F is for St. Francis, Fuchsia Fairy, Flowers, and Fire Safety!

We wrapped up our work with the letter F on Monday, and now we are heading into G for the rest of the week! I am thinking that, although a bit late for F, we make take a trip next week to the aquarium to see the fish!

Here are our themes for the week, all of which went into the Word Box, as usual.

Our F poems for the week from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and God's Alphabet

~Work Activities~

Caroline does a new puzzle of The Frog Prince (not that we have read the story...)

Fairies of the Field lacing cards - Caroline really enjoys these

Cecilia had various farm puzzles out on her shelf for F week

Caroline displays one of her lacing cards

~Foods for F Week~

fondue!!

I love this cheese fondue... what a great excuse to make it for dinner!

French onion soup

falafel

French toast - stuffed, that is!

Farmhouse Pizza and fruit salad

Yes, you may be thinking, "That's not a pizza; it's a pie!" Well, for some reason, it is called Farmhouse Pizza. That is the name of the recipe. It is filled with ricotta, provelone, mozerella, parmesan, spinach, and pepperoni... and we carved some Ff marks into the top crust for fun! Too bad Caroline doesn't like pie crust... weird for a kid who likes pretty much anything!

fettucine... specifically, pumpkin fettucine alfredo! The girls loved this one and ate it up!

Other F foods enjoyed were fajitas, fig jam, and baked French fries... and lots of fresh fruit!

~Tea Time~

We made fig bars for tea time and had them outside so we could get a little fresh air and outdoor time. Do you see that there is no tea?? Well, I attempted to get apple cider, but when I did, the girls began fighting for the 8 billionth time that day, and so I decided that if I couldn't even walk to the kitchen and pour two mini-teacups of cider and then walk back without Caroline getting in Cecilia's face and Cecilia whacking her, both of them screaming, then there would be no apple cider! If you won't let me go get it, then it doesn't happen! ;)

As a side note, they had an absolutely wonderful day today (Tuesday), with no arguing... Cecilia even set the table for Caroline and randomly told her that she loved her, and Caroline set up a "flower contest" for Cecilia to discover after her nap. :) Just a little inside look at the good and the bad that both occur when homeschooling!

I think these are before they found out there would be no apple cider... ;)

~Circle Time~

For show and tell, Caroline and Cecilia both brought frog toys from the bathtub. Caroline also brought a squirrel Beanie Baby and claimed it was a flying squirrel.

Here's Cecilia reaching into the mystery sound pouch to fell the secret F object...

Songs and Rhymes

Farmer in the Dell

Make New Friends

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

Fall and pumpkin songs and rhymes

~Letter Formation~

forming letter Ff using playdough (and looking at the very tall F a bit suspiciously!)

writing F's in cornmeal

Cut and Paste F Collage... this time, she tried to spell lots of the words herself. For the E collage last week, she began labeling each picture for the first time, and you may have noticed that I spelled many of those somewhat difficult words for her. She wanted to try all on her own this week!

Punch Out the Letter - Capital and Lowercase Ff

~Flower Fairy for Letter F: Fuchsia~

I don't know what happened to the photo of Caroline coloring her picture, but here's one of Cecilia... she really bears down hard with the crayon. It was like a perfectly smooth layer of yellow wax when she was done! Not sure why she always colors over faces with a pencil, though...

Caroline's completed Fuchsia Fairy

~Saint for Letter F: St. Francis of Assisi~

painted St. Francis

St. Francis poem copywork from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints

Illustrating the saint

Caroline's completed work - see the animals with St. Francis (the tiger is most obvious!)

~In the Book Baskets~

Science Theme: Flowers

The Reason for a Flower

Sunflower Sal

The Boy Who Grew Flowers

Sunflower House

(there are lots more flower-related books for next week's theme, Gardens!)

