worksheets/papercrafts to do related to pioneers

When our schedule has homeschool time (1 hour increments now!) she starts with the first box and works away. She can do a lot of it independently, sees what work there is to do, and likes to be "in charge" of her morning. When the hour is up we break for some fun and playtime (there are some workboxes just filled with play activities and crafts to choose from or she can go do anything she wants until the next homeschool hour.

For the next 3 younger kids I have a set of boxes filled with activities and a few worksheets that they can choose from in any order. Today AcrobatBoy and TagalongGirl each chose to do some worksheets (tracing alphabet, a number page, shapes and patterns), one of them used the balance and pattern blocks for weighing while the other made pictures with the pattern blocks, both colored, one played with some cards, both used magnifying glasses to explore the house, and you get the idea....It is WONDEFUL! They can have an activity ready when they are ready and so learning happens.

Some things in their boxes for tomorrow - sidewalk chalk, puzzles, file folder games, more worksheets, a microscope with some slides, and a note to watch a signing time dvd. BigGirl has workboxes for math, art, grammar, unit study, piano, spelling, and notebook. It will be a good day because even if I'm exhausted from another night up with a newborn my older kids can work independent of mom. I don't need too many brain cells working at once! Which is probably a good thing...

One Month Old Today

Here is a picture of my sweet one month old boy! I can hardly believe it is going so fast and *relatively* easy. Oliver is already spending some more time awake, sometimes a 3 hour stretch. You would think that means he is spending longer stretches asleep too. Nope. Not yet. We're still up 2-3 times each night, occasionally more if he saves dirty diapers for while he's sleeping. The good part of being up so much in the night is I am getting to watch a lot of movies and read a lot of books.

My Children Are Talented!

Our church primary had a talent show this past weekend for all the kids. Our family went and it was so much fun watching the neat, funny, and amazing things children could do. BigGirl, AcrobatBoy, TagalongGirl, and daddy did a skit in the show. Daddy the giant captured the princesses. The knight fought the giant, and rescued the fair maidens. They had a lot of fun.

Just a Random Post

You will have to bear with me here. This post is likely to be a bit of random thoughts about unrelated things. What can I say except I'm a bit lacking in the adult conversation area today and so I'm going to post it instead while the kids are in quiet time. I already walked on my treadmill with sweet Oliver in the Moby Wrap along for the ride.

He wasn't too impressed by my ability to walk, carry him, and read a book out loud to him at the same time. As a matter of fact he fell right to sleep. Maybe that is because I was reading a mommy book... anyway, here he is sleeping in his swing from his grandparents, which is where I put him after our walk. I don't know if you have ever seen this swing, it is by Fisher Price and is their Rainforest swing. I have a love-hate relationship with baby swings. I love them but hate that they can go through batteries at an obscene rate! Not this swing though - I asked for this specific one because it plugs into the wall!!! Talk about wonderful. I am so happy! Our last swing lasted 7 years and 4 children before the gears finally gave out. I'm hoping this one lasts just as long!

A quick homeschool update - we're enjoying being mostly on baby break still. Remember the workboxes post I did not too long ago HERE ? We're still using the boxes. For the preschoolers it is nice to have things ready when they are in the mood to do some school, which often happened right when I was in the middle of something. Now they can grab a box and go for it - no waiting on mom! They go through anywhere from 3 to 6 boxes a day. BigGirl usually ends up using close to 6. I've got to pull out some more boxes for her come April when we pick back up with our regular homeschool subjects or she's not going to have enough boxes for what she is doing. On the whole the boxes are great for me too. It is fun to fill them each evening and slip in fun notes, games, or activities that I wouldn't have thought to do spur of the moment when I'm in the middle of a busy day. My husband has even gotten in on the fun of adding a surprise task to the kids boxes or just a note from daddy.

