Review: I'm Not a Scaredy-Cat

I have loved the writing of Max Lucado for a very long time now.  At one point I had all his books, but alas, I can't keep up.  :)   I admittedly was somewhat skeptical when he branched out into picture books, but have found them all to be very lovely.  Therefore, when given an opportunity to review "I'm Not A Scaredy-Cat" I lept at the chance.

Art Series: The Painting-In Book

Today I have a NEAT book.  It's  one of those use it up type books, but could easily, be adapted for a classroom setting.

It's called the Painting-In Book, it's written by Anna Rumsby, and it is just a fun book... meant to teach young children about paint and how to use it.

Book Synopsis: 
Can you give the gorilla a jungle to hide in? Can you create some honeycomb for the bees? And can you mix up some delicious flavors of ice cream?

Create paint masterpieces with nothing more than your poster paints and Anna Rumsby's entertaining activity pages. A great big book of painting fun!

Also contains an introduction to mixing colors and simple, easy-to-copy painting techniques. 

My thoughts:
This is such a neat little book.  64 pages filled with one sided sheets to help young children express themselves with paint, learning to mix colours, and use differing paint techniques.

Can you give a dog some long hair?

Can you help this boy have fun with the elephant?

The instructions on each page are written clearly and simply.

I am not sure if it is the copy that I received, but the pages pull out very easily.  This makes it easy to pull individual pages out in order to let your little artist create, and later display.

Recommendation:
If you have young children, and want to let them show their artistic side and learn a few things while doing so, this book will work for you.   If you KNOW someone with young children this would make a great gift, along with some washable paints.

The Painting-In Book: 30 Paint and Play Activities
By: Anna Rumsby
Pages: 64
Geared for ages 3-5
Published by: Laurence King
Size: 14.56 x 10.29
Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.

Amazon.ca: The Painting-In Book: 30 Paint and Play Activities

Amazon.com: The Painting-In Book: 30 Paint and Play Activities

I Linked up at the Virtual Fridge this week. Good place to go to for Art Inspiration!

Love is the air... Love is found in picture books

Ah...just think... February 14 is JUST around the corner.
People planning ways to have a special time with their loved ones.

It's also a time of year when it is SO much fun to grab up a new picture book and share them with your littles...and if they are seasonal.....so much more the fun!  :)

Today I would like to introduce you two delightful little books, given to me by Raincoast Books, for you to introduce to your littlest ones.

Love Is...
This delightful picture book by Diane Adams walks us through what love looks....using a young girl and her duckling.

The text is clear and simple, the illustrations so fitting.  It would be so much fun to sit with a young one and point out all the things that happen, to look for the duck, to see how this young one find a way to care for her charge.

Love is ... all the ways that we care for each other... even to the point of missing our loved ones when they are gone, and the joy we have at their return.  Love is messiness and maturity, snuggles and loneliness.  Love is just so very much.  :)

Love is all around Canada.
Ah...but love is INDEED found in Canada!!!   :)

It is found in national parks, and provinces, caught sidling up to families having picnics, in bears held tight, and in listening to lonely friends.  Love is found in the smiles and helps that others offer.  Love is found everywhere you look in Canada... and as you know.... you can never have too much love.

An easy reading rhyme flows from beginning to end with many Canada attractions mentioned.

I love how this book points out all the ways and places love can be found.   The work that the illustrator did is simply marvellous, so many things to point out to a wondering, learning child.

Recommendation:

I would happily recommend both of these books.
Love is... it's a cute story of a girl with her duck, and it parallels so well the love of a family for their child. 
Love is all around Canada: the delightful rhyme, the pictures, the Canadian content... it works.

The illustrators have done a fabulous job with both books, the writers in showing the importance of love and family.   It is what Valentine's Day is all about right?   The love shown in families that broadens to the community around us.

 Amazon.ca: Love Is
Amazon.com: Love Is 
 Love Is
by Diane Adams
Illustrator: Claire Keane
Chronicle Books

9.58 x 7.67
32 pages
Ages 3-5

Amazon.ca: Love Is All Around Canada
Amazon.com: Love Is All Around Canada
Love is all around Canada
By Wendi Silvano
Illustrator: Joanna Czernichowska
Sourcebooks
11.08 x 8.75 
32 pages
Ages 4-10

Today... a good day

My mom needed a day away so I went up with the lad to watch over my dad. He's not good left alone for long periods of time since his walking isn't very good, neither is his memory. So.. we did our homeschooling there today.

First we played Skipbo. Dad played too. He won. The lad got a good chance to count his numbers and to remember what they looked like. And even got to finish a hand or two. :)

Then we had fun playing dominos. Not so much playing the game, but constructing buildings to keep the "angry birds" safe from the not nice birds who would knock on the door and pretend to be good birds. :)

We had a hot meal for lunch. Dad peeled the potatoes. :)

After lunch we did some book work. I'll have to add the books we did later. :)
and the lad made up a game for his stuffie rabbit to do involving memory work from Gilligan's island, his newly favouritiest show. :) The lad had lots of opportunities to exercise a servant's heart today and he did so willingly which pleased this mother's heart. :)

Stopped at a gardening centre on the way home and picked up some flowers. The lad really wanted to plant them and was disappointed to learn that we need to wait a couple days before planting them as they need to harden off a bit first. So we planted some other plants instead. He helped cut up potatoes and plant some tomatoes. He even ran over the potato bed to tampen them down for good growing. He'd helped me last week with planting some pea seeds and is disappointed they aren't coming up yet.

