To Draw or Not to Draw.....

There is going to be a lot of drawing involved in Animal Worlds. I don't mind drawing, and Annabelle doesn't mind drawing. However, she is a perfectionist at heart and does not do well with open ended drawing.
Example:
Me: Annabelle, draw a horse.
Annabelle: I don't know how to draw a horse....
Me: Well, how about if we just try to draw a horse.
Annabelle: A) I don't want to draw a horse. OR B) I will try to draw a horse. (There is no scientific reasoning that these two answers are completely opposite from each other. It is just who Annabelle is. lol)
If option B was chosen and said horse doesn't turn out perfect, mass hysteria is bound to ensue.

She would much rather have a picture or something to look at to draw from. I do not want this conversation to happen every other day. Also, I do not want to discourage her and want to follow her learning cues. Here is the solution I've come up with.

Here is the blank page that would cause the previous conversation to happen. Underneath the title it instructs the student to draw pictures of animals and plants that they know would already live in the Savannah. This would freak Annabelle out. So we did the activity in two steps (for her).

Step 1) Annabelle lists the animals and plants that she knows are found in the Savannah.
Step 2) I print out clip art of the animals/plants and draw outlines around them so Annabelle knows where to cut.
Step 3) Cut and paste onto the blank page.
Finished product.
I'm hoping that substituting activities like this for some of the drawing activities will keep Annabelle motivated and in a good mood when she actually will be drawing.

Another solution that I have come up with to this 'situation' is to let her use my camera. She loves to take pictures and they are easy enough to just print out like clip art. That is a method that we will probably be using a lot this year. Instead of having her draw what she sees on our explorations she will be taking pictures of what she sees.

That's it for this post. Happy blogging. :)
jess_hak

I am linking this up to Preschool Corner. :)

Tot School: V, X, Y, Z

This week I decided to just wrap up the rest of the letters really quick. Annabelle was ready to start her K curriculum so the decision was made to move past the letter of the week for the moment.

Asa and Silas will begin their new weekly themes/letters in July. I need a small break to get Annabelle into her new routine. We are having a fun time so far and are looking forward to this year!

So not many pics at all just enough to show you the letter crafts that we did.

V is for violets. We used the bottom of soda bottles to stamp violets.

X is for X-ray. I drew with white crayon on white paper and Asa brushed on a watered down black paint to reveal the picture.
Y is for yellow yarn.
Z is for zig zags and zippers. I can't find Asa's so this is a picture of Annabelle's.

And that's it....short and sweet. I'm linking up to 1+1+1=1, and this will be my last post there for a few weeks. Happy blogging!
jess_hak

Kindergarten Week 1!! :)

I am so excited to share with you our first week of Kindergarten! If you didn't see the post about the curriculum that we chose you can read it here. As of right now we have only begun the Animals Worlds portion. We will begin the phonics portion in July, and math in August. Even though it was all introduction stuff we (yes, both of us) had a great time this week. I don't know who had more fun! I absolutely LOVE that I have a curriculum all planned out before me. All I have to do is check things off. Of course I can't leave well enough alone and add things here and there. I just have to find things to add to the theme whereas before I was creating the entire theme.

This week in the encyclopedia (which Annabelle is actually enjoying!) we talked about animals, what they eat, where they live, senses, skeletons, organs, camouflage, and your basic introductory stuff. She was really enthralled by the anatomy portion of this and we talked about our insides for quite a while. I caught her looking at this book several times throughout the week. I don't blame her, the pictures are quite beautiful.

