My Blue Boat

Before Five in a Row

My Blue Boat

by, Chris Demarest

Bible Time:

• We worked on memorizing Isaiah 41:10 from Seeds Family Worship with our tracer pages and coloring pages and minibook from Bible Story Printables

“So do not fear for I am with you,

do not be dismayed for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you;

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Isaiah 41:10

• We learned about the virtue of kindness from We Choose Virtues and used the lesson plans and bible story readings from Kids of Integrity. We especially liked the Kindness Flags they suggested to make and we put a sticker on either Joshua or Amelia’s flag if they demonstrated an act of kindness. They loved it and it really helped them recognize when you are truly acting kind and not trying to get something out of it. We put the flags in our prayer stick jar on the dinner table and got to share with daddy the stories of kindness throughout the day!

• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

We read My Blue Boat this week which was a cute and simple book. I think the kiddos’ favorite part was all of our read alouds.

I added in some elements of Noah’s Ark because I found a short supply of printables/ideas to go along with this book and thought this would be perfect! I went to this website  where I found some neat coloring pictures that tell the story of Noah’s Ark and printed off a plethora of Noah’s Ark printables from DLTK’s website.

Joshie colored this one : ) He did a great job doing the yellow on the animals! I’m not sure what the brown scribbles are all about though : )

story comprehension sheet

And these are the printable activities from homeschool share’s lapbook

We did this fun Noah’s Ark animal craft... behind all the blue is a picture of a boat and they painted it and then glued on different animals from our animal cracker box… can you guess whose is who?

And this was a big hit! On our last night we made blue boats out of blue cardstock paper and ate some fish sticks! This was actually the first time the kiddos have eaten fish sticks and boy did they love them! I got the idea from a website that when I just clicked on the link now the website was removed… so I’ll just link to my pin so you can see their picture! We also made blue jello to be like water although we didn’t take a picture of it the kiddos loved eating it!

Yay fish sticks!

 

Read Alouds:

• Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Iza Trapani
• Harbor by Donald Crews
• Sail Away by Donald Crews
• Magic School Bus: The Wild Whale Watch
• Some books about the ocean and boats from the library

Blueberries for Sal

Blueberries for Sal

by, Margaret Wise Brown

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a BFIAR post. We’ve had an interesting couple of months. I have really struggled to be consistent now that I went back to work full time (although my full time season was short and is already ended yipee!). We also had our Easter week of learning time and my mom came to visit for a couple of weeks and then I had a class I had to study for and then we found out we’re pregnant with our 4th and thus entered pregnancy fatigue! Deep breath! Again I am so thankful I don’t have to be working full time right now anymore and we can focus on finishing our BFIAR plans for June and July… take August off to plan for our upcoming year with Heart of Dakota and Joshie’s first year of ABC Preschool! I am so excited to be 100% devoted to this again and not work : ( We keep praying for God to change our financial situation and soon so I don’t have to squeeze in work again this winter especially with the baby due in January! I digress : )

Bible Time:

• We worked on memorizing the next song from Seeds Family Worship with our worksheets from Bible Story Printables

“God is our refuge and strength

an ever present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear,

though the earth give way

and the mountains fall 

into the heart of the sea.”

Psalm 46:1-2

• We finished the virtue of Perseverance from We Choose Virtues and continued reading some of the bible stories from Kids of Integrity.

• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

We liked reading Blueberries for Sal and we fortunately made a trip to the city and were able to buy some blueberries in bulk at Sam’s Club : ) So we ate a lot of blueberries this week!

Here is Amelia’s book report and some printables

Circle the different one and rhyming words

Fruit and Vegetable sorting game from this website

I got the following printables from a Nutrition Unit Study from this website teachbesideme.com. I wasn’t sure what else to do with this book and liked the idea of learning about some fruits and vegetables.

Learning how much sugar is in some different things we like to eat.

Match up the different food groups

Putting stickers on this chart when we eat a different fruit or vegetable with the different colors of the rainbow

Putting stickers onto this body each time you eat a fruit or vegetable

And we went over the food guide pyramid and what different serving sizes look like for different ages

 

Read Alouds:

• Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A-Z by Lois Elhert
• I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child
• Gregory the Terrible Eater by Mitchell Sharmat
• Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk by Stan and Jan Berenstain
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
• Good Enough to Eat: A Kid’s Guide to Food and Nutrition by Lizzy Rockwell
• Stone Soup by Marica Brown
• The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin
• Oh the Things You Can Do That Are Good for You by Tish Rabe

The Carrot Seed

The Carrot Seed

by, Ruth Krauss

Bible Time:

• We moved on to our next bible verse from Seeds Family Worship with our copywork paper, coloring paper and minibook from Bible Story Printables

“My soul finds rest in God alone

my salvation comes from Him

He alone is my rock and my salvation

He is my fortress I will never be shaken.”

