Preschool - Week 4 - Ask Mr. Bear

We spent the past two weeks covering Ask Mr. Bear. We were busy and not able to do preschool everyday, but managed to include a lot of fun activities.  This book is an antique.  Our copy had an old library check-out pocket with stamped dates that were older than me!  But the story is timeless, and the little boy was very polite, which I liked.

We did a mix of BFIAR discussion topics/activities as well as a few of my own. She especially liked acting out the way the little boy skipped, galloped, etc. from animal to animal.

On Mondays, E and I have started a habit of going to the library story time after we drop C off at school.  This week they had "anything goes," so E made this wonderful work of art. Notice the chairs the bears are sitting on and the rain storm over the little bear:

We did a clothespin "bear" card:

I got out the Animal Habitat cards I made last year, and had E pull out the animals that live in the deciduous forest:

We also did a number activity. I feel that she knows her numbers 1-10 very well, and can recognize the numerals as well as count them. We may move on to some very simple addition next. This activity she had to put them in order:

We also did a Hen magnet page,

 and printed out these great Ask Mr. Bear cards from HomeschoolShare.com.  

With these, she had to match the "gift" to the animal who offered it, and then I had her put the animals in the order that they appeared in the book.

Preschool - Week 3 - My Blue Boat

This week we read My Blue Boat. It has a lot of nautical vocab words that we talked about, and talked about using your imagination.:

This was a fun week, as there are many boat related activities around. E found and colored this entire color-by-number page by herself! Her coloring skills are very much improving, as is her patience with it.

I made some tangram pictures of boats for her to work on. Of course we used the blue tangrams! She did well with this. Unlike C, I had the pieces outlined on the paper, so hopefully next year she will move on to the solid colored ones.

I wrote uppercase letters on a set of clothes pins, and printed off a lowercase "boat" card for her to attach them to.  She liked this activity:

Then, (thanks to our PF Changs dinner in St. Louis) E used some kiddie chopsticks to sort out the blue cubes into a container. We also counted the cubes:

This was one of my favorite activities.  I dug out some of my good watercolor paper and used a black crayon to draw a simple boat scene from the book.  Then, with a white crayon, we filled in the moon and sails.  E attached some foil star stickers to the sky.

Then I helped her paint the scene with her watercolors.  First, you wet the page with clean water. Then, blend blue and green for the water, pure blue for the boat and black and blue for the night sky.

The white crayon keeps the moon and sails pristine.  Don't you love how it came out?

Preschool - Week 2 - Yellow Ball

Week two - on to a new book! E was sad to see Jesse Bear go back to the library. But this was a neat book, too.

This story is more pictures than words, so there is a lot to talk about. We discussed perspective, and opposites (near/far, above/below) and I made some little flash cards to go along with that:

E loves to paint, so one day I helped her recreate the cover page of the book:

We did another magnet page, although I realized that I only have one of each letter so, "BALL" didn't work out so well... I have a plan to use clothespins as a backup. Wait and see!

I also had some small, colored foam blocks that I was using to make patterns for E to complete.  She really didn't understand anything more complicated than ABABA, but we'll work on that.  Just another reminder that she is only 3 and that I can't expect her to do what C did last year.

Preschool - Week 1 - Jesse Bear What Will You Wear?

As C was off to the exciting land of Kindergarten, E was eager to start her preschool.  As I mentioned before, we will be using BFIAR as the main "curriculum" for her first year of preschool.  This basically involves reading a book each day for a week (or four days, as I have planned) and doing little activities along with it.

Our first book of the week was "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?"

E loved this book.  We read it through many times, to the point she pretty much had it memorized by the end of the week.  In addition to this, we did some "look and find" activities as we read the book, and talked about some of the things in the story.  A couple days I just ripped out a page from one of our many workbooks and had her do that after our story. 

She wanted to do a science experiment "real bad" so we made a sun-fade picture.  You find some objects and place them on a sheet of construction paper in the full sun.  Later in the day you can see where the sun has faded the paper:

Each week I plan to make a "magnet page" for E that will highlight a key word in her book.  Maybe this will turn into some sight words?  I bought a pack of letter magnets for $1 at Target and scanned them in. Then I used those images to make a page that she can match the magnet letters to and color in.

As another fun activity, I cut out a "Jesse Bear" from cardboard and E helped me make him some "clothes."  We went through my scrap fabric and I cut out some boots, shirts, pants, etc.  Then I'd say: "Jesse Bear, what will you wear, what will you wear to.... (insert made up location here)" and she'd pick out what he would wear.  She really loved this, despite how simple it is. Although she *really* wanted to make Jesse Bear  a girl bear. Uh - No. I am a realist/mean mom. He's a boy, dear. Let it go.

Since the story is a rhyme, we did some rhyme puzzles the last day to reinforce that concept.

Homeschooling - Part Two

It's hard to believe that C will be starting Kindergarten in 3 1/2 weeks! While we have decided to send her to public school, I will be homeschooling E for preschool this year.  Since she's a year younger than C was for our Letter of the Week curriculum, we'll be doing something new.  For the majority of our lessons, I'll be using a book called "Before Five in a Row" (BFIAR).

BFIAR is a set of lesson plans based on numerous children's books.  The idea is that you read the same storybook each day for five days in a row. Then you pick a lesson/activity to do with your child each day.  The lessons range from art, science, math, language arts, etc. I hope to get most of the books from our library, so that means that my cost for the curriculum will be the cost of the BFIAR book itself (~$35).  I am looking forward to having a lot less work this year by using an existing curriculum! :)  We will supplement with  occasional flash cards for letters/numbers and some worksheets, but those will be to a minimum.

Here are my preschool goals for E:

•  Be able to write her name
•  Recite our address
•  Recite our phone number
•  Know upper and lower case letters
•  Know letter sounds
•  Know numbers 0 - 20
•  Do at least 3 days of BFIAR a week

Highest of all

Here's a two page spread I made, copied from a layout in Memory Makers magazine, April 2006.

More on the Digital Revolution

So I've gotten a lot of comments on "my new obsession."  (Although most were via email and not blogger comments... what's up with that?)

Here's a few more details. 

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 which I received for Christmas last year (thank you, Marcia!). It is about $80, I believe. There are other programs out there that you can use, which range from free (the GIMP) to moderate (Creative Memories) to professional/top-of-the-line/expensive (Photoshop CS).

Why Photoshop Elements (PSE)?

Doug has tried and tried to get me to like the GIMP, and I did attempt to use it last year, but it just didn't work for me.  While Photoshop is not exactly intuitive, the GIMP was worse.  Plus, almost all the free tutorials online are for Photoshop users.  While I haven't tried Creative Memories' software, my impression was that it is more for ready-made/drag-n-drop type of scrapping, and I wanted to do more "from scratch."   And Photoshop CS is just way too expensive for what I am doing.

There are some things that I wish Photoshop Elements could do, which it doesn't, but for the most part it has been great.

Where to start?
I started by doing a free online tutorial.  You can Google "beginner digital scrapbooking tutorials" or search on YouTube for tutorials as well.  You can download templates (pre-made pages) and just add your photos to them, if you like.

Another thing I did was to take some of my existing traditional pages and then see if I could reproduce them digitally. For each new "thing" I needed to do, I searched online for a tutorial or free element. It really helped me learn a lot!


What's so great about digital elements:
One great thing about digital scrapping, is that the papers/embellishments/borders are all reusable. For example, if you buy a digital paper pack, you can reuse it as much as you want.  It is very simple to change the colors, as well, so that instead of searching for the perfect shade of blue, you can create it yourself!

While you can buy digital scrapbooking elements (just like traditional scrapbooking), you can also find a lot of stuff for free.

Here are a few sites I've found useful so far:
* Pixels & Ice Cream
* Free Digital Scrapbooking.com
* The Digital Scrapbooking Free Site

Making my own elements:
What has really attracted me to digital scrapbooking, is the ability for me to make my own elements. If I see a layout I like somewhere (magazine/online) or want a certain embellishment, I can use PSE to make it myself! I've made photo anchors, frames, flowers, papers - whatever you can think of.  Here are some examples:

 

What about printing your pages?

Yeah, that's the part I haven't got to yet. :)  I need to research my options a bit.  But, I know that it is possible to get 12x12 prints of your pages, so that you can add them to your own albums. Or, you can have a photobook printed with your digital pages as well.  

A lot of folks do "hybrid" scrapbooking, as well.  Hybrid scrapbooking is basically using Photoshop to edit/enhance your photos, printing them out and using them on your traditional paper page.

Hope this answers some questions!