Social Studies Theme: Fire Safety

The Fire Cat

Blaze and the Forest Fire

Firefighters A to Z

Fire Engines

Liturgical Year and Religious F Books:

Francis, The Poor Man of Assisi

Saint Francis

Favorites for Letter F:

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

Fox in Socks

Best Friends for Frances

Good Night, Fairies

The Story of Ferdinand

The Glorious Flight Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot

Free Fall

Curious George at the Fire Station

Fletcher and the Falling Leaves

Little Fox Goes to the End of the World

After we read Best Friends for Frances, Caroline planned a "no boys, best friends outing" just like Frances did in the book. Frances did this because a friend of hers said she couldn't play with him since it was a "boys only" game. Caroline made a sign, packed a picnic basket, and even brought along some toy frogs for the frog-jumping contest. Cecilia went right along with the idea... and just so this doesn't sound too picture-perfect, with my children happily re-enacting a book as part of their own self-learning, homeschool-inspired life... Caroline also brought out balloons as "prizes" (just like in the book), and then the wind blew them away. Well, one was Cecilia's, and it popped when it hit a rose bush (or should I say, what used to be a rose bush and is not just a kind of thorny vine that keeps growing back). Cecilia dropped her snack, ran over and cried that her balloon was gone - her balloon which Caroline did not ask her permission before bringing it outside - and, in the meantime, a few of the chickens discovered the snack laying unattended on the picnic blanket. It was one of those rice krispie nests we made at the end of E week, remember? So, the chickens made off with the treat, which upset Cecilia even more. I gave her a chocolate chip to make up for it (since it was a special kind of treat that got eaten by the hens!)... ahh, what fun that all was! ;)

~Word Box Work~

We had enough words in the C section of the box that I had Caroline do a word sort: soft C, hard C, and ch words. We also added the F words to the box (boy, that sounds a bit inappropriate, ha ha!).

~Picture Study: F is for Feet and Fountain~

This week, we had Leon Bonnat's Roman Girl at a Fountain as our picture study. The paintings in Museum ABC all featured feet, but this one also had a fountain for F. I sat down and did my own version of the painting alongside Caroline, thinking I could model for her how to fill up the paper and not leave random empty space. Well, I started out too big and so the girl's feet didn't even make it into my picture, ha ha!

~ABC Virtue of the Week: Friendly~

These are virtue coloring sheets found here. Using the great idea of another Catholic homeschooling mom, I am reading Caroline a relevant story from this sweet little book full of stories with morals to them. I am choosing a story from Devotional Stories for Little Folks that reinforces the virtue for each week. This is Caroline's favorite part of our homeschooling routine, I think... she will be very sad that the virtue coloring sheets end after about letter N! I may just have to draw up some of my own...

Her finished page... I colored the top of the sky. The white space is "clouds."

~Activities for F Week~

F is for Fire Safety

Caroline made a Fire Safety Lapbook, which included things like escape routes from each room, tips on fire safety like burn care and how often to change smoke detector batteries... I found all the info for this lapbook compiled here at Shower of Roses... I love when free lapbook resources can be found, already put together, online! I am grateful that people take the time to post links to it all! So far, I have put together one lapbook from scratch on my own (and by "from scratch," I mean that I came up with a theme and searched for pre-made components online!), the All About Me lapbook that Caroline did during A week. It's a time-consuming process!

Cecilia pursues her own creative endeavors... I love letting her loose with open-ended art materials because it is interesting to see what she does with them!

Gluing all the little mini-books and other components into the lapbook

The inside of the finished product! Caroline likes having these and being able to look back through them!

F is for Fruitful Os

Caroline and Cecilia used plastic embroidery needles to thread Fruitful Os cereal onto thread...

...then they wore them as necklaces and snacked on them as they played outside.

Yum!

~Art Project for F: Making Flower Fairies~

I saw this idea in a Family Fun magazine... first, the girls gathered items from the yard like leaves, flowers, stems...

I had drawn the outlines of some people and given them faces, and then the girls used glue to attach various details, like leaves for wings, a flower on a stem for a magic wand...

the finished products

~Cooking Project: Fig Bars~

Caroline pours the oats

the girls press the dough into the pan

We used dehydrated figs (rehydrated in hot water!) to make the puree that is spread in the middle

~Chores/Practical Life: F is for Folding~

I worked with Caroline on how to fold up blankets... this is an important skill for her, and she and Cecilia are always dragging out all the blankets to make tents, picnic blankets, capes, beds for stuffed animals... she was really pretty good at lining up the corners and folding them straight without much help at all!

~Outdoors: F is for Frisbee and Freeze Tag!~

We practiced throwing and catching the frisbee outside... Caroline is probably almost better than me at it lately! We don't have any photos of freeze tag because, well, have you ever seen a game of freeze tag with only three people, one of which is a two year old? Yeah, pretty lame... but Caroline didn't want to stop playing it, she was enjoying it so much! One day we'll have to play it in a larger group!