Psalm 62:1-2

• We continued working on the virtue of Gentleness from We Choose Virtues and I needed a little bit extra for the teaching so I found Kids of Integrity and I am so thankful I did! They have a great multi-page lesson plan which craft ideas and readings and questions about some character traits and they had a great section on Gentleness. I loved reading through the readings and it made me realize how important it is to be reading from the actual bible with Amelia. We read through the story bibles so much but I think it’s a good practice to read through the actual bible equipped with chapters and verses. So… I am in the process of trying to find a cute one for her age. Any suggestions?

I actually didn’t purchase much from We Choose Virtues but I found some deals and I got these cute little cards

I got a great coloring book as a pdf file

And the song book which Amelia turned into a coloring page as well : )

• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

We loved reading the Carrot Seed… okay, correction… I somehow missed putting this book on hold through our interlibrary loan so we loved watching someone read it on youtube… haha! Thankful for youtube! But it was a sweet and short book and I loved the tie in to the parable of the sower concept and that’s what we did most of our learning time on from the DLTK website and I did some learning stuff from the Homeschool Share lapbook

This cute flower craft and little book that says what plants need… water, air, sun

Here is a simplified version of the parable of the sower

Coloring pages from the parable of the sower… there were 4 pages for each type of soil the seed was planted in

Sower and the seed maze

word search

Some ordinal numbers worksheets

Some addition worksheets

We decided to plant some carrot seeds : ) and some other seeds… I think Josh may have licked the soil!

Our carrot seed pots with a seed growth book where we will draw the growth progress on the pages

Read Alouds:

• Sunflower House by Eve Bunting – This was a great book! If we had a backyard this is what we would do!
• The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
• Zinnia’s Flower Garden by Monica Wellington
• The Parable of the Sower in the Bible (Matthew 13:1-23)
• We watched the Magic School Bus: Phoebe Turns to a Beanstalk on netflix : )

The Mitten

 

 

Before Five in a Row

The Mitten by, Jan Bret

Bible Time:

• We kept working on our second week of Psalm 34:10 from Seeds Family Worship with our paperwork from Bible Story Printables
• I am so excited to be starting our next character study. Awhile back I got some free stuff from We Choose Virtues and thought it looked like such a cute way to study about character. So we began this week studying about Gentleness. I wasn’t sure where to begin but thought I’d sift through the character traits and pick one of the ones we needed a little more work on : ) We had a blast doing the coloring page and singing the song to learn about what the character trait means
• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

This was a cute cute book. It’s actually not a BFIAR book but Homeschool Creations and Homeschool Share both had printable packs so I was able to do our school week exactly like a BFIAR book and it was a great end of winter book to add in.

Amelia’s book report

This was a neat activity to learn about who hibernates and who migrates. The read alouds I found at the library worked perfectly for some extra learning about this area. We also had fun learning a little bit about Ukraine. We added a picture with a mitten on it to where Ukraine is on our map

This was a fun maze!

Another cute activity of learning some of the characteristics of the animals in the book and again our read aloud went along great with this!

Which one is different

line tracing

 

We also made Baked Chicken Kiev at the end of the week of this study. I didn’t even connect the this dish was a traditional Ukrainian dish as I have made this a lot before and it is super delicious and easy!

 

Read Alouds:

• Animals in Winter by, Henrietta Bankcroft
• Big Tracks, Little Tracks by, Milicent Selsam

Angus Lost

 

 

Before Five in a Row

Angus Lost by, Marjorie Flack

Bible Time:

• We gave up on Romans 8:38-39 : ) No not actually giving up but just taking a break… it is such a long section to memorize and we will go back to it later. So we started Psalm 34:10 from Seeds Family Worship with our mini-book, copywork pages and coloring pages from Bible Story Printables

“The lions may grow weak and hungry

but those who seek the Lord

lack no good thing.”

Psalm 34:10

• We finished our character book by learning about Joyfulness
• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

We loved this book! I think I say that every week but this was such a fun and cute book and Amelia loved all the read alongs and learning about dairy farms. I got my printouts from Homeschool Creations and Homeschool Share and we did the Read!Build!Write! cards for this book.

Amelia’s book report

Similar ending words

Rhyming words

A great bible verse to talk about with the kiddos when they are afraid of something… the dark, monsters, etc.

I have given up on a formal math program (Saxon or Math U See) for this period of our preschool time and am just going back to all the resources I found online for free printables and ideas. These mesh better for me and Amelia and therefore we actually do it and enjoy it! So we’re shooting for addition, # review, ordinal #’s, money and time worksheets throughout the week.

