Week 6: Corduroy

PRIMARY STORY:
Begin each day by reading the story Corduroy by Don Freeman.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS:
Ask your student the following questions to jump-start a discussion.
Did you like the story, Corduroy?
Which part of the story did you like best?
What did Corduroy lose? Did he find what he was looking for?

ADDITIONAL READING: Read the sequel, A Pocket for Corduroy, also by Don Freeman. Another favorite bear book is A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond.

VIDEO: If you want to give your child nightmares, view this live-action version of Corduroy.

If you'd rather skip scarring your offspring for life, there are many read-alouds of Corduroy on YouTube. Here's a decent, non-terrifying one:

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Button Fun
Supplies:
     Various colored buttons
     Cups or containers labeled by color
     Yarn or string

1. Have your child sort the buttons into containers by color.
2. You can also have them sort by size if your button sizes vary.
3. You could use bowls with lids with slots cut into them for more fine motor practice.
4. Use the string to make button necklaces. 

We counted, sorted, and tallied the buttons. Then we made a bar graph.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Counting Bears
Supplies:
     Counting bears page
     Teddy Grahams or gummy bears

1. Lay out the counting bears cards and a bowl full of bears.
2. Have your pupil place the correct number of bears on top of each card.
3. Practice with two cards at a time to work on simple addition.
4. Snack on your sums to work on subtraction. Subtraction was our favorite. :)

EXPLORATIONS
Watch this video about making teddy bears.

Practice "sewing" with lacing cards.

Listen to the Teddy Bear Song:

Week 5: Good Night, Gorilla

PRIMARY STORY:
Begin each day by reading the story Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS:
Ask your student the following questions to jump-start a discussion.
Did you like the story, Good Night, Gorilla?
Which part of the story did you like best?
Which animal was your favorite?

ADDITIONAL READING: Check out other zoo books. Our favorites are The View at the Zoo, by Kathleen Long Bostrom and 1, 2, 3 To the Zoo, by Eric Carle.

VIDEO: Here's an animated version from the Scholastic Video Collection, Good Night Gorilla and More Bedtime Stories.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Animal Track Process Art

          SUPPLIES
          Zoo Animal Figurines (Here's a Wild Toob with a lot of standing animals)
          Paint              
          Paper
          Paper Plates

Step 1: Pour paint into plates.
Step 2: Allow your child to dip animal feet into paint and make "tracks" on the paper.
Step 3: Ask about the similarities and differences in types of tracks.

 

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Flashlight Play
Gather up some flashlights and teach your student to operate them. Turn off lights and have some fun playing with the flashlights. Make hand silhouettes or play flashlight tag. Look for objects in the dark.

EXPLORATIONS
Visit a zoo!

Read about zookeepers. 

Play the following video of the finale from The Carnival of the Animals from Walt Disney's Fantasia 2000. Allow your watch or explore movement while listening.

Watch this video about being a zookeeper:

Listen to the Raffi song, Going to the Zoo:

Break A

This week is a break week for us. We're schooling year-round with a lot of time off. If you're following the Literary Explorations program, the upcoming books are Good Night, Gorilla and Corduroy with My Father's Dragon as the read-aloud.

We've had some fun unschooling experiences lately, including the discovery and identification of a barking tree frog in our bathroom, which we moved into our habitat for study and then released.

 

The Spawn also found my giant container of pattern blocks. I pulled out some pattern sheets and he went to town. These were a big hit.

We're gearing up for the tropical storm which is supposed to hit us directly late tomorrow into Friday, so we're talking about being prepared for storms and securing our outdoor belongings. We're packing our hurricane bags: Thomas engines, snacks and pajamas for The Spawn; chocolate, vodka and Jane Austen novels for me. Bring on the rain. I could do with an excuse to binge read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the 18,452nd time. Ah, yes. Also for our storm preparation: we'll not forget to pack our towels.

Week 4: The Runaway Bunny

PRIMARY STORY

Begin each day by reading the story The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

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

Did you like the story, The Runaway Bunny?

Which part of the story did you like best?

