My Blue Boat Lapbook

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We recently spent two weeks on "My Blue Boat" by Chris Demarest which is a book in the Before Five in a Row curriculm. The book is currently out-of-print but many library systems have it available for checkout. It was a fun unit which my boys really enjoyed. We used many components for our lapbook from here: www.homeschoolshare.com/b4_resources_my_blue_boat.php. I tied in several Bible stories that have boats in them like Jesus calming the Storm & Noah's Ark. We also used our new Do-a-Dots to dot the "W is for Whale" page from here: www.makinglearningfun.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.makinglearningfun.com/Activities/ocean/OceanWhaleMagnet.gif . We made boats from here:http://jas.familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts?page=CraftDisplay&craftid=11996 and floated them in the bathtub. As a surpise, I purchased the boys their own wooden boats from Magic Cabin - http://magiccabin.com/magiccabin/product.do?section_id=0&bc=1004&pgc=549&cmvalue=MCD0Normal%20Search%20ResultP1. The boys were so excited about the boats especially when they found out that we would be visiting Aunt Tammy at her beach house the next week. This was a wonderful way to culminate "My Blue Boat"!!!

Jesse Bear What Will You Wear

We spent last week reading "Jesse Bear What Will You Wear" and making a lapbook to go-along with it. Most of the components of the lapbook came from here -http://www.homeschoolshare.com/b4_resources_jesse_bear.php . The boys loved the felt bears that I made for them. I traced this bear pattern http://www.first-school.ws/t/craft/bear_xmas1bw.htm on a cereal box and then glued the felt on to make the body. Then I got out a bunch of fabric scraps and they chose clothes for their bears. We attached the clothes to the bears using velcro so that they could change out the outfits. I also added a component to my lapbook of rhyming words from the book because Eli & Max are really into "What Rhymes". I chose several pairs of rhyming words from the book and put them on cards with a matching picture. Then we said the words and decided what went together. This was a big hit!!! You can see pictures of the lapbook & dress-up bears below.

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Jenny's Suprise Summer Lapbook

We spent the last 2 weeks doing Before Five in Row's "Jenny's Suprise Summer" lapbook. This was a great book and a perfect preschool lapbook!!! It is out of print so if your library doesn't have it you can request it through an interlibrary loan. I bought mine off of Ebay. It was not originally in my September plans but several weeks ago my mom and I both went searching for kittens at the local humane societies. Eli, Max, and I choose a classic orange tabby and named him Baxter after much debate. We also considered the names Garfield, Marmalade, Tigger, and Pumpkin. He is a considered a classic because he has bullseyes on both of his sides as part of his striping. You can see a slideshow of him here - http://wordoftruthboysacademy.blogspot.com/2008/09/introducing-our-new-kitty-baxter.html . With that context, it made perfect sense to scratch my original plans to do "My Blue Boat" and go with this instead. Most of the lapbook components were taken from homeschoolshare.com and I added a few more which are now also on the homeschoolshare website. You can find a direct link to all the components here - http://www.homeschoolshare.com/b4_resources_jenny.php. I like to use the boys' art work for my cover and back page. I used Eli's cat for the front and Max's cat for the back. These were two additional art project we did to go along with the lapbook. As luck would have it, I also found the book "Cats and Kittens", an Usborne First Pets book, for five cents at a local thrift shop. It went perfect with the unit and had a great idea to make homemade kitten toys out of felt and catnip. The boys had fun with this and so did our kitty! We also used Scholastic's First Discovery Book "Cats". This was a fun lapbook and so relevant to our lives! I am so glad I didn't rigidly stick to my schedule!!!

Jenny's Suprise Summer Lapbook