Faith's Frog & Toad Lapbook

For literature this week, Faith & I gave Frog & Toad Are Friends a try for making another lapbook. It was nice to try a combo lesson for her & Ben, though I'm not sure how often that will work. They did enjoy both making frog lapbooks!

Like the last one we did, the book was a little under her reading level, which meant she understood it well enough to take several leaps for designing her lapbook. I've noticed that she can stretch more if the book itself is easier, whereas she gets discouraged if the book is more complicated.

For the week, we use Frog & Toad Are Friends as our main book. She also had to read:
Frog & Toad All Year
Days with Frog & Toad and
Frog & Toad Together.
She took advantage of this to take the BookAdventure quizzes to earn herself some extra points. (She also had enough points to earn her first Ponyville set!)

We did a 3 panel lapbook again. I'm intrigued by the larger ones, but we also have other curriculums we use, so the 3 panel suits our purposes.



In the right panel are 5 mini accordian books, one for each chapter of Frog & Toad Are Friends. Faith's job was to figure out a way to retell (summarize) the chapter in 4 simple sentences, so that someone would get the gist of the story. It was a bit arduous! She can retell a story beautifully, but simplifying it to 4 sentences was a fun challenge. She also illustrated each story with very cute frogs & toads.

In the left panel, there is a graduated book called "How are Frog & Toad friends?" Each page is for a different chapter where she had to explain how they showed they are friends ie) in The Button, Frog helps Toad look for his missing button, Toad gives a jacket to Frog to thank him. There is also an envelope where we learned about writing a friendly letter. Faith already writes to her penpal Meghan and informed me that she knows how to write a letter. ;o) However, we went over the actual format of the letter (addresses, salutation, closing, all the stuff she doesn't worry about).

After putting the book together, we discovered there was an empty space. That space is now occupied by two Sizzix frogs, one brown like Toad & one green like Frog, that list adjectives to describe each character.

The middle panel has some of our Science work--a life cycle of a frog and a Venn diagram comparing frogs & toads. We also had a couple of worksheets about frogs & toads from Enchanted Learning that we did not cut up for the lapbook. We used the website Something Froggy for more of our science information.

Also in the middle section is a petal book of French words--frog, toad, and the five chapter titles, and Faith's creative writing assignment for the week. She had to write a story or poem or article about frogs. After realizing that poem because it's the shortest was not a good reason to write, she decided to write a story called "Super Frog":

A frog sat on a rock. When no one was around, he would jump into the water to his secret lab! He gets his clothes on to help people because he is Super Frog! He helps an old lady find her dog. He went down into the water to get a log out of a pipe so the people will have water again, and lots of other stuff. Once again, Super Frog saves the day!

She was quite proud of her story, and I'm thrilled that I got her to write something. Writing has not been a favorite around here, so I've been trying to get her to help pick what to write in the hopes that she will learn to enjoy it a bit more.

I haven't figured out what literature we are doing next week. I have a few ideas, but we are not doing school on Monday. We have a field trip to the planetarium instead, so we're doing school Tu - Fri.

What My Children Are Reading - 11/7/09

This week has included a plethora of frog themed books. If you pop back to Ben's lapbook post, there is an Amazon widget of some of our favorite picks. Of those, both kids were rather enamored with Bad Frogs by Thacher Hurd. It was goofy, full of naughty frogs who don't want to be good.

Faith and I also discovered the new book section in the library we go to on Mondays & Wednesdays while Ben is in school. It led to many fun book discoveries too, including a few we've been wanting to read that I didn't necessarily want to purchase in hardcover.



Faith was most excited to find a copy of the new Fancy Nancy book Fancy Nancy Tea Parties. This very well may have to be a purchase because there was so many fun things in it--recipe cards, party ideas, craft ideas, etc. Faith really liked the idea of making a box of fancy French words, so we may add that to our homeschooling ideas in the next few weeks. I am thinking of adding this to her Christmas gifts or telling Nana that we need it!



On the other hand, The Nine Lives of Rotten Ralph may have been Ben's favorite library find of the week. I had a Rotton Ralph book when I was little and we found it at my parents' house a few summers ago. However, I never realized it was a series until fairly recently, so we've been reading and enjoying the rest of them ever since. Ben loves the naughty cat, especially when he's eating garbage! Got to love little boys. :o)



Now my pick of the week, which is also one of Shaun's favorites, is Pirate Pete's Talk Like a Pirate. It's one I bought for Ben because he likes pirates and is the tale of a pirate looking for a new crew. Each one he interviews is told "You've got to load a cannon and know how to fire it, but most of all, you've got to talk like a pirate!" And of course, each crew member interviewed appears to speak the Queen's English and is forced to walk to the plank. There is much arrr-ing around our house as we wander about quoting the book. ;o)

Our Frog-Filled Week!