I spent some time yesterday planning and printing a few things for next month. We're doing a short health unit on the Food Pyramid and food groups. It was an easy unit to plan thanks to these two websites:

MyPyramid.gov is the official website for the Food Pyramid. This site is packed full of information for adults and kids on nutrition. It has food trackers, meal planners, exercise guides, personalized pyramid plans, podcasts, and more. You can learn a ton here!

TeamNutrition is the USDA's site for schools, food service, and teachers. This is where I hit the jackpot for our unit. When you look under the information for educators there are lesson plans, worksheets, activities, projects, games, and more all free for the downloading and printing! I have no real work to do to prepare the unit besides read the lessons and gather materials for the ideas I want to use!

The next thing I need to work on planning is our final history/literature unit study for this school year. We're focusing on pioneers/westward expansion. Our literature will be the Little House on the Prairie books. There are free lapbooks available for all of them on www.homeschoolshare.com but we're not doing them - I know, you're shocked, aren't you? It really comes down to the fact that I'm trying to simplify what we do for the tail end of this school year with a new baby in the house. We DO need to produce some paper from this unit for our portfolio review and will be using the great reproducible book History Pockets: Moving West book by Evan-Moor. The book is technically written for 4th-6th graders, but I've read through it and BigGirl will have no trouble with it. As a matter of fact she will have a lot of fun for a minimum or effort on my part.

Another thing on my mind: our schedule! Remember how wonderful our life was pre-baby with our schedule? I'm ready to put a new one together that incorporates our new life with a newborn as well as using our workboxes too! I've begun the process of praying and playing with schedule ideas and hope to have it pinned down by midweek next week. I'm doing a total overhaul, so it should be interesting what we end up with. One thing I hope to include that was not in our previous wintertime schedule is playing outside time. Now that spring is on the horizon we're all ready to be outside.

BigGirl's Haiku Poems

I got her okay to share these. For the first one I asked her to look around the room and tell me what she saw and we went from there.


" A nail in the wall
It used to hold a map up
The map is gone now. "

Not too bad! She got the syllable count right - a major accomplishment. For the second haiku I asked her to close her eyes and tell me about something she loves.


" My cats like to sleep
They like to rub against me
I love them a lot. "

Horray! Two poems in one day! The next day our poetry box pops up we will write at least one more haiku and then try a different kind of poem, probably one with end rhyme. We'll see how that goes.

Just a Regular Day

I thought I would put up a regular day post today. We did not have any special plans. We are still in our "not really homeschooling because I just had a baby" time. So here is how the day has gone so far:

I was up a few times with Oliver overnight and finally got up to stay at 7:20am. AcrobatBoy was up then and we woke the girls but left the younger boys asleep. Everyone treked downstairs for breakfast(cereal), then got dressed for the day. I started washing the cloth diapers and turned on a Dora DVD. BabyBoy woke up and had some breakfast. By the time he was finished Oliver was awake and had a bottle.

Turned on a short Max and Ruby and a friend dropped in to visit for about 20 minutes. When she headed out everyone went to the table to do some workboxes. BigGirl learned about synonyms on her grammar worksheet, built a ballerina with linking cubes, and played with BabyBoy some. The preschoolers had letter search worksheets to color and then linking cubes for building. BabyBoy played with dominoes. Oliver napped.

Next up was snack and some free play while mommy did dishes and switched loads of laundry, then did some exercise. When that was finished BigGirl and I worked on poetry. She learned about counting syllables today and wrote two haiku (japanese poems that are 3 lines long. each line has specific syllable counts: 5, 7, 5). I'll ask her later if I can share her poems. During this time the other kids played with our big tub of Little People. And Oliver was still sleeping.

The next box for all the kids had measuring cups and today they got special jobs to help making lunch. We did lunch early(11:00am). BigGirl got to cut strawberries with a real knife (eekk!), AcrobatBoy measured chips out with measuring cups, TagalongGirl ran the microwave, and BabyBoy just played with the silverware. We ate lunch and then changed Oliver's diaper and fed him.

