Today marks the beginning of Lent! I've actually been really excited to start this season, which has been the case more and more each year. The reason for this is that every year my kids get older, their understanding increases, and they are more fully able to participate! It's really wonderful to be able to celebrate Lent as a family with mostly understanding persons (as opposed to celebrating Lent as a family of mom & dad with a couple of toddlers who don't know the difference between wearing diapers and wearing underwear!).

We started the day with our usual morning prayers/offerings. But we added a few more things into our religion. We started our Lenten learning with "The Reading of the Strips"...or at least that's what one of the kids yelled out when I told them to gather around the table so that I can read all the Lenten Deed tickets to them. "Guys!!!! Mom's gonna do the reading of the strips!!!"

Now our Lenten Deed jar is full and the kids are all itching to see what deed they get to work on for the week. "Can we switch tickets if we don't like what we get?" NO!!!

Another fun addition to our day today was the beginning of our Lent Lapbook from Lapbooks for Catholics. We worked on the cover and the kids were coloring and cutting while I read to them the history of Lent and asked them questions. We'll be working on the lapbook for another week or so and then I'm planning on taking it out during our religion time to review from it.




Of course, Isabella will be working on 2 different faith lapbooks. This past Sunday, she had her Sacramental Prep class and they went over the things we see in church. This was perfect since she is currently working on "The Things We See in Church" lapbook from Lapbooks for Catholics. It's so much fun to be able to do all these fun and educational things with the kids!




But what about the littlest members of our Catholic crew? Well, lets just say that they have plenty on their minds to keep them busy. Ummm....yea. That's little Jimmy with a box on his head. He was pretty adamant about putting it on and walking around. The kids and I got a good laugh from it!



And let's not forget about our little school room altar. Our Father Nick just got a change of vestments to go with the season! And you'll notice that we have yet to change the color of our tablecloth. I know I put that purple "altar cloth" somewhere!!

St. Patrick.

Saint Patrick's Day is coming up next week and I thought I'd post some links to some activities, lapbooks, and coloring pages in case anyone wants to spend the weekend doing something fun with the kids.

We are constantly in cleaning mode around here; having your house ready to show is lots of work, but I'm thankful that we've decluttered enough to make cleaning up easier. With all the packing, however, we are missing TONS of our usual school supplies. We are working with basics around here...paper, pencils, a box of crayons, a few markers, and some glue sticks. So although I'm hoping to make some fun stuff with the kids, I'm not sure exactly how much we'll be able to do!

On to the link!! If you have yet to make a lapbook, why not start with a St. Patrick's day lapbook?!? Below are links to some FREE lapbooks.

• Saint Patrick's Day lapbook from Homeschool Helper.

• St. Patrick's Day lapbook with pictures.

• St. Patrick's Day lapbook with pictures from Homeschool Share (this one is more for leprechauns from the looks of it.

Not wanting to try a lapook this time around? Here are some more links to other activities.

• Free from CurrClick, Shamrocks and Shillelaghs.
• St. Patrick's Day unit study at Homeschool Share.
• St. Patrick's Day notecards from Paper Dali.
• St. Patrick coloring page from Paper Dali.
• Free St. Patrick notebooking pages from NotebookingPages.com.

*Please note that I have not gone through these pages in detail.

I'll be using some of these sites and reading some books over the weekend all about Saint Patrick. I'll post about that later!!

Multiplication Lapbook. Update!

Well, we've been slowly working on our math lapbook and still have some math facts to go. But I thought I'd post how far we are along so you can see what we've been up to. Eventually, we'll have a fully finished product.

You can find many of these folds here. Just print them out and fill in what you want!! Lapbooking is as easy or complicated as you want it to be!!





Here is a brief explanation of what folds I used for each times table. You can click on some of the description and it will take you to that particular fold on Homeschool Helper.

2 times table: petal fold
5 times table: 10 section wheel or circle petal (created this through Word)
6 times table: layered book
7 times table: flashcards held in an envelope
4 times table: flap book (created this through Word)
3 times table: flap book
10 times table: fan fold (or accordion fold)

As you can tell, we are missing the multiplication tables for 1, 8, and 9. No rush here!! This lapbook will probably be around for a long while!!

Multiplication Math Lapbooking.

