The Little Rabbit

We chose the BFIAR book, The Little Rabbit, for this week. It is about a little girl named Sara who received a rabbit in her Easter basket, how they play, how it is having a rabbit for a pet, and also how it is after Buttercup, the rabbit, has her babies. This is our first book where the artwork was from photographs and Silas seemed to really like that because he said it was real. He even asked when he could meet these kids in the book haha.

On our first day exploring the book, we read the story and also reviewed our scripture verse that says you are blessed when you are kind to animals. This was  also the scripture they learned in church a Sunday or two ago and Silas liked that a lot. We learned some new vocabulary like rhubarb and hutch. We then talked about how words have syllables and did a game of one or two syllable sort. Silas is so keen when it comes to auditory things that he caught on no problem. We also used a sheet protector to work on our letter of the week, R. I am learning that right now this is his favorite way to write. I don’t know how long it will last but he loves using the expos and worksheets under the sheet protector. We ended up practicing R’s over and over this way so later in the week I added S work since those make him most nervous when writing his name.  We also used our manipulative and did some peg work on patterns. Later this night, little brother found some flowers that looked like buttercups at soccer practice and this made Silas so happy.

The next day we read our story and talked about the differences between the pet rabbit and the wild rabbit. They were different in how they looked and also in how they got their needs met. We talked about how God helps provide for both the rabbits in different ways because he knows what we all need. We worked on our R’s again and also on making a hutch for our rabbit and a wild place for our wild rabbit. We learned that where you live is called a habitat and we thought creatively to make our habitats the best they could be. We didn’t have enough cotton balls to make the seven babies so we just made two bunnies. We also reviewed our days of the week since the baby rabbits were named after the days of the week- we are finally learning the order! Calendar time is paying off!

Our third day of The Little Rabbit, we played with our habitat while we read the story and acted out when the rabbits met (all his idea).  We did a worksheet where we had to count all the rabbits and below were three number choices and one was the correct answer. I showed him how to do the first one and let him work independently and I was so surprised he got them all correct. This was his first time doing a worksheet like that too! He thought it was important to draw a line to each bunny, even though that wasn’t a part of the directions, but I let him do it his way and I think that number trail helped him not miss a single rabbit! I guess he taught me a little bit! Then we worked with our vocabulary words and clothes pinned the beginning letter/sound. We did the words with both capital letters and also lower case. He enjoyed this activity too. He usually maxes out at two to three activities so we took a break and continued working later in the afternoon. In the afternoon, we summarized the story we have been learning and told dad all about it. We also explained the parts of our habitat to him and told him about all the different flower types in the book.

Our last day of The Little Rabbit was a very fun one. We read the story, then we practiced writing R’s, S’s, and our whole name. We did a scissor and glue worksheet where we cut out pictures of words that started with a H sound and glued them down. We then talked about all the different kind of pets that people have from kitties to big spiders to goats. We talked about if we would like to have these animals as a pet or not. Then we decided we were going to go to the pet store to look at all the different pets- even rabbits! We saw hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, fish, and birds! We asked the worker if we could pet the rabbit and she let us. We were surprised at how very soft the rabbit was! He was even softer than our dog. The worker gave us a sheet of paper about how to take care of the rabbit if you choose a rabbit as a pet. We ended our pet store visit with buying a couple of treats for our dog. This was a very great week of school and I would love every week to feel just as exciting!

Yellow Ball

This was our first long weekend since we started homeschooling a month ago (gasp! can't believe it's been a whole month!). Since Labor Day was Monday, we didn't start our week until Tuesday. This week's book was Yellow Ball by Molly Bang. It was a really pleasant surprise. The artwork in the book was very pretty but the story was basic, one word per page basic, so I feared it would be hard to keep him engaged. The simplicity though allowed a lot more room for activities than I would have thought!

We started this week off with an experiment called "Hopping Corn". This experiment used yellow food coloring, baking soda,vinegar, popcorn and when you mix it just right, the corn begins to hop on it's own. Our corn hopped and looked like a lava lamp for an hour! We discussed solids, liquids, and gasses and how they are all forms of matter. We also discussed how they can move differently and also make each other move- like rain in a cloud or popcorn that hops because of gas.

We also discussed what the word interpretation means. We used the cover of our book and made our own interpretation of the cover. This was special to me because he really took his time to make it his own but loved looking at the cover for a guide. It was fun to observe his mind working and figuring out how he could make his similar.

The following day, we read our story again and were careful to notice the artwork on each of the pages. It really is a beautiful book. We then used play dough to form balls and build with toothpicks. We were going to make our balls yellow, but of course, we were all out of yellow play dough! We choose green. We made balls with our hands and learned that they are called spheres. We then made some balls with our hands and smooshed them flat and we already knew these were called circles. This was fun. We did this for a while before we ended up making pizzas with our play dough- haha.

Then, we squeezed in some more work on our letter S. These are hard for us but we really want to get confident in it, considering there are two S's in Silas! He will do it with help but on his own still makes him nervous! We also worked on Y this week. We made a big Y and a little y out of yarn- and yep, you guessed it our yarn was blue because we were out of yellow! haha

Our last day on the Yellow Ball was packed with learning because he was especially into school this day. We opened with reading our book. We recalled our discussion on matter and talked about how a force is necessary to move objects. We talked about that in the book the storm was the force that moved that yellow ball all the way across the sea. We decided to reenact this, but again our ball was not yellow, because the one we found was blue. Silas moved the ball across our sea by creating wind! We also stirred the water to make it choppy and saw that water can be a force to move an object too. We then made guesses if we put the wall under water would it come back up or stay down...what if we pushed it really hard? Each time it came up and we learned the reason why is because of gravity.

We also used our cars later and discussed how one car could move the other car if it pushed it enough. After all of this, we decided to watch the storm episode of the Magic School Bus and learn more about what happens in a storm. Then we made our own storm with construction paper and paint.

And mom squeezed in some more handwriting! Look how serious. The next week we are taking off because daddy has a few vacation days so we are spending time as a family of four before Ruby hits the scene in the next few weeks!