First Grade Reading List

We have been doing school work for first grade for 22 days.

One of our favorite parts of school is reading.  I love reading.  O loves to be read to.  It is a perfect way to finish our days.

Before our year started I tried to compile a list of books (both chapter and picture) that I wanted to read with O.  I had various reasons for all the books.  

Here are a few of my reasons:

Some of them we have already read, but I wanted to read again and do some type of lesson with.  

Some of the picture books, I want O to start reading to me

Some were outside our normal genre of books we read

Some won awards

Some are classics

Of the 56 books on my list, we have read 9 (they are in bold).  (This isn't all we have read, just the ones that are on my list).  

Title	Author
Once upon a banana	Armstrong, Jennifer
Mr. Poppers Peguins	Atwater, Richard and Florence
Madeline	Bemelemans, Ludwig
Madeline at the White House	Bemelemans, Ludwig
Berenstain's bears new pup	Berenstain, Stan
The Mitten	Brett, Jan
Stellaluna	Cannon, Judith
Henry Huggins	Cleary, Beverly
10 Black Dots	Crew, Donald
Fantastic Mr. Fox	Dahl, Roald
The Day the Crayons Quit	Daywalk, Drew
Llama, llama time to share	Dewdney, Anna
I knew you could	Dorfman, Craig
Best Nest	Eastman, PD
Olivia	Falconer, Ian
Corduroy	Freeman, Don
Miss Smith's Incredible Story Book	Garland, Michael
Benjy's Dog House	Graham, Margaret Bloy
Crysanthemum	Henkes, Kevin
Humphrey's First Christmas	Heyer, Carol
Ordinary Princess	Kaye, M.M.
Snowy Day	Keats, Ezra Jack
This is not my hat	Klassen, Jon
Ferdinand	Leaf, Munro
Swimmy	Leonni, Leo
Henry's Freedom Box	Levine, Ellen
Gooney Bird Greene	Lowry, Lois
Angelo	Macaulay, David
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle	Macdonald, Betty
Too Tall Houses	Marino, Gianna
Make way for Ducklings	McCloskey, Robert
Homer Price	McCloskey, Robert
Love you Forever	Munsch, Robert N
The Day Jimmy's Boa ate the Wash	Noble, Trinka Hankes
Junie B Jones Party Animal	Park, Barbara
Goodnight Gorilla	Rathmann, Peggy
Creepy Carrots	Reynold, Aaron
The Dot	Reynolds, Peter
Higglety Pigglety Pop! There must be more to life	Sendak, Maurice
The Lorax	Seuss
Sheep in a Jeep	Shaw, Nancy
Encyclopedia Brown	Sobol, Donald
Interupting Chicken	Stein, David Ezra
Ballet Shoes	Streatfield, Norman
Joseph had a little overcoat	Tabback, Simms
Eloise: The ultimate Edition	Thompson, Kay
The Gift of the Magi	Various
Alexander and the terrible horrible no good very bad day	Viorst, Judith
Boxcar Children	Warner, Gertrude
Emily's first hundred days of school	Wells, Rosemary
Little House	Wilder, Laura
The Pigeons Finds a Hot Dog	Willems, Mo
Charlotte's Web	Williams, Garth
Owl Moon	Yolen, Jane
How do dinosaurs go to School:?	Yolen, Jane
Bartholomew's Passage	Ytreeide, Arnold
It could always be worse	Zemach, Margot

Do you make lists of books to read with your child?  What are your favorite children's books?  

Fall Activities When Everyone Is Grumpy

My morning began like this...

The Star Wars theme song (the one where Darth Vader walks in the room) starts blaring in my ear.  My husband's phone was approximately 2 inches from my face.  Ugh.  Who wakes up to that?  I stumble out of bed, and go try to wake up, while my husband just keeps sleeping like nothing ever happened.  Gggrrrr.

I sat on the living room floor and tried to stretch out a little, when I see something out of the corner of my eye.  It's fall, and I am on high alert.  There are spiders and crickets and who knows what all over the place right now.  I practically fall over myself trying to get away from the two giant spiders I see.  I flip the light on, shoe in hand ready to attack...the pretzels my daughter dropped on the ground.  Ugh.

Having a stressful morning?  Nothing seems to be going right?  Your child has been up a mere five minutes and you are already fighting about something?  

My daughter and I have had our fair share of rough mornings since we started homeschooling.  Here are some of my ideas for dealing with days that just are not going as planned, and bad attitudes.

Grab a small basket.