So why did we eat an early lunch? Because the weather is beautiful today and we wanted to be outside! The skies are blue. The temperatures are warm (mid 60s). Usually we just play in our nice fenced backyard.

Today I was feeling adventurous so I put Oliver in my Moby Wrap and the other 4 kids got to walk. We went on a nature walk looking for signs of spring. Of course with my almost 17 month old holding my hand our walk was pretty slow, but everyone had fun. We just went around the neighborhood, maybe a block or so. Some of our spring discoveries: a robin, plants peeking up out of flowerbeds, and insects creeping and flying around us! The walk ended back at our yard and we played there with balls, bats, nets, sticks, and dirt. Lots of dirt. The kids gathered what they could find and began building a house along the fence. I think they hope the turtles will like it when they come out of hibernation.... we'll see. I spent the time walking around the yard trying to get some more exercise in. (Don't laugh - I have to take what I can get at this point!)

After an hour outside I was tired; remember - I was carrying Oliver for that whole time and walking. But that brought me to one of my favorite parts of the day - Quiet Time! Inside we went and after everyone washed up I got BabyBoy down for a nap and the other big kids went to their beds to read and rest for an hour. I started typing this post and then Oliver woke up again. That brings you pretty much up to date for the day. The rest of our day will be playing together and waiting for daddy to get home from work so we can do our family things like scripture study and playing a game.

The Girls New Haircuts!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Organizing Homeschool Things

I thought I would share some of my favorite organizational things we've done for homeschool stuff. Like any family with a few kids we have lots of drawing supplies and craft supplies. I have paper in files in a filing cabinet, but didn't bother with a photo of that. What we have done for the multitudes of crayons, markers, pens, pencils, scissors, gluesticks, dry erase markers and more are use those handy zippered pencil bags. I must admit this was my brilliant husband's idea. We ahve a bag of crayons for each child, etc. Then all the bags went right into large 3 ring binders and onto a shelf. All 3 older kids know how to open the binders and get out whatever bag they need.

The next picture shows the top of our largest bookcase. We keep games we play often in a tub on top. The laminator is there too. On the top shelf you see tons of those hard pencil boxes. These hold our math manipulatives by type: pattern blocks, dominoes, counting bears, linking cubes. There are a few more games, chalk for the chalkboards, etc.

This is a shot of that same bookcase from further back. Those binders of supplies are on the 2nd shelf from the bottom on the right. The blue magazine holders on the next shelf up are the workboxes for my preschoolers. Yes, I know they are backwards! The kids turn them backwards after they finish the box so they can easily see what boxes are finished.

Ever Heard of Workboxes?

Today we tried out our workboxes. For those of you who haven't heard of them let me give a quick overview. You take your children's assignments for the day and divide them up into a set of boxes that they work through fairly independently. The great part is that you can put fun things in some of the boxes - things that you may have on hand for the kids but you usually forget to pull out. Or things that you never make time for. The kids can see the fun things in the boxes and it is motivation to do the work in the other boxes to get to that fun activity.

Now none of this was thought up by me. The official ebook is here, Sue Patrick's Workbox System. I have not read the book. I actually have only read what some other homeschool moms are doing with it. Reading their posts was enough to give me ideas to try it out. Really our homeschool works pretty well, I'm just trying out some ideas for fun. One reason I wanted to try this is it encourages my children to work independently more. Check out this post by Ami for her setup and be sure to look at the 4 links in the post to other homeschoolers who are using this system in a way that fits their family and space!

In the official system you use clear shoeboxes on a shoe rack, but we're using magazine holders. I got mine at OfficeMax in 6 packs. The perk being even if we don't use the workbox idea for long I can transfer these to my bookcases to hold books by subject and add pictures on the front so the kids can find books on topics they are interested in without searching every shelf of every bookcase. Here are BigGirl's, all that is left in this picture is the box of slides and pocket microscope in the last box.

