Although we are currently doing Mr Men school with the younger two, A5 has been asking for more school. I have decided to go ahead with a rerow of some of the BFIAR titles. This will be just using note pages from various sources. A5 wants to school, not do more fun activities! These note pages will hopefully improve her basic skills. We will do these when B2 is napping.
Reading
- Goodnight Moon is B2’s all time favourite book, so of course I had to include her in my read aloud, after which she headed off to bed.
- Once I had snuggled with B2 and tucked her in it was A5’s job to ‘read’ the book to me. She knows this book off by heart so I’m not sure how much actual reading was occurring!
- To practice her writing I used the Read-Build-Write pack from homeschoolcreations. I am hoping this will help further A5’s reading, which she has always found tricky. She loved doing this though!
- We also read and matched some words to their pictures:
Writing
- Narration of Goodnight Moon:
- A5 then wrote out her own narration:
Maths
- I have decided to make an easy puzzle from one of the pictures in each BFIAR book:
- We also did the star maths from Home school creations pack. We altered it slightly because A5 finds numbers much easier than letters. Instead of simply counting she made up her own addition and subtraction sentences:
Science
- The BFIAR curriculum suggests teaching your child about why the moon changes. I thought a useful science go along would be the ‘Let’s Read and Find Out’ science series. So our book to accompany Goodnight Moon was ‘The Moons Seems to Change’. This was a little advanced for her so I think I’ll stick to level one for now, but it was useful to explain why the moon changed. Each night she asks to see the moon, so it has ignited some interest in her. I also showed her Our first row of the book, where we showed the phases of the moon using Oreo cookies. I think she would have liked to do that again!
Art
- She chose to draw a cow and watched this video to learn how:
Our Learning journal
I intend to print out one copy of each of the printables I am using (homeschool creations and FIAR fold and learn). I will place each page into a clear plastic folder and give A5 a wipe-able pen to work with. The reason for this is two-fold. A5 seems to very much enjoy doing worksheets. If she could she would work her way through many each day. By placing them into plastic covers I am ensuring she can use them again and again, over the week’s learning. In addition, they will be available for some extra learning for B2 when she gets older at no extra cost.
BFIAR Bunting Square
I have rowed these books so many times, first with my older ones, then the little ones and now a 2nd row. These are books which will stay in all our homeschooling memories, forever. To this end, I wanted to make a keepsake. We are currently turning our hallway into a school room and I thought it would be lovely to have something to remind us of our preschool BFIAR fun. I was going to make a quilt square, but to be honest, I just didn’t believe it would get done. I wanted something that would take minutes, that the little ones could help me make and that would be meaningful to everyone. I decided that a BFIAR bunting would be just right, especially if I made each square by using an iron on transfer picture from each book (nothing could be easier!):
Once we have a collection of them I will sew them onto some colourful ribbon and hang it proudly in our new school room.
This row has been entirely different to our first row almost a year ago, concentrating on increasing her basic skills. Alongside reading, writing and arithmetic, A5 has learnt rhymes, classification, syllables, moon phases, narration skills and much, much more. I think it has been well worth the rerow.