Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

We read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last week for school.  I think this is the first time the kids have really loved a story I've read them.  John isn't really a fan of being read to so chapter books are a challenge.  I had planned to read 2-3 chapters a day and there's 30 in the book.  We read the whole thing in 3 days because they liked it so much.

I bought the unit study to go with it from Confessions of a Homeschooler  It was well worth the $2 I spent.  I got it for the lapbook material and the kids had fun making it.







Then on Friday night was watched the old Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie.  I even bought chocolate for the kids.  I never let them eat candy, not even at Halloween, so they were very excited about it.  I printed Wonka Bar labels and put them over the candy bars and the kids thought they were really Wonka Bars.



Then on Saturday we watched the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, which Corey and I had never even seen.  The new movie is definitely truer to the book and I liked it if you totally ignore the last 15 minutes.  Seriously they did so good and then messed it all up.  So dumb.  That and no matter how good an actor Johnny Depp is the old Wonka can't be beat.

Then today we made a Venn diagram comparing the three.  It was a great book to read and use for school.  Now to find something else equally great.

More lapbooks

John and Bella are huge fans of lapbooks.  In the mornings they like to do art before I wake up.  The other morning I woke up and Bella had made a lapbook out of construction paper.



So that night before they went to bed I printed out some lapbook pieces for them so they could make their own the next morning.  They are currently reading two of the Magic Tree House reasearch guides, Mummies & Pyramids and Dolphins & Sharks.  So John picked sharks as his topic and Bella picked Egypt.

I cut the pictures for the covers but they did everything else themselves.

Week 2

So we finished up week 2.  It's going well with Phoebe, she likes it for a few minutes and then hates it.  Then cycles through the two extremes over and over.  I started a sticker chart for her and for every subject she does without making a fuss she gets a sticker.  She's a big fan of it so far, fingers crossed it stays that way.

John and Bella have a lot more work to do this year and so far they are handling it great.  We started cursive, which John was terrified of, and he's doing great and actually likes it.

We read My Father's Dragon over the past two weeks.  I read it to John and Bella when they were in kindergarten and we all loved it.  It's an adorable story.  Phoebe wasn't a fan at first and grumbled through most of it, but by the last chapter she was laughing and loving it.

We made a lapbook to go with it.  Lapbook pieces found here

















We also read this book:


It was one of my favorites as a kid.  Phoebe hated it, probably because every day is a terrible, horrible day to her.  John didn't like how they used the same phrase over and over.  I think Bella was a fan though.

Lapbooks

So we're about to finish up our school year.  John and Bella have finished most of their workbooks which makes for short school days lately.  All of our curriculum for next year has been ordered and we're just waiting for it to get here.

I've decided to give lapbooking a try this coming year.  When I first heard about it I really wasn't interested in it at all.  But after giving it more thought recently I decided it's perfect for my kids.  They LOVE anything involving scissors and glue.  This gives them art projects while reinforcing what we're learning about.  Plus Corey bought me a new printer for Valentine's Day so now I can actually print things.

So what is a lapbook.  It's basically just a bunch of papers/mini books on a subject glued into a file folder.  So I had the kids make lapbooks about themselves yesterday to practice and get an idea of what they're going to be doing.  They loved it of course.





I used the blank templates from homeschoolshare found here

Plus a couple things from this all about me lapbook.

This is what it looks like with all the flaps closed:


And with all of them open: