Category Archives: Literature Units

Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel's Angel Vision-

It has been said that guardian spirits watch over and protect small children, and that may be so.  But there are also stories of children who find the courage to protect themselves.  Such is the story of Hansel and Gretel.”  Cynthia Rylant

We took a break from Five in a Row (FIAR) this week in order to spend some time with another classic fairy tale: Hansel and Gretel.  I chose to use this book by Cynthia Rylant as our main source, though we used a number of other resources as well.  I really enjoyed Rylant’s writing style and her focus on the children’s bravery.

In addition to reading that book several times, we listened to the classic version by the Brothers Grimm from Listen to Genius, as well as enjoying the beautiful illustrations from Paul O. Zelinsky in Hansel and Gretel retold by Rika Lesser.  Ian had fun with an Android App from StoryChimes that he played with on my Kindle Fire.  Other than that, we took it pretty easy this week as far as “school” because of a busy schedule.  If we do this story again in a few years with my younger children, I hope to do more, like build a gingerbread house, make patterns with candy, or take a walk and try to follow a trail of stones.

The one big thing we did do was go to see a children’s concert version of the opera by Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921), featuring selected songs, sung in English, with a narrator.  Ian was already familiar with most of the music because we listen to a recording of it quite often. It was his first time at a major orchestral performance and he was slightly overwhelmed at first, but ended up enjoying it.  We also watched a video (available streaming on Netflix) that uses a lot of the opera’s music and its storyline (which is slightly different from the more familiar Grimm’s version).

While I love Rylant’s description of the children’s bravery, I think Humperdinck completes the picture with his repeated mentions of God’s providence and protection of children in a scary situation.  His beautiful “Evening Prayer” is one song I don’t mind being stuck in my head.

When at night I go to sleep
Fourteen angels watch do keep
Two my head are guarding’
Two my feet are guiding
Two are on my right hand
Two are on my left hand
Two who warmly cover
Two who o’er me hover
Two to whom ’tis given
To guide my steps to heaven
 

If Jesus Came to My House

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I had never heard of the book If Jesus Came to My House by Joan G. Thomas until we started Before Five in a Row, but it’s become a favorite of mine.  It seemed like a fitting choice to go along with our Bible story this week, since Jesus really did go to Zacchaeus’ house.  We didn’t do a lot of activities, but the book did trigger a lot of good conversations.

We talked about shadows and enjoyed listening to a poem, “My Shadow,” from A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. We also discussed how the dark can be scary sometimes, which led to talking about Ian’s favorite Scripture song: “When I am Afraid” from Hide ’em in Your Heart Vol. 1 by Steve Green. The Before Five in a Row manual had another song suggestion, but I also used this discussion as an opportunity to introduce Ian to Rodgers and Hammerstein with “I Whistle a Happy Tune” from The King and I.  I put all three of these on our iPod playlist, along with other things related to our Bible story.  (The full playlist is in my post on our week with Zacchaeus.)

I love the part of the story where the little boy lets Jesus play with his nicest toys, and even lets him pick the best to take with him when he leaves.  I asked Ian which of his toys he thought was the nicest.  He decided it was his monster truck.  “If Jesus came to visit, would you let him play with your monster truck?”  I’m not sure he was quite ready to answer that question.  He definitely seemed torn!

I put some pages from Homeschool Creations in Ian’s workbook, which he always enjoys.  I also created and laminated some cards with rhyming pairs from the story.  Ian has gotten much better with rhymes than he was when we first started talking about them (about a year ago), but sometimes he still comes up with the craziest answers when I ask him, “What word rhymes with [blank]?” It makes me wonder: does he really not understand the whole concept or is he just being silly? I figure it never hurts to have a little more practice.

This story didn’t “click” with Ian as much as some of the others we’ve done, but I love it because it’s so sweet.  I’m looking forward to re-rowing it with Elijah and Arianna down the road!

Katy and the Big Snow

When we read books like Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton, it makes me both thankful and a bit sad that we don’t experience a true snowy winter.  Since we already spent one sunny week focusing on snow (see The Snowy Day), we spent most of our time with Katy talking about the different things that make up a community.  (There are lots of ideas for related conversations in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1).

