Ireland lapbook

Tuesday
February 17, 2009

I enjoy looking at other people's blogs and seeing the massive amount of creativity and talent out there. I came across the idea of lapbooks last week. I think it's absolutely brilliant! So, the quest began. My husband's parents are from Ireland. His mom was one of six children, all girls. The only one to move to America. His parents came here in the 60's. I thought since St. Patrick's Day is the next holiday what a fun first book to make to share Meara's heritage with her!

Number matching on both inside flaps 1-10 with a pocket at the bottom of each to hold the numbers.

Flip ups for bagpipes, Cliffs of Moher, leprechaun, and unicorn

Six different Irish blessings

I made upper and lower case letters in Word. I taped a piece of file folder to the top to flip up for letter matching. There is a pocket at the right hand bottom corner that holds the lower case cards.

The matching lower case letters

I found a pot of gold clip art that I liked. I made copies of it and numbers 1-20 so Meara can practice counting.

Size order shamrocks activity

A pocket on the back to hold the size order shamrocks, numbers and pots of gold.

You can find some of the documents I created for this lapbook here.

Valentine's Day

Saturday
February 14, 2009

We decided to celebrate Valentine's Day as a family which turned out to be WONDERFUL! We thought it would be nice to make it a favorite things we love day. We each picked out something that was our favorite thing to do and eat. For the food we drove around to our favorite places and got take out and took it home.

One of mine and Mike's favorite...bowling

Meara wanted to snuggle up on the couch and watch a movie.

My favorite...Olive Garden Salad

since the take out came with breadsticks we decided

to get one of our other favorites tomorrow

Red Lobster biscuits...YUMO! ;-)

Meara's favorite...Papa Murphy's Pizza

We also watched a program about Abraham Lincoln on National Geographic Channel. (He's my favorite president)

On the same day as the historic inauguration of the United States first African American president, NGC tells the fascinating story of the life of Abraham Lincoln and his struggle to abolish slavery. We'll follow Lincoln's journey from his early years as a rising politician, to his run for presidency and his fight to unite the country in the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

Thursday
February 12, 2009

Today is our 16th President's birthday. Meara and I both really like Abraham Lincoln. We are going to be making our first lap book. We did some research online and found pictures and facts about him that we wanted to use.

Our craft today, Abraham Lincoln's log cabin.

We had to take a break and eat an icing pretzel snack and let mommy put icing on Meara's nose! ;-)

Vocabulary Words

Sunday
February 8, 2009

This summer we took advantage of the word of the day on the Scholastic website. Most of the words were way too complex for Meara. I ended up teaching several other "big" words to help her understand what the specific word of the day meant. All in all I think it was a GREAT experience. For each day's vocab word I tried to put the word in action all day long. Out of all the words over the summer two words stick out in my mind as memorable.

1)Boogie- to dance energetically.

I filmed her dancing with my cell phone so we could send the clip to her daddy telling him what the word of the day was. She had the biggest smile on her face because she was having SO much FUN! I found it comical that she came to the conclusion on her own that you had to shake your bootie when you boogie!

2) Decorate- to adorn with something ornamental

She and I discussed what we could decorate. After much debate she declared we should decorate each others hair. This was our result......

Birthday Countdown Craft

Thursday
February 5, 2009

*UPDATE* I found this idea at http://bobbicamacho.blogspot.com/. When I first posted this I couldn't remember where I saw it. Today, she left me a comment on one of my postings so I went to look at her blog...I came across it! YEAH...

Meara will be turning five this month. Today she made a cupcake countdown to keep track of how many days she has left until the BIG day...sniff...sniff!



She loves to use my cutter. She is always asking me if she can cut scrap paper with it. I let her cut the links for the countdown.

She glued down real sprinkles to her cupcake. Her favorite on ice cream!

Peanuts and Colors

Wednesday

February 4, 2009

I found this free worksheet on http://www.learningpage.com/. There was a separate sheet marked with a number and letter. Meara cut each square out and pasted it in the corresponding square on the sheet below. She had fun seeing the picture come together and trying to guess what it was going to be.

Using color paddles from Learning Resources to find out what color two colors together make.

http://www.learningresources.com/product/color+paddles%2C+set+of+18.do?search=basic&keyword=color+paddle&sortby=best&asc=true&page=1

We used the worksheet with the color paddles to mark what each sets of colors make.

Using fine motor skills to break the peanut shells open. I created a graph for Meara to mark how many peanuts were in each shell.

Meara gluing her shells to the inside of the peanut outline.

Groundhog Day

Tuesday

January 3, 2009

Yesterday was Groundhog Day. It appears Phil saw his shadow so six more weeks of winter. It was fun sitting with Meara on the computer yesterday looking for information about Groundhog day and groundhogs. She learned a lot. I have to admit I learned a couple of things I didn't know like why groundhogs wake up in the middle of winter to go outside.

I found this headband for Meara to color and wear at http://www.daniellesplace.com/images/groundhoghatpat.gif. She colored and cut it out herself. I helped her finish it off. She ran to the mirror to check it out then insisted that I take her picture. Usually it takes some convincing to get her to sit still for a picture.

Lately, we have spent a lot of time reading books on the computer that we don't own. I found a website that has many books to choose from. You can even add them to your own personal online bookshelf. http://www.lookybook.com/index.php Yesterday we read some books about groundhogs and Groundhog Day like this one we found online.

Fun groundhog facts we found online:

1. AKA woodchuck and whistlepig

2. they eat grass, bugs, and larva

3. they are diggers

4. they use tunnels to get to their underground home(burrow)

5. they can have up to six children who after two months move on to create a burrow of their own

6. groundhogs wake up half way through winter to find a mate

Muffin Tin Monday

Monday

February 2, 2009

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Muffin Tin Monday...what a great idea!! I have seen this all around the mommy/homeschool blogoshpere. I'm not sure who originated it but the main place people were talking about was http://sycamorestirrings.blogspot.com/. I decided Meara would think it was a really exciting, fun idea. I had to get this muffin tin from her kitchen items which explains the scratches all over it. I was trying to keep it a secret from her because today is our first day using this idea. She couldn't contain her excitement about something new happening. When I finally unveiled the surprise she gasped with joy. She couldn't wait to dig in. For her that's says a lot because she doesn't eat much.

In the tin: celery, Sunmaid Apples, bologna (I tried to make it look like a flower), ranch dressing, mac n' cheese and honey wheat braided pretzels. I can't wait to think of something more creative next week for Muffin Tin Monday!