Category Archives: Literature Units

Giraffes Can’t Dance

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By Giles Andreae: Giraffes Can't Dance

Our story this week, Giraffe’s Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae, wasn’t exactly a classic of children’s literature, but it was still a fun book to go along with our Bible lesson on “joy.”The story is about Gerald, a giraffe who wants to join in the annual Jungle Dance, in which all the African animals show off their fabulous dancing abilities.  Gerald, however, is a bit clumsy and gets teased when he attempts to participate.  After he slinks away in embarrassment, a wise friend encourages him to listen to the music around him in nature, and he ends up dancing from his heart, impressing all who see him.

The book was sure to be a hit in our house, as Elijah especially loves animals.  I was surprised to find it also also sparked a lot of questions from Ian, which led to a great learning experience!  I wasn’t planning to do much with this story other than read it, but here were a few of the places Ian’s questions led us:

What’s a cha-cha?

Several different dances are mentioned, but the “cha-cha” was the one Ian noticed.  I found a clip on YouTube that demontrated what it looks like.

what kind of sounds to baboons make?

When I lived out in the Kenyan bush I was often awakened by baboons, so I know the sound all too well.  But I didn’t think I’d be able to demonstrate very accurately, so we headed back to YouTube.  Which led to the next question:

 What do baboons eat?

This fun clip showed us the answer to that one.

I’ve been marveling at what a wonderful resource we have in the Internet.  Ian loves listening to Old Mother West Wind and other animal stories by Thornton W. Burgess (all of which we downloaded for free from Librivox, as well as free Kindle editions so I can read them out loud to him).  These books really expand his vocabulary, but when it comes to plants and animals, he often doesn’t have any frame of reference for understanding.  Here are a few of things he asked about this week: bulrushes, red-wings (birds), grouse, woodchucks, possums, and yellow-jackets.  I just went to Google Images and we found all sorts of great pictures to help him understand these new vocabulary words.  Twenty years ago we would have had to go to the library just to find the stories, and then we’d have to keep a list to look up pictures on our next trip.  How blessed we are to have so much information right at our fingertips!

Posted in Literature Units, Preschool

The Little Rabbit

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Last week we very lightly “rowed” The Little Rabbit by Judy Dunn (from Before Five in a Row).  I chose it to go along with our “Fruit of the Spirit” study, in which we were talking about love.  Since we were focusing on the kind of love that entails doing what’s best for someone else even when they can’t give anything back, a book about caring for a pet seemed appropriate.100_7213

This really is such a sweet story about a girl and her rabbit.  We didn’t do a whole lot of “extras” beyond some of the discussions from the Before Five in a Row manual.  One thing Ian specifically requested was to make bunny masks like we did back when we rowed The Runaway Bunny.  (For some reason, he really wanted his bunny to look angry.)

I also found a Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood episode “Pets: Children Take Care of Their Pets” which goes along well with this book.   It even has a little segment comparing a drawing with a photograph, which was great since this story uses photos instead of drawings or paintings for illustrations.

And that was pretty much it for this book!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units

Blueberries for Sal

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This week we “rowed” Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.  In my opinion, if you can only do one book from from Before Five in a Row, this is the one to pick.  There are so many wonderful discussions and activities that can flow out of this story!  I’ve been holding off on it until the right time of year, and it seemed like a good complement to our Bible lesson introducing the Fruit of the Spirit, which just happened to coincide with the beginning of berry-picking season around here.  This was one book that had really made an impression on Ian when we first went through all the Before Five in a Row stories back when he was two.  He’s requested it several times since, so when he saw me bringing out our little tin pails, he was really excited about this week.

After reading through the story on Monday, I broke out several types of blueberries for our afternoon snack: fresh, frozen, dried (chewy, like raisins), and freeze-dried (crunchy, like cereal).  They loved making them go “kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!” in their pails before they ate them.  I had them try all four kinds, but Ian’s favorites were the frozen ones and the dried, while Elijah preferred the dried and freeze-dried.  Only Mama kept going back to the fresh ones.  We enjoyed snacking on blueberries every day this week!

