Saturday, September 13, 2008

Our first Unit (9/2-9/5)

Using our FIAR Volume I, we did our first Literature study on, "A story about Ping."

We had fun with the book, though overall my girls didn't enjoy the story. By day three, K asked, "Do we have to read this again?"

This website has some amazing resources for lots of literature book studies and dedicates a whole section to FIAR books. (Thanks Jolanthe)


The girls illustrated a duck poem one day and illustrated their favorite scene from Ping another day. (K's is pictured on the left) Daddy did the science experiment, "What will float?" with them. The girls loved it. And we were all fascinated that the rubber band sank! No one predicted that correctly, even daddy!

I found some Art ideas at Donna Young. These designs (pictured right) are meant for the student to copy in the boxes underneath. The one K worked on is Level One and was actually quite challanging for her. We discussed the five elements of shape: dot, circle, straight line, curved line, and angle. I let her do the first row with very little discussion. Then we talked about the two designs she had the hardest time with and she did them again. I think we'll do it again one week. It was fun and challenging. It helped her to really pause and LOOK at what she was trying to imitate.

I was having a rough week emotionally, but we were having fun at school. Since I am really pulling from a lot of resources, I was still working on getting in a groove for our day. We worked out a lot of issues and were looking forward to the next week!

*I plan to try to do these weekly reviews, but we'll see. I think they'll be a good record for me and for the girls, as this will be their school album now that I have resolved to let the scrapbooking go.

*The updates will be on our history, science, art, and literature studies. I do not plan to list a whole lot about math, reading, or handwriting unless something unique comes up. We are using pretty defined curriculums and working through them in those areas, so there seems to be less to "say". I'll just type some milestones occasionally.

1 comment:

Jennifer@DoingTheNextThing said...

Kudos on a productive week! I think Ping will grow on the girls - it's one of A's favorites. I've always loved FIAR and used it occasionally, but never as our core curriculum. May do that with #s 4 & 5, though...you make it look so fun!