Angus Lost

We took off the week of the boys’ birthdays to do some family time, learning and playing at Sea world, and just having the best celebration week ever! I can’t believe we now have a FIVE and TWO year old! That’s big boy stuff, for sure. When I decided to go with Before Five In A Row before starting FIAR, it was because:

1.     It had many books on the list that we had not read

2.     It was for ages 2-4 and Silas would be 4 ½ when we started but I thought it would be great to read those books for our literature foundation (perks of having a literature lovin’ mama) and also I could save our work for when little brother and even sister are wanting to start tot school whether it be at 2, 3, or 4 years old.

Our school year has been so FUN and full of learning, exploring, and play that I am glad I started with BFIAR, but since January I’ve been feeling a little more like we’ve hit almost all the bigger kid books on the list and the really young books like Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny just aren’t going to hold our attention. With that in mind, family visiting over the next two weeks, and several youth group events coming our way, I think we may be hitting the end of these books we are rowing. My tentative plan is to row, If Jesus Came To My House, right around Easter, and maybe 2-3 more if I can find them at another library branch since ours didn’t have them and then put our book rowing on hold until fall.  We’ve been debating if we would do a traditional school year or school all year and because of our active life we are leaning more towards all year and spreading our break days where we need them. With that, our plan is over March and April finish our BFIAR book rows, then transition into listening to a chapter book, one of the living books, yet to be decided, and start working on learning to read throughout our summer months. We travel a whole lot in the summer with our teens so our summer plan is just to focus on reading and I think it’ll be really fun and a special time. Learning to READ! This is such a big deal. Silas and I were excitedly talking about how if you know how to write, and read, and maybe drive a car, you can pretty much do anything in the whole world…it’s kind of all you need to know. And Silas said, “yeah and I already know how to drive a car!” So yep, he is pretty much prepared to do life. I’m so so so thankful for this special school time I have with him and that I get to enjoy these conversations with him and that I get to be the one to teach him how to READ. That is a big deal. Just like I got to teach him how to write his name and make letters…special, special moments and important things that he will do every day and even as an adult. Thank you Jesus that I get to be the “school mommy” as he called me the other day.

Now to this past week! This week we rowed two books Angus Lost and Angus and the Cat that were generously given to us by a friend! These books we had not yet read and although simple were very enjoyable. Since they were so simple, I didn’t have too many book activities so we supplemented our learning with our My Father’s World Preschool supplies. 

On Monday, we read our story for the first time and talked about the book. We talked about how Angus must have felt sad when he was lost and relieved when he made it back home. We reviewed all the important things to do if Silas ever got lost and made sure he knew his first and last name, mommy and daddy’s real names, our address, where daddy works, and we are working on memorizing our phone number. Thankfully he knew all of these things except the phone number so that’s one we will keep working on. I told him about one time when I got lost in a church and how I was so scared until I found my mom. We talked about being curious and how it is okay to be curious but when we go alone that we may get lost or hurt so it’s better to tell mom or dad what we are feeling curious about. We decided that the two most curious people we know are Curious George and Ezra. :) I drew a picture of Angus and Silas colored him in and made him furry with yarn. 

Our MFW work included, making rows of pegs on our peg board, listening and following simple instruction like “place 3 pegs in row 1 and 2 orange pegs in row 5”. We also did complete this pattern with our pegs. We utilized our foam numbers by placing them in a bag and feeling them with our hands and guessing what number we were touching. Silas knew 1-10 by touch and not sight and only confused number 5 and number 2 and they are so similar. We used our fit-a-piece puzzle by taking all the little pieces out of the big circles and sorting them in piles. Ezra explored the big circles. 

 

We also talked about the significance of a leap year, colored a leap year page and figured out how old Silas would be at the next two leap years- 9, and 13!! We also started an experiment of growing snow crystals since it snowed in Angus’ story.

On Tuesday, we used our MFW pegs to practice listening again. Listening is so hard and so it is good to practice. We also used our fit-a-piece puzzles like we did our numbers and covered our eyes to guess what shape we were touching. He did so well at this! We both learned one of the shapes we have is called a parallelogram. When Ezra napped we worked on using our light up Legos on our light box and we watched a short live action video of Angus. It was really cute and we liked it a lot.

Wednesday was a day of a lot of brother playtime. We decided to wait to do school until after lunch since they were having so much fun. When that time came, I could tell that Silas was feeling a little non-compliment…he wasn’t that way yet but I could tell a mood was brewing. Since Wednesday nights are long for us, we decided it would be a good idea to have a game day since we haven’t done that in a while and games ARE learning! We played Uno moo 3 times, then Candy land, then memory game, and finally, The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel! My goodness, we had fun and were both feeling very tired now. So tired, we even took a nap!

Thursday, we colored and then we read Angus and the Cat. There was a part of the story where Angus could not reach the cat because she was sitting on the windowsill and the story told us his Scottie dog legs were just too short. Silas said, “wait, why can’t he reach the cat?” I reminded him what we just read and he said, “No they are not. Wait.” He grabbed the other book and thumbed through until he found a page of both the cat and Angus with paws on the windowsill looking out. We hadn’t read Angus with the book since Monday, since we watched the live action and then had game day, so I couldn’t believe he remembered this illustration with such detail!

I told him he had a point and at another part of the book Angus was now upstairs looking out the window, talk about inconsistency, haha. I told him I bet that some of the windows were just taller than others and that was why. We enjoyed this story just as much as the other Angus book. We worked on -og and -at sight words and talked about learning to read and that this is helping us do just that!

We then talked about the different types of illustrations and how the author included a silhouette of Angus. We learned that silhouettes are similar to shadows and we practiced drawing our own. This was really funny and we were laughing at our outcomes. We checked on our snow experiment from the beginning of the week and it just didn’t grow snow like it was suppose to…a teeny tiny bit of flakes started but then I knocked it over so we don’t know how it would have turned out. I think we didn’t put in enough baking soda to cause our chemical reaction. We will have to try it again, another time!

I’m glad we studied some of the Angus books by Majorie Flack because we really liked them!