  

Blueberry pancakes are a regular occurence in our family, so to do something special we made blueberry muffins from a boxed mix, which included canned blueberries.  I saved the juice when we drained them and the boys made blueberry paintings before drinking the rest of the “paint.”  (They really enjoyed this activity, and it was less messy than I had anticipated.  Still, I think next time I might try thickening up the paint with some corn starch, though then it wouldn’t be so tasty to clean up.)

For Ian’s “workbook,” I printed out several of the pages from Homeschool Creations‘ printable pack.  I also printed and laminated the math activity. (I was impressed with how well Ian did equations in his head.  I think it’s because of the Inchimals we’ve been using to explore the concept of addition.) I even found some worksheets for older kids that I printed to save in my file since I know we’ll be doing this book again in years to come.

As I said before, this book lends itself to lots of fun conversations.  We talked about canning (I’m going to have to learn more about it for the next time we row), bears storing up food for hibernation, and the dangers of meeting a bear (especially a mama and baby) and wandering off alone in the wilderness.  We also read One Morning in Maine, another favorite by Robert McCloskey.  It features Sal when she’s a little older and loses her first tooth.  Right away Ian asked, “Hey! Is that ‘Little Sal’ in this book?”  Ian’s not quite to the tooth-losing stage, so he was quite intrigued by the story.  I read it several times with him, though it was a bit long for Elijah.  By the time we row Blueberries for Sal with Arianna, Ian should have lost a tooth or two and I’m sure Elijah will love this book too.

To finish off our week, we went out in our backyard and picked berries in our tin pails.  No blueberries, but we are blessed to have an abundance of blackberries at hand!  We’ll go picking once or twice a week for the next month or so and then make jelly to give as gifts and hopefully last us through the year!

     

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

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Last week spent some time with one of Elijah’s favorite books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  It was a great go-along for our Bible lesson on Paul’s conversion and how we become a new creation in Christ (post on that coming soon).  Everyone was already quite familiar with the story, so I got busy on the laminator to prepare some activities for extra interest.

We put these cards from Confessions of a Homeschooler in the correct order to retell the story

and then did the same with these days of the week sequencing cards from Making Learning Fun (lots of great ideas here!) while singing our song about the days of the week.

  

Maybe next year we’ll get our own butterfly garden, but this time we were content watching watched our friends’ caterpillars and chrysalises. (Thanks, Christine!)  Their butterflies weren’t out yet, but it was fascinating just seeing the first couple stages.  (Did you know they wiggle in the chrysalis?)  I was going to have the boys go through some life cycle cards but we never got to that.  We did watch a couple short videos on the subject though: “The Caterpillar and the Polliwog” (on the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video); Wonder Pets episode “Save the Caterpillar” (from Season 1, available streaming free for Amazon Prime Members and on Netflix); and of course, The Very Hungry Caterpillar video itself.

I’m not really big on crafts, but we all love to paint around here so we did make some “butterfly prints.”  We started by putting drops of paint on the paper, then blew through a straw to move the paint around, and finished by folding the paper in half to make symmetrical “wings.”  I love how Elijah’s first one turned out!

  

Posted in Literature Units, Preschool

Night of the Moonjellies

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Last week for Five in a Row we read Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha.  I chose it  to go along with our Sea World field trip on Wednesday, and I’m glad we started doing activities/discussions from the book over the weekend, because we were too wiped out to do much after that long day!

The one thing about the book that was a little hard to explain to Ian was identifying true moonjellies.  Mark Shasha used it as a nickname for comb jellies (ctenophores), but there actually is a different sea creature named a “moon jellyfish” (Aurelia aurita).  Since they’re not really fish, the new trend is to call them jellies, which means when you come across things labeled “moon jellies” (such as we did in an aquarium at Sea World, much to Ian’s delight), they may not be the same creatures you were reading about!  I decided it really didn’t matter.  Ian enjoyed the story and seeing the Aurelia aurita just as much as if it had been a ctenophore.   Still, we talked about the differences (comb jellies don’t sting) and enjoyed looking at online pictures of the ctenophores Shasha was remembering in his story.  There was a lot of good information on the author’s website, as well as fairly basic descriptions and good pictures from the Simple English Wikipedia and  earthlife.net.

To add to our look at ocean creatures, we watched the Magic School Bus episode “Take a Dive” and read The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole.  Ian loves this series, and while I don’t read all the information on every page, he still learns a lot.