My idea for now is to play around with these for a few weeks until we're ready to start back to full time homeschool, so a lot of the boxes will just be fun activities as we get started.

My oldest had the following boxes today:

1. a grammar worksheet

2. a file folder game where she put fruit and veggie cards in alphabetical order

3. a math worksheet with manipulatives

4. dry erase book to practice cursive - she did half the alphabet

5. tangrams with a sheet of cat puzzles to try and make

6. our pocket microscope and set of slides to explore

I suspect we'll need more boxes for her when we're into the groove.

My preschoolers had matching boxes today and after the first 3 I refilled them with another set of 3 activities that I had ready (I'm still trying to make space for their full set of 6 boxes each).

1. letter p worksheet where they traced the letter p on some pepperoni, cut them out, and glued them to a pizza they had colored

2. file folder games (colors and animal matching)

3. tangrams with a sheet of puzzles to make (these showed where to put each piece)

4. dry erase boards with #s 1-5 to trace and their name to trace, then they turned them over to draw on the other side

5. strips of construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, and card. they love cutting and gluing!

6. a phonics reader to read with mom

They finished all their boxes and were asking for more...

My thoughts on it so far:

The kids really liked being able to get things to do without waiting on mom to gather supplies. My oldest was motivated to do things she doesn't enjoy (math!) to get to the fun things in the boxes. I've printed a list of ideas for things to put in the boxes and I'll keep adding to it as I think of more.

I want to make a set of index cards with tasks written to toss in with items like math manipulatives that I brainstorm ahead and then can rotate through. For example with dominoes the tasks could be counting dots, doing math with them, playing a game of dominoes, building with the dominoes, etc. If I make up a file box of cards then I'm not having to think things up every time I grab dominoes.

I also will plan most of my boxes for the whole week each weekend and list them for the days. That way the time in the evenings is simply filling boxes, not thinking up what to put in them and trying to remember what I used the day before so I don't repeat too much. (I may even make a spreadsheet for each child to check off how often they do each type of activity so I don't get to repetitive! Yes, that is my organizational brain kicking into gear...). I'm always open to changing the planned box if they have asked for some activity in particular the day before or I see we need to work on something specific. I will try to update you as things go on. Today was definitely fun!

2 Weeks Old Today

Here are pictures of my little guy today - a whole two weeks old! He is still the easiest baby we've had and we are loving having him in our family.

Homeschooling Updates

Remember how I planned to take a month off of homeschooling the kids when I had Oliver? And then how days after having him I posted lapbooks we had just done with a newborn in the house? Yeah. My kids were a bit unhappy with the idea of dropping all homeschooling for a month. To satisfy them we have continued to do some homeschool activities, though not what we usually do.

BigGirl has been doing worksheets. Grammar and math worksheets. Really, it is a perfect time to do them as it is getting them done and out of the way when there is nothing else to focus on. I printed up a set a while back that I hoped we would finish by the end of the school year for her portfolio review. The grammar ones she really "gets". They make sense to her. Which is funny to me. I didn't expect my 2nd grader to like learning about nouns, verbs, subjects, predicates, etc! The worksheets are pretty handy as they usually have a box at the top explaining the new concept (like what the difference is between a simple predicate and a complete predicate). It's been really helpful as I'm a bit rusty on my grammar stuff. I got the worksheets HERE . They also have worksheets for other things, including some math ones we've printed to try out.

Remember math? That nightmare that was our life with addition facts? We took a break from the math curriculum we were using and have moved on to learning about math topics instead. I'm giving her brain time to process those math facts while we study things like fractions, place value, graphing, geometry, roman numerals, money, story problems, and time. Of course the math facts are snuck in there. And she's getting better at them without realizing what she's doing. Horray!

