our literature unit this week was harry the dirty dog. parker loved the story.

the illustrator used only three colors so parker drew a picture of harry burying the scrub brush using the same three colors. he did great with this until he wanted some blue for the sky. we went back and looked through the book and i asked him if he could find the sky in the pictures even though it wasn't blue. he could. and decided to make his picture look more like sky he added the yellow sun and some cloud outlines in black.

parker is also very into writing right now. last week he loved the rainbow writing with the highlighter. now he does not want me to write it out for him to trace. he wants to do it 100% by himself. and he also wants to spell it all himself as well. for the titles of the book i do have him copy it correctly. for everything else he writes phonetically. the only thing we are really concentrating on is making sure we start our letters at the top and write them correctly. he is doing great on most of the letters!

we talked a lot about pets and how they need similar things that we need. and determined which animals were domestic pets and which animals we would rather not even consider to have as pets (aka wild animals!). parker kept telling me how he wouldn't want them as pets because they would destroy the house. especially the rhino and tiger and hippo.

one day we took a trip to the library to find more harry books. and he also wrote two harry stories of his own (they are inside the harry shape book). we have been doing much of our story writing when we are out walking. then we come home and retell the story as i type it up.

story 1: harry and his family went to the park after they all got dressed one afternoon. at the park harry went down the slide. he also went through the tunnels to different parts of the park. then they went on a nature walk that was by the park and harry's family collected all kinds of nature. harry walked around and barked to tell his family what to get for nature collection. then they went back home and harry was so dirty from all the park fun. his family gave him a bath. harry didn't bury the scrub brush or run away from his bath. the end.

story 2: after harry and his family got ready for the day they went to disneyland. they rode on all the rides that were at disneyland. even harry went on the rides. and then they went back home and took a shower and it was night time and they went to bed. the end.

we also talked about the exclamation point which parker thought was the coolest thing. he is also very into the period right now which he learned about when he was reading. now everything he writes must end in either a period or an exclamation point. when asked what an exclamation point was he said 'can be found at the end of a sentence. it makes the sentence really exciting!.'

we also talked about some words in the story and what they meant. he loved acting them out just like harry. he has been really into asking me what different word mean lately so it was a fun activity for him.

and of course we ended up with a couple pet fish this week. we will add a picture of them to the blank space below the exclamation mini book.

we are loving the notebook so much more than lapbooks!!! parker looks at it every day and we only have two units (and one in progress on seeds/plants) so far. he never pulls out the lapbooks. i have tons of art and photos and misc. stuff from units we have done in the past that i think i am going to put together in a different notebook for him. and i will probably take apart the lapbooks and add them to that notebook as well. i will share when i get it done!

Comments

[Jimmie]

What a great mixture of lapbooking and notebooking! :-) Quite adorable too!

I'm glad you found a method that works for you (sticking the things into a notebook).

[Jimmie]

I've linked to you here:
http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking-vs-notebooking