To go along with talking about different habitats I made up this animal/habitat sort that I found here. We did this a couple times. I wanted to see what her knowledge was of where animals live. She did very well with the tundra and ocean animals. We will keep this out the next couple weeks and work on it some more.
Annabelle loved helping me cut out her animal measuring chart. She felt pretty big.
All hung up on the wall. We will be using this all year as we chart how tall different animals are. If you look closely you can see the light blue square on the chart. Annabelle is 42inches tall. Amos, our dog measured in at a whopping 37 inches (his head height while sitting).
We will be starting our Animal World adventure in the Savannah. I got a head start on the book, Born Free, that we will be reading for the next 6 weeks or so this week. I really think that she will only be able to handle it every other day so I wanted to start it early. We did a neat little game to hold her interest, you can read about it in this short post. It worked out really well, and got her excited about reading a book that would otherwise be of no interest to her.
After one of our readings from Born Free was done we practiced dragging a blanket around like a lion would drag something, between its legs. Let me tell you....this is very awkward. Yes, I did try it. Yes, Annabelle did take a picture of me doing it. No, you cannot see them. lol
Throughout the year we will be doing a lot of exploring and observing outdoors. On this night we talked about what an observation is, and how we use our senses to discover things. I let her use my camera to make some observations about the living room (she LOVES this). She made note of what was out of place. (This is one of her sample pictures)
After the observation time was completed I printed off the pictures she took and she cut and pasted them into her 'field journal'.
The day before we made our first observations outside we put together a little explorer's backpack. She was incredibly excited about this and told anyone who walked in our door about it. The backpack includes: a flashlight, zip lock baggies, bug house, binoculars, tape measure, colored pencils, pad of paper, shovel, magnifying glass, AND something every explorer shouldn't leave the house without.....2 My Little Ponies, in case she gets bored exploring (as per her reasoning). lol
Her first outside observing venture.
The next couple pictures are ones that she took. Not included are the pictures of bushes and tree sap (which smells like a Christmas tree). I printed these off and she pasted them in her journal.


Annabelle also finished up her alphabet wall this week. She danced around saying, "I'm all done with letters forever!" If she only knew what was coming. It's ok, I'll let her think that she's done for a couple weeks. :)

We used the bottom of plastic soda bottles to stamp violets.
V is for Violets.
X is for X-ray. I drew the X's and the skeleton on white paper with white crayon. She brushed black paint over it and revealed the picture.
Y is for yellow yarn.
Z is for zig zags (which she drew on the Zz you just can't see it very well) and zipper.
The completed wall. It has been in the works since August 2010. This gives me such a feeling of accomplishment! It is finally finished! :) AND.....we had fun and learned so much along the way, not only academically, but about each other too.
I'm so glad that we get to keep learning together! Happy blogging.
jess_hak

I am linking up to Preschool Corner. Head on over there and find out what other fun littles are doing.

Garage Sale Treasures: Week 7

Had a good time garage saling this week. I really missed it last week, but our sale was very successful (almost paid for our wooden swingset that we bought the kids. I want to do a post on that, but Zak is still trying to find the time to squeeze in to set it up (estimated 10-14hrs with 2 people!). Hopefully by next weekend it will be good to go. Anyway, I had a fun. Thursday evening I went with my mom and the kiddos to a couple different sales. Friday morning my good friend came over to watch the kids while I got out of the house and had some quiet time, some cold, wet, rainy quiet time. lol Thanks Jill!! :))

Onto the spoils.....
Annabelle saw these roller skates and absolutely had to have them. She asked so nice I told her yes. She even asked the lady how much they were all by herself. $3 for good skates plus elbow and knee pads. Do people still roller skate? lol

I also found this almost brand new Easy Bake oven for $5. Just have to run to Wal-Mart and get some goodie mixes. I contemplated this for a while because we do let her bake with us so why do we need an easy bake oven. I knew that she would really love all these miniature goodies that she will be able to make with this. It will be fun to do on the next rainy afternoon.
I found some great girls clothing. Unfortunately most were bigger sizes than what I was looking for and a tad pricey. I did pick up this really cute sweater that will look great with a long sleeve shirt under it this fall. Also a pair of dress shoes. $2
Boy clothes were difficult to find this weekend. I went to one sale and the wanted $1 for t-shirts. Granted they were GAP, but still.....meh. I did buy those ADORABLE plaid pants at that sale though for $2....they are GAP. I would normally not spend that much, but I must confess any plaid pant/short I am sold. Completely sold, doesn't matter if I have 15 pair of plaid shorts already.....I have a problem. lol 6 shirts $3.00, 5 pair of unders $1, and a pair of jammies $1
Ok, if you get bored looking at books the rest of this post is not for you. Otherwise, proceed. I was particularly excited about The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Baby, and Owl Moon.
$2.25
This one I was really excited about the Little House Songbook, Don't Frighten the Lion, and the Beatrix Potter Treasury. I also got completely new dot-to-dot books and a hidden pictures book for .25 (total!) $2.
I really did well at one garage sale. In the back corner underneath a pile of stuff I found some early education teacher books.....brand new condition, recent editions for .50 a piece. This picture is the phonics books that I bought. There is a set of 12 Dora first readers that I paid $1 for. Fun Phonics set: Puzzles & Games, Cut & Paste, and Mini-Books. Complete Letter Book, and a book full of ideas to go along with popular book titles. Very. Excited. To look. Through. These. :) $4.00
These are the math books that I bought from that same sale. Measurement, Clockwise (yeah!), Money (exciting), Kinderfolders (full of file folder games to make if I want to), Math Fun and Games. $2.50
I also bought a few cook books in new condition. I really have all the best intentions to start cooking. lol The book in the lower right corner is a Smoothie recipe book (really cool and easy recipes!). $1.50
I also bought this large basket for $1. Our book basket bit the dust this last week (may it rest in peace). I think this will be a good replacement, especially after I spray paint it black.
Ok....last picture. I bought some stuff for myself. I usually tend to find only basics at garage sales for me, but that is ok.....a girl's gotta have her basics. :) These items were .50 a piece. A couple skirts (stretchy, comfy ones that will get me out of pj's lol). Cute tunic shirt (gray and teal in the pic....doesn't do it justice). Light gray LC (Kohls) sweater with cute ruffles around the bottom. Apt. 9 (Kohls) black shirt, Apt 9 summer top....cute brown and red paisley thing in the bottom right. $3.50
Also not pictured is about 40 quart canning jars that I got for $5 (very clean!). Along with cooking more I also have the best intentions to start gardening (next summer), and canning. It is such a huge investment upfront so I thought if I could find some nice used jars it would knock a little start up money off the top.