Other than that BigGirl has done some drawing with her Draw Write Now books, the most recent of which was a drawing of a platypus. She is also reading reading reading. She just finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in a week. Really. She started reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets yesterday. I offered her other books, but that was what she wanted to read. Which reminds me of a funny conversation I had the other day with a family member whose daughter goes to public school. This girl is just a few years older than my daughter. She's a great reader, but has been frustrated with her school's rules. She is required to read so many books per year. The problem comes in when the books she is allowed to "count" toward her total have to be on the school's accepted booklist for her age and reading level. Seriously - they tell her that some books (think big chapter books like the Harry Potter series) don't count! No, she has to read simpler, shorter books. I was shocked. Who in their right mind would tell a child that they need to read easier books? I understand editing what they can read because of inappropriate content, but just because it is above her reading group level/grade level? Hello? Not to mention requiring her to read so many books that she doesn't enjoy reading anymore and doesn't have time to read for fun! I am yet again so glad we homeschool. Not only because my children can read whatever books they want just for fun, but because the opposite is also true. My children can NOT read books too. Whether that is because they just don't want to read a ton of books or because they aren't reading for pleasure yet because reading isn't something that comes easily to them. No wonder the public schools have issues. Either they force kids to read before they are ready or they stifle kids reading lists who are ready to read bigger books. Either way what you get is a generation of non-readers due to frustration. What a broken system.


Sorry. I got off on a tangent there... anyway, the other kids have been doing worksheets for homeschool too and enjoying it. TagalongGirl and AcrobatBoy both are doing multiple worksheets a day. That isn't so unusual for TagalongGirl. She's liked worksheets for a long time. But for AcrobatBoy it is a major shift! He's even begun asking for paper to draw. This is the child who lives up to his nickname of AcrobatBoy, the boy who doesn't sit still unless he's sick or tied to the chair! It is amazing to watch my 4 year old boy growing into a boy instead of a little ball of energy.

Today the kids all got to do some file folder games. That is something new for us. I made a few up from free files online (www.filefolderfun.com). They all had fun with them. I am working on getting things ready for something new in our homeschool. We're going to try a new way to handle our work, called workboxes. I'll post about it later when I have things up and running, but it involves helping the kids have more independent work and fun stuff to go through each day. It will mean revising our schedule, but we need to do that anyway with a new baby here.

BabyBoy has been playing with measuring cups for homeschool. Today it was measuring cups and counting bears. He's still not figured out how to pour them from cup to cup, but he likes picking them up and putting them in a cup then dumping that cup out and starting all over.

The other thing my 3 older children have been doing over and over and over are writing plays, practicing them upstairs, dressing up, and then coming down to perform them for me. They have been in 4 themes so far: Harry Potter related, princesses rescued by a knight, Cinderella and the fairy godmother, and people during the American Revolution from the American Girl books about Felicity. It's very fun to watch the theatrical side to my children. They are quite adorable, if I say so myself!

Cloth Diapers on Oliver

As many of you know we love cloth diapers at my house! We've used them for all the kids but BigGirl. For a very long time we simply used the basic prefolds with a snappi fastener and a cover. Easy and inexpensive to cloth diaper several at once. (We have had 3 in diapers at the same time - I can't imagine affording disposables for them all!) During my pregnancy with Oliver we were given a new kind of cloth diaper from friends who decided not to use them. They are called BumGenuis One Size Diapers. Basically they have snaps to adjust the size for newborns clear up to toddlers. Literally, they will fit my 3yo TagalongGirl, they work great on BabyBoy who is 16 mos, and I was hopeful they would really work for Oliver too. We were able to buy some more at a nice discount so we have enough to diaper our two youngest.

We didn't use the cloth diapers on Oliver right away. We wanted to let his umbilical cord fall off and hopefully let those early tar poops go into some disposables. So we have about a pack of disposables left. Last night I put Oliver into cloth for bedtime. Why? Because the night before Oliver peed through his disposable diapers 5 TIMES !!! He soaked his clothes, his blankets, his sheets. Which meant in the middle of the night I had to change everything. Over and over. Not fun.