What kinds of things did the little bunny become?
What might you like to become when you are older? 
The bunny talks about running away. Do you think this is a good thing for the bunny to do? What might the bunny do instead?

ADDITIONAL READING: The bunny runs away to the circus to become a flying trapeze artist. Read the poem, The Acrobats, by Shel Silverstein.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Popsicle Stick Rafts

SUPPLIES

Popsicle sticks
Glue                                                
Wooden skewers or small dowels
Corks

Empty milk carton
Straws and plastic bin for racing

Step 1: Paint popsicle sticks if you wish. Glue popsicle sticks together to make a raft. Glue two sticks onto the bottom parallel to your raft sticks.

Step 2: Cut a hole into one end of a cork. Glue a skewer or dowel into hole. Glue cork to raft.
Step 3: Glue corks onto the bottom of raft.
Step 4: Cut sail out of milk carton. Attach milk carton sail to skewer.
Step 6: Fill plastic bin with water and use straws to blow your raft across the water's surface.

EXPLORATIONS

Practice "tightrope walking". Put down some tape or a rope and walk the line.

The runaway bunny talks about becoming a flower. Plant something and talk about caring for plants.

Learn about rabbits and hares in this video:

Secular History... no, really. Seriously.

The Spawn has just started preschool which I have been planning since before I was pregnant. I'm not kidding. And since I know exactly how picky I am about things like, I don't know, facts with a healthy side of secular worldview, I knew that world history would be a tricky thing to prep. So I started early. Kindergarten will be devoted to prehistory/intro to geography and I'm piecing that together but 1st-4th grades we'll be on a Classical cycle:

1st grade: Ancient History
2nd grade: The Middle Ages
3rd grade: Early Modern Times
4th grade: Modern Age

Then we'll repeat the cycle in increasing depth twice more in 5th-8th and 9th-12th, with summer units to reinforce prehistory, geography, and the Cosmos.

I really, really, REALLY love the idea of a timeline. Specifically a timeline song. And I've done my research. A few years ago I began the search for the holy grail of timeline songs. And, as expected, all of the timeline songs that I found had something in common with the holy grail. They were either super-duper religious or totally non-existent. Warning: Python tangent ahead.

Ahem, as I was saying.

As I don't have a full orchestra in my homeschool materials closet (surprising, I know!) I've decided that writing, orchestrating, recording, and mixing my own timeline song is not a project that I wish to undertake.

Enter: Classical Conversations.

For those of you unfamiliar, Classical Conversations (CC) is a Christian company with classical homeschool materials and co-op programs. They also have a timeline song. And I bought it. Their timeline song is meant to go along with the CC Classical Acts and Facts cards. It also has a sign language component which is right up our alley.

Unfortunately, CC is decidedly un-secular. The timeline song begins with creation, goes through the fall of man, the flood, etc. This is totally expected from a Christian-based company. But it also includes motherfucking Billy Graham's birth as an event deserving of inclusion in a timeline of the Events of World History.

Picard does not approve of this fuckery.

I'm planning to replace these moronic additions with things like "3500 BCE" instead of "creation" and "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" in place of "Motherfucking Billy Graham". That last one might not be a direct quote from their version.

So I'm geeking out over my version of the timeline song. And I'm trying to work lesson plans with the usable narratives from SOTW and a whole bunch of secular reference materials: Usborne IL Encyclopedia of World History, Oxford Children's History of the World, A History of World Societies, The Humanistic Tradition, The Earth and Its Peoples, and A Little History of the World. Any suggestions for other reference materials that won't make me want to remove my eyeballs with a red-hot cocktail fork? Thanks in advance.

Week 3: Blueberries for Sal

PRIMARY STORY

Begin each day by reading the story Blueberries For Sal by Robert McCloskey.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

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

Did you like the story, Blueberries For Sal?

Which part of the story did you like best?

Do you have a favorite picture from Blueberries For Sal?

ADDITIONAL READING: Read the book Make Way For Ducklings, also written by Robert McCloskey.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Blueberry Count and Transfer

SUPPLIES

Small cups (little paper water cups work well)                                                     

Plastic tongs/tweezers like these... (These are optional. Fingers work too!)

