A few Bigger questions..........

[christyg]

Hey ladies! We received our Bigger box this past week (We LOVE box days, don't you? ) and I have been looking over everything. I have just a few more questions.

1) Science-Lab sheets: I didn't notice one in the guide that could be copied. Do you make your own?

2) Storytime/DITHR: Do you mix up the genres in DITHR so that you aren't doing the same one as you are doing in Storytime?

3) Dithor Level 2/3: Do you do any of the optional phonics or vocabulary work that is mentioned in the teacher's guide? I wasn't sure if we needed to do this or not.

4) Art supplies: Will the kiddos use crayons or markers much this year? Or will it be mainly colored pencils and paints? I will still need crayons for my ds in Little Hearts, but I didn't want to buy a lot if my dd
wouldn't need them as much in Bigger since she is getting a little older. She has always liked her own art supplies.

Thanks so much for your help!!

Christy

[girlboygirlboy]

I'll try to help...

1)Science/Lab sheets - I believe the children are supposed to write them on their own, but I just made some up for them as my kids have writing troubles.

2) I kept the Dithor genres the same as what we are doing in Storytime. Found that it complemented really well to have them reading their own version of the genre.

3)I don't do any add'l phonics or vocab as vocab is written into the Bigger guide. Most of the books they are reading for dithor don't seem to have much in the way of vocab they don't already know. One option, though, would be to use the vocabulary page in the appendix of the dithor tm which is what I plan to do next year.

4)I think it's primarily colored pencils and paints, but my kids like having markers around to color around headings, or make illustrations for their poetry, etc.

HTH!

[FiveLittlePeaches]

This is what I do:

1. I use Word and make the lab/science sheets, but this is something I like to do. It looks neat. The kids fill in the information.

2. This is what we've been doing for DITHOR. I displayed all the books from the different genres, and I let my daughter pick which one she wants to read. She enjoys reading the back covers before making her decision.

3. My daughter did phonics R&S phonics for 1st and 2nd grade. It's a pretty thorough program and she really excells in language arts, so I don't think it's necessary for her. However, the vocabulary sheets are great. My daughter loves doing them, but I sometimes neglect to assign them.

4. We definitely use colored pencils in Bigger. Will you be doing the Book Projects? We've used lots of different materials for that...fabric, foam board, yarn, buttons, beads, sharpies and construction paper all come to mind.

Hope that helps.

Enjoy Bigger! You're in for a great year.

[3sweeties]

Hi Christy!

First of all, you will really enjoy Bigger -- we sure did!

Here is what I did:

1) I just had my DS make his own. I would write the question for him and then he would write his guess, then I would draw a line and write "Procedure" with enough space for him to write/draw, draw another line, and then write "Conclusion" and he would write the answer in the space. You could certainly make one on the computer if that fits your DC's needs better.

2) Yes, I mixed up the genres so we weren't doing the same one. You can totally do what you prefer as far as that goes, but they don't HAVE to coincide.

3) I have always done the optional phonics for my DS. We are almost done with ETC, but I feel like it has been good for him to still get phonics review every week to 1.5 weeks even though he is an advanced reader.

4) We used crayons, colored pencils, and watercolor paint. My DS prefers crayons over colored pencils, but I'm sure you could use either/or.

HTH -- Have a GREAT year with Bigger!

[MomtoJGJE]

I just used WordPad to make a page that has Question, Guess, Procedure, and Conclusion down the left hand side (with most of the paper being under Procedure) and made maybe 40 copies or so? I also saved it so I could just print out a bunch when the others get in Bigger.

For DITHOR, we started about three months before starting Bigger. We started with biography, and then after that I would give her two books, tell her the genre, read the back to her and let her choose. We only got the first 4 or 5 genres of books, so the reading level was all roughly the same. I try to not have it overlap, but sometimes it happens. We began reading historical fiction in story time this week, and she's doing her project for the historical fiction section in DITHOR. Basically I treat DITHOR as a separate program from Bigger.

If she has asked me about a few words in the book she's reading for DITHOR I'll have her do the vocab.... otherwise I don't. She has done it maybe 4 times and we've done 4 genres.

We use crayons, but that's mainly because we have plenty the few times she's used colored pencils she's complained that it takes too long and doesn't look as neat. As long as she does the work without complaining I don't care which she uses We have used watercolors and regular paint, crayons and colored pencils, not markers (because we don't trust Evie not to find them) and construction paper and regular white paper. Along with other random things from around the house.