Product reviews, parenting articles, and advice for first-time moms from the experiences of real-life mommies.

Milkweed and Butterflies

“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”

For Mother’s Day we have a tradition of planting in our garden in the back yard. The kids help pick out what we want to plant while we’re at the nursery, then enjoy digging holes in the garden to plant their favorites.

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Lapbooking for Dummies

Have you heard of lapbooking? While it’s a very common method of teaching lately, especially amongst homeschoolers, I’m just now dipping my toe into this gigantic ocean of possibilities.

I’ve decided that I want to focus on butterflies for the month of May, and I’d love to have a lapbook as our final product for all that we’ve learned. So, now, I’m off to figure out exactly what is a lapbook? and how do we make one? and how long it will take? and what is a mini-book exactly?

So, for your learning pleasure, I’ve decided to document my researching trip into this new land of lapbooking. And, PLEASE, add your favorite sites to the comments below. I’m definitely the Dummy needing to learn LOTS more!!

Enjoy!

What is a lapbook?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lap_book
http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking
http://lapbooking.wordpress.com/lapbook/

How do you make a lapbook?

How long will it take?
http://www.squidoo.com/faq-lapbook#module9400578

What is a mini-book?
http://www.squidoo.com/minibooks

What are some easy mini-books that I can make?
http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking#module2314521
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.php

Starting Lapbooking and what to avoid…
http://simplest.lapbook.ever.com/

Books We Love: April 2009

by Leda Schubert

My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars

Winner of the 2007-2008 Texas Bluebonnet Award, this book filled with watercolor pictures of the true story of the Ballet of Elephants was captivating. When Igor Stravinsky (composer of The Nutcracker) was asked by George Balanchine (Russian Choreographer) to compose a piece of music for John Ringling North’s circus elephants to perform to, Stravinsky gladly jumped at the opportunity. My 6 year old listened to the story fascinated by the idea of elephants performing ballet, and was even more enthralled at the end when she realized this had been a TRUE story. Great book for introducing Stravinsky as a composer. Continue reading…

Books We Love: Matisse: The King of Color

A bit about the book…
Laurence Anholt has done a beautiful job of telling the story of Matisse and his nurse, Monique, who became a nun, in a way that children can relate to and enjoy. Since I didn’t know anything about this artist, I also enjoyed getting to learn more about his personality and his art, too.

What we loved…
While the illustrations were quite unique, I also loved the way that the author used typesetting to help ‘illustrate’ certain passages. During a passage about “diving in tropical lagoons and rowing on blue-green seas”, Anholt typesets the words in curves that go around the fish in the picture behind the words to hint at the motion of swimming and waves. But, more than anything, it was the story itself that captured both my attention and the attention of my six year old. There’s just something fascinating to me personally about an artist creating a chapel in a new and different way.

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Books We Love: Carnival of the Animals

A bit about the book…
While we had listened to a few of the movements from Camille Saint-Saens’s “Carnival of the Animals” (specifically Yo Yo Ma’s performance of “The Swan”), Kate had never really appreciated it the way I wanted her to. So, when I saw this book was at our public library, I decided to check it out and see if it would help her to fall in love with this clever composition. From the moment we read the first pages and listened to the first accompanying piece, we were hooked! Kate couldn’t wait until our next ’school day’ when we could listen to a few more of the movements and read along in this book.

What we loved…
Barrie Carson Turner has done a fabulous job of commentating and setting the tone for this entire work of Saint-Saens. The first few pages describe why Saint-Saens wrote the piece (although I’m not positive it’s historically accurate, it’s a very cute story) and then describes an orchestra, the different instrument families, and how they are all arranged during a concert. A perfect introduction to the orchestra! The illustrations, by Sue Williams, that accompany this are a great visual for kids to ’see’ it all, too. Turner’s descriptions of each musical movement and it’s corresponding animal are incredibly written so that you can easily hear the subtle nuances of each piece without getting bogged down in too much verbiage.

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