I’m sure we’ll come back to this book in a couple years and do some of the more advanced activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1).  Right now every book has something new and exciting for a 4-year old.  We’ve got lots of time to dive deeper into all there is to explore!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Make Way for Ducklings

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This week for our Five in a Row (FIAR) studies we read Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.  I chose it because we’ve been enjoying watching the webcam of a hawk nest at Cornell University.  All three eggs hatched this week and we got to see them in almost every stage of the process.  It was amazing!  I left the site open on my computer and often we would just sit watching in awe.  It seemed like the perfect time for this story!  I know I saw this book as a child, but I don’t remember ever reading it.  I missed out!  Ian and I both enjoyed reading this one over and over throughout the week.

On Wednesday we went to a local park to try to find the mama duck and ducklings Grandma had spotted the day before, but to no avail.  Instead we just enjoyed watching the adult ducks and I taught the boys the differences between the males and females.  Ian was really disappointed not to see any ducklings, so we prayed that God would give a chance to see some.  On Friday morning as I was getting Arianna dressed, it occurred to me that we should try another park that day.  The boys were thrilled at the sudden plans (I am NOT a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment type of person) until they found it we were returning to the scene of our unfortunate duck incident back in January.  (Elijah still reminds me at least once a week out of the blue, “Mommy, the duck ate my chicken.”)  Ian insisted as we drove there, “I do NOT like that park.  I don’t EVER want to go there again.”  Mean Mommy wasn’t giving in.  Thankfully, the ducks and geese were all on their best behavior.  The boys relaxed and we enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine along with the cool breeze as we walked along the water’s edge.  And lo, and behold…

Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard!  Hello, Ducklings!  There were only 5, but of course Ian started to call them by name: “Jack! Kack!.. Mack!… Pack!… Quack!” We spent quite a bit of time watching the family before moving on towards the playground for lunch.  Needless to say, this is now Ian’s FAVORITE park.

  

Other things we did at home this week (in addition to many discussions out of the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 2):

  • I found lots of ideas from this unit study, including a great collection of “uck” word family activities.
  • I also used some of the pages from the lapbook at HomeSchoolShare to do one of the math activities in the manual.
  • We watched the Reading Rainbow episode “Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones,” which talks about other animals that lay eggs.  Ian was so fascinated and delighted in telling all about how turtles lay eggs too!
  • For our mapping activity, we went on a Google Lit Trip, which was fabulous!  It was so much fun to see Boston on the map and “travel” around the city to all the places in the book with real pictures of what it looks like today.  (We first watched it on YouTube, but the pace was a little quick for me.)  Someday I hope we’ll make it to Boston to see the Public Garden in person!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

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Our Five in a Row (FIAR) time this week was sweet and simple.  The boys were already familiar with The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter because we listen to many of her stories from Lit2Go on a regular basis.  I’ve been saving the print version until this week, however, so they really enjoyed getting to see the illustrations.  I love Potter’s original pictures best, but I actually have 4 different versions.  It was fun looking at the differences.  We also got a lot of giggles out of the Peter Rabbit-Pop Out! Android app on my Kindle Fire (it was free at Easter time this year).  Just for a little change, we also listened to a different version of the audiobook from Tales from the Forest, along with The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies.  (Because these stories are in the public domain, there are several different readings available for free.  Ian can be rather particular about the readers, so we’ve tried a few.  He likes these best, but we usually do the ones from Lit2Go because we can get many other Beatrix Potter stories all by the same reader.)

We planted onions and spent the week water and watching, but it will be a while before there’s much to see.  The only other thing we did related to this story was listen to a Karen & Kids podcast on “Obeying Your Parents.”  It’s always an important topic of conversation in our house, as I’m sure it is in most of yours!  This book led to some great discussions on why God calls children to obey.  I liked having the story as a tool so I wasn’t just throwing Bible verses out.

Many of the activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 2) will be better when my kids get a little older, so I know we’ll come back to this book.  We didn’t do a lot of extras, just rowed this one “conversationally.”  I love that FIAR can be so simple and yet so rich!