GRAND TOTAL: $38.75

.....huh, a little more than what I thought. :) I'm linking up to My Life on a Taffy Pull. Head on over there to see how everyone else did on their ventures or share your treasures! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Reading Chapter Books

We have started Annabelle's K curriculum this week. In doing this we have begun to read chapter books. I am not concerned about most of them holding her interest. However, I was feeling a little iffy about Born Free by Joy Adamson.

It is a good book about a woman and her husband living in Africa and raising a lion cub. The language (not bad words, just the way things are worded) and words used are way over Annabelle's head. Coupled with little to no pictures I knew this book would be a hard one to get through. I didn't want to put it aside because of that.

After our first reading I knew that I would have to come up with something more to keep her listening. Pretty sure her eyes glazed over within the first two paragraphs. lol I thought for a while and this idea popped into my head (thank you Lord!).

We played a "Find the Lion" game while we read. I printed out a clip art picture of a lion and placed it behind one of the doors in this Melissa and Doug latch puzzle. I would read a page and then ask Annabelle a question about what I just read. If she got the answer right she was able to open one of the doors. As soon as she found the lion we would be done reading the book (even if we didn't get through all that was scheduled).
She really appreciated this. I think that she felt like she had some control over what was read. With the goal of finding the lion in mind she listened much better, although we still had some problems.... her brothers. lol I hope that she will soon adjust to listening, comprehending, and answering questions. If this book continues to be a problem we will shelve it for later. I want to foster her love of learning and reading. I want it to never feel like something she HAS to do, but something she WANTS to do.

How well did she do with this little game? Well, I asked 8 questions and she answered 5 correctly. I think that is pretty good for the first time around! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

I am linking this up to Preschool Corner. Head on over there to see other great ideas.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

Just wanted to give an update on our Summer Bucket List. We've crossed several more things off of our list. Two of them happening yesterday. It was Zak's birthday yesterday so the kids decorated a cake for him. Annabelle liked this more than Asa. He was cranky and just woke up from a nap and ended up letting Annabelle decorate most of his half of the cake.

Here is the finished masterpiece. :) It was quite tasty.
After the birthday celebration was finished we decided to end the evening with running through the sprinkler. Silas enjoyed standing right next to it.....the whole time....he didn't move at all.
Asa was less cranky at this point and really enjoyed himself too.
Even Amos loved it. lol Such a great dog.
Annabelle was trying to drink the water just like Amos.
Doing a little dance. This girl loves the water.
This dog loves the water.
It was such a fun evening. It ended in baths and then some schooling for Annabelle. We have also gone to the beach and visited a zoo. I didn't take my camera to the beach. I will make sure to have it next time and to take pictures so I can post about it. The zoo.....well, let's just say that we will be attempting it again because it was an epic fail. lol Annabelle and Silas did great. Asa on the other hand.... let's just say we didn't see very many animals due to handling an uncharacteristic Asa. Happy blogging!

jess_hak