Miss Faith is doing a lapbook on Frog & Toad are Friends, so I decided to try my hand at a similar unit for Mr. Ben. His theme this week was frogs as well, though not about a specific book.

Again, we made a lapbook, but I think we will make one more component tomorrow. As much as I like the lacing frog, neither of us want to glue it down into the book. So imagine that the lacing frog spot is replaced with a mini book on the colors of frogs. I have a Sizzix frog, so I'm going to punch out 6 different color frogs for him to paste in a book with each page saying "The frog is [color]." He can trace the word in the right color, then glue in his matching frog. :o)

That said, here is the rest of the lapbook:



Top left is a lacing frog (to be replaced with a color book), underneath is an envelope that holds a counting frog set I made Ben. The middle panel has an F is for Frog coloring picture, a Venn diagram that shows similarities & differences between frogs & toad (which has glued on answers now, but weren't there when I took the picture) and F writing practice. The right panel has a shape of a frog dot-to-dot and a little life cycle of a frog book.

The Venn diagram & life cycle books were from Enchanted Learning, the F is for Frog & F writing is from First-School, I cannot remember where I found the frog dot-to-dot anymore. The counting frogs & frog lacing card are me-created, I even drew the lacing frog, so feel free to ooh & ahh at it! ;o)

A closer view of the counting frog game I made for Ben! There are 20 frogs. Ten are numbered 1-10, the other ten have little black flies on them, numbering from 1-10 flies (ok, they are really just Stickles dots, but play along here).



Ben loved these! He really likes math activities, so I need to think of some slightly more complicated ones for him, he is so good at it!



And my very special, *homemade* lacing frog! He is truly one of a kind, because I have zero intention of making another one. :o)



We've also read lots of frog books this week. There is a great children's librarian at the library Faith & I go to while Ben is in preschool and she helped me find a ton of great frog books. Green Wilma was a favorite that she recommended and we all loved. Faith, of course, was using Frog & Toad for her actual work and we all really like Froggy to begin with.



I'm not sure what next week will bring. Ben is still lobbying for the platypus book and I promised him we will do it, just as soon as I figure out what to do with it. Personally, I'm thinking fall, thanksgiving, leaves, etc. :o)

ETA: Faith's frog lapbook is here. She pointed out that there are more comments for Ben's stuff than hers, so if you'd care to check it out, she does like to read what people say. :o)

Field Trip to the new Grossology Exhibit 11/5

My friend Michelle invited us to tag along with her homeschool group for a field trip. We've been wanting to check out the new Grossology exhibit, so we were more than happy to join them! We hadn't been to the SciTech Discovery Center yet and were quite thrilled to find it was all of 10 minutes from our house.

The exhibit was so much fun and F&B loved it. It's subtitled "The Impolite Science of the Human Body", so what wasn't there to like about it for a 7 and 4 year old? It's all about fun things like snot, poop, belching, etc; the kids were thoroughly amused.

They got to shoot objects up a giant nose!



And they learned all about snot with Nigel Nose It All (Did you know humans swallow a soda bottle worth of snot a day? I was perfectly happy not knowing this.)



Ben got to see what it looks like inside when you digest food:



This was possibly their favorite part, a giant Operation game. They played repeated rounds with their friends Audrey & Gracie, we may need to get Operation for Christmas for them.



Other highlights included making tooting sounds in the Gas Attack part, making another exhibit burp by pumping air into it, and climbing & sliding on a giant digestive track.

I called it science for the day and left it at that. ;o)

Scrappy Blog Hop - Fall Theme!

Time for another scrapbook challenge!

This month, the theme was something related to fall (including Halloween & Thanksgiving).

I have been meaning to alter a frame to put out the kids' yearly Halloween picture for ages and I keep moving the project around my office without doing it. This was the kick in the rear I needed to finish it!

Now all I need to do is print the kids' picture, which should take, oh, another few months or so! ;o)



Hop over to my friend Erica's blog to see her beautiful fall inspired cards! Her work always amazes me.

Sometimes Daddy Gets His Wish ...

Check out what F&B started today.





Shaun is thrilled to have them taking Tae Kwan Do, even though Ben informed us (during our explanation of what it was) that he already knows how to punch & kick.

They had their trial class today, so tomorrow, time to go shopping for the required clothing!

Happy Halloween!

From JoJo the Clown and Alien Stitch!