P.S. Just for fun, you might enjoy this little video clip from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown! I didn’t show it to my kids because we have trouble with the word “stupid” getting thrown around a little too carelessly, but it’s fun for Mom and Dad!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units

The Red Carpet

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Our Before Five in a Row book this past week was The Red Carpet by Rex Parkin.  It seemed appropriate for the week when we were studying Palm Sunday, since they rolled out the red carpet for Jesus as He made His “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem.  Oh, wait.  That was cloaks and palm leaves.  Close enough.   It was still a fun read (one of our favorites from B4FIAR, I think).

The boys had fun driving their cars along a red ribbon (though I wish I’d checked the spool more carefully before I bought it–it wasn’t as long as I would have liked).

  

We spent a wonderful afternoon making pretzels together (in honor of Tony Tortoni’s pretzel cart that got upset when the carpet went whizzing past)!  There’s also a fun episode of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood that Ian adored (Vol.2 Episode 2 “How people make pretzels”, available streaming free for Amazon Prime members)

  

And as a special treat, the boys got “Red Carpet Candy.”  (Okay, it was “Fruit by the Foot.”  But it qualifies as candy in my book.)

Academically, I introduced Ian to the concept of counting by twos as we looked at pictures of the policemen riding their motorcycles in pairs.  He was a little confused by the way I was counting, so I explained.  I still don’t think he got it, but that’s okay.  He’s got plenty of time to figure it out.  I just wanted to put the idea in his head.

I also printed out a bunch of pages for Ian’s workbook from Homeschool Creations and the HomeSchool Share lapbook components.  They are just little extras he always enjoys when he gets a chance.  We didn’t get to everything this week, but I’ll just keep it in my Red Carpet file.  I’m sure we’ll row it again in a couple years!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Index of Before Five in a Row (B4FIAR) posts

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We’ve also touched on a couple of the books without thoroughly rowing them as part of our unit on the Fruit of the Spirit:

And finally, this isn’t a B4FIAR book, but we spent time with it in a similar manner:

For more ideas from other blogs, check out Michelle’s Before Five in a Row link-up page over at Delightful Learning, where people have shared links organized by book.

Posted in B4FIAR, Index, Preschool

Harold and the Purple Crayon

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Over the last couple weeks (sickness and weather dragged it out a lot longer than I intended), we’ve been “rowing” Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. Many of the activities in the Five in a Row (Vol. 2) manual were geared toward slightly older children, so I’m sure we’ll enjoy rowing it again later on.  We kept it simple and had a lot of fun!

As with all our school books, I made Ian wait until Monday morning before I would read it to him.  He’d seen me get the book out on Saturday and was itching to get going.  We read the story many, many times over the course of three weeks, as well as enjoying Harold and the Purple Crayon: Let Your imagination Soar  on video (which I found at the 99-cent Store a couple years ago and have been saving for our Five in a Row time.  (Both boys loved it and requested it repeatedly.)  We also watched a Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood segment on how crayons are made, which Ian found fascinating.

We took out all the purple crayons and markers we could find to compare the different shades of “purple”.  Then we each took one purple crayon and drew a picture.  This is one area where I feel like we should be spending more time.  Ian never “draws”; he just scribbles color and doesn’t even attempt to make it look like anything.  So I was very intentional about drawing a real scene.  He attempted to copy me all on his own.  He was worried that it didn’t look like mine, but I tried to reassure him that the point of art is making something that is unique.  And actually, I thought his picture turned out pretty well considering what I’m used to seeing out of him.  I think we’ll start being more intentional about “art lessons,” since he does really seem to enjoy it (and Elijah is really into it).

The highlight of our time with Harold, however, was the lesson on “Gaining a View from Altitude” (FIAR (Vol. 2), pg. 152).  We live up in the hills, so we are fortunate to be able to look down upon the “flatlands” below and see places we go on a regular basis.  (Target’s big red sign is an easy landmark for us to find.)  But we were able to take this idea even further with an awesome field trip that only cost us the gas to get there.  In the book Harold tried to figure out where he was by climbing a mountain, and he ended up coming down in a balloon that looked a lot like this one.

  

Orange County Great Park has a helium balloon that can take passengers 400 feet up in the air.

  

We loved looking down and seeing the parking lot, the carousel, the playground, the freeway, etc.  What a view!

It was a fun way to finish off our time with Harold!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool
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