From Caterpillar to Butterfly

Look what finally came in the mail last week.....

A few weeks ago, in anticipation of our summer-long insect study, I purchased a Butterfly Garden kit from a local toy store. This kit included a coupon for three caterpillars. Finally, last week, our caterpillars arrived!

Here is a pic of M with his caterpillars. He is really loving this.

This has been a great project for us this summer. I made M a Butterfly Journal (found here) and we have been using this to mark the progress of our caterpillars. We spent a few days measuring our caterpillars and watching them eat (boy do they eat a lot!) and now that they have formed their chrysalides, we are just waiting.

I will take some more pics when our butterflies emerge.

I wanted to add that this Butterfly Garden, along with all kinds of other insect things, can be purchased online at Insect Lore.

Caterpillars and Butterflies

We started our Insect Study last week and began with a favorite bug book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Our first activity came from Homeschool Share. Since The Very Hungry Caterpillar talks about the days of the week, we worked on the days of the week by printing these sequence cards. I then made up my own days of the week cards and printed them. M and I had fun going through the story and talking about what the caterpillar ate each day of the week

The next activity will be ongoing as M learns to read. I got this idea from the Five in a Row Message Boards. By myself, I created Mr. Reading Bug. I introduced Mr. Reading Bug to M by telling him that I had a HUGE surprise for him. Of course, M is only 5, so he was extremely excited by my HUGE surprise. I brought out Mr. Reading Bug and told M that Mr. Reading Bug is a very special bug. Right now, he is small. But he has a very big mouth. I told M that Mr. Reading Bug will need M's help to grow big and strong. Did M want to help Mr. Reading Bug? Yes, Yes!!! The only way that Mr. Reading Bug can grow big and strong is to eat the words that M knows how to read. So far, M has only read one word on his own...that word is BUG (is this a surprise to anyone?). So I wrote bug on a small circle and attatched it to Mr. Reading Bug. Slowly but surely, Mr. Reading Bug is growing.

M with his new friend, Mr. Reading Bug.

Mr. Reading Bug ate his first word.

Next, with our new-found understanding of the word BUG, we worked on reading this book together - Zug the Bug. This book is part of a series of books by Dorling Kindersley. Each book in the series focuses on one of the short vowel sounds. The entire series can be found here. Once M figured out how to read the word bug, he realized that he could also read the words: tug, lug and hug. Lots of fun! So next, we will move on to another vowel sound.

We finished our day with a combination of the two things that M loves most - crafts and painting! I found a very cute wooden butterfly at the Dollar Tree (LOVE that place!) and I gave it to M, along with a small pack of paints and a paintbrush. For those of you who know M in real-life, you won't be surprised to see that he painted the entire butterfly purple!

Insect Study

Since we will be schooling year-round, my plan is to do a fun "theme" each summer. Who knows if I will actually do this, as this is my very first time homeschooling, but it is my plan just the same. So, in light of M's current obsession (actually, it has been his obsession for most of his life), this year's summer theme will be INSECTS!!!

At the top of this post you will see a bunch of insect books, as well as a few activities. First of all, those aren't ALL my books. I did get some from the library. But we do own quite a few insect books (including our new Bug Dictionary, which is a huge hit at our house!). Have I mentioned that I love books? I truly, really LOVE books. I especially love buying children's books. I could spend hours on end at Barnes and Noble. But really my favorite way to buy books is to get a deal. I love my library's semi-annual sale...I love Half-Price Books and I even love a local consignment shop that sales kids toys and books. I have gotten tons of great deals there!

Back to school, because we enjoy doing literature studies so much, we are going to use several picture books as our way to study insects this summer. Here are the books that we will be using:

I found ideas for how to use these books all over the web, but my starting point was http://www.homeschoolshare.com/. This site is fabulous...and best of all, it is FREE! Definitely check it out if you are interested in trying literature-based unit studies. Truman's Aunt Farm is a Five in a Row book, so most everything we do for that book will come from my FIAR manual. And if you Google "insect unit studies" - boy will you be overwhelmed! There is so much information out there. I really had trouble narrowing it down.

As we do each book, I will post and talk about the specific things we are doing. I also hope to post pictures of our Insect Notebook, which we should have completed by the end of summer.

Before I go, I want to mention that I am just learning how to post pics of things in my blog. As you can see, the links for the books above aren't working (when you click on the picture, it should take you directly to that book at Amazon). I am not computer savy and frankly, I am proud of myself for having a blog at all! Hopefully, I will figure this out and fix the links in this post and going forward.

First Day of Kindergarten!!!

Today was the BIG day...M started Kindergarten! Before I start describing our day, I have to say those words that all moms out there say when their babies start Kindergarten...Where did the time go? Honestly, it seems like only yesterday that M was a tiny little baby. Just in case you don't remember, here are a few pics of him.

First bottle -

First food (rice cereal) -

First Halloween (I picked this one because I am in it too!)-

First Christmas -

I just can't believe that he is even old enough for school yet!!! Now for those of you who are wondering why in the world we are starting Kindergarten at the end of May when most kids are getting ready to be finished with school for the summer, here goes. I work part-time, so I don't have the normal Monday - Friday available for school. We will be doing a lot of school over the weekends, which is fine since M doesn't know any difference. I know that lots of "life" happens over the weekends and there will probably be many times when we will have to put school on the back burner. Therefore, if we start now and school year-round, I am confident that we can get in a full school year, even with my schedule.

So back to today, we started the morning by giving M some special books for school. He received a Big Bug Book and a Bug Dictionary. As you can see, he was thrilled!

Of course, O got a book too and she also had to have her pic taken (by the way, we normally do put shirts on our daughter...she was being a bit difficult this morning and was refusing to wear one - she was also refusing to relinquish the paci, but that is another story).

Next, Brendt and I decided to start a tradition and we took the kids to Bob Evans to celebrate the first day of school. Here is M waiting on his pancakes to arrive...

...and O trying to master the art of drinking from a straw (we did this A LOT today).When we arrived back home, we started our first exciting day, which was actually a little on the short side since we were all tired from seeing Peter Pan last night (thanks Janelle for the tickets!) and from our fabulous breakfast.

We started our school day with our Bible Memory Verse (Acts 9:20b Jesus is the Son of God) and then we moved on to our Five in a Row (FIAR) selection, The Salamander Room. Finally, we did some handwriting practice and our ETC workbook and called it a day!

At dinner tonight, M told us that he enjoyed his first day of Kindergarten but he was wondering if tomorrow will be his last day. This is going to be a long 13 years!!!

School is starting...

So, last week, I got some time to myself. Actually, I got (almost) three entire days to myself!!! Can you believe it? (well, I can't - it seems as though it had been about 5 1/2 years since I had been alone...crazy!). I could have spent my free days lying around, reading a book or watching tv. But no...I decided to spend my time cleaning and organizing (crazy again!!). Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, as I finally had the opportunity to clean out and organize all of my school stuff.

M is 5 years old and ready for Kindergarten. Since I have my crazy work schedule (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday), we will be doing school on Friday, Saturday, Sunday (very little) and Monday. Now, I know that school is not "supposed" to start until the fall, but we are going to start this summer (tomorrow, actually). Since we are schooling over the weekends and I know that lots of life-things are going to happen over the weekends, we are going to school year-round so that we have plenty of time to fit it all in.

My plans for school - my goal for school this year is really just to foster a "love of learning" in M's life. He is such a curious kid (aren't all 5 year olds?) and I want to keep that curiousity alive. Here is the curriculum that we will be using:

Five in a Row - This is an awesome curriculum that I found years ago when I was just researching homeschooling (thanks again to my cousin, Marla). It incorporates awesome picture books into learning. This is how it works - you read a great picture book 5 days in a row. On each of those days, you do a different activity pertaining to that book dealing with Social Studies, Language Arts, Art, Math, Sciece or Bible. It will be a great (and fun!) way to learn.

RightStart Math - RS Math is a hands-on math program. What I like about it is its heavy use of manipulatives and the way that it encourages you to "see" numbers.

For phonics, we are using a combination of two programs: Explode the Code and Happy Phonics. Explode the Code is a workbooky curriculum and Happy Phonics is phonics games. For ETC, we are still working on the primers (which teach letter sounds), but M is doing so well with them that I think we will be moving onto Book 1 in no time.

Handwriting Without Tears - Obviously, this is a handwriting program and it is great for left-handers! We went through the preschool book last year and M did great!

So, there you have it...my curriculum plans for the year. In one of my next posts I will write about how I am planning our school days, but for now, I will leave you with pictures of my bookshelves, which I oh-so-happily organized during my "alone-time" last week.