A # review worksheet

An addition worksheet

Amelia has been loving doing mazes!

Line tracing

She also loves doing these circle which one is different sheets

These were cute little books to make talking about what a dog needs to be taken care of as well as some different breeds of dogs

Read Alongs:

• Sally Goes to the Farm by Stephen Huneck
• Kiss the Cow by Phyllis Root – THIS WAS ONE OF THE CUTEST BOOKS WE’VE READ IN A LONG TIME!
• Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman
• Angus and the Cat by Marjorie Flack
• Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
• Arthur’s New Puppy by Marc Brown
• How to Talk to Your Dog by Jean George
• A book from the library about various dog breeds

 

 

 

Prayer for a Child

Before Five in a Row

Prayer for a Child by, Rachel Field

Bible Time:

• We continued memorizing Romans 8:38-39 from Seeds Family Worship with the printables from Bible Story Printables.
• We learned about honesty from our character book
• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

This was a very sweet book. Amelia has been practicing praying before meals and at bedtime and has really taken an understanding to the concept of prayer so this book came at the perfect time to see what a little girl prays for : ) I got these printables from Homeschool Share and Homeschool Creations.

Our schedule for the week

Amelia’s book report

Line tracing

Rhyming word match

Circling the first letter of the word

She traced her hands then stapled them together to make a book and wrote on the fingers the names of the people she is praying for

This was a neat activity to stress the importance of this aspect of prayer… thanking God for our blessings

We continued with our Read!Build!Write! words for this book which Amelia is doing so great at!

We also did a Compassion notebook where we 3 hole punched all the letters and updates from our Compassion child and we learned a little bit about Ecuador where our child is from. We looked it up on the map and read in our atlas about Ecuador. This was all prompted from this blog.

Read Alouds:

• The Milk Makers by Gail Gibbons
• Poems and Prayers for the Very Young by Martha Alexander
• Prayers for Children by Eloise Wilkin
• Portrait of a Farm Family by Raymond Bial
• Tony’s Bread by Tomie DePaola
• Everybody Bakes Bread by Norah Dooley

Caps for Sale

Before Five In a Row

Caps for Sale by, Esphyr Slobodkina

Bible Time:

• We continued working on memorizing Romans 8:38-39… this is a long one! We used more coloring pages from the Bible Story Printables to go along with the Seeds Family Worship verse.
• We learned about thankfulness from our character book
• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

We LOVED Caps for Sale! The kiddos loved loved reading it and it is such a cute story. I got a lot of these activities from Homeschool Share and Homeschool Creations.

We did our Read!Build!Write! cards for this story

Amelia’s cute “book report” : )

Some fun learning about pennies since the caps were 50 cents a cap!

Rhyming words

They had a suggestion from the Homeschool Share lapbook to look at different monkey species around the world so I got on google images and printed out some pictures from the suggestions they had and we printed them on cardstock and did a little geography lesson : )

The kiddos loved putting the pictures on the map : )

This was a fun and new lesson… measuring the height of caps with a ruler : )

A great bible verse to go along with the book perfectly : ) “A fool gives full vent to his anger…” AND a cute How much is it worth lapbook project

Amelia loved this game which ended up a subtraction lesson where you sing a song about monkey’s in a tree and they get taken out and leaves… however many monkeys in a tree : )

We did some fun fingerpainting from this website… which Joshie loves to do!

Amelia’s finished result : )

Trying to balance books on their heads like the peddler does with caps!

We even tried our smallest books and still had no luck : )

Read Alouds:

• Circus Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
• The Penny Pot by Stuart Murphy
• Books about monkeys from our library
• Books about pennies from our library
• See my book list compilation here for book recommendations about money

The Snowy Day

Before Five In a Row

The Snowy Day by, Jack Ezra Keats

Bible Time:

• We began memorizing Romans 8:38-39 from Seeds Family Worship with the mini-book, copywork pages and coloring pages from Bible Story Printables:

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life,

neither angels nor demons,

neither the present nor the future,

nor any powers, neither height nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us,

from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8:38-39

• We learned about wisdom and tenderhearted from our character book
• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

This was a cute story. Nice and simple. It was fun that we had so much snow on the ground while reading over it too! We used the printable packs from Homeschool Creations and the lapbook from Homeschool Share and the RBW Cards from Homeschool Creations.

