Preschool - Week 17 - The Runaway Bunny

This week we read The Runaway Bunny, a classic Margaret Wise Brown story. It's about a little bunny who dreams up ways to run away from his Mother Bunny, only to have her tell him how she would find him/get him back in each instance.

This week was extremely low key. We've read this story many times in the past. It's a great "snuggle story." It presents a good picture of how much God loves us and that we can never run away from Him.  E and I talked about this and related it to the story of Jonah trying to run away from God.  There's such a peace in knowing that He won't ever let us go. :)

But, we did not lapbook or do any "ack-tib-i-dees" (activities) this week.  I had recently found a math workbook that I wanted to start with E, so we pretty much read the story and did one math page from the book each day.  

I Can Add (Grades K - 1) (Step Ahead Golden Books Workbook) by Patricia A. Reynolds - Powell's Books

Math workbooks are a dime a dozen. However, there were a couple things that drew me to this particular workbook. One is that it teaches addition by gradually introducing the concept of a number sentence.  Two is that it comes with a lot of stickers. Some that go with specific worksheets and some that can be used as reward stickers on the other pages.  (E loves stickers!)  Three is that the pictures on the pages are in black and white so E can color them in after completing the page. For her, that is a reward in itself!

This was a good way for her to practice writing her numbers. For some of the harder ones, I let her figure out the answer and then draw a dotted outline of the number for her to trace.

As with C, I try to give her lots of encouragement and tell her often how good she is at math.  I really don't want my girls to grow up thinking math is hard or something just for boys.  So ask me in 5 years how that worked out... ;)

Recent Scrapbook Layouts

Here are some of my recent digital scrapbooking layouts I've created. I am a serial scrap-lifter, so most of these layouts are copied from magazines and online.  If I find an element I like (the metal snowflakes and bingo card, for example) it's been a fun challenge to find a way to make them myself in Photoshop Elements, rather than buy them.

Preschool - Week 16 - The Carrot Seed

After another couple weeks off (I'm taking a "laid back approach" to homeschool this year, can you tell?), we picked back up with The Carrot Seed and another lapbook.

This story is short and simple. A little boy plants a carrot seed, and despite his family's claim that "it won't come up," he persists to water and weed it. His efforts are rewarded with the biggest carrot I've ever seen!  While the story was short, it lent itself well to talking about character trait of perseverance.  Obviously, it also is a good topic for learning about seeds and how plants grow.

I introduced a new sight word, water, which we reinforced with a clothespin card:

We cut out a carrot for the front of our lapbook. Her scissor skills have really improved since the beginning of the "year."  The lapbook activities have really helped her practice that well:

I also made up a worksheet for her, based on beginning sounds of vegetables.  I would like to proudly point out that she did this whole worksheet correctly, without difficulty. And it is the SAME kind of worksheet that C brings home in her homework from public school Kindergarten... (which C also does with ease):

While reading the book, E asked a great question. Why don't we eat the tops of carrots? This led to talking about how we eat the roots of some plants and the tops of others! Here is a lapbook element I made up myself. She had to glue the vegetables above or below the soil:

I found these sequence cards on Enchanted Learning and had E put them in order of how a plant grows. Of course she wanted to color them in and turn them into a little book. :)

We added a large flap to our lapbook to accommodate this vegetable pattern folder game from homeschoolshare.com:

I finally bought some Con-tact paper, which we used to cover this little carrot book so E can practice tracing the words for "What Plants Need:"

Here is the completed lapbook. You can see one other fun element, which is just a carrot that you can pull out of a pocket: 

We planted some seeds of our own in a little $1 pot from Michaels.  We plan to water it for a while and find out - "Will it come up?"

And last, but not least, we made some delicious carrot cupcakes to celebrate the end of the week!