We have always done Saxon for our math studies. It is straightforward for me to teach, the kids don't hate it, and I think it is a wonderfully strong program. But at times, math can get a little boring for both teacher and student. My solution to mixing things up? Lapbooks!!

Marco is working on his multiplication...I won't say what lesson we are for fear of embarrassment, but things are going fairly well. We just need a little push; something different to make it fun. So I searched high and low for a quick lapbook and found some really great sites!

We will use a combination of these different sites, just to make this multiplication lapbook our own. Hope you find the following links useful. We'll be spending the rest of the afternoon cutting, pasting, learning, and reviewing our multiplication tables. Pictures will follow!!

PDF of a mulitiplication lapbook (and links to other lapbooks as well)
Multiplication File Folder Games (good for lapbooks too!)
A good visual of a multiplication lapbook from blogger Dishpan Dribble.
Another visual from Dots and Daisies.
Multiplication Facts Game Lapbook (for a more game oriented lapbook)

Valentines.

Today we took a day off from our regularly scheduled school work to do some fun school. Monday's are typically our co-op days, but with all the snow outside, co-op was cancelled and we were given a whole day to fill up with enrichment activities.

CurrClick has a great lapbook all about Valentines Day that we are working on for this week. And at only $4.00 for the download, it's a great value!! The lapbook is geared towards 2nd through 6th grade; but with some minor adjustments, I'm making it work for our preschooler and kindergartner as well as for 2nd grade Marco.

It's hard to think ahead sometimes and plan fun things to do, especially when you are busy packing for a possible move! But I'm trying really hard to keep things fun around here! Luckily, there are plenty of websites to visit and get holiday crafts and things to do.

For our lapbook we studied the history of Valentine's Day, as well as how it was celebrated during the Middle Ages. Anthony wasn't able to follow along with the more in-depth questions I made the older children answer, but he was still involved with some preschool valentine activities. Enchanted Learning has some great valentine activity books you can print out. We used this activity book from them and glued it to the inside of his lapbook. He also practiced writing letters and did some coloring.

Here are some additional websites that I love and can always find things for not only my preschooler, but for Marco and Isabella as well. Some of them do require a subscription, but I find that they are well worth it!

www.abcteach.com
www.enchantedlearning.com
www.teacherfilebox.com
www.dltk-kids.com
www.first-school.ws

Getting our mini-books ready for the lapbook.

Marco having fun with his work.

Isabella gluing stuff down.

Anthony working on his own preschool version.

Holy Week.

This week we are wrapping up our Lent Lapbook study. Actually, we are doing most of the work for the lapbook this week (the actual putting together of it). Last night, we made our Holy Week book and it was incredibly moving. Today we'll be finishing off our Stations of the Cross and reading some stories about the miracles of Jesus.

In the end, our lapbook is going to very simple. I didn't dedicate as much time to it as I would have liked, but the kids still learned in a fun way.

Here are a couple of links that we used during Lent.

• For our Holy Week book, we went here and printed out the story of Holy Week.
• Catholic Mom offered lots of our activities including Mosaic Crosses, Stations of the Cross, and prayers.
• There are some coloring pages at this website, which I used during our reading times.

If you want to spend the rest of Holy Week making your own Lenten Lapbook, you can visit my old post for ideas on what to include.

Planning a Lent Lapbook.

Ash Wednesday is fast approaching and I'm still wanting to do a Lent lapbook with the kids. I have made a list of what I'm thinking of putting in it; and with the help of Dinah Zike's Big Book of Books and Activities, I'm also listing what paper fold I'm planning on using (this is the over-planner in me!). I might add some things as we get into Lent and I might take some things away. But for the most part, I feel like I have enough to start off with.

Lenten Lapbook

• What Is Lent? (hamburger fold)
• Why Do We Celebrate Lent? (hamburger fold)
• Mini Stations of the Cross booklet
• Prayers (booklet)
• Saints and Feast days. (envelope fold)
• Examining Our Conscience (hamburger fold)
  
• The 10 Commandments (layered look book)
• Ways We Help Others (layered look book)
• Corporal Acts of Mercy?? (layered look book)

Some activities that I have planned include the following:

• Decorating a family altar
• Make a crayon stained glass cross
• Stations of the Cross
• Make a banner
• Make an alms box or jar
• Lenten Cross

There is so much to do during Lent and I don't want to overwhelm the kids with any project or activity. This is just a brainstorm list I have gathered from my Lent books and resources. Now that the kids are getting older, I know that they are able to grasp so much more than when they were younger. I'm hoping that this is a starting point for us and I'll be busy preparing for our Lenten journey as a family. I'll make sure to post things as we complete them, along with resources.

Back on Track.

We did get to finish our Harvest lapbook this week. Although the kids did not decorate the front or back of the lapbook, they had a great time doing the activities and helping with the pasting and taping of the lapbook. Here is a picture.

The Harvest lapbooks look plain, but the activities were fun!!

We also have started reading our Thanksgiving books and they are all a big hit around here. Anthony is loving his BFIAR selection of The Little Rabbit. Color matching is always fun for him and he is getting faster at naming colors. This week we did color matching using Lauri's Sorting Set. Unfortunately, I didn't get to take him to the pet store today to look at the rabbits, but maybe over the weekend we can take a quick trip. As for tomorrow, Anthony will be finishing the week with animal classification.

Anthony loves Lauri's Sorting Set.

Since I did have some catching up to do with Marco, Isabella enjoyed some extra time with our centers today. She worked on two reading centers: word families and matching words. Sometimes I forget that I have these really cool centers to use for crunch time. I'm glad that I didn't forget today!

Matching letters and words.

Working with word families.

Planning for the Week.

We are still working on putting together our Harvest Festival lapbook. The components are all done, it's just a matter of gluing and taping them into the actual folder. We'll probably tackle the project first thing in the morning, take a snap shot, and post the finish product here!

This week we'll continue as scheduled with our Turkey Time lapbook. We'll also be hopping back on with BFIAR with Anthony (scroll down to see activities we have planned). Since we have family coming in next week for Thanksgiving, we are going to try to do as much of our lessons as possible. Even with the best intentions, we always slack off when we have visitors.

Turkey Time can be purchased through Hands of a Child. We will be using the following books to accompany the Thanksgiving theme activities, as well as taking us into next week with fun reading.

Thanksgiving Is...by Louise Borden. This is a Hello Reader Level 3 book and a simple way to introduce what Thanksgiving is. It's a great book to get your child to practice new words, but it isn't complicated so that they get frustrated.

Thanksgiving is Here, by Diane Goode.

The Thanksgiving Door by Debby Atwell. I love that this book is about an immigrant family and how they celebrate Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day at Our House, by Nancy White Carlstrom. This is a book with Thanksgiving poems and cute illustrations. Isabella loves poetry and this book was perfect for her! Although Marco and Anthony aren't the best at reciting, they enjoy the illustrations and making up stories to go along with them.

Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks, by Margaret Sutherland. Such a simple way to introduce the concept of being thankful and for all the things we can be thankful for. Great for little kids.

Round the Turkey, A Grateful Thanksgiving, by Leslie Kimmelman. This is a really sweet book set in rhyme, which the kids love. As a family gathers, they all take turns saying what they are grateful for.

Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation, by Diane Stanley. This is like a children's history book for Thanksgiving. It can be a little long for the younger crowd, but Marco really enjoyed it.

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie. We'll be revisiting this funny book. It's been a favorite read aloud around here this past week.

Praise and Thanksgiving Coloring Book. This Saint Joseph coloring book is a perfect reminder that in the center of all gatherings and holidays, is our Lord.

Anthony will be joining us for some of the Turkey Time lapbook activities, but he'll also keep busy with his own BFIAR work. We'll be reading The Little Rabbit this week. Our activities will include our animal classification, color matching, and visiting the pet shop down the road to look at the rabbits. Although it doesn't seem like much, I don't want to overwhelm him with things to do since there will be plenty of activities to do with the older kids. If anything, I might print out some rabbit coloring pages for him.

Planning November.

November is like a stepping stone to Christmas. It's the time of year that everyone starts to rev their engines and get ready for Advent. There are a million things to do before, during, and after the Christmas season. For now, I decided to focus on this month. The beautiful autumn leaves, the changes in weather, and Thanksgiving. November really is a wonderful month and one of my favorites!

I took out some fun activities that I wasn't able to do last year. Turkey Time by Hands of a Child is a fun lapbooking activity that I've been waiting to do for the past couple of months. It is meant to be finished over the course of a week and provides some fun activities and crafts for not only Isabella and Marco, but for Anthony as well. Another lapbook project I have by Hands of a Child is Harvest Festival. It is along the same lines as Turkey Time, but has more of an autumn theme to it. I'll be starting on Harvest Festival next week and doing Turkey Time the week after that (which is the week before Thanksgiving).