I printed and laminated the “community helpers cards” from HomeSchoolShare.com‘s resouces for Katy.  I had intended to play “memory” with them, but Ian found it challenging enough to just match up the pairs.  The boys are definitely into trucks, so they enjoyed watching the Mighty Machines episodes “In the City!” (from season 1) and “In the Snowstorm!” (from season 2) on Netflix. Ian also really liked a video that has orchestral music written to go along with the story.

100_6667He spent a long time poring over the “map of Geoppolis” in the book and figuring out what each little picture around the edge represented.  So I used that concept to make a map of our area, including all the places we visit on a somewhat regular basis: the zoo, children’s museum, church, friends’ houses, Daddy’s work, etc. I just sketched in the main roads with pencil and numbered each place of interest.  Then I copied little pictures of each place into a document, printed them all out on one page, cut them out and pasted them around the edges with the corresponding numbers.  (I’ve blurred the edges for privacy, but I wanted to share the idea because Ian loved it!)  He asked about the compass on it and it gave us a good chance to discuss directions.

Our messiest (and therefore probably the most fun) activity was playing with shaving cream (almost a whole can!) and construction vehicles out on our glass patio table.  We actually did this activity twice, one time using whipped cream on a tray with some friends who were visiting.  They loved licking their fingers afterward, but the “snow” melted pretty quickly so it wasn’t a very long play time.  I’d definitely stick with shaving cream next time.

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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.

The Story About Ping

 

The Story About Ping

We fell in love with China this week as we read The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack.  It was my husband’s favorite story as a child (somehow I missed out), so Ian was very eager to read it.  Although we did enjoy a few duck/water-related activities, my main objective this week was to give Ian a taste of China and Chinese culture.

For geography we took our “story disk” from the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1) and placed it along the Yangtze River in China.  We also watched part of a fascinating documentary series called Wild China (available streaming on Netflix).  I wasn’t sure Ian would be at all interested, so I played it on my laptop during lunchtime.  My goal was just to watch the portion on the cormorants (fishing birds), but he actually enjoyed the half hour before we got there (especially the part on bats).  So after naptime I played the rest of the the first episode and we enjoyed learning about the “dragons” and giant salamanders, and lots more.

Watching a show like Wild China gave us a good opportunity to discuss the meaning of “fiction” as well. Ian kept asking when we were going to see Ping or if each man was Ping’s master, so I explained that these were all real people, whereas the characters in the story are made up and wouldn’t be there.  For a fiction experience, we watched the Reading Rainbow episode “Runaway Duck.” (“Ping” is one of the book recommendations at the end.)  Since Mulan played on Disney Channel this week, hijacked Grandma and Grandpa’s DVR once again and recorded it for us to watch as a family Friday night, just for a little extra taste of China.

I’m not usually big on “go-alongs” (related books), but I thought I’d put a few into our school basket just for a little broader picture of China.  We already owned Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel and The Seven Chinese Brothers by Margaret Mahy, so I included those.  I also added Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett.  I love her detailed illustrations (especially the Chinese clothing), and this story is actually similar to “Ping” (the book jacket mentions it as an influence) so it fit easily into our week. (Visit Jan Brett’s website for more “behind the scenes” information on the book.)

     

Our math lesson was pretty simple.  To help us count all the ducks in Ping’s family, I printed out a “worksheet” from HomeSchool Share, but instead of coloring all the ducks (which I was afraid would get old fast), we used our “rainbow stones.”  (We used one color for his father, one for his mother, one for his sisters, one for his brothers, etc., so it was a great visual.  Look at all those yellow cousins!)  Elijah loved this activity and got lots of counting practice playing with the stones as we cleaned up.

