Riley
After a few more trial runs with Traveling Tales from the public library, we began a Letter of the Week curriculum. I'm kind of building it as we go, pulling from Pinterest and other great blogs out there. We made it through letters A, B, C, and D. Most of the pictures I have are probably going to be of Riley's work because it's so cute, and it's more interesting than a sheet of multiplication problems, but I tried to tone it down as much as possible.
Letter A Books We Read:
No Ordinary Apple by Sara Marlowe
Little Apple Goat by Caroline Jayne Church
Ten Apples Up on Top by Theo LeSieg
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Letter A Activities
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| Forming letter A with playdoh and putting playdoh "apples" in order from smallest to largest. |
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| "Climbing" the masking tape apple tree by walking it like a balance beam. Then he had to "pick" the apples and bring them back to the basket at the bottom of the trunk. Sawyer thought it looked like a lot of fun and insisted on giving it a try, too. |
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| Felt board apple pie. His job was to assemble the apple pie by putting everything on the board in the correct order. |
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| Find the letter A activity. We did this first with pom poms. Then with dot stickers. |
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| This is a working pocket chart that I'm changing each week. It has his name at the top, the letter of the week, the number of the week, color, shape, and picture cards that start with the letter of the week. |
Letter B Books We Read:
A Bug, A Bear, and A Boy by David McPhail
Three Bears in a Boat by David Soman
Starting Life: Butterfly by Claire Llewellyn
My! Oh My! A Butterfly! by Tish Rabe
Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McClosky
Letter B Activities
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| Putting colored flat stones on the Letter B. |
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| Stamping all the Letter B's! |
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| Playing with bugs in chocolate scented playdoh (aka MUD) |
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| Roll the dice and move the caterpillar that many butterflies. |
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| Butterfly Snacks! (The big boys like being included in this part of Riley's school). |
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| Brown Bear felt board activity. |
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| Here, Riley had a snack cup of m&m's. He had to match the colors to the animals and then color in the graph. |
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| Learning patterns with teddy grahams and blueberries. |
Letter C Books We Read:
Clara Caterpillar by Pamela Duncan Edwards
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (yes, again) by Eric Carle
If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
Little Cloud by Eric Carle
Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld
The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson
Click Clack Moo! Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin
Letter C Activities:
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| Putting together the ABC Caterpillar on the felt board. |
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| Playing with a "cloud" that we made from ivory soap in the microwave. |
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| Hand painting (not finger painting) a cloud. |
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| Cars on the Letter C. |
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| Putting "spots" on the cow. I showed him a card with the number, we said the number, and he put that many pompoms on the cow. |
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| Caterpillars!!! |
Letter D Books We Read:
How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs? by Jane Yolen
There's No Such Thing As A Dragon by Jack Kent
One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root
What's Up, Duck? by Tad Hills
The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Dr. Seuss
Go, Dog! Go! by P.D. Eastman
Big Dog, Little Dog by P.D. Eastman
If You Give a Dog a Doughnut by Laura Numeroff
Letter D Activities:
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| Dot stickers on the letter D |
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| Making shape dinosaurs |
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| Sensory bin with toy dinosaurs and a variety of beans. |
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| Duplos on the Letter D |
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| Going through all our A-D picture cards and sorting them into food - not food categories. |
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| D is for Duck! |
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| Letter D snack |
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| Dice game: roll the die and mark the matching die hat faces up. |
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| Making doughnuts with the chocolate scented playdoh. |
And now on to the big boys....
Language Arts
We started the curriculum, Moving Beyond the Page which is allowing both boys to work on the same thing at the same time at their own level. I did this, thinking it would cut down on our time spent on language arts since I wouldn't have to switch off kids. However, this curriculum has proven to be more intensive and detailed with character development, writing, and other concepts that I haven't touched on much with the boys. So, it took us WAY longer than I expected to finish this test unit. Still, it's a much more enjoyable curriculum. So, we are sticking with it, and we will adjust and adapt as needed.
The unit that we tested out was the book, "Charlotte's Web", by E.B. White. Of course, everybody knows this story. I thought, "This will be the perfect way to try this curriculum out!" It WAS great. We loved it. But we've definitely met our match as far as challenges go. Here are some of the things we did:
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| Like Charlotte in the book, the boys made webs with adjectives describing each person in the family. (Sawyer is giving a mad face because one of Hayden's original adjectives wasn't very appealing to him. So we changed it.) |
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| Matching vocabulary words to their definitions. |
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| Poems that the boys wrote about spiders. |
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| Finding the vocabulary words in the book and writing the sentence using that word. |
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| Watching how a spider lays eggs and how they hatch. |
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| The boys had to design a carnival/fair game that included the theme of cycles. They chose spin the wheel, and all the winning spots relate to life cycles. |
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| Trying to make spider webs: one with yarn and one with popsicle sticks |
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We also took a field trip to CJ Acres Animal Rescue Farm where the boys could get an idea of what life on a farm is like. This farm is a bit different from most farms in that they don't use the animals for profit. They save the animals from abandonment, abuse, and neglect. I posted to my photography blog about it here.
Math
Sawyer's math took him from skip counting, working with patterns, and adding 4-digit numbers, to making change, learning non-standard units of measurement, and how to find the perimeter of a figure.
Hayden finished his Level C unit (YAY!) with finding perimeters & areas, fractions, an introduction to division, more multiplication, and tangram puzzles.
Geography
We took about 4 weeks to study the country, Argentina. I didn't do as good a job with the meal this time around. I think that maybe I'm a little burned out on studying countries? Whatever the reason, the boys didn't notice too much, and they learned a lot about this country's topography.
Books We Read:
The Magic Bean Tree by Nancy Van Laan
Animal Poems of the Iguazu by Francisco Alarcon
On the Pampas by Maria Cristina Brusca
The Tiniest Giants: Discovering Dinosaur Eggs by Lowell Dingus
The Gaucho by Jose Luis Lanuza
Argentina: Enchantment of the World by Martin Hintz
Cultures of the World: Argentina by Ethel Caro Gofer
Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa by Francis Kalnay
Children Just Like Me pg 12-13 by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley
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| Our Little Passports map and all the stuff we've gotten so far. |
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| An Argentinian lunch of empanadas with chimichurri sauce. |
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| Yerba mate, a drink the gauchos sip from gourds with metal straws, and alfajores, dulce de leche sandwiched between cornstarch cookies . |
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| We can't study a country without a tea party!! |
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| After reading about the dinosaurs found in Argentina, we made dinosaur egg fossils. Then we excavated them! |
