Turtle Lapbook

We finished the Dude's Turtle lapbook today. We didn't do a cover but I don't think he cares. I might just let him paste and color the leftover clip art from the copywork pages onto the front and call it good.

Here are the stick puppets I talked about in today's first post.

This is the first middle fold of the lapbook:

The extra middle flap with his Alligator Snapping Turtle report

Middle flap up close

A few details from inside

And a poem that was meant for copywork but since I think the Dude needs a bit more handwriting instruction first, I printed both poems off for him and we made books out of them which he illustrated. I like the hatchlings and eggs on the right. :) This is also the poem from the MFW teacher's manual.


Well, that's the lapbook. I hope you liked it!

Books and Video we used for Tt Turtle

Just thought I'd list three of the books we used for our Tt Turtle unit since they worked the best for us.

The first was All About Turtles by Jim Arnosky. I really like Jim Arnosky's nature illustrations. I was turned on to them a couple of years ago while using My Father's World Exploring Countries and cultures. His books are really helpful when doing nature study.



The second book is Fun With Nature by Mel Boring I think I'm going to try to purchase this one because it's something like six books in one. I wish I'd found it back when we were studying Ll Leaf. I like the short two-page spreads. They're perfect for short attention spans.



The last one is "Maybe Donna Wants a Cheeseburger!" by Karen Adler. This one is really cute. It tells the story of a Box Turtle named Donna who lived in a class room and how her owner, the teacher, explained hibernation and other turtle-specific terminology. We used some of the definitions in the back of the book for the Dudes turtle vocabulary in his turtle lapbook. Tink was actually the one who found this book for me. She had seen it at our local Whole Foods and liked it so she told me to get it for the Dude. I love how my girls look out for their little brother. :)


I also found a video from a show called Eco Geeks on Alligator Snapping Turtles. It was short and caught the Dude's attention. Now he focuses on that particular turtle whenever he hears about it. It's also the turtle he chose to do his lapbook report booklet on.

I'll probably post again to show the Dude's lapbook and his WH Question cards that his speech teacher made for him.

The Puppets Are Working!

Yay! Some exciting news. The puppets suggested by the Dude's speech teacher really are working. After reading the Tortoise and the Hare we made some simple stick puppets.

Dude was very excited about them. He wanted to be involved in every part of the process of making them. I sketched our favorite poses of both the tortoise and the hare from the book we'd just read and he helped decide which ones to use. (I think we've read it about 5 times.) Then we colored them, cut them out, glued them to some card stock, then glued them to Popsicle sticks.

Of course, Dude didn't narrate back the whole story on his own but he was able to act it out with me using our puppets. I think that's amazing for him! I'm sure the more we practice acting out the stories at the end of each unit, the better he'll get at it.

We've finished the Tt Turtle unit and are almost done with the Turtle lapbook. Pictures will be posted as soon as we're done. Probably next week since this is a busy weekend. I'll have to make a standard pocket to store our stick puppets for each unit. :) Puppets and lapbooks. Who knew?

Narration With Puppets!

The Dude had a great day at speech today. Mrs. B, his speech teacher, noticed that he really likes puppets so she's started using them during some of his speech sessions. Today when we walked in the room, I could tell she had something up her sleeve because she was extra smiley.

Instead of working on Chicken Little like they had been with their "WH" questions like we'd planned, she pulled out some puppets that went along with the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

It was a success! The Dude was so excited about the puppets he was wiggling in his seat and could hardly hold still. Mrs. B read the Three Billy Goats Gruff and would pause so the Dude could read his "lines". Then they used the same "WH" question format she'd been using for Chicken Little. (I'll have to post a picture of this set-up another time.) The Dude had only a few problems answering the questions and helping sequence the story with the visual cues.

After the questions, they picked up the puppets and acted out the story together and the Dude was actually able to tell back little snippets of the story. Can you say "narration"??? I've been trying to push back the little worries in my head that the Dude could not narrate or tell back stories we'd read yet. This should help bridge that gap until he can get a better grasp on his language skills.

I'm going to have to work on making simple puppets to go along with what we're learning in school. Should be pretty since most of our units are on animals. Hey! I just remembered, I think I still have that hinge template from doing that Puppet tools review a couple of years ago. That'll come in handy.

Perseverance (Did I spell that right?)

I'm having a lot of luck thinking of different ways to teach perseverance to the Dude. Perseverance is the theme for his Tt Turtle unit. The problem is getting my hands on the materials. I went to the library today to pick up a couple of books with perseverance themes but even though the catalog said the books were in, they weren't. Sorta frustrating. I'll have to go back and look for Horton Hatches the Egganother day since this cold/allergies I have is a bit much for me.