Go on a walk.

Follow your child's lead.  

Look at the grass and leaves.  If there are any leaves on the ground collect a few in your basket.  If there aren't any on the ground, pick a few off the trees.  

Talk about the changing weather.  Is it windy?  cloudy?  

Getting outdoors is usually enough to improve both my mood and my daughter's.  

Take the leaves back home and sort them by type.  This took us about thirty seconds since we have 3 types of trees in our neighborhood.

Still have a grumpy child?  Sandwich a leaf between paper towel (on top) and paper (on bottom) and give them a little hammer (think Melissa and Doug wooden tool kit, but regular one works too) and let them hit the covered leaf.  Talk about what happens.

Glue the leaves to a paper.  You can be creative and make butterflies with drawn on legs and such or you can just glue a bunch of leaves to a piece of paper.    

 Thumbs are perfect for making leaves.  Print off (or draw) a tree with branches and no leaves.  Give him/her a green ink pad, and let them loose.

 Q-tips make great apples for a thumbprint tree.

 Don't worry if your child's finished product doesn't look like the finished projects on Pinterest.  My daughter decided some of the apples were falling to the ground, hence the long red lines.  Children do not need to color perfectly inside the lines for them to be successful in life.  :)  O loves messy work.  For whatever reason it is a great stress reliever for her, so when we are having a rough day, I give her art projects.

Ask for help at home.  Hmm, I have this black thing with wires.  What do you think it is used for O?  It has a dip in it for something round.  Here are some eggs.  Hey!  Do you think this contraption might be used for slicing eggs?  Show me how you would do it, O.  Children (at least my child) often feel unvalued at home, and like they don't have an important purpose.  Give them jobs they can do so they feel appreciated and 'part of the team'.

Go to the playground.  We always find someone there to play with, and O has an abundance of energy she needs to let out.  This girl is going to move mountains one day, mostly because she has the energy to do so.  :)

 Let your child play outside while you still can.  Enjoy the last of the warm days as much as possible. It really wasn't that cold out, but she wanted to wear mittens and gloves, so I handed them over.  Most mornings start with O playing outside on that teeny tiny tricycle.  She gets to be outside (her favorite place to be) and she gets rid of some energy.  She also has a few minutes of quiet to herself to observe things like the bazillion grasshoppers and spiders around our house.

Side note:  Yes, she has a regular bike.  No, she doesn't want to use it.

They are only little once, and you (and possibly grandma) will be the only one(s) impressed that they learned their ABCs at age 2.  It is way more important to live life and learn manners, respect, and thinking/analytical skills.


How do you survive a bad day of homeschool?

Fall Activities

Today, I have two projects to show you.  We love them both so much we tend to do them with each season change (we just switch up some of the materials, and the poem/words).  Both of these activities are pretty versatile for different ages.  I started making some of this material when O was 2 (over zealous, aren't I?) and she is still using the same pictures now, just in different ways.  

I keep all my school items sorted by month, and am always pleased (and a little relieved) to pull out a folder that has fun things from previous years we can adapt to what we are learning this year.

First up:  Poems 

When I first heard about this idea on a blog I follow, I thought, 'that's so not going to work.  My daughter will never be interested in poems.'  Well, I was partially right.  It depends on the poem, Mama's attitude, and if there are fun things to do with the poem.  

I will be the first to admit that my skill level when it comes to drawing/artistic things is about 5th grade.  Yes, you can sort of tell what I make most of the time, but it is not pretty.  Thankfully 5 year olds don't care.  Put it on foam or felt and they will get down right excited about the new material.  Add glitter, or textured puffy paint and they may squeal.

The poem itself doesn't really matter, as long as your child finds in mildly interesting.  This one is talking about seasons changing and includes a hedgehog.  If you are over-zealous you can print it in a fun font, and throw some pictures of key words (like trees) on there.  I try to not print unless absolutely required, because we go through ink like crazy.

  

I usually read the poem through once to O, using our handy dandy pointer.  This inexpensive popsicle stick with googley eyes, and a marker mouth has made reading much more enjoyable.  O loves using the pointer while I read.  She will  point to words she recognizes or the foam pieces.

I may ask her a few questions about the poem when we are finished reading.  If there are words she doesn't know (like palette or migrate) I ask her what she thinks they mean, and I try to let her figure it out on her own (with helpful questions from me).

Next up, time to label.  Last year, we just labeled the beginning letter of most things.  Sometimes we would sort them by letter as well.  This year we are using the whole word (I just jot the word down on an index card I cut in half).  We start with just a few labels (2-3) and add as she learns the words.

