Week 6-7 - We're Going on a Bear Hunt

Did you think we had disappeared off the face of the earth?  Nope, just went camping last week so we had an extra fun time rowing We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen!  This book is chock-full of onomatopoeia's that will be floating through your head all day long.  Check out the author reading the book on YouTube- we listened several times throughout the weeks and played along!  After reading the story a few times, we sequenced the locations in the story (grass, river, mud, forest, snowstorm and finally...the cave!).

 I made a sensory tub with all the locations so the boys could act out the story:

 We talked about different species of bears and read several great bear books with pictures of them.  We went on two different bear hunts this week.  The first bear hunt involved reading clues on bear paws hidden throughout the house to locate a yummy snack (chocolate teddy grahams)!  I used some paw print cards that came from this lapbook printable.  I made up clues that would be easy enough for them to figure out and voila!  The hunt was on...

 Our second bear hunt we took in the woods when we went camping.  We recited the book as we were walking on the trails.  Thankfully, it was an unsuccessful bear hunt! 

Other than a bird and squirrel, the only other animal we saw!

We found deer tracks and these.  The boys thought it was a bear track, but it was most definitely not!  Then, they claimed a rabbit track.  I think it could have been a coyote, what do you think?  I heard them howling one night.

Finally, we wrapped up this great story with some activities from this lapbook.  They drew a picture of our family, thought about what kind of hunt they would like to go on and colored bear patterns:

Won't Gramps be proud!!  C is ready to go on a deer hunt!

Some awesome go along books that we read are:

   We're Going on a Lion Hunt by Margery Cuyler, Oh Look! by Patricia Polacco, Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson , Bears by Ian Stirling and Bears:  A Year In the Life by Matthias Breiter.

Great resources for inspiration:  Delightful Learning & Totally Tots.

BIBLE

Our story this week was of John's birth.  We focused on trusting God (Zacharias did not) and how he knows everything about us.  Our memory verses were Psalm 139:14a and ...  Psalm 56:3...

When I am afraid, I will trust in You.  Psalm 56:3  A great tie in to our Bear Hunt adventure as well!

We started out by talking about all of our names and how they are very special to God.  Also, how God knows everything about us, even the number of hairs on our head.  This, of course, was followed by many guesses as to how many hairs they had...7, 23... I think they were a little off.

Our board for the week.  They loved finding their name and tracing it to their picture.

They memorized this story very quickly and recognized that it was John the Baptist.  When we got to the actual birth of John, we talked about how special he was to God.  We had our own announcement and read You Are Special by Max Lucado (this book actually made me cry, such a good reminder that God loves us how we are).

 Then, we talked about how John grew up to be a preacher.  The boys got to dress up in different occupations:

Baseball player

Doctor

Preacher!

Construction Worker and angry Race Car Driver

 We finished the week by making a film strip of the story.

Math

2 pretty easy weeks with math.  They worked on recognizing different patterned circles and counting them.  As well as review of either counting blocks and writing the answer OR reading the number and shading in the appropriate amount of units.  Meet Math-U-See Monster 1 & 2:

Handwriting

  We reviewed all of the frog jump Capital's F, E, D, P, B, R, N & M.  We also made H & K.

Phonics

So, we've officially done -at, -an, -ap, -ag, -ad, -ig, -id and -it words.  You can see each of their progress below:

C

B

See ya next week!

Week 5 - Caps For Sale

Caps!  Caps for Sale!  Fifty cents a cap!  I think I repeated this 5 times a day, every day this week.  Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina is a great book with an exciting and unexpected twist at the end.  A peddler selling his caps takes a nap under a tree.  When he wakes up, all of his caps have been taken by monkeys.  He gets very angry at the monkeys and yells at them while making gestures.  The monkeys just repeat the actions that he makes while saying Tsz, tsz, tsz.  In the end, he throws his cap on the ground in frustration and then all the monkeys throw their caps down to the ground.  Thus, he gets his caps back.  We started the week by talking about the peddler and all of his different feelings.  We also talked about how he was dressed and his peculiar "handlebar" mustache.  So, we made our own:

Of course we had to stack our own caps!  First they had to group them by color and count them.  Then, they stacked them on our very own peddler.

And then.... a little balancing act of our own:

And my two peddler's yelling at the monkeys:

Then, we moved on to monkeys.  We talked about what the saying "monkey see, monkey do" means.  We read Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, Monkey See Monkey Do by Marc Gave and Amazing Animals:  Monkeys by Valerie Bodden.  We took a trip to the zoo and looked at several species of monkeys and apes.  No pictures of the zoo...it seems every time we visit the monkeys, they are doing something obscene.  Thankfully, the boys have not caught on to this yet.  We sang Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and made thumbprint monkey's in a tree (the black lines are tails made out of pipe cleaners):

 And, what would the week be like without a fun treat?  We made chocolate covered frozen banana pops with chocolate sprinkles.  The boys said they were great...the one bite that I had tasted pretty good ;)

Tsz, Tsz, Tsz?

C is all about the silly posing these days... personally, I think he looks a little touched.

I used bits and pieces from two different lapbooks (homeschool share and homeschool creations) this week.  We did a page on phonics, rhyming and made a book that introduces the concept of cents.   We looked at pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters:

We wrapped up the book with some acorns!  Since it is officially fall, we talked about the season and read a few fall/autumn books.  We made acorn faces to show the feelings of the peddler and used the caps of the acorn to make a Memory game:

 








Some great go-along books that we read are:
   Whose Hat? By Margaret Miller, Jennie’s Hat by Ezra Jack Keats, Peedie by Olivier Dunrea and Circus Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.

BIBLE

We talked about some of God's promises this week and our story was on Abraham & Isaac.  Our memory verses were Psalm 148:5 and...Luke 1:37:

Nothing is impossible with God.  Luke 1:37 (Not sure what the 2 fingers at the end are.  Peace?)

I started the week off by showing them a present that was wrapped with Spiderman (their favorite!) paper.  I told them that there was something very special inside that God made.  There were many (hopeful) guesses of new toys.  I talked about patience and how we would have to wait to open it, but I promised that we would open it before the end of the week.  That lead into our lesson about Abraham and how God promised him a son.  Abraham had to be patient and wait a long time before God's promise was fulfilled.  

The Day of opening the box:

It was....a mirror!

I was so happy that they understood right away that the special gift w

as them.

You can't tell by this silly picture, but there was no fuss about no new "toys".

  We focused on God's Promise to:  never destroy the earth with water (rainbow), hear us when we pray (listening ear), send His son Jesus to die for our sins (cross) and love us and never forsake us.  They got to choose their favorite promise and color it and make it into a gift.

Our mobile with all the images/promises.

B's rainbow

 Lastly, we talked about the birth of Isaac and what his name meant.  Then, we looked at their baby books and talked about how special they were to Mommy and Daddy!

Hard to believe this was nearly 4.5 years ago.

MATH

We moved on to lesson number 5 this week.  The boys are doing great with writing their numbers.  They had to count the blocks that were shaded in and write the answer.  There was a bit of review of the other methods at the end of the lesson.

HANDWRITING

We made our N's and M's this week.  Next week we'll be reviewing all of the capital's we've done so far.

PHONICS

Another great week of reading in this house!  I promise there will be a video next week!!

We'll be lightening the load next week as we are going on a camping trip!  

 

Special thanks to Core Knowledge for inspiration.