That being said, I am not an Oak Meadow purist. We don't have circle time every morning. I use Internet produced printouts to help teach my sons concepts like ordinal numbers. And I didn't buy Oak Meadow Main Lesson Books. I went to Ollie's (one of my favorite stores) and purchased two 11"x14" sketch books. And it is these Oak Meadow inspired drawing books that I am currently in love with.
These sketch books contain all of their language arts work. I have different binders for social studies and science, so the sketch books contain story inspired drawings and poems with illustrations. Also stapled to the sheets are lined papers with sentences for spelling and parts of speech, and the occasional worksheet for a special event.
But the thing that makes me love these books so much is how much the BOYS love their books. They love to show their day's work to their dad in the the evening. They will get the book out and show visiting friends or grandparents all of their new drawings. Every so often they will take a look back at their work for the year. They talk about different drawings that they created, and remind each other of different stories that were read. Today my younger son was fascinated by a poem that my older son had written in November. He liked it so much that he was inspired to copy it into his own sketch book. And when I pointed out that they only had a few pages left in their books, both boys looked at me in a panic, and made sure that I was not going to throw them away.
So thank you, Oak Meadow for inspiring these lesson books. My boys and I love them now, and I know that we will love them even more in the future when we can look back and see the journey they have made in their work and art.
And here is the poem my sons love:
The Giant Orange Cat
by Andy
There once was a giant orange cat
Who saw a big purple bat
The bat flew away, the cat wanted to stay
Oh! That giant orange cat
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