Big Green Pocketbook

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Deanna

This week we jumped back into Before Five in a Row with The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom.

I printed and laminated the “Green pocketbook pocket and items” from homeschoolshare.com. (I can’t link it directly to the page, but if you search for “Big Green Pocketbook” on the site, you’ll find it!) For some reason the box of crayons didn’t print out, only a blank card. I just drew my own. Ian LOVED this activity. I pulled it out the second time we read the story, and he insisted on doing it every time we read it from then on. The first time through, I handed him each item. After that I spread them all out and when we came to each place where the little girl added something, I let him pick out what the right object was. By the third time, he was choosing the right one before I said the word. Lots of fun!

We made green pudding out of blue and yellow (using food coloring in vanilla instant pudding). We did this a few months ago for our Bible notebook page on Adam and Eve and Ian loved it, so it seemed like a fun chance to talk again about combining primary colors. Once again, Elijah HATED this activity. (I started by giving him plain pudding in a bowl since he’d been so against it last time, but then he begged for “colors” so I thought maybe he wanted to copy Ian. Evidently joining in was NOT was he was trying to communicate.)

The B4FIAR manual suggested talking about shapes (like the ones on the little girl’s shirt). I thought about making shape cookies, but after doing the pudding that seemed like a lot of sugar for one week, so we used the shape cookie cutters with playdough instead. Again, I let the boys mix blue and yellow playdough to see if we could make green. Elijah (22 months) surprised me by naming the “diamond” and “circle” on his own. I was curious as to what other shapes he knew, so I asked him the others as I held up cookie cutters. He missed the rectangle and square (although he said “star” and might have just been having trouble pronouncing it right), but knew “triangle,” “star,” and “heart.” Sorry to brag, but I was mighty impressed since we haven’t made any effort to teach him. I think it’s such an advantage to kids to have an older sibling!

We didn’t write our own thank you notes this week, but we received one from a friend (who just happened to have drawn a picture of the gift we gave him), so we talked about expressing appreciation. We also went to Grandpa’s office to use the typewriter and to stamp papers with a “ker-chunk” like the lady at the bank.