BFIAR : ask mr. bear

ask mr. bear is a sweet little book with 70s pastel drawings by marjorie flack in which a boy, danny, asks a goose, a hen, a goat, a sheep, a cow, & a bear for advice on what to give his mother for her birthday.  the goose suggests a pillow, the hen an egg, the goat some cheese, the sheep a wool blanket, and the cow some milk.  since danny's mother doesn't need any of the items the animals suggest, he finally goes into the forest and asks mr. bear, who tells danny he should give his mother a big birthday bear hug.  the book provided opportunities for learning about various cottage industries.  so we learned about wool processing/dyeing & chickens!

our studies have been sporadic lately, and i have begun to call this year "practice for next year", when heron will be in kindergarten.  we are homeschooling for certain next year, & the fun we've had with BFIAR in preschool has helped us decide to continue homeschooling.  the days that we've actually had class time together have been lovely.  i love the BFIAR curriculum and will be moving up into FIAR in the fall with the kids.  but we have found that there is such a learning curve to our family even having a routine, period.  not only are we trying to figure out school, we are learning how to have a family schedule with chores, daily wake-up times (mostly for mom & dad!  to allow time for exercise & devotions before the work/school day begins), getting out of our jammies by 9, meal planning, etc.  that said, we have been rowing through "ask mr. bear" for a month or two now ;)  here are some of the school activities we did together...

: counting (with sandpaper letters & buttons) : 

(suggested by teaching montessori at home by elizabeth hainstock--a great resource!

: pelle's new suit by elsa beskow taught us about sheep, from shearing to dyeing to making a wool suit :

after reading pelle's new suit we watched a video on sheep shearing & another one on natural dyeing.

: we learned about prepositions with our farm animals (& an egg!) :

: we threw sheppy an unbirthday tea party :

(an activity suggested for ask mr. bear in the BFIAR manual)

(iphone / vsco cam)

(iphone / vsco cam)

: we had sensory bin time with our farm animals (& a pegasus?!) :

: we visited our friends' chickens :

there are so many more activities we could do for our row through ask mr. bear.  cheese-making, natural dyeing, cow-milking... but we are going to wrap this one up for now!