Small blue pom-poms
Blueberry Numbers page

Step 1: Cut out the blueberry number labels and affix to small cups.

Step 2:  Fill a bowl with at least 55 blue pom-poms (or rotate them out and do less numbers at a time).

Step 3: Show your student how to use the tongs to transfer the poms from the bowl to the cup.

Step 4: Help your student to count and transfer the appropriate number of "blueberries" to the corresponding cup.

The Spawn preferred using his fingers to the tweezers. They were a bit too large for his hands. This was a big hit and he asked for it twice after we'd moved on to other things. :)

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Blueberry Muffins

INGREDIENTS

1.5 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
approx. 1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup fresh blueberries

For the topping:
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 tbsp butter at room temperature
1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray top and cups of muffin pan with non-stick spray.
2. Combine flour, brown sugar and baking powder.
3. In a 1-cup measuring cup, combine oil and egg. Add enough buttermilk to fill cup. Add to flour mixture. Stir until just combined. Fold in blueberries.
4. Fill muffin cups to the top. Sprinkle with crumb topping.
5. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Increase temperature to 400 and bake for an additional 3-7 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan for 5-10 minutes before removing.

Crumb Topping:
1. Mix brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter with a fork until combined.

EXPLORATIONS

Go fruit picking. Look for you-pick farms and bring home a bounty of fruits or veggies.

Store something for the winter: You could learn to preserve or can food. If you have a fireplace or fire pit, go out and gather firewood. This is a good time to talk about saving money for later. Count coins into a piggybank or open a bank account.

Watch this video to learn what kinds of foods bears eat:

Week 2: Freight Train

PRIMARY STORY

Begin each day by reading the story Freight Train by Donald Crews.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

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

Did you like the story, Freight Train?

Which part of the story did you like best?

Do you have a favorite color from Freight Train?

ADDITIONAL READING: Read the book Inside Freight Train for more discovery.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Alphabet Matching Train

SUPPLIES

Construction paper
Scissors

1.5” Circle Hole Punch
Sticky dots or double stick tape (velcro if laminating)

Tape-safe surface or poster/foam board
Black sharpie

Step 1: Cut out a train engine from 1/4 black sheet of paper.

Step 2:  Cut 8 sheets of construction paper in quarters to make boxcars.

Step 3: Punch 26 circles of various colors of construction paper for each type of matching you want to do (uppercase/lowercase, uppercase cursive, lowercase cursive).

Step 4: Write alphabet letters on boxcars (3 per car) and attach a sticky dot or piece of double stick tape beneath each letter for the wheels. (I used felt/velcro because I laminated my letters. I know that Atlas will flip his shit if I try to take letters away from him after one use.)

Step 5: Attach train to wall or surface.

Step 6: Write alphabet letters on circles (wheels).

Step 7: Mix up wheels and have your student match and attach wheels to corresponding boxcar. You could also match uppercase and lowercase or manuscript and cursive.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Name Writing Train

Step 1: Download Alphabet Train file.

Step 2:  Print enough copies to have all of the letters in your child's name.

Step 3: Cut out the engine and the boxcars to spell your child's name.

Step 4: Have your child trace the letters of their name with a marker. Let your child color the boxcars.
Step 5: Help your child to practice ordering the boxcars to spell their name.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY: Egg Carton Steam Train

SUPPLIES

Bottom half of a cardboard egg carton
Scissors

Toilet paper tube
Cotton balls

Tempera paint and sponges

Step 1: Cut egg carton in half lengthwise.

Step 2:  Paint the first section of the upside-down egg carton black for the engine car.

Step 3: Paint each section of the carton a different color, red last for the caboose.

Step 4: Cut off 1/3 of the toilet paper tube and paint the remaining section black for the smoke stack.

Step 4: Attach the smoke stack to the black section of the train.

Step 5: Spread and squish cotton balls to create smoke and attach to smoke stack. 

EXPLORATIONS

Snack Idea: eat fruits/veggies to match the train car colors. Monday: red apples (caboose), Tuesday: oranges/carrots (orange tank car), etc.

Visit a train station or museum.

Watch this video about how trains work: