Rowing Week 1 :: I Am an Artist

I stumbled upon a blog last week sometime, delightfullearning. She had posted some inspiring preschool activities and other homeschool "what we're doing" type things. After my last preschool post I had really been thinking that my little boys get a lot of leftovers as far as school goes. Keep them out of trouble stuff. Seemed like they should have more than that...not more rigid curriculum but more from me. One thing I found on her site was BFIAR. When I first saw those letters I was confused...what?! What could BFIAR mean? After digging around a little I discovered Before Five In A Row. A gentle preschool and beyond program that uses children's literature 5 days in a row with activities that go along with the book. 

I dove right in!

I wanted to continue with the alphabet work we'd been doing and I found a companion teaching-the-books-with-the-alphabet listing at homeschool share so I jumped in with the "E" book. Found the book at the library, read it myself, used another homeschool share resources page for go-along activities and planned out our week!

We've had so much fun! The activities have been relativity easy and a great way to spend time together. Though I have a plan for the week and which activities I want to do each day we're really flexible about the timing...when we have a few moments we read the book or do a quick activity, when we have longer we'll get more involved.

This week we "rowed" I Am an Artist by Pat Lowery Collins. It really is a beautiful book about looking and stopping and experiencing nature.

So this week:

We took school pictures out in the flower farm. Finding fall colors to use as backdrops.

We painted clouds to see what shapes we could find.

We went on a nature walk (again through the flower farm) to find treasures...

...and made a collage of what we found.

We made whipped cream (like clouds, right).

We cut an apple to find the star inside. (An example of "fitting it in" as this apple was for breaky.) This was a page from the book.

We meant to do the next page for our alphabet book, an adorable elephant from homeschool creations, but we had a visitor and dentist appointments and life just got in the way.

The boys also worked on their mini books for the letter "E" and traced letters and patterns in cornmeal boxes. A full week. So blessed. Really great activities that we got to do together. Cuddling on the couch or front porch or in a circle on the living room floor reading a good book.