For science we visited a local park to observe the ducks.  Unfortunately, so many people disregard the many signs asking them NOT to feed the ducks that the birds have all become quite aggressive, expecting to receive food anytime anyone approaches, especially if they turn out to have anything edible with them.  We had taken a lunch and I thought we’d just sit by the lake and enjoy watching the ducks.  Think again!  First they swarmed around us in such an alarming way, even I felt a little uneasy.  Could I get three small children away from them if they got too bold?  But after shooing them enough with my feet, they eventually left us alone.  Until one decided he didn’t care.  He ran up to Elijah and snatched the last bite of chicken nugget right out of his little hand.  At first Eli was too surprised to react, but then all the other ducks realized he was an easy target.  Of course I happened to be nursing Arianna, so I didn’t exactly have two hands to rescue him (at least without exposing myself to everyone else at the park!)  I managed to stand him up on the bench, but even then a duck took a nip at his shoe.  By this point he was terrified, so I helped him up to the table out of their reach as an elderly Chinese man came over and helped drive the rest of the birds away.  After seeing them go after his brother, Ian was pretty nervous too, and both boys ended up finishing lunch on top of the picnic table.  So much for our nice peaceful lunch by the lake!  Elijah was so upset he wouldn’t get out of the stroller the rest of the time we were at the park, even when the ducks were far away.  Ian, however, did fine as long as they stayed away and started throwing things into the lake (leaves, sticks, stones, etc.) to see what would float.

Little did he know that I had already planned to have a little buoyancy experiment that afternoon.  I gathered various items from around the house and we predicted whether they would sink or float.  Then we tested each one and sorted them into two groups.  Afterward, I asked Ian why he thought they did what they did.  We talked about how the ping pong ball floated because it was full of air, just like the barrel on the little boy’s back in the story.  Ian took the screw from our “sink” pile and said, “This can be the little boy.”  I caught on to what he was thinking and we used a rubber band to strap the ping pong ball to the screw.  I asked Ian to predict whether it would sink or float now, and he said with certainty it would float.  Of course, he was thrilled to be right.  He loved this whole experiment, and as I cleaned up he asked, “Can we do this again next week?”

We finished off our week by taking the train into Chinatown to celebrate Chinese New Year.   What an adventure!  Lots of crowds, but so much fun! We watched lion dancers, admired dragons, and had a blast throwing down the little “party snaps” vendors were selling on the street.  Ian loved seeing things we’d talked about all week, and he was very excited at the thought of visiting “China.” (I couldn’t quite convince him there was a difference, though after seeing all the gorgeous scenery in Wild China, I hope we both get a chance to see the real thing someday!)  Gung Hay Fat Choy!

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.

Wise and Foolish Builders

This was one of those weeks that just didn’t turn out quite the way I planned it.  But that’s okay.  I’m learning to go with the flow and grab those teachable moments.

Our Bible lesson was from ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum Week 21: the wise man who built his house upon the rock and his foolish counterpart (found in Matthew 7:24-27).  For literature, I thought we’d spend some time with the Three Little Pigs, since the stories fit so well together.  My main objective was for Ian to associate being “wise” with doing things God’s way (which often means being patient), and being “foolish” means just doing whatever we want.  For a memory verse I wanted to begin working on Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  That was the plan anyway.

But things happen.

#1.  I forgot to put the memory verse on our iPod playlist. Plus, Ian enjoyed LAST week’s playlist so much, that was all he really wanted to listen to. So while I tried to spend time listening to this week’s lesson, I figured I’d go with his interest.  After all, he’s going to hear this Bible story many times over the course of his life.

#2. We finally got to have a playdate with some of our good friends.  So we lost a day there.

#3. We discovered ReadingEggs.com (more to come on this one!)  We lost most of Thursday morning to this, but I have to say it was time well spent as by the end of it, Ian had read his first sight words!

#4. We decided to use our tickets to Ian’s favorite children’s museum, which are only good through the end of the month.  So there goes Friday as well.

We did spend a little time on the Three Little Pigs.  We read the classic story from English Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs (great for learning to just listen and FREE for Kindle), as well as a simple mini-book from Scholastic. The boys also enjoyed a free storybook app on my Kindle Fire and listened to the story on a CD from the library read by Holly Hunter.  Ian especially got a kick out of The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivisas.