Not only that, but I have taken out all our Thanksgiving and autumn books for the kids to read and look through. I also have printed out some fun November-themed crafts and activities for the kids to do on their down time. It seems like we have very little down time lately, but doing crafty projects is something that is always welcome around here. I really want to make use of some of my fun educational memberships. Here are my favorites that have turned out to be well worth the small fee.

ABC Teach : This website has loads of free worksheets. With a paid subscription, however, you get so much more!
Teacher File Box: If you have ever used any Evan-Moor books or materials, you will love this website!! Absolutely my favorite and has paid for itself time and time again!
Discovery Education Streaming : This is on the pricier side, but so worth it! Great videos to go with everything and every grade!! You can even sign up for a 30 day free trial!

I'm planning on posting pictures of what we accomplish as we go.

Saints Day Party, Saints Alive, and School. Too Busy!

Today was stressful, busy, and fun! We celebrated All Saints Day at co-op as well as with our Faith Formation at church. The kids had tons of fun, but I'm exhausted. Besides waking up and not finding Anthony's St. Francis costume, forgetting some costume accessories, leaving everyone's lunch in the refrigerator, having four kids complain about breakfast, and being late to co-op...it was a good morning! We prayed the Litany of the Saints before leaving home and it really helped lighten my mood like nothing else could.

The Saints Day party at co-op was fun for the kids. Besides being the end of my geography unit, we celebrated by singing "Siyahamba." All the kids did excellent! There was also lots of games, tons of candy, and all the kids got to introduce what saint they were dressed as. I did take off early, however, because I accidentally forgot our lunch and the kids were starving! By the time we got home, Anthony and Christian were asleep.

Isabella dressed as St. Therese of the Little Flower.

The kids starting to get ready for a group picture.

Anthony actually borrowed Christian's costume so that he could be in the picture.

Marco reading the clues to have everyone guess who is dressed as...it's St. Joseph!

Of course, I must have an endless amount of energy today because as soon as we got home and I put the little ones to nap, I made Marco finish his phonics and math lessons. It wasn't too long after we finished with school that Anthony and Christian woke up and joined us downstairs.

DH was home today so I definitely took advantage and made him entertain Christian while I moved on to doing school with Anthony and Isabella. We are still reading Yellow Ball this week and we actually did a lapbook! It was really simple and I let the kids do all the cutting and gluing. They had a great time and Anthony LOVES his lapbook! It is our first together and I'm looking forward to incorporating them into our future BFIAR activities.

Isabella working on the lapbook.

Anthony cutting out a book for the lapbook while Christian smiles for the camera!

The finished product! We also got to play with a yellow ball today!

So, I bet you are thinking that this is the end of my day??? Do you think I'm kidding about all we did today??? (Pssst....check the dates on the pictures. They are all the same!) No Way! We quickly cleaned our school mess, ate dinner, and took off for the Saints Alive party at church.

It was fun!! I decided to get out an old costume for Anthony so that Christian could wear his own and Anthony wouldn't feel left out. Christian definitely stole the show! He did so well dressed as Pope John Paul the Great and he even left his hat on!!! The kids got to announce their saint, march in a parade, and they even got a necklace with a medal of the Holy Family on it (that's the name of our church...and our homeschool!). So I guess I saved the best pictures for last!

We arrived with the Pope on the Pope-Mobile!

Christian makes a cute Pope John Paul the Great!

My four little saints!

Christian happy in his costume!

One proud and tired mom with her saintly bunch.

And that concludes my day. Days like this are made of gold and never forgotten!

Summer Olympics 2008.

I was watching a segment on TV about the summer Olympics, when Marco asked me, "What are the Olympics?" I tried to explain to him the basic concept and he kind of nodded and went on his way. I've been thinking about it and I've made the decision to do a little unit study on the Olympics. After all, they represent a unification of all cultures through sport. And even though the are underway, we'll learn as we watch our favorites on TV. It'll be way cool!

After doing a bit of research, I came up with the following websites that offer some fun and educational Olympic activities. It is always a challenge to find something that is appropriate for the lower grammar levels. I'm planning on picking and choosing from these different sites to make my own study. Perhaps we'll wrap it all up by making a lapbook and hosting our version of the Olympic games using activities suggested from first-school.

