Hot off the Press...

My first printed digital scrapbook pages arrived in the mail today! I have been so curious to see how they would look on paper.  They are even better than I hoped for!!! I am SUPER excited and this just confirms that I will be doing most of my scrapbooking this way.

I ordered one-sided 12x12 prints from VioVio.com.  It was a little confusing to figure out how to order loose prints. You need to create a 12x12 photo book with at least 10 pages, then choose the loose page option at the end.  I think I chose "photo paper" as the paper type.  They are beautiful - not think like a standard photo, but more like a poster. The total with shipping was $14.47, so they were about $1.45 a page. Not too bad. I'm not sure if they ever have a sale? The shipping was $5.02 and it took almost two weeks to arrive.

When I created my pages, I didn't really think about the edges of them and whether things would get "cut off" when printed.  C's birthday pages are the only ones where this is evident, but it's not really that noticeable. In the future, I will need to make sure I keep that outer margin free of necessary elements.

Digital page:

Printed page:

They fit perfectly into my 12x12 drop-in album and I can't wait to order some more! :)  It's a good day.

A Green Thumb

In the past, we've done a "garden" with marginal success. I never kept up with the weeding and watering and it seemed like half of the plants never turned out well, anyway.

This year, I am determined to make it a success. I've been reading up on vegetable gardening and hitting up my gardener friends for advice.  I have big plans to create a new raised bed in a prime location in the yard and fill it with a ton of vegetables and herbs.  Doug is skeptical about the whole thing, but I really want to put my best efforts into this.

Part One of my grand plan is to start some seeds indoors. I have three varieties of lettuce, green onion and tomatoes going.  I have been told that tomatoes are very difficult to have success from seed, but it's worth a try!

March 19, 2011

So far I have some sprouts!  I'll try to keep track of my progress (or lack thereof) on the blog so I can remember what I did right/wrong for next year. Any advice is welcome! Wish me luck...

March 25, 2011

Preschool - Week 19 - I Am An Artist

This week we read "I am an Artist."  It is a story about seeing beauty in nature that is often overlooked. How to look at our world through an artist's eyes.  The illustrations are lovely and we enjoyed noting the details in each page.  This book lends itself well to discussing the five senses.  We also talked about how God is creative - the ultimate artist.  By observing the beauty in our world, we can learn more about that aspect of God and thank Him for creating such an amazing world for us to live in!

This was a low-key week, activity-wise. We continued with a page from our math workbook each day.  One day we made a nature-hunt wheel from homeschoolshare.com:

The idea was to take an actual nature walk and look for the things on the wheel. However, mud, cold and wind prevented us from doing this. :( She had fun making the wheel, anywho! And we can use it next time we have a nice day and get out.

The girls took a class from our local Parks and Rec called, "Come to Your Senses."  Very timely to go along with our BFIAR book...  They did a fun activity for each of the five senses:

1. Touch - the kids each got a "touchy board" to take home, which has many different textures for feeling.

2. Sound - they played an animal sounds game, where the kids had to listen to sounds and guess which animal made them.
3. Sight - a look-and-find hunt for items around the room.
4. Smell - the kids took turns smelling different containers and guessing what was inside (i.e. onion, cinnamon).
5. Taste - snack time! The kids tried tart (lemon), salty (pretzels), bitter (bitter chocolate) and sweet (gummy bears).

They each came home with a Five Senses puzzle as well! LOVE these classes - so well done and it's a drop-off! Woo-hoo! :) All these activities would be easily replicated at home, of course, but it's so nice to have a kid-free hour and a half to go to Meijer.

Preschool - Week 18 - Play with Me

This is a short, sweet story about a little girl who wants to play with the animals by the pond. However, she inadvertently scares each one away. She discovers that by sitting very still and quiet, the animals each come back.  We used an activity guide to help our discussions, found at LiveOakMedia.com.



This week we were low-key and did not lapbook. We continued to do a page from her math workbook each day, which is working out well. E needs things in brief intervals, unlike C who could sit for 30 minutes working on a single worksheet.

We did a little drawing lesson one day. I pointed out the artist's style of illustrating the story using only a black pencil and then lightly coloring the main characters of each page. We each made a simple drawing of a tree, rocks and turtle using the same technique. Here is E with her cute little picture:

I also printed out an insect box activity, which I found online at Kizclub.com. E enjoyed cutting out and coloring the bugs while I assembled the box. We made the labels into stickers to attach to the box, but left the bugs loose so she could play with them.

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!