The Carrot Seed- Part One

Wow! What a week!! This one was one for the books- it was good, it had some bad, it had hard times, and victories, moments of incredible weakness and moments of success and such thankfulness for others. Because of such a busy week, I decided the book we studied this week will carry into next week too. The Carrot Seed, although simple, had so much more we wanted to do with it. So this week's blog will be The Carrot Seed part one.

The Carrot Seed is a lovely simple little book about believing and waiting and tending to a seed when others tell you it won't grow or amount to anything and then one day it sprouts into a huge beautiful carrot. (Yes, I hear you God) Silas and Ezra both enjoyed this story and because of the simplicity it is easy enough to be memorized and for Silas to read on his own and that always makes him feel very big. As I'm learning more about my children as students, I think I've said before but will say again Silas is a very auditory learner. He hears things once or twice and can remember and quote them for forever. He has always loved to sit and listen to books. Ezra, on the other hand, is completely hands on. He is WAY to busy to listen to a story and if you start to read one it only reminds him of a different book that he wants to read himself, without you. BUT if you have art supplies out or one of our bins- he is ready to participate FULLY. This middle child of mine is 100% hands on, kinesthetic learner. It is in these moments that I value my education background very much so I can appeal to the different learning styles of my most favorite students.

On Monday, we read our story for the first time. We also, finally got the fancy carrots with the carrot tops, that Silas has been begging for. Thank goodness I got 2 bunches because these kids cleaned and ate an entire bunch that morning. With ranch, even though Silas called it yummy tarter sauce. Haha. 

 

After we cleaned, ate, and discussed carrots and that they are a vegetable but also a root. We used a couple of carrots to do a carrot impression painting. The boys loved this and were busy with this a while. 

We also "planted" some seeds to see how they grow under ground. 

Each day, we checked the progress of our seeds and they have already begun sprouting, how cool. We also worked on writing number 3. Before bed, we read Peter Rabbit, because Peter liked carrots too, and Silas was invited to see his first play, The Tale of Peter Rabbit on Tuesday.

Tuesday, Silas was so excited to go on a field trip to see Peter Rabbit with his favorite friend, Luciana. They had so much fun together and played all day! Silas' first "without mommy" field trip was such a success and still went so great with our weekly story. I wish I would have gotten a picture of him before or after but I forgot :(

Wednesday, was quite different because we had a big youth service and not a lot of help because a lot of our leaders were sick. The boys learned about the importance of serving others, helping family (dad), and how it is important to do hard work especially if it means that other people will come to church to hear about Jesus' love. So Wednesday, we brought daddy lunch, and the boys helped move chairs, count rows, and put up curtains to set up our youth service. They worked as hard as the best workers I know with just a few breaks to play hide and seek.

Thursday, we read our story and also watched a YouTube video of the story. We worked on cutting triangles and gluing them to paper to make carrots. Three of our seeds had begun to sprout and they look like they have little tails. We worked on our 4 worksheet and I was so surprised that Silas remembered the songs for 0-3 all on his own. His memory is outstanding.

We didn't get a whole lot of activities in with this book so we are going to continue on with it this week and read even more Peter Rabbit books. I think it'll be a great week that continues to build on the previous.

We're Going On A Bear Hunt

This past week was still cold for Florida! We had school in our pjs some days because Silas said they were so much warmer than clothes! The joys of homeschool! This week we left Ask Mr. Bear for another bear story, We're Going On A Bear Hunt. This was a new to us story that we borrowed from our friend, Kate, since it was a part of the BFIAR curriculum. We are going to have to get this book because it was an instant hit and we've read it more than fifty times this week, I think!

On Tuesday, before we read our book, we talked about why we did not do school on Monday because it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We watched the kid president video that discussed who MLK was from a kid perspective. After, we talked about how crazy the world was that people couldn't be friends because of skin colors. That Dax and him couldn't be friends. Or Tasha and Jeremy and maybe even long, long ago Mommy and Daddy! What a weird place that would be. We discussed that MLK stood up for what is right so much so that now we have a day that the whole country remembers him and people get to stay home from work and kids stay home from school. We decided it would be so neat if one day there was a Silas Day and every one remembered how Silas helped others.

After we were done dreaming about a Silas Day, we read our story, Going On A Bear Hunt, for the first time. We loved the natural song nature of the rhythm of the words. The story was fun because of the sequence of events and then the reversal when the bear chased them back through them. Silas thought the funniest page in the book was the last page where the bear was walking alone bedside he didn't catch the family. After we read our story, we talked about bears and identified panda bears, polar bears, and black bears. We discussed where they lived and what made them unique. We then followed with a bear pattern coloring activity. We learned different patterns like ABAB and ABCABC and AABAAB. All of the Bears were ABAB.

While we worked on coloring our patterns, we watched an animated version of our book, we liked it so much we also watched the book read by the author and this was our MOST favorite of all so we watched it another 10 times I think.

It was so stuck in our head that all day we were reciting the words. While Silas colored, Ezra worked his little hands at the spelling boards. Turn it, turn it! We put the pieces in trying to not get frustrated and clapped YAY when we did it!

After that, we worked on making our very own bear map. My hands were as we say "full, full of what? Full of Ruby" so Silas made many of the choices of how to make each aspect of his bear map. I must say that I was very impressed with how great he is using scissors. 

 

In the afternoon, we practiced counting to 100. Right now Silas can count to 30 without mistake, then needs prompting at the 10s- 30,40,50... I prompted him at the 10s and together we counted all the way to 100. We also practiced writing 0 and 1 and learned a rhyme for both. One is "the easiest number of all" as Silas puts it.

Wednesday, we read our story again but this time put motion to our action words. After, we talked about the words: over, under, and through and how these words describe action much like the words gallop, skip, and run in Ask Mr. Bear, but they are also direction words. We remembered another book that had direction words in it so we read Kitty Up to Ezra, a favorite from when we were two. We used a story map and went through the order of events by memory. We spelled bear with our puzzle because we noticed it had a bear board. We played with magnatiles and we used our iPad for technology. Later that afternoon, we learned our number 2 rhyme and practiced writing 2s.

On Thursday, Ruby was very clingy and did not want to be put down the whole day. Silas decided it would be best if he read the story since he had it memorized. So we worked on recitation. He really did know almost it all, and read it to me complete with hand motions and the best impression of the author. After he read our story, we looked at all the art in the book. We thought about why some pages were black and white and others were color. We liked the page where the bear walked alone best and thought it was very neat how the picture went over two pages. We noticed the front and back cover did the same. We also looked at the family, and Silas thought the big sister may be the mommy. I said I thought she was the sister but he was right that she definitely could be a "little" mommy like me. We also looked at each page and focused on details like why they were holding their shoes when they crossed the river. His level of comprehension of details is very impressive to me. We discussed how they ran because they were scared and what makes us feel afraid- like when bad guys are on the tv in our mind. We learned a scripture that says "When I am afraid I put my trust in you" Psalm 56:3. I hope he remembers that one all of his life. After our discussion, we worked on an art project of making binoculars out of toilet paper rolls. In the afternoon, we did an activity we made up called super hero math where we took all the superheroes and put them in one bin and had an empty bin. I would write a number 1-30 on a dry erase board and Silas would identify the number and put that many superheroes in the empty bin. We would practice subtracting and adding as our number changed. This was very fun to him.

Because we took Monday off for MLK day and also because we loved this story so much, we decided to squeeze in a few more activities on Friday. