Saturday, June 30, 2012

Our Lazy Summer

Not that being a momma of five children ages 2 to 11 can leave much time for laziness, but I am trying my best to get in lots of reading, pool time, beach time, and just unstructured hanging-out-with-my-kids time.

We are spending our days...

...splashing around at the splash pad with friends.






...taking a tour of the fire station with our MOPS group.














...coloring with my girls.




...going to Lego Club with the boys.


...cooling off at the beach.


Why hello there, little sea turtle.


...having tea parties with Minnie Mouse.



...playing board games with friends.



...swimming in the pool.



We are enjoying our "laziness" and are looking forward to another month or so of it before starting back up with school.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

BFIAR: Blueberries for Sal

I've started using the Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) curriculum with Leah and Anna this summer.  Leah has been asking to do 'preschool' almost every day now, which really means she wants to do crafts.  I've had her doing a couple Kumon workbooks and while she likes them, it's the cutting and pasting, painting and coloring that she is looking for.  I've heard of BFIAR and through this would be a fun, gentle approach to learning, incorporating crafts with reading, counting, and really, a full scope of different subjects, as much or as little as we want to do.

Going out of order is not really my thing, but seeing how it's high blueberry season and a friend invited us to go blueberry picking with them, I decided to start with the book, "Blueberries for Sal".  

The way BFIAR works, is that you read one good literature book every day for a week, and do different activities to go along with it.  

We started with blueberry picking.















Leah was anxious to do more preschool once we got home, so I let her count the blueberries and then she could snack on them.


Anna got the order wrong.


We then used paint (all time favorite with preschoolers) and made blueberry pies out of paper.  






On another day, we painted a scene from the book.  Again, the painting was a hit.




I used a animal matching game I had made from a previous homeschooling year, and Leah matched up the baby animal with its mommy animal.  



Then, my favorite part, we made the yummiest blueberry pie that I've ever had.  It was sooooo good.

We used it as a birthday pie so that Leah's Daddy could sing Happy Birthday to her and she could blow out candle again.



Another favorite, we used dot paint along with craft sticks to make a basket of blueberries.


The ideas I used came from all over the internet.  The next book we use, I'll be better about keeping the links  so I can share them.  I found them all through Google, so it should be pretty easy for you to find them too.