ABC's and Fairies: our focus for our 2010-2011 year for Sarah (1st grade), Anna (Kinder), Leah (Pre-K) and Levi (Pre-K). If you remember, I was initially concerned about Along the Alphabet Path at Serendipity, as being too girlish for Levi. Nothing like getting a comment direct from the author of said curriculum to offer "tweaking" options! Elizabeth Foss suggested that I could leave out the fairy portion all together and focus on plant identification and utilizing the science basket links that are organized so nicely on the left side sidebar of the website. Ultimately, because Levi is only 3, the only tweaking I ended up doing was to trade the fairy coloring book the girls will use, for an alphabet animal coloring book. The other activities for the rest of the week are not gender specific and I don't need to make any changes. Really no tweaking at all.
I may have the older boys join us in the second half of the year, and take advantage of the books for older kids as well as the science basket.
The girls really wanted to somehow continue our very informal study of American Sign Language. I noticed on one of the activity links at Serendipity that a mom was doing an ASL letter each week along with the written alpha letter. That seemed like a great idea. Not only could we practice the letter, but Sarah and Leah, who are familiar with more signs, can practice a few words beginning with the letter of the week. Plans are to use resources from both here and here to help accomplish this goal.
The fairy story is printed and in the binder, books are ordered and scheduled to arrive soon. One book is scheduled to arrive by "Royal Mail" in September. I am very much looking forward to the recipes, simple activities, saints, and bible verses to make our ABC year a memorable one!
8 comments:
Your plans sound simple and lovely Jennifer. Although we are very relaxed and project-based around here, I still love planning the atmosphere and making open-ended checklists. It's fun and inspirational to see what other moms are doing.
Looks really cute! Love the sign language connection.
Jen, the alphabet material you are "tweaking" for Eli sounds great! I wish I would have thought of that for Stan. With pre-school, I'm using odd and end books that I had collected for the older girls when they were his age. But, maybe next year.
The sign language dvd's look awesome! Gosh! There is so much out there, isn't it? We are blessed but it can be overwhelming at the same time.
Oh wow. We are super interested in ASL and know a lot of words but I have always struggled with how to incorporate it into our daily learning. I never thought of tying it into our alphabet! That is a really great idea and I am off right now to make up some word lists for each letter of the alphabet. Thank you so much! :)
I'm interested in Along the Alphabet Path too. and Flower loves fairies so no tweeking here! I plan to check it out.
Elizabeth - I too love to see what others are doing with their children, it is inspirational :)
Jill-I hope it helps us make some progress
Patty-The Signing Time DVD's are really great.
SA-I had one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments too!
Gardenia-this will be right up Flower's alley :)
We're doing Along the Alphabet Path this year too with our 1st grader and preschooler.
Love your blog!
I just posted our alphabet pages! It made me really miss these days!
I love the science baskets- I don't know if this list is still there, but we checked out *all* of the "rock" books from the library a while back- great list!! You should have fun! :)
For your 3yo, there is a Dover Animal Alphabet book that we used. Another fun resource is the Sesame Street Sign Language book.
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