Corduroy Lapbook

Shanan Preschool is still in session! After finishing our “first semester” we started reading Corduroy by Don Freeman and creating a lapbook. Most of the ideas for this lapbook came straight from Homeschool Share. I didn’t spend hours planning and finding resources on the Internet. Still, it has taken us several weeks to do this project. I have not gotten any better at doing five-in-a-row in five days, maybe worse. Luckily, the kids don’t seem to mind reading the same book over and over for 12 or even 15 days. In fact, after reading a book that many times, they may still request the book for a bedtime story.

Shanan Preschool is not formally in operation on a Monday through Friday basis. On Mondays, the kids learn Music Appreciation while listening to Marissa sing at voice lessons. Oh, and they practice that ever important skill of sitting quietly. They also are the backseat drivers during Marissa’s driver’s education. Then on Fridays, we have added a Socialization Experience. The kids are learning how to fight, eat animal crackers and gold fish crackers, use toys inappropriately and talk back to the “teacher” while playing with all the kids whose moms are at the the Women’s Bible Study. I am quite sure that they could have become typical preschoolers while at home. But, who wants to be accused of being one of those home schoolers who keeps their kids hidden in the house away from the rest of the world?

• Science: When I laid out the lapbook, I had a lot of open space that needed to be filled. So, we decided to study real, live bears. The kids learned a poem about hibernating bears. We talked about bear characteristics and found the characteristic on photos of bears. And, they took a whole bunch of animal classification cards and sorted out the bears from rabbits, frogs, blue jays, snakes, possums, kangaroos and what-nots.
• Pre-reading: The kids practiced matching button shapes and laying out a pattern doing “Button Patterns.” Understanding rhyming words helps children read. We practiced rhyming by making our own My Rhyme book. Beverly already recognizes and can write most of her lower case letters. She doesn’t always know the letters name, but she does know the sounds that they make. The activities in this lapbook used all capital letters. What a great time to review the lower case letters and introduce their partners; partners that make the same sounds. As usual, we worked extensively on pencil control. So, we did a lot of tracing and coloring. Beverly is very good at writing left to write. David needs a little help. He writes only the letters he feels like writing and kind of picks and chooses.
• Pre-math: We are continuing to work on counting and knowing what numbers mean. Beverly has number recognition down all the way to 9. When we were in the grocery store, Beverly was using her new skill to let me know what number aisle I was in. She has also learned to count and is beginning to understand what numbers mean. David recognizes that what he sees is a number, but rarely does he use the right name. And, of course, matching and patterns are an important pre-math skill too.

Not to be outdone, David still found a way to participate in grocery store cuteness. Every time an announcement came on over the intercom system, David yelled, “Amen!” when the announcer was finished talking. I suppose he thought God was speaking.

And the fruits of our labor:

Beverly wants to make sure you notice her cool, blue nails!

The entire captions were visible when I viewed my slide show on my computer screen. I didn’t realize that they weren’t going to show in their entirety on my youtube video until after I loaded it. I contemplated redoing the show with the captions turned off, but thought, “Nah!”

The music for this video is Starting to Learn by Reid Jamieson. It is available CNET’s DOWNLOAD.COM.