I requested Veggie Tales Sumo of the Opera from the library but they just took too long so I had my hubby bring it home tonight. It was nice, the whole family sat down to watch it while dinner was in the oven. Perseverance was mentioned over and over again and it was even defined in the beginning. I wish we'd had the movie a bit sooner for St. Patrick's Day but that's okay, maybe the Dude will remember what it's about in time for next year. :) After watching the movie I asked him if he liked learning more about perseverance and he sounded very happy to hear the word again. I think we picked the right movie!

Nn nest and Tt Turtle

Okay, so the Dude is working through My Father's World from A to Z. We just finished up the Nn Nest unit. It worked out great because Tink is working on her badge requirements for her American Heritage Girls "Our Feathered Friends" badge. They built a nest out of mud, sticks and strips of newspaper.

Then we moved on to the Tt Turtle unit. When it was time to make a paper plate turtle the Dude was moving a bit like a turtle, plus I knew LB would want in on the painting action so I decided to let her help him. Even Tink surprised me and wanted to help paint too.

Here's the finished turtle.

The Dude has been having problems absorbing the details in the lessons so to help reinforce his lessons we're going to try to print out lapbooks for each unit he studies. So far the most useful looking lapbooks for the Dude are on Homeschool Share. Dude likes cutting, coloring and pasting quite a bit now that he's finally able to do it well so the lapbooks will be pretty handy.

Oops! I forgot to explain what a lapbook is for those who don't speak homeschool mom-ese: a lapbook is just a manila file folder filled with mini books on whatever subject you're teaching. Here's an example.

The Dude also has a pretty nice speech therapist at the local school. She's great because she has the mom perspective down and he really likes her. She volunteered to bring her tortoises so he could get an up-close look at them. That was really nice of her!

I'll also be sure to take him to the reptile house at the zoo and take a good look at the big Galapagos Tortoises on the way in.

Tink is going to get some small aquatic turtles for her birthday but we'll have to wait a bit for that.

I'll post pictures of the lapbook once we're done with it and any other interesting project we do for the Tt Turtle unit.

Hold Fast

Welcome to my new blog. I'll be working out all the kinks as I go along and will continue to adjust this blog as I figure out how it all works since my old blog was hosted elsewhere and I'm not yet familiar with Blogger. Should be easy enough I hear. Plus I have a teenager in the house to help. ;)

I'm starting this new blog to chronicle my family's journey holding fast to the path we've been led to. The last 5 years have been pretty difficult ones. We've somehow survived the loss of our youngest son, Peter. Then we were blindsided by the economy's tumble. So far we just can't seem to recover. We had to move away from an area we had come to love very much and we long to go back. I've nearly thrown in the towel a few times because of discouragement and I'm so thankful that I didn't. Since I know we're not the only ones struggling these days I hope this blog will encourage others to hold fast through their own trials.

Inspiration for the name of this blog came from my daily Bible reading: Joshua 23:8 says, "but you shall hold fast to the LORD your God, as you have done to this day". I thought it was a very fitting verse since I've been fighting for the last two years, especially, to hold on to following God in spite of others' discouragement.

So for my intro: I'm a homeschooling mom of four children. The rest are in heaven being schooled by the Master Himself. I love reading and acquiring knowledge on all manner of subjects so this homeschooling thing springs naturally from that love. I also like knitting and spending time with good friends. I have organizational and time management issues that seem to get worse with stress. I'm easily overwhelmed. But I know where to go for help and have mostly survived thus far.

My children are:

Ninja- 17 year old black belt extraordinaire. She loves Christian rock, headbanging and keeping up with her favorite bands. She plans to devote her life to rockin' out for the Lord.

Tink- 12 years old. She loves reading just as much as I do and when she's not knitting or bouncing off the walls, she has a book in her hands. We've recently found she has a gift for clothing design, particularly in the area of knitting but she'd like to branch out and maybe eventually become a clothing designer for equestrians. There was a time when I would have said she has ADHD but she seems to be maturing so that's changing. She's still distractible and not the best of organizers (like her mother) but can focus better now that she's older.

The Dude- 7 year old handsome little man. He's super smart, but held back a bit by language delays, a bit of general anxiety and a strong need for routine. He goes three times a week to speech therapy and about once a month to occupational therapy for feeding issues. He can build just about anything with Legos and loves to draw.

And of course, little Lady Bug (LB for short) is 3 years old- She's the princess of the castle. She can talk up a storm and charms everyone who sees her. She loves being involved with our schoolwork and always wants to be right in the middle of it all. She adores books and is forever asking, "Can you wead dith to me?" Read her a book and she's happy.

As of right now our family is using My Father's World curriculum. We like it quite a bit but when you have to buy for 3 different age groups it gets pricey. If funds are not available when next school year starts, we're going to use a method taught by Carole Joy Seid which is very similar to My Father's World except it's a bit more relaxed.

So that's my first blog post. Time to go check on the kiddos so I'll be back later with some pictures.