Now stop laughing! That's not nice! Since I have used disposable diapers before I know it wasn't user error. Oliver just happens to pee a lot, and being a boy he can "aim" to the side where there isn't as much absorbancy in a disposable diaper.

The VERDICT:

I love my cloth diapers!

Not a single leak last night. And Oliver slept better because he was more comfortable in the cloth diapers. Horray! I might finish off the disposable diapers during the daytime, but if not then I'll just pass them on to one of the pregnant women I know.

I Love My Moby Wrap!

I don't know how many of you have used a sling or baby carrier of some sort before. I have used several over the years and babies. Some of my kids liked them, some hated them, and none were comfortable for an extended time. I've used them with new babies and they never seemed comfy for the baby. I've used them with 1 and 2 year olds and the kids liked it but it killed my back if I wore them for too long.

During this pregnancy I began looking for a new baby carrier that would be more comfortable for me to wear because I knew I wanted to have my baby with me but still have my hands free to play with my older children, cook, clean, and homeschool. One Sunday at church my husband saw a sister wearing her baby in some crazy wrap thing. "You've got to see it - it looks like something you would like hon!" he told me. I got to see it, see how to put it on, and learned what it was called (Thanks Erin!). And I fell in love with the Moby Wrap. Head over heels, love at first sight. You can see them here .

What I loved was this wrap spreads the baby's weight out over your whole back. No more one shoulder carrier or awkward front pack carrier. It was simple cotton, washable, breathable, and versatile. Online here you can download the book of instructions for 12 different ways to wear your baby in the wrap. These range from holds for newborns to toddlers, single babies to twins, forward facing, facing mom, on the hip, as a backpack with toddlers, and more. The instructions are PHOTOGRAPHS of each step and made it so easy to figure out.

Thus began my search for a Moby Wrap on Craigslist or eBay. I had a few colors in mind that I would prefer, but I was pretty open. I found a brand new Moby in the sienna color (my favorite!) and it arrived by Christmas. Despite the fact that I was very pregnant(huge) I tried it on with my 1 year old. It was great. Then I packed it away for Oliver's arrival. I've used it a few times already, including walking on my treadmill, playing outside with the rest of the family in the backyard, and just around the house. I'm wearing Oliver as I type this post because he fell asleep in it when I exercised. Life is good! Here are two pictures from earlier this morning that my oldest took for me:

And because we had the camera out here are pictures of the other kids too:

We're not even 2 weeks old yet!

A few more days have passed and we've been too busy to post any pictures. Life with 5 children has really been different than I expected. If you know me well at all you know that while I love being a mommy, I don't love babies! I'm being honest. Newborns are exhausting and the rewards seem few and far between. Combine that with the fact that with each baby I've had more of a struggle with depression in those first few months. I've never had depression issues before, but that hormonal roller coaster of the first 4 months or so after having a baby has gotten harder with each one. I was really worried about going through that again.

The older the kids get the more I enjoy them. The whole newborn stage is only beat out for worst time with kids by the pregnancy itself! I do not enjoy being pregnant or the whole first several months with a newborn.

I suppose that sounds funny to some of you, especially as you read my blog that I have just had baby #5 and I would love to have several more children.

This time around Heavenly Father has blessed us SO much. Life with Oliver has been wonderful. I am actually loving every day of it. My husband has even mentioned how great it was to be home with us for that first week and that it seems easier having our 5th child than any of the first 4! Like many daddies he loves his family, but being home 24/7 for days on end usually makes him very excited to go BACK to work! Not this time though. Oliver is easy. He only fusses if he is hungry or needs a diaper change. That is it.

Oliver is still awake a bit more than I would like at night, but hey - I haven't had a single night in the last 7 1/2 years where I slept without being woken at least once by a child. Really. Not even once since my oldest was born have we had ALL the kids sleep through the night at the same time.

