"Goodnight Moon"

"Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown is a fun book about a bunny saying goodnight to everything in his room in poetic form.

We talked about storytelling and the rhythm and rhyme of "Goodnight Moon". The picture on the bunny's wall of the three little bears caused us to retell the story and then they each drew a picture of "The Three Little Bears".

Gideon's picture:

Zoe's pictures:

We gained a new vocabulary word - great - and discussed the different meanings it can have.

We watched youtube videos about the phases of the moon and then they each completed their moon phases worksheet.

We talked about primary and secondary colors and watched youtube videos to reinforce what each color would be. Then they had fun painting with primary colors.

Gideon's primary color painting:

Zoe's primary color painting:

We looked through the book to find the different shapes and then they used different block shapes to build. Gideon built a tower.

Zoe built a house.

On our last day we played a memory game after reading the book and tried to recite the objects in the room. Then we talked about nursery rhymes and the one mentioned in the book. They made their own little booklet of "Hey Diddle, Diddle".

"Madeline"

After stressing trying to two one book for each child, I decided we will just do one book together. Best decision. They are loving sharing their experiences.

Our book this week is "Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelmans.

For our first morning, we made croissants for breakfast. The kids had fun rolling them up.

We bought French preserves to put on our croissants.

We enjoyed our yummy French breakfast of croissants with strawberry preserves and hot chocolate. This is what I ate for breakfast while I was in Paris.

We took a little break from Madeline for the morning and Gideon worked on his letter for the week.

Then we read Madeline for the first time of the week. We located France and put our story disk on the map. Then we made flip books of the map and location of France as well as the French flag.

We gained some new vocabulary words on our second day.

Then we talked about literary devices: poetry and repetition.  The kids enjoyed making their own poems and illustrating them.

 Next we talked about architecture and identified the French architecture illustrated in the book. Then we watched a Rick Steves' video on youtube about having lunch on the Sein.

They each picked their favorite example of French architecture to draw. Zoe chose the Eiffel Tower.

I tried to interest Gideon in something else, but he did not waver from his love of the Eiffel Tower.

For math studies, we used dominoes to represent the twelve little girls and had fun learning about grouping and dividing.

On our last day, we learned about health. After talking about ways we can be healthy (eating good things, exercising), Zoe and Gideon had fun coloring their body organs worksheet.

"Madeline" was so much fun! Zoe has decided we need to move to Paris and live there at some point in our lives.

"Blueberries for Sal"

Little Sal and Little Bear both lose their mothers while eating blueberries and almost end up with the other's mother in this delightful story by Robert McCloskey. 

This book provides lots of opportunity for teaching about classification. Gideon had fun classifying blocks in different ways.


First, he classified them according to color. (Excuse the fuzzy pictures. Camera malfunction.)

Then he classified them according to shape. Even little T got in on the fun.

For the next day, we enjoyed looking at the illustrations in the book. Gideon would have preferred them be in color. I always remember thinking the same thing as a child. Now as an adult, I can appreciate the feeling the blue illustrations convey.

After picking our favorite illustrations and sharing them with each other, Gideon drew a picture of Blueberry Hill with Sal and her mother and the mother bear and little bear climbing opposite sides.

Gideon enjoyed counting the the different animals in the story. Then on the last day we took a trip to the zoo and had fun seeing a bear in real life. 

"Lentil"

In the story "Lentil" by Robert McCloskey, Lentil's harmonica playing saves the day when calamity threatens the homecoming celebration for the leading citizen of Alto, Ohio.

Zoe learned about the elements of a good story. Setting the stage, Conflict, Rising action, Climax, and the Denouement. She then used each of those elements to write her own story.

The story is set in the town of Alto, Ohio. We found Ohio on our big wall map and marked it with the Lentil story disk.

Then Zoe did a worksheet paper to see the direction she would need to go from our state to the state of Ohio.

For Art, we learned about musical skill. Zoe had fun making music with the harmonica. She has declared it to be her favorite instrument. I love that she takes it with her everywhere just like Lentil did in the story.

This is the song she wrote with the harmonica.

For Math, we learned about fractions by first discussing the music note values in the book and then moving on to some hands-on fun. First we discussed the cupcake as a whole.

Then Zoe got to help divide the cupcake into fourths. We each ate one fourth to make half of a cupcake. Finishing off the cupcake made for one of the best math lessons ever.

Zoe finished off by making a fraction flap book.

In the story, Lentil's favorite place to play his harmonica is in the bathtub because the sound is 100% better. We talked about acoustics and Zoe enjoyed playing her harmonica in the bathtub. The difference in sound was amazing to her.