Week 1: Goodnight Moon

Each weekly lesson contains several elements. The units are developed for a 5-day week, but you could easily adjust to fit your needs. You should read the Primary Story and a Read-Aloud chapter each day that you "do school". All of the other elements can be spread through the week as you choose.


PRINT Narration Page (one for each week) 
PRINT ASL Alphabet Page

WEEK ONE:

PRIMARY STORY

Begin each day by reading the story Goodnight Moon.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

 Ask your student the following questions to jump-start a discussion.

Did you like the story, Goodnight Moon?

Which part of the story did you like best?

Do you have a favorite picture from Goodnight Moon?

VIDEO

Watch this animated version of the story narrated by Susan Sarandon. It is a segment from the DVD, Goodnight Moon and Other Sleepytime Tales.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY

Teach some or all of the following ASL signs and have your student sign with you while you read or watch Goodnight Moon. You can view video examples of these signs at lifeprint.com.

Goodnight: Begin by holding your non-dominant arm horizontally in front of your body, palm down. With a closed flat hand, touch you fingertips to your lips with your dominant hand then place wrist on the back of your non-dominant hand, fingertips pointing down.

Moon: Make your thumb and index finger into a C-shape, while keeping your other fingers curled. Start with the C-shape near your temple and move it up and away from your face.

Telephone: Extend your thumb and pinkie into the “Y” hand shape, like an imaginary telephone, and hold your hand to your ear as if you were talking on the phone.

Balloon: Place your closed fists in front of your lips and expand them into an open shape, representing the action of blowing up a balloon.

Cow: Extend your thumb and pinkie into the “Y” hand shape. Place your thumb against your temple and twist your hand forward and back. 

Bears: Cross your arms over your chest and claw your chest twice ending with the fingers in a claw shape.

Mittens: Use your dominant hand to trace the outline of a mitten on your non-dominant hand.

House: Use flat hands to trace the roof and walls of a house from the roof peak down the side walls.

Mouse: With an extended index finger, brush your finger past your nose twice.

Brush: With a closed fist, make a couple of brushing movements near your hair.

Bowl: Use slightly curved hands to show the shape of a bowl from the bottom up the sides.

Lady: With a closed fist and extended thumb, draw thumb tip along jaw toward chin and bring hand in front of chest to an open “5” hand position.

Hush: Place index finger to lips and lean forward slightly.

Stars: Extend your two index fingers and hold them together in front of your face. Raise and lower your two fingers alternatively higher as if you are pointing at lots of stars in the sky.

Noises: Point to (or touch) your ear and then shake your hands a couple of times in front of you.

Everywhere: Begin with both hands palm up at chest and spread hand apart and away from your body.

BONUS ENRICHMENT
I made a felt board set for Goodnight Moon. I've seen these for purchase on Etsy if you want to use one but aren't interested in making your own. The Spawn had fun with this.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Van Gogh Layered Finger Painting

SUPPLIES

Apron
Baking Sheet

Aluminum Foil
Finger Paint: Blue, Yellow, White, Black

Gold or glitter paint
White Paper

Step 1: Pour a small amount of blue paint onto a baking sheet covered in tin foil.

Step 2:  Add small dollops of white and yellow paint.

Step 3: Use fingers to create swirls and patterns in the paint.

Step 4: Very lightly lay a piece of white paper on top of the paint and remove. Repeat with a few sheets of paper.

Step 5: Allow paper to dry for a while. You can repeat steps 1-4 a few times if you want more layers and depth.

Step 6: Repeat paint mixing process on foil, mixing gold paint of glitter and swirl with fingers.

Step 7: Lay paper gently on paint to pick up final layer. Remove and dry.
 

When your paintings have dried, frame them and hang them to enjoy. This technique can also be used to make greeting cards.

EXPLORATIONS

Snack Idea: cut sandwiches into crescent moon shapes.

Have a nighttime excursion to view the moon and stars.

Look at pictures of constellations.

Watch this video of a lunar eclipse:

Rabid Pooping Bubble Monsters

It's mid-July in Florida (aka Satan's Buttcrack) which means that the time we spend outside has to be strategically planned for the hours of 6:30-8:45am. That is literally the only acceptable time to be outside here if one wants to avoid the Rango shrivel or being carried away by Miracle-Grow-possibly-Zika-infested mosquitoes.