There were a number of ideas at Making Learning Fun (tracing numbers, mazes, concentration cards, etc.), but the closest I got to any of them was introducing Ian to cuisinaire rods, which I loved playing with as a child.  They are a great tool for building “number sense,” and I hope to use them in many different ways in the future.  My goal this week was to help him get familiar with them and be able to do at least part of this addition activity, but alas…

I don’t want to linger on this lesson (it’s such a short passage of Scripture and the meaning is too abstract for Ian to really grasp anyway), so we’ll just move on next week and work on being more intentional about focusing on the Bible.

Madeline

My plan for literature this week had been to “row” The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats from Before Five in a Row, but the weather has turned so warm, I just couldn’t get enthusiastic about such a wintery book.  However, as I thought about some math lessons to do with our Bible story on the 12 disciples, it occurred to me that this might be a good time to introduce “twelve little girls in two straight lines.”  I had intended to start introducing some of the simpler books from  Five in a Row (FIAR) after Ian turns 4 next month, so we just jumped in a little early with one of my childhood favorites: Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans (with lessons from Five in a Row (Vol. 1)).

We still have a few B4FIAR books to finish up, but I want to start including at least one FIAR book a month now that Ian’s getting older, though we won’t pase out of B4 completely because I’ll want to re-row them with Elijah (and then later with Arianna).  I don’t think we’ll do a lot of extras yet, but I’m looking forward to rowing “conversationally.”

For math we used twelve little stones to see how many different ways we could group them.  (Since we were also talking about the disciples this week I wanted to use something neutral.    Otherwise I would have used the “Madeline Girls” from Homeschool Share’s Madeline resources.  We also got out a measuring tape to measure how tall the boys are, just like the man measured Madeline in one of the illustrations.

For geography, we found Paris and placed our story disk (from the FIAR Vol. 1 manual) on the big world map on the wall in the boys’ room.  We also looked at some pictures andsouvenirs from when Grandma visited Paris a couple years ago.  It was fun seeing the Eiffel Tower ond other Paris landmarks represented in many different ways.

For science, we talked about the appendix and the parts of the digestive system.  Ian’s fascinated by anything to do with the body, so I also purchased the My Body unit from Teacher Created Resources (available digitally on CurrClick or as a hard copy from Amazon).   I drew life-size outlines of both boys and let them color them.

   

We printed out the pages on the digestive system and taped them on to the drawing of Ian.  (I know we’ll get to more from the unit at some point, but that was enough for now).  We also read The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body several times.

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For language arts, we talked about rhyming words, which Ian is finally starting to catch onto and have fun with.  One time when I read through the story, I pronounced “again” as “uh-GANE” to emphasize the rhyme with rain.  Ian corrected me, saying, “It’s ‘uh-GEN.”  I explained that I was trying to make it rhyme, and sometimes in poems you’ll see “again” paired with words like “rain.”  From that point on, if I tried to pronounce it the way we usually do, he’d get upset.

We went to the library and checked out a few other books about Madeline.  Madeline’s Rescue was my favorite (after the first one).  Toward the end of the week we watched the original Madeline special  and Madeline’s Rescue. (Ian loved them so much I ended up buying digital copies on Amazon so he can watch them anytime, anywhere on my Kindle Fire.)

I wasn’t sure how Ian would like a story about a bunch of little girls, but he LOVED this book.  He brought it to me to read several times every day, and he would have watched the movie over and over all day if I’d let him.  Even Elijah was asking for Madeline and pretending to read the book to himself by the end of the week.  Our first FIAR book was a hit!

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.

The Snowy Day

I introduced The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats a few weeks ago because we were heading up to the mountains for some snow play, and neither of the boys really knew anything about snow.  I’m glad we got that experience in, because the weather quickly turned warm and we wouldn’t have been able to find any snow to play in if we’d waited until we were ready to row the book.

  

We also enjoyed some other books about snowy days.  First we listened to an audio recording of a Ukrainian folk tale in The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt.  Then we read the same story told a little differently in Jan Brett’s The Mitten, as well as its companion book, The HatIan especially liked the last one because he could read the title all by himself, thanks to a few lessons at readingeggs.com.  (See my post about it for more information and a promo code if you have someone eager to begin reading!) And we all enjoyed this fun video on YouTube.