Finally, after we have exhausted every idea this Mama has for poem work, we make up our own story using the pieces.  O has quite the imagination and comes up with all sorts of stories using the pieces.  If your child has mastered rhyming (or maybe to practice) you could make up a poem that rhymes using the words.

Next up, Mr. Scarecrow

I don't really have a good name for this, sorry my brain is foggy.

I made 6 parts to a scarecrow (in the Spring I use a rabbit, and in the winter I use a snowman).

Hat

Head

Shirt/torso

Legs

Post

Bird 

If O hasn't watched me pull all the pieces out, I pull out the pieces one by one and ask her to guess what we are making.  Next, we may talk about patterns (ok, I know his shirt isn't really plaid, but let's pretend I wove all those pieces, ok?).  In the past we labeled him by colors, counted how many parts he had, talked about what scarecrows are used for, etc.  

Now we put the scarecrow together.  We mix up the cards, place them face down, and draw one at a time.  We each take turns selecting the parts to correlate with the word.

When O was learning her numbers and not at all interested in letters we played the same game with a dice.  I drew one piece for each number she would roll.  She would have to tell me the number of dots, and then put the pieces out.  When she was this little, I also had a template I traced, to make it easier for her to know where to place the pieces (this was especially helpful with rabbit ears and also the circles for the snowman).

Finally, reuse, reuse, reuse!  If I am going to spend that much time making these little pieces we use them every way we can think of.  Don't be afraid to mix the pieces a little as well.  (Because I am crazy I have a color-coded sticker or label on the back of everything so I know what it goes to just in case it gets misplaced and I have no idea what that blue bird is for).  

This year we put the scarecrow together from this activity and had corn from something else, and the hedgehog came along to much on the corn.  Count the stripes and polka-dots.  Have your child use letters that are placed in their room (like those foam mats with the letter cut-outs) and run back and forth from the living room to bedroom grabbing H for hat, and B for bird.  My daughter laughs hysterically when she plays this game.

If you are really on top of everything, you may laminate all those pieces, but that takes away the fun texture of the shirt and hay.  I used to laminate (or cover with clear contact paper)  everything.  I don't anymore, because I don't have a problem with O destroying the pieces.  

I try to switch things up each month but Mr. Scarecrow might stick around through October if I can think of different ways to use him.  

Do you use themes when teaching?  How do you incorporate fun into learning?

Welcome Fall Sensory Box

Ok, ok, I know it's not officially Fall yet, however it sure seems to be Fall.  The weather is crisp when we wake up in the morning, apple cider is for sale, and I am starting to see pumpkins pop up everywhere.  As far as this household is concerned Fall has arrived.

This mama is super tired lately and just can't seem to muster up enough energy to get much done.  Just looking at my to-do list makes me yawn.  Pair that exhaustion with an un-eager homeschooler (O not Me) and we need to scratch the big projects and go for a few simple activities.  This is not to say we aren't hitting major school topics with our homeschooling.  We ease ourselves into the reading, writing,  and arithmetic by starting with something like this in the morning.  Easier transitions for both mama and child.  

Enter the Sensory Box.  Before our whirlwind adventure of joining the military we used sensory boxes All.The.Time.  It is a sneaky way to get in learning and have fun.  Before you say, 'but what about the mess' every person I talk to that actually uses them says that they really don't have a mess to clean up.  Set strict boundaries in the beginning, and expect the toys to stay in the box, and generally speaking children want to please their parents so it works.  I like to use bins with pretty high sides (at least 4 inches) and if you and your children are just starting out, don't overfill the box.  If you look at ours, we have about an inch of beans in a 4 inch tall container.

Now that O is older, I let her help choose the items we put in (as in would you like metal measuring cups or plastic measuring cups?).  She also gets to help actually putting the items in the container.  She likes staging the items, so all the sorting and what-not that you see is all her.  I used to do that when I would present it to her, so she likes to make it look as beautiful as she can when she makes hers.

Step 1:  Fill the container with something.  It could be beans (these work great because they are big and easy to clean up), rice (can be colored and lots of fun for sifting), pasta (lots of shapes/sizes to choose from and can also be colored), coffee grounds (I can't bear to use such an expensive item on a sensory box, but it sure would smell lovely in your house), salt, sand, etc.

Step 2:  Add the fun items.  Scoops and measuring is what we are working on in this box.  In the past, I have done a letter theme using colored alphabet pasta and added anything and everything I could find around the house that started with a particular letter (think cookie cutters and mini plastic pieces like the toob animals, raid the toy box).  Color themes are also a fairly easy theme for toddlers.  

We have some wood leaves painted in fall colors, and several bowls and containers for her to sort the items in.  We also had large and small wooden acorns we added.  She had to count out 10 large ones and 20 small ones to add.  If you want, you can get pretty elaborate with these things.  I like to keep mine pretty simple compared to what I have found online (ie Pinterest).  If you are just starting out, less is more.  Right now, O has just scoops and measuring items in hers.  As an extra incentive to keep things neat and tidy, in a week or so I add items if I don't have to remind her to clean up.  I will usually add a few wooden peg people or other items she enjoys playing with so she can have characters cook food and other pretend play.  We typically keep the same theme for the sensory box for about a month.  It depends on the interest and amount of energy this Mama has.  

Step 3:  O helped with this part of the project.  We traced the measuring cups, measuring spoons, and scoops.  Next we cut them out, glued them to some heavy duty paper, and labeled them.  

She is doing school work and doesn't even realize it.  All of these things are using fine motor control, pincer grip (good for strengthening little hands to write well), and cognitive development (she is writing her letters, learning to associate the labels with the pictures, not to mention organizing all those tools by color)

Here, you can see our finished paper for her to place measuring cups and spoons on, when she is not using them.  I told her the names of the cups, and she figured out rather quickly that it takes 4 scoops of the 1/4 cup to fill the 1 cup.  I love when she is exploring and discovers things on her own.  It sticks with her so much better than if I told her that you need 4 scoops to equal 1 cup.











The finished product as O wanted it displayed.

So there we have it, day 1 of easy to make activities for children.
In theory, (as in if I have the energy) I plan on doing a few more homeschool posts the rest of the week.

Do you have easy go-to activities for your children when you are tired or have a lot going on?  I would love to hear your ideas!  :)

This Week (In Pictures)

We Love Jammie/Snuggle time in the morning with our tea and muffins.

I am trying my best to decorate the house...finally.

A few more details.

The dining room table is in place (unfinished but in place).

I couldn't have done it without my awesome husband.

Play Dough school work.

We practiced our Geography.

We did patterns in probably every way possible.

Everyone got haircuts this week.  

O invented a machine to pull her baby dolls using her tricycle, doll stroller, some string and umbrella.

The Story Part 2

If you haven't read yesterday's post, read it first.

.

I had the weekend to prepare, and then Monday I would probably need to call the fertility clinic to set up the first of several tests.  I tried to calm myself as best I could.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I was 3 days late, and stressed that the ideal days I was supposed to do testing were falling on weekends.  I knew I had been overly stressed the last few weeks about the doctor appointment, and that was probably why I was late.  I waited another day, and then finally took a test.  

Pregnant.

Unbelievable.  I was speechless.  I tried to think of a fun way to tell F when he got home, and how we would tell O and our parents.  I was thrilled.  Could it actually be?  

F hardly walked in the door, and I told him the news.  So much for creativity and being all cute.  We were too busy rejoicing to care.  We were relieved we didn't have to go through fertility treatments.  We were so thankful and excited to finally be having another child.  After all this time, it was hard to believe.

Although wanting to be healthier wasn't inherently wrong, wanting to rely on myself and fix everything myself was wrong.  I truly think God was waiting on me to ask for prayer from my Bible study, and completely relinquish the planning to Him before giving us another child.  Sometimes God allows us to go through painful situations so we can mature and grow closer to Him, and in my case rely on Him.  

After much time, much heartache, many prayers, much growth, and all while learning to wait on God's perfect timing we are expecting a child in February.  The month that I told my Mentor Mom was the worst because nothing good happens in it.  

So far, everything looks good.  Baby is healthy and kicking.  Mama is well into her second trimester and still sick and very tired.  This Mama does not glow during pregnancy, but that's ok because it's only for a short while, and it is worth every moment of sickness.

        

The Story Part 1

Fair Warning:  This is super long, and there are no cute pictures :)

People Plan and God Laughs.

I have quoted that phrase to myself and to others for such a long time.  It is so true though.  When F and I got married I had a plan.  We would graduate, F would find a good job, we would get a house, have a baby, and then another, and then adopt.....

Not one thing that I have planned has happened in the order I thought it should.  We had O while we were still in college.  F didn't get that perfect job right out of college (and really who did?  The market crashed right before we graduated).  We don't own our home.  I saw all my friends having babies and I was ready for a second one.  We tried.  We prayed.  We waited and waited and waited.