He had a great deal of fun playing with Blossom (a young rabbit who lives with a guinea pig in an outdoor cage). Sam (the guinea pig) can be a bit of a spaz so the lad never succeeded in catching him. BUT the other guinea pigs are in a much bigger cage and he had a hoot rounding them up and making them sit in their hidey-holes. Since no harm was done, I called it good exercise for all concerned...plus the lad is gentle in his handling of them. But encouraging critters to run and play hide and seek is a favourite pass-time.

then in for supper and some Gilligan's Island watching and off to bed. Tonight our bed-time reader took us into the world of Heidi which intrigued the lad NOT AT ALL. He was much more interested in the one-room schoolhouse story than in anything else...though Jesus feeding 5000 people using only five bread and two fish... that elicted a "wow mommy, that's a lot of people with just my supper, how did he do it?"

All in all a good homeschool day. :)

Tuesday - book work today

Since we are going out this afternoon, we decided to do some book work this morning.
I asked the lad to pick a number between 3 and 8 and that's how many pages we would do in each book. He waffled between 4 and 5 and settled on four. :)

These are the books that we did

Capital and lowercase letters.

After this book we read two poems, one of those poems mentioned wind and weather maps which we want to look up sometime.

Letter Play

After this book we read a story.

Number Fun

We read a poem called "wagons west". It was a fairly long poem, and lad asked questions which I always like.

Then we did Fisher Price, preschool book, I can learn. This book had number and letter sound concepts in it. He had a great deal of fun teaching one of his baby(correction little child) stuffies about matching and letter sounds. On one page he made up stories about why different stuffies didn't like different shapes.

Then we read a poem about Indian children. Can't say it went over very well. :)

The complete book of numbers and counting

Once again doing this book the stuffies played an important role in helping him count and to teach. We had a lot of fun using his stuffies to reinforce learning. :)

We followed this book by reading the Little Red Hen where the lad helped read the "not I" and the "I will" parts. by the end of the story he was also filling in the animal parts.

My Heavenly Helper, k-2

This book has lots of dot to dots in it. It's interesting seeing him learning well his letters and numbers even though I don't focus on this information a lot in our schooling. But through reading and copywork he's doing good at picking it up. After this book we read a story about a tiger called "Kattor". He was a rather silly young tiger who had to learn a lot growing up.

This afternoon we need to take dad to the eye doctor so we're going to go see a movie called "African Cats".
African Cat
Documentary

An epic true story set against the backdrop of one of the wildest places on Earth, "African Cats" captures the real-life love, humor and determination of the majestic kings of the savanna. The story features Mara, an endearing lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother's strength, spirit and wisdom; Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns; and Fang, a proud leader of the pride who must defend his family from a once banished lion. Disneynature brings "The Lion King" to life on the big screen in this True Life Adventure directed by Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill ("Earth"). An awe-inspiring adventure blending family bonds with the power and cunning of the wild, "African Cats" leaps into theatres on Earth Day, April 22, 2011.

Director: Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey

Here's the official site.

St. Patrick's Day

Different things I'm considering preparing for the Lad for St. Patrick's Day. ONLY because it can be a fun holiday for a boy child. :

A colouring page of the Irish flag. Not sure if I"ll do this as we did one for our study on Ireland.

According to legend, Saint Patrick used a shamrock to explain about God. The shamrock, which looks like clover, has three leaves on each stem. Saint Patrick told the people that the shamrock was like the idea of the Trinity – that in the one God there are three divine beings: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The shamrock was sacred to the Druids, so Saint Patrick’s use of it in explaining the trinity was very wise.

In light of this I'm considering having him do this activity.

If I can figure out how to print this maze off I would use it. :)

and here's a nice little unit study that I might pull ideas from.

DLTK has an anagram. one is easy, one is more difficult. Same site has an easier to access maze.
:)

there's this neat green on green craft that I think the lad will enjoy. :)

Fairly certain I'm going to be doing this one. it's a file folder game.

and there are lots of ideas on this page. Not sure what I'll use at this point, if anything. Though I do like this 3 in 1 craft/song.

What we Learned today - March 8, 2011

Today we practiced opposites. First I had to teach the lad what opposite meant.

And we read a poem on cats, and did some work about Tabby Cats. We're feeling VERY disorganized and muddle headed this morning so I'm pulling together things that I think will work for us today as book work ain't where it's at today. :) So we did some lap book work on cats. Poem, parts of a cat, practicing the letter C, Spelling the words Tabby Cat,

Pulled a poem from a cat study from reading-tutors.com. We read through it a couple of times.