I think the boys’ favorite part of the week was when we made “snow” by throwing some ice in the blender.  I presented it as a “special treat” (which in Ian’s mind means dessert), prepared to add some cranberry juice if they caught on and protested that I was passing off water as something more delectable.  They were thrilled with it plain though.  They enjoyed trying to make miniature snowmen, but mostly they just had fun eating it.  We turned it into a science lesson by trying to predict what would happen if we left it out in our warm kitchen.  After it had melted down to water we boiled it to see how it turned into steam.

  

There were a number of things I had planned that we never got to: some of the suggested discussions in the Before Five in a Row manual, the pages I put in Ian’s “workbook” from Homeschool Creations, and the sequence cards from HomeSchool Share’s Snowy Day Lapbook which I had printed and laminated.  We’ll try to get to all those when we re-row this book with the younger kids in a couple years!

For more snowy fun, check out our time with Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening.

Angus Lost

Over the last week or so, we’ve been casually “rowing” our latest Before Five in a Row book: Angus Lost by Marjorie Flack.  It’s a cute little books about a Scottish terrier who is bored of all the same old things at home and decides to explore the neighborhood, only to discover he can’t find his way back home.

The Before Five in a Row manual had lots of wonderful ideas, especially for discussions.  We talked about what it would feel like to realize you were lost and what to do if it happened to you.  I also shared with Ian about the expressions “home sweet home” and “there’s no place like home,” which connected well with us since Elijah makes every homecoming a celebration worthy of applause and cheering, even if we’ve only been gone for an hour.

We also talked about dogs and being safe around them, as well as introducing the idea of different breeds of dogs.  Homeschoolshare.com had a lot of lapbook resources for the book, but the only one I felt suited our needs was the “Dog Lotto,” which I printed on cardstock and laminated.  It was great for discussing how different dogs can be from one another.  We didn’t play the game as suggested, but instead just used it as a matching activity, where Ian used the cards to try to find the same picture on the gameboards.

I’m so happy that Jolanthe at  www.homeschoolcreations.com added Angus Lost printables to her B4FIAR resources in time for us to do it this week as planned.  As I mentioned in my post on Daniel in the Lion’s Den, I was inspired by these charming worksheets to put together a little “workbook” of pages associated with our lessons for the week.  I just slipped each page into a plastic sheet protector, and then Ian completed them with a dry erase marker.  Not only did that allow him to erase each page and enjoy it several times throughout the week, but I’ll just file them away to pull out again when Elijah and Arianna are ready to do them.  (I also printed out a few activities that were too advanced for Ian, so when we “re-row” the story later, there will be new things for him as well.)

There are other “Angus” books out there as well.  I believe the first in the series was Angus and the Ducks, but we didn’t have access to a copy.  We did enjoy reading through Angus and the Cat, however.  Elijah is such an animal lover, any of these books would appeal to him.  I think Ian just liked the idea revisiting Angus in a new book!

Katy No-Pocket

We had a pretty simple week with Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne.  The manual had lots of good ideas for discussions, so that was how we spent the bulk of our time.  Since we’ve been spending a lot of time preparing for the arrival of our little Arianna, it was a good time to talk about all the different ways to carry a baby.  We looked at pictures from when the boys were little of them in slings, wraps, backpacks, or just being carried in arms (we don’t use strollers much).  Ian also really liked the part of the book where the man dumped all his tools out.  He tried to name them all and we talked about how each one could be used.

We also did a couple activities from HomeschoolShare.  I got out the cards from the Animal Classification Cards Set II .  We never grouped them, but the boys had a lot of fun looking through them, naming the animals, and reading the facts about them.  Ian also loved making a game out of the Animal Homes Matching Cards from Kizclub, which we found through HSS.  (There’s also a game similar to this on the Peep and the Big Wide World website, so he was familiar with the whole concept and figured out the matches the first time without any help from me.)

Like I said, it was a pretty simple week, but the boys enjoyed the story.  I’m going to try to do a couple more Before Five in a Row stories before the baby comes, but if we don’t get to them, we’ll pick them up again in the new year.

Big Green Pocketbook

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.

It’s been a while since we did anything from Before Five in a Row, and I think we were all glad to be back!

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