FIAR-ing Madeline

I have been looking forward to using Madeline for school this week. It was one of my favorite books growing up and we also used it with Quintin a few years ago and had a really good time.

Monday- We located Paris, France on the map, learned that France is in Europe and where the Seine River is located. We talked about being happy for good things and sad when bad things happen and how to cheer up those that are sick or old. I hope have the children bring a treat to our elderly neighbors next door this week to practice this.

Tuesday- We colored the French flag and traced "France" and their names on a paper (will have to get pictures later). We discussed literary repetition again (as we did in PING) and rhyming. We compared our daily routine with the one the little girls follow and discussed the benefits of having one. Our vocabulary for the week includes the words "appendix", "solemn" and "disaster". We made solemn faces and talked about different kinds of disasters. Before nap time we read a book about the Eiffel Tower. Now I want to visit Paris again :) I will have to get out the pictures from my trip to show the boys.

We have been doing some "seat work" daily also. Last week we did not do a FIAR story because Q was home for 1/2 of it and then starting school so we were busy getting ready. We did however, do seatwork. Landon uses a Bob the Builder preschool workbook. I was just letting him do puzzles and color while Ashton worked in his Rod and Staff workbooks, but Landon wanted to do seatwork, too so I found him this book at the dollar store. I was very happy to see how well he did with it (he finished the book today after working in it for a couple weeks). The pages would ask him to "color the small circle red and the big circle blue", "match the red machine to the red word", or "trace all the squares and color them red". He learned what it meant to color in the lines and his coloring looks much less like scribbling now. This is not something I push, but once I explained it he seemed to want to do it right. It was very rare that he needed me to correct his work or help him find answers. Go Landon!
Ashton's Rod and Staff preschool/kindergarten books have lots of tracing, coloring and cutting and pasting. He also will learn to write all his letters, numbers and some sight words. I only have him do a page or 2 a day or he gets super bored. He's quite happy to do the first couple, however.