We try to spend some time outside everyday. Sometimes we stay at home and play on the slide or with the sand table. Sometimes we swim. Usually though, The Spawn wants to go to the park. These little excursions involve driving to the park, unloading, and "racing" with The Spawn around all of the playground equipment 10-15 times. Then he's ready to go. That's it. No sliding. No swinging. Just running around and around and around. I've had several conversations with him about how we could have just run around the yard at home but it always ends with tearful protestations and requests to return to the park immediately to go "slide," otherwise known as, "run around the slides".

It's nearing the end of our summer vacation, so I've been having fun with some not-so-educational craft projects before the school year starts up. Since we need outdoor entertainment that doesn't involve running around playground equipment, I thought it was time to break out the bubbles. Here's what you'll need:

Rabid Pooping Bubble Monsters

• empty water bottles
• cutting utensil (I like throwing knives and broken glass but I guess you could use scissors if you're one of those boring scissor-using people)
• fabric or socks
• rubber bands
• foam sheets
• googly eyes
• hot glue gun & sticks
• Dawn dishwashing liquid (classic blue works best but I only have "New Zealand Springs". Can you blame me? It smells less like plastic.)
• Glycerin (look for this in the pharmacy section near the surgical washes and bandages)
• water
• paper plates and a plastic cup

You'll want to prep this the day before you want to use them to let the bubble stuff do its secret magical chemical bonding shit.

Make your bubble stuff: Mix 8 oz of water with 3 tbsp dawn and 1 tbsp glycerine. Let your solution sit overnight. I tripled the recipe and poured it into an old 2 liter bottle. Then I created a quick cardstock label, et voilà!

Cut the bottoms off of your water bottles.
Decorate your bottles with foam and googly eyes to make adorable monsters. Note: depending on which way you decorate, you'll end up with either a rabid monster or a pooping one.
 

Cut fabric to fit over the bottom of your bottles. I used an old flour sack towel. Secure with rubber band or ponytail holder.

 Set up outside.

Pour a small amount on bubble stuff into the cup. Add more than 10 drops of food coloring. Mix and pour onto plate. I found that I used too much bubble stuff and not enough color. Don't make the same mistake that I did. Learn from my sins.

Dip the cloth-covered end of your bubble monster into the bubbles then blow into the spout to create your foamy awesomeness.

Foamy poop!!!

There's no hope for him now, Travis. He's suffering. You know we've got to do it.

 Bubble success!

Moveable Alphabet

I really like the Montessori "movable" alphabet. I refuse to use that spelling, but the concept is solid. These are giant wooden letters which are color coded (blue vowels and red consonants) and used on a mat to let the student begin working with CVC words even before they're capable of writing. They're also pretty fucking expensive. Here's the "small" version on Amazon.

And it's only $59.99!!!

This would be great for The Spawn right now. He's beginning to read. He knows all of his letter sounds and enjoys trying to spell. He writes well but I like to give him a lot of variety when it comes to learning. Enter the moveable alphabet. But since I have such a long Amazon list for this school year, I try to trim the fat wherever possible. Gotta fund the next Disney vacation somehow, eh?

So I spent yesterday evening working on my own version for use with our felt board. Even better, I had all of the supplies on hand already so no need to scavenge for change in the depths of the couch.

I create The Spawn's school materials using fonts from Educational Fontware which includes 33 of the most popular manuscript and cursive font families. A Teacher Pack license is available for $49.95 (academic use only). There are also openware fonts available on sites like dafont.com if you're looking for free font options.

I opened up Publisher and created a document with the alphabet, punctuation, and numbers 0-9 in the manuscript font that I use for all of his alphabet work. I color coded the letters like the Montessori movable alphabet and printed copies on cardstock.

Decorative printer art by The Spawn.

Trimming and laminating came next.

And more trimming...

Finally I had all of them finished. I printed 4 of each consonant and 10 of each vowel in addition to the punctuation and numbers. Then I cut out 154 felt rectangles and glued one onto the back of each laminated tile.

I also put together a tabletop felt board out of an extra 8x10 frame I had lying around for The Spawn to use at his desk.

Success! He loved his new letters.

I'll link any future activities that I come up with to use with the moveable alphabet.