Here’s the cover of our folder

The Snowy Day story sequencing cards and our lesson plans for the week

Amelia’s book report

A cute cut and paste activity of sorting winter and summer clothes

Some shape reviews

Circle the first letter of the word in the picture

Line tracing

Cut and paste words that start with an S sound

Inside this little booklet Amelia cut and pasted her own little snowman and colored it in

This was a cute craft where we glued these cotton balls onto a snowman sheet. Joshie loved this one too!

And this cute borax snow crystal project that turned out so great!

Read Alouds:

• Snow by Manja Stojic
• Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee
• Mouse’s First Snow by Lauren Thompson
• Footprints in the Snow by Cynthia Benjamin
• Snow is Falling by Franklyn Mansfield Branley

Katy No-Pocket

Before Five in a Row

Katy No-Pocket by, Emmy Payne

Bible Time:

• We began memorizing 1 Timothy 4:12 from Seeds Family Worship with the mini-book, coloring pages and copywork pages from Bible Story Printables:

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young,

but set an example for the believers.

In life, in love, in faith and in purity.”

1 Timothy 4:12

• We learned about obedience from our character book
• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

BFIAR:

We really enjoyed the book Katy No-Pocket. It is quite a bit longer but it was enjoyable to read every day. It’s such a cute story! I ended up getting a lot of my stuff from the DLTK-Kids website about Australia and Kangaroos. There was only the Homeschool Share lapbook and the Fold & Learn that had any additional print-outs.

Here’s the cover of our folder

The fingerplay, Life in a Tree mini-book, Itsy Bitsy Australia mini-book and My Little Kangaroo mini-book

The animal families… this was cute to learn about the mom, dad, and baby names of the kangaroo, lion and sheep

An Australian animals word search… these are one of our favorite activities and a great lesson on spelling and word and letter recognition

Some Australian tracer pages… here is the Australian flag and we colored it appropriately after consulting our children’s atlas of the world

Painting some kangaroo pictures

And this cute kangaroo craft!

Read Alouds:

• Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle
• Gluey: A Snail Tale by Vivian Walsh – this was a super cute book!
• The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson
• A Pocket for Corduroy by Don Freeman
• A book about Australia from our library
• A book about Kangaroos from our library

Corduroy

Before Five In a Row

Corduroy by, Don Freeman

Bible Time: 

• We continued memorizing Psalm 40:1-2 from Seeds Family Worship with the bible verse copywork and minibook from Bible Story Printables

• We finished learning about patience and began learning about contentment from our character book
• We worked on our calendar notebook from Homeschool Creations

Afternoon School:

• Lessons from Teach Your Child to Read
• Math U See lessons

BFIAR:

We really enjoyed Corduroy. This is a classic kiddo book and it was fun to read it over and over and even in Spanish to the kiddos all week : ) We changed things up this week and went from the lapbook to a notebook to put our completed work together. My friend who is doing BFIAR with her daughter compiles their work this way and I loved it so much better than the lapbooks.

So you basically buy one of the 15 cent folders from Wal-Mart with the 3 pronged hooks inside. I pasted this picture on the front:

And the first page you open to is my planning sheet for the week that I created on Word using various ideas I found online but made my own for our needs : )

Here is a closer view of the planning sheet. I have typed in the things we do every day (Seeds Family Worship, Calendar NB, etc.) and then I have some blank lines under BFIAR for the ideas and worksheets I find online for the book that week. At the bottom on the left I have a box with blank lines for the library books we will check out to read along with the book and on the bottom right is a box for supplies or ingredients I need to acquire for cooking or crafts for the week. And at the very bottom are extra notes… I have been writing down the notes from the BFIAR manual about teaching points they suggest so that way I have it all right here on the same sheet and don’t have to flip through the manual again. It has worked out great for me the last 2 weeks!

I glued the projects that are assigned for lapbooks onto a cardstock paper and inserted them into the folder. Here is the matching word to picture, the F is for friend folder, and the button patterns.

The bible verse “A friend loveth at all times.”, and My Rhyme book

I was so proud of her completing this worksheet. I explained one time how to know which direction the greater than or less than symbol should be pointed and she completed the worksheet all by herself! She’s a smarty when it comes to math : )

Sorting furniture vs. other things… she loves cutting and pasting!

Some shape reviews… we really needed to do this as it has been awhile since we’ve reviewed diamonds, ovals and rectangles

We made the button shape paper dice and worked on some graphing… she really enjoyed this!

Line tracing

Beginning letter sounds

We took real pennies and placed them on top of this paper and she had to pick out the number card that matched the amount of pennies in the bank

Read! Build! Write! cards for Corduroy

I got these worksheets from Homeschool Creations and Homeschool Share.

Read Alouds:

Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday – Judith Viorst

A Chair for My Mother – Vera B. Williams

A New Coat for Anna – Harriet Ziefert