FIAR: A New Coat for Anna

A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert is a post WWII story of a young girl who has outgrown her coat and her mother then uses things to barter with the farmer, spinner, weaver and tailor to get a new coat for her daughter. The book ends at Christmas time so it was nice to read this time of year, if you can find it at your library I recommend it. We rowed this book not "in a row", but rather over the course of a couple weeks as it overlapped some of W's other studies (a Little House book club carding/ spinning demonstration this fall, and also rowing Warm as Wool by Scott Russell Sanders).

Yesterday we had our FIAR co-op and used strongly brewed tea and blueberry natural dye to dye some strands of yarn and they came out really cute. We didn't use any mordant (these kids are young so this was a good demonstration anyway) but I can see getting into this and using our small loom to make some woven squares. W has done finger knitting in the past but I might reintroduce it to him again since it may help him slow down and focus while working on something relaxing and productive.

W hung his yarn on the tree and it makes a cute garland. This week we are preparing for Caleb's birthday, as well as preparing our home for puppies. We didn't initially plan on this happening now, but have hoped to get a dog for years and all of a sudden things fell into place pretty quickly. ;)

organization

We are in the very early stages of homeschooling, but one thing I figured out really fast: we needed a system. I liked the concept of Sue Patrick's Workbox system that I have seen on several homeschool blogs so we bought a set of 5 plastic shoeboxes to start out. I put number stickers on them and so far they are just in a pile, but eventually I would like to have it set up on a shelf. As I type this C (8 months) is getting into one of them, so I may need to do this sooner than later. We also need to put the baby gates back up this week, he is crawling so fast now!

Also I found a lesson plan book at Target a few weeks ago for $1, and it has a week by week calendar format which is very convenient to plan themes in, so it has been working out very well so far. Although I would love to be able to do things completely on the computer, it is more convenient for me to have the book to jot things down in and bring with me to the library, etc.

This week we are working on the "sh" letter combination, and the theme of the week is shells. Today after reading "What Lives in a Shell?" by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld and looking at a pile of real shells while discussing the animals that once lived in them, W made shell magnets out of foam stickers and glitter (glue + glitter always = a fun time). This morning we went to the library and also found a few other good theme books for our Sh week.

recap of "ee" week

Last week we focused on the vowel combination "ee" with W. I have been finding very useful information from letteroftheweek.com's letter sounds section, including recommendations for poems, books, crafts, and songs to go along with the theme. Last week's theme was trees. W painted green leaves which I then wrote "ee" words on including bee, sleep, sheep, and green and we reviewed each word as we put our tree page together. Throughout the week I also encouraged him to try tracing and writing the lowercase letter "e". He is starting to put small words together with letter magnets, and is getting good at sounding out small words.

W also painted a wooden puzzle (a paint your own sort of project) that he had gotten for Christmas from Auntie Chris. He chose two of his favorite colors, blue and green, and had a great time painting, it turned out very ocean-like. Then he wanted to make it an alphabet puzzle (which was a great idea because otherwise even I would have a hard time putting that puzzle together) so I wrote the letters for him and he finished it by writing his own name on the bottom pieces using the "gold dust" as he calls my gold colored craft pen.

Other things we focused on was making shapes and scenes out of foam shapes, and he discussed patterns with me and created his own color pattern and remembered the concept. And of course, singing "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" throughout the week. Next week I am going to also implement a number of the week plan, since he is much more confident in letters than numbers.