We did this page from Enchanted Learning. And we read books looking for the letter C (easy to do when you have LOTS of cat books). :) We did this maze as well.

Then upstairs to read books for a half hour.

Time for a late lunch. and the cleaning up the house and playing. We done good on a day when we just want to veg so it's all good. :)

What we Learned today - March 4, 2011

Today the lad and I worked on telling time and writing out the long I, long U and short o sounds as well as figuring out first letters in words from a choice of three.

We also did colouring and designing of some of our own art work.

Then we made a Canada puzzle. I tried to find a pic of it for you but was unable to do so. I do know that I bought it at "the bargain shop" though. It's a really good puzzle as it has all the provincial flags on it. and has basic coordinates on the outside edge of the map. It's a really good one to do with a five year old as it helps him practice his numbers and alphabet, and the flags are easy for them to figure out so they are able to help well making a bigger then normal for them puzzle. We practiced finding coordinates (map reading), learning the province names (geography) and team work.

The rest of the day was spent watching a movie (stuart little 3) and doing laundry. :)

Sight, Sound, Taste, Hear, Touch

Today the lad and I learned about the five senses.

We cut out pictures of mouths, ears, noses, eyes, and hands.

We talked abit about how fish hear (vibrations in the water), and how people can hear better by cupping their hands over their ears (we had fun with this one whispering up and down the stairs).

We then played with a bunny and a cat for a while and used our five senses to learn different things about them. How bunnies smell like bunnies and cats smell like cats and people smell like people. :) Bunny fur is different than cat fur. Bunnies ears are shaped differently than a cat and so are their eyes. it was VERY interesting to a cat and bunny crazy lad of five.

We then traced out the words for the five senses. Then mommy wrote down different words for each sense that the lad could come up with.

Sight: looking, seeing, pretty, ugly, nice, colour, differences
Taste: tasting a chip, sweet, sour, salty, hot, spicy, yummy, "sometimes good, sometimes not good"
Hear: hear, listening, sounds "too much noise", "milo comes when he hears you calling Milo come here".
Smell: Chip eating, yuck, nose, "ew" "mmm" "cats - can smell like cats"
Touch: hands, fingers, somethings don't mind if you touch them, "helps blind people pay money".

All in all, a good time learning by a five year old. :)

Tuesday Learning - Feb 15

This was a typical Tuesday for us. Play for 20 minutes, work for 20 minutes, play for 30 minutes, work for 20 minutes and so forth. We had a lot of fun, and got a fair amount of learning done as well.

Today we did four pages in this book. Writing out ending sounds to words, matching words to pictures and so forth.

We worked on a couple of workbooks upstairs as well. Math, letters, matching and what not.

We continued to go through a Kumon math book for 4-5-6 year olds. We did another four pages.

We sorted through pencil crayons and sharpened them. The lad spent about 20 minutes working through Time4Learning. You can read my review of the program here.

And to finish off our learning time.. we went for a walk outside. We had fun pretending to be watching out for made up animals and how to avoid them. :)

Yesterday and Today

This week we're going to work on lesson two of this kindergarten curriculum book. I'm starting to teach him the "I'm a little teapot" song which actions. It's a good "T" letter song and the focus this week in the letter "T", the Number "0" and something else I can't recall at the moment.

and we did another five pages in this book on Tuesday. Matching of upper and lower case. We did this in the basement as that's where our alphabet chart is. he pretended he was a little rabbit learning the alphabet and that I was the teacher rabbit. Made it fun for him. :)

Yesterday for exercise we did Cardio Fit by Billy Blanks Jr.

I'm doing two things with Cardio Fit. I'm trying to teach the lad that through perseverance that he can master any skill he sets his mind to, and get us exercising and using our bodies. After we finished exercising...which involved moving and twisting our bodies and stuff...hard work, The lad played with some building toys while I did my back and stretching exercises.

Then it was time to go to a funeral.

Today I have bible study in the morning, so the lad will go to story hour where he will play, hear a bible story, and make a craft. I can't recall what we're doing for bible study.

This afternoon we are going to be busy! We have time at a museum in St. Mary's with the homeschool group, and then off to London so I can get my shears and then go the children's museum there for an hour or so. Busy day, but tomorrow is a stay at home day so it will all be good. :)

Who Am I?

Today the lad and I worked on finishing a model train house. He had to listen, follow instructions, and then set things up. He needed to practice some good hand eye coordination and he had to help his mommy figure out how some things got put together. It was a good brain exercise for him. Afterwards we had fun playing with our HO model train.

In the afternoon we focused on a lesson plan on Who Am I? I made out this copy work sheet Who Made You?
We also took weights and measurements and did some drawing. I used lesson one of this kindergarten curriculum book.

Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum

Still not quite sure if this is what I wanted to find, but it's a least a start.

The kindergarten Program
what the government expects children in Kindergarten to know.

I found the overall expectations to be more helpful than anything else. :)