Lapbook

This week, we started our Five in a Row (FIAR) curriculum. We've used that for every year since we started homeschooling. It's a literature-based curriculum that uses classic children's books to discuss social studies, language arts, art, science, & math. In past years, this curriculum has been the focus of our schooling. It is designed to be the main curriculum with just a need to add an additional math & phonics/reading curriculum. Some people use all three volumes of FIAR each school year, one for each trimester of the school year. I, however, use one volume a year. This year, we're on volume 3. Volume 3 only has 15 books. Instead of spacing the books out over the school year, or using each book for more than the usual 1 week, I decided to use FIAR for the second half of the year. (In the first half, we read through a History and a Biology curriculum.)

Our FIAR book this week was The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco. It's a cute story about a grandfather who takes his granddaughter Mary Ellen on a wild hunt for a bee tree. At the end, Mary Ellen learns that some wonderful things take work but are worth the effort. Just like the run through the countryside was worth the sweet honey, the time it takes to read a book is worth the adventure experienced.

This year, I decided to give lapbooking a try. I've heard great things from other FIAR lapbookers. A lapbook is a folder with artwork, flipbooks, and minibook fact books glued inside. Jimmy made a lapbook for The Bee Tree with a map of Mary Ellen's bee tree hunt, a hexagon/honeycomb mini worksheet, a vocabulary flip book (of vocab words from the book), and an onomatopoeia flip book (onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like the thing it is describing, like "buzz"). Caleb made a lapbook for honeybees, with a diagram of a honeybee, a "busy bee checklist" of a bee's daily activities, a flipbook of bee dance moves (dance is how bees communicate how to get to the good pollen), and some bee clip art. We all had fun, but I think maybe Mommy needs to let the students do the cutting & pasting next time. ;)

Jimmy's big news of the week is that he has finally gotten to multiplication in his math lessons! He has been looking forward to this for, oh, about 2 years now. lol

Caleb's big news of the week is that we are 1/4 of the way through his phonics lessons! He is doing a fabulous job & is well on his way to becoming a great reader.