The Big Green Pocketbook

This week's book came from the library. I decided to save some of the ones we own for when Ruby comes. Even though we will most likely take a little time off, it'll make it easier to use books we already own then requesting them to be sent to our library. When I went to pick up the book, they had one of the Jesse Bear books I requested since we had such fun reading from that series. The book they had for us was What a Scare, Jesse Bear and was perfect for our transition to fall! We read this book and Silas said it was his favorite Jesse Bear one and that he wished he could have that candy corn in the book. We then started our book for the week, The Big Green Pocketbook! 

This story was a cute one and after we read it, we discussed how the little girl found something fun to do or see everywhere her mom went even though they were just errands. We sometimes I have complaining on our multiple errand trips, so I was sure to point out that the little girl didn't grumble and complain even though she did get tired and fell asleep on the way home- have to take advantage of those little lessons! We decided to make a pocketbook like the girl in the story. I had Silas choose between felt and foam and he chose foam. I cut out the foam pocketbook and he practiced using a hole puncher and punched all the marks for the holes on the pocketbook.

Then we practiced sewing. We talked about how it was different than our lacing animals because we had two pieces to sew and not just one. We then had to decide between making it a purse like the book or just a pocket like a wallet. We decided a Peter Pan satchel was perfect so pocketbook meet Peter Pan it is.

We wanted to make the items to put in our pocketbook but I knew this would be more than a one day activity because we were reaching our max attention span. We started to make tickets and wanted to write BUS on them so first we practiced spelling bus. We ended up writing it together.

We also made some foam lollipops for our pocketbook but since we used paint we had to leave them to dry. We took a break for lunch, but Silas wanted to keep practicing using the hole punch. He loved using that tool haha.

The next day, we read our story again but this time put in our pocketbook/Peter Pan pouch the items we created the day before. 

Afterwards, we pretended to go all of the places that the little girl and her mommy did. When we went to the insurance office we wanted to type our name out like the little girl did on the type writer. We talked about the differences of type writers and computers and then we learned how to type our name in big letters and start a new line and use little letters too. We also learned how to use the back space key and we practiced typing for a while because it was so cool. (We did this again the next day and I was pretty impressed that he remembered where the backspace key was and how to use it all on his own.)

We also practiced writing our name and reviewed money with our pretend money, a matching worksheet, and our piggy bank worksheet. Quarters and nickels are especially tricky. 

On Thursday, we listened to an audio of the book and also related the lost pocketbook, to the Bible story of the lost coin. We read the story and watched a you tube version as well. We spoke about times we've lost things and how great we feel when they are found and how sad when they are not. We reviewed our coins again and played store.

Our last day of The Big Green Pocketbook was welcomed because, we weren't as excited about this story anymore. I know that's okay because we appreciated it enough and that's the point :) Today we worked on art and science. Silas is most excited about art and also likes experiments so I snuck in some coin review and handwriting first. My biggest aim is for him to learn how to write his letters this year but I am still trying to find a way to make it not a begrudging task. 

After that, we talked about primary and secondary colors and learned how to make green. We did some experiments on how to make blue and yellow make green. We tried with crayons first and that worked well. Then we tried markers and they didn't really turn green for us. The best part was our food coloring experiment. We did it algain and again.

We ended this day's activity with going on a GREEN scavenger hunt. We looked all around our house and backyard for green things and stuck them on a green piece of construction paper. I didn't plan it this way, but it was great we ended with talking about blue and green because those colors played a big role in our study the following week.