2008 Summer Olympic Games: offers printables on individual sports.
The Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympics: super cute and perfect to decorate a lapbook!
Learning Page: offers some nice worksheet with the Olympic theme.
Summer Olympics 2008 Unit Study: this is a free unit study with lapbook templates and activities correlating to several subjects.
The Olympics Games: a great resource from Enchanted Learning. Offers everything from flags, history, activities, and crafts.
Discovery Education Streaming: this is a great resource and I plan on using it to watch some video segments with the kids.

There are plenty more sites out there, but I always get overwhelmed with the multitude of websites to visit. I don't want to inundate anyone so I'm keeping it nice and simple. We'll start our unit on Monday and I'll be spending the weekend getting ready for it.

My main objectives for the unit will be:

• What are the Olympics?
• Why do we have them?
• How are they important?
• What is the history behind them (brief)?
• What sports are played?

I really don't want to get sidetracked into the study of China, so I'm keeping that to a minimum (we don't have that much time!). We'll also be taking a field trip to the library and seeing what Olympic books are available. With this being all last minute, I don't expect to find the greatest selection.

Lapbooking and Notebooking.

I have had a great time creating lapbooks with the kids this past year. Now that 1st grade is upon us, we'll be adding to our lapbooking by starting with notebooking. Don't know what either one of these things are? Here's the scoop!

Lapbooking: "an inexpensive portfolio or collection of mini-books, flaps, and folded display material, that provides interactive space for drawings, stories, graphs, graphics, time lines, diagrams, and written work, from any topic, unit study, book you choose, gathered, glued, and creatively displayed in a coloured standard sized cardboard folder, often folded in a “shutter-fold”..., that fits in your lap." http://lapbooking.wordpress.com/1-whatis/

Lapbooking is great in that you can do it with a 2 year old or a 17 year old. The difficulty of the project is up to you! Our best use of lapbooks come when we are doing unit studies. It's a handy little way to wrap up all the stuff your kids learned into one handy area. It's also easy to save since they don't take up a lot of space.

If you are just getting started, I highly recommend Dina Zike's "Big Book of Books." Here, you can learn all kinds of folds to include in your lapbook. Another great book is "The Ultimate Lap Book Handbook." This one also teaches you the folds and includes some lapbooks you can do. They make great reference books if you plan on using lapbooks as part of your curriculum.

If you are interested in getting more detailed information, free resources, free lapbooks, samples of lapbooks, and just about anything related to lapbooks...here are some websites that I often visit when I start planning a new lapbook.

Lapbooking on Squidoo
Homeschool Helper (free lapbooks!)
Lapbooking 101 (great resource)
Lapbook info on Jamin's blog (another great resource!)
Lapbook Lessons (Lots of links, how-to's, and info)


Notebooking: this is probably self-explanatory. It is, basically, creating a notebook and falls along the lines of scrapbooking. Notebooking can be as simple as you want it to be with information being put into 3-ring binders. These notebooks can be made per subject and include maps, reports, narrations, science experiments, project results, drawings, worksheet pages, timelines, and just about anything else that is considered relevant work by the student.

Notebook is probably the easiest way to gather your child's work and notebooking pages are among the easiest to create on your computer (and find for free on the Internet!). If you are a scrapbooker, you'll find that creating an elaborate notebook is as enjoyable as putting together a scapbook page. Notebooking, much like lapbooking, can also be done with a preschooler or a high schooler. The older the child, the more their involvement in creating pages for their notebook.

Since we are embarking on a classical homeschooling journey, narrations and nature studies will be a large part of what we do. Notebooking is going to be the method of choice for collecting our work. Each subject will receive it's own notebook and the complexity of how they are put together will depend on how we are feeling at the time. The great thing is that you can always come back to alter your notebook at the end of a unit or chapter. It's a great way to review!

Still want more info? Here are some great sites that I've been visiting lately to get me ready for a new year.

The Homeschool Mom (great info and links!)
Notebooking A-Z
Free Notebook Pages and Printables
Notebooking on Squidoo (we love Squidoo!)
Free Notebooking Pages on Homeschool Helper

I hope the links I provided are enough to get you started on your journey into lapbooking and notebooking. They are both wonderful tools to add to your homeschool!