Friday, July 30, 2010

Literature Unit: Story About Ping

We recently 'rowed' The Story About ping and I am only now getting around to posting about it. If you are unfamiliar with the term 'row, rowed, rowing' it was coined by FIAR and the fact that they advocate to read the same book (the book you are studying) for five days in a row......make sense?!

I have purchased the first Volume of FIAR after having completed a few of the BFIAR books with the kids over the last few years. This is a supplement, something different, not something we would do all of the time. Not because I don't feel that it isn't 'good enoough' or up to par, in fact it is a beautiful, gentle, encouraging way to learn and perfect to use in a way which brings all of the children together.



I just don't want FIAR to become same old same old, if we were to tackle it week in week out. In the end there is loads of printing and loads of cutting of mini books and whilst doing the odd lapbooking type project here and there for the kids is fun, I really don't want it to be our basis. In fact I like to change things up all the time and use a wide variety of stuff.

We are certainly not a family to purchase a curriculum and use it from Pre - 12 and I don't think we will ever do that! In saying all of that though, this was truly enjoyable and I am looking forward to rowing something again soon.

The kids had a blast and asked for the related activities several times over the span of the two weeks that we took to complete this project.

I also chose to change things and not do a traditional lapbook, we already have done a few and the thought of having to store all of those lapbooks that could possibly build up over the years was a growing nightmare. So we have done what I think is now being called a Lap n Note, a combination of a lapbooking and notebooking.

We've still used all of the little booklets, with each on a sheet of A4 cardstock, my plan is at some stage to bind these all together into one large Literature Studies Booklet. I'm still not sure if I have made the right decision on how we have put these together but my procrastination on the assembly side of things already held us up for weeks.

First it was trying to decide if we should stop doing them in the manila folders, then I had to come up with alternatives, large scrapbook/A3 sketch books were a possibility too. I think any way would work but my thoughts on the lap n note is that we can easily 'rerow' books (since K has only just turned 6 this is a high possibility) and add to our exisiting lap n notes (much more difficult to do with an already completed lapbook)

So as you look at the images you will notice that there are some blank pages (this is where I am unsure if I have made the right choices here). Anyway, I'll quit rambling so you can just scroll and look at some of the photo's.

All printables are straight from the lovely ladies at home school share and I am only showing B's as K's is very similar anyway.


I have grouped like topics/subjects together, so geography/cultural topics on china.



I always take lots of photo's so made sure that those were included. These are invaluable when tyring to show/remember hands on stuff, like the salt dough map of china and the other smaller creations (ping and a chinese flag)

Moving on to language arts, which includes poetry above and story sequencing below.


Well that's a boring photo, I probably should have opened the booklet. It is filled with small images of the story that the children had to sequence before gluing into the mini booklet. Need some more language arts activities to complete this page.


Counting Ping's family.



Extra's, like the cute carrot and celery stick Ping, B made from his snack and K loved the egg Ping toasties.


And not forgetting a bit of science, the sun mini booklet was actually from 1+1+1=1.


This is the finish and we have one lonely mini book on types of ducks, Which in one way is great as it shows exactly what we need to focus on the next time we row Ping, but what if we never get back to it, this is going to be one big glaringly boring page!

Oh well maybe we can fill it with some cute duck pictures or something.

6 comments:

Angie said...

Awesome! I also struggled (for so very long) with the format for our hands-on approach to our studies. The end of last year I settled on (I think):) a 12 x 12 scrapbook page. I like what you've come up with here. Looks fun!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I admit that while I find FIAR intriguing, I just can't see daughter reading the same book 5 times in a row. I'd rather invoke past books while we are discussing/learning something or leave her to decide on story extensions. You did a lot of work with both the story and the book!

Anonymous said...

Ok the "Ping egg toasties" just won you the "Creative Mom" award! We call them funny eggs, of course they aren't shaped like a bird but they could be. I love it!

Kylie said...

Raising A Happy Child, I thought that way too but it didn't bother one. I didm't rea it every day though as we took 2 weeks to complete the unit. THe idea is that the child can build on prior knowledge from the previous days and I definitely saw that at work as the kids discussed the things they had learned earlier in the week. I don't think it is a hard and fast rule and I am sure many familie do it differently.

Thanks Angie, so do you put them in a scrapbook album as well?

LOL Dana, yes well since then my kids have eaten alot more eggs too, in all kinds of shapes in sizes :-)

Mary Prather said...

I love this post about Ping. We just finished Ping (we use FIAR much like you do - here and there but not as the basis for everything) and it inspired a whole study about China for my older child. Take a look if you get a chance. We are rowing other titles this year as well.

http://homeschoolsuccess.blogspot.com/2010/09/five-in-row-story-about-ping.html

Michelle Gibson said...

I've never heard it called a Lap N Note before. I call mine a lap journal. I don't do as many lapbooks any more, though ~ just too time consuming and I think they were for me mostly (to have a record of our row). I just put the pics in my Project Life now and add samples of their work, writing, etc.

Very cute Ping snacks! This is such a fun row. Thanks for linking up! :)

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