I was able to look at my husband quite honestly this weekend and say I would love to have another baby! (Can you blame me? He's just adorable!)And my husband felt the same way. That never happens this soon after having a baby. Now don't get me wrong, I really hope to have enough time between pregnancies to lose this baby weight and get into shape again. But I am already looking forward to adding to our family. Which I think will be a great motivator to keeping up regularly with eating healthy and exercising. And that is a good thing!

Really quickly I wanted to share one of the sweet things we have seen happen this week. Our no-longer-the-baby-of-the-family BabyBoy has found his favorite time to be with his new brother:

Any time you lay Oliver down on a blanket, be it for a diaper change or just to lay on the floor for a bit his big brother comes over and lays down with him on the blanket! Isn't that cute? For some reason this is BabyBoy's favorite way to be with Oliver. (notice Oliver's unhappy face in that picture? it was one of the rare times he was fussing - it was time to eat!)

Oh, and here is a closer look at BabyBoy's haircut - I buzzed it a few days ago. He looks so much like AcrobatBoy now.

Oliver is 1 Week Old Today

One week old today! So far I am a fairly easy baby, only fussy when I am hungry or need a diaper change. My family loves me very much!

Platypus Lapbook

Here it is, the platypus lapbook BigGirl finished up today! You can find it on HomeschoolShare HERE . She had a lot of fun and the whole family learned about these amazing creatures. We even hopped online and watched video of real live platypus swimming.

Cars and Dora Lapbooks

I really did plan to take a break from homeschooling the kids after having the baby. The kids had other plans however. We've been doing grammar and math, scriptures, music, and reading! All at the kids' request...

Well, the other request was to do a lapbook. Of course. So yesterday AcrobatBoy did this preschool lapbook with a Cars theme. He loves the movie Cars and I found this free here . If you check out the link it is a list of what the creator Carissa calls "Tot-Books", little lapbooks for little tots. They are great fun!

Of course TagalongGirl wanted one, but she wanted it to be Dora. No, there isn't a Dora one. So I made it and based it off the Cars one so I didn't have to be too creative.

BigGirl decided to do a lapbook on the Platypus. She wanted to do an animal and I gave her a list from HomeschoolShare to choose from. She's still got two pieces to finish today so I won't put her pictures up in this post, but they are coming soon.

Charlotte's Web Lapbooks

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of the kids' notebooks/lapbooks from our Charlotte's Web unit. First up are the preschoolers. They did things about pigs and spiders mostly, with a few things specific to the story. We got a lot of the pieces from Homeschool Share in the pig lapbook and the itsy bitsy spider lapbook. The first two pictures are Emma and then Joseph's pig page:Next you can see inside some of the minibooks in this picture:
Now here are the spider pages:

Many of Makayla's pieces came from the Charlotte and Wilbur Project Pack I purchased from Hands of a Child. You will also recognize a few pig and spider pieces from the HomeschoolShare stuff in the preschool pictures above.

This first page has facts about the book Charlotte's Web like when it was written, how many chapters it has, the name of the author and illustrator, other books written by E.B. White, a timeline of the author's life, and a little about pigs.

The pig pages have information about what pigs eat, piglets, how farmers care for pigs, things that are made from pigs, and a minibook on the advice the animals on the farm gave to Wilbur when he escaped from his pigpen:

On these two pages are minibooks about spider facts, spider webs, why Wilbur couldn't spin a web when he tried, the words Charlotte wove into her webs, and Wilbur versus ordinary pigs:

These two pictures show minibooks covering the award Wilbur won, Templeton the rat, spider life cycles, Charlotte's egg sac, ways to be a good friend, and two coloring pictures:

She also took the challenge to write a summary for each chapter in the book. There were 22 chapters! So the last several pictures are those summaries, which we glued into the notebook.

In case you were wondering, we got these nice blank spiral bound books from Bare Books. They sell a lot of neat blank books, gameboards, and more that come in many sizes. They even have blank board books! We got these notebooks knowing we would not fill them with one unit. Instead the kids will now be making a collection of their lapbooks in these. They are having a lot of fun.