Life happened.  F joined the military which sent us on another wild ride.  We waited for our next child to come, while I watched as mama's delivered and became pregnant with baby number 3 (or 4).  What was happening?  What was I doing wrong, that all these other people seemed to be getting so easily?

As month after month passed with no pregnancy, I began to up my game.  I read everything I could get my hands on about healthy eating, and living.  No chemicals, no processed food.  We became that family, or rather I became that crazy lady that doesn't let her child eat food coloring and doesn't buy anything with high fructose corn syrup or MSG or.....  I exercised.  I tracked my cycles.  I went to a chiropractor.  I did everything I could possibly do on my own.  Still nothing.

Last February, as I was anxiously waiting to find out if we were going to able to go with F while he was training I got a call from my Mentor Mom in my mom's group.  She asked how I was, and I responded with some comment about hating the month of February.  I have nothing eventful happening at the time.  The excitement from the holidays has long disappeared, my great-grandmother died a few years before during this month, and everything is gray and gloomy and just sort of depressing.  She said, 'Oh I just love this time of year, because my family has a few birthdays and we just have a wonderful celebration.'  As I hung up the phone, I burst into tears standing at the gas station because I was so, so frustrated with all the uncertainty.  I tried to recall all those verses I had memorized before about waiting on God's timing, how His way is best, and such but honestly I had very little comfort.

Just a few days later we found out we could go with F to his training and we were thrilled.  F and I were also excited that we would have really good health care coverage.  As I perused the list of things it included, I found 'infertility'.  Sigh.  Maybe we need to see a doctor because something is wrong.  When we get there, we will go to the doctor.

Fast forward to our time at the base.  We had more income and practically no expenses, and a well-stocked commissary.  F and I both decided to try eating healthier.  We had probiotics, coconut oil, chia seeds, chlorophyl.  We had vitamins, and made sure to get plenty of veggies.  Just about every morning, I would hand my husband some gray concoction that contained every superfood I could get my hands on.  He smiled, closed his eyes and drank it as fast as possible.

After a solid two weeks at the base, I gathered the courage to set up my appointment for an infertility clinic, but it took almost two months before I could get in.  While we waited, life went on.  We went to our Bible study, and one week we were discussing how if we are followers of Christ we will have afflictions.  There were 14 different ones discussed but the one that caught my eye was 'mysterious affliction.'  Sometimes God, has chosen not to reveal why we are suffering.  There was no obvious reason for why we haven't had another child.  We were doing everything right, but God's timing is different than ours. With much hesitation, I told the group about our struggles with trying to conceive.  With a sympathetic smile the Chaplain's wife told us their children are all about 7 years apart and God's timing is best.  The Chaplain put us down on his prayer list.

The days leading up to the appointment, I was riddled with fear.  What should I expect?  What kind of tests will we have to do?  F couldn't make it to the initial consultation, so I left O with a friend and drove to the appointment alone anxious and shaking.

Of course, on the way to the appointment I got lost, it started raining, I tripped into a puddle while running around to the other side of the building, and arrived with mere minutes to spare.  The consultation was very anti-climatic.  The doctor gave me a biology lesson on how babies are made, and told me if myself plus 99 friends tried to conceive 90% would conceive in 9 months, so the fact that we have been unable to in the years we have been trying makes us infertile.  In my head I knew this, but having someone say it to you is not pleasant.  It's heartbreaking.

I listened in horror as he detailed the next several weeks of testing.  I had to wait until a certain day of my cycle to begin all of the tests.  If you have never had to go through fertility treatment, count your many blessings.  If you have, the tests alone are a testament to your strength.

The doctor asked a few more questions, and tried to get an idea of when all of these tests would begin.  I gave him my charts I had made and he said, 'Sometimes women come in here, have the consultation, and then find out two weeks later they are pregnant, and I never see them again.  So, if you're aren't pregnant I will see you in a few weeks.'  I am certain my mouth dropped open at this point.  Even if he has had that happen before who says that?  Of course I am not pregnant.  I have been trying for years.  Something must be wrong.

I left the appointment, went out the wrong door and wandered around 2 parking lots in the rain without an umbrella until I stumbled upon my vehicle.  I drove home crying and then trying to compose myself, and then crying some more.

Then, I had to explain the day to F, who was equally horrified by the tests.  At least we had a few days before we had to do it.  I prayed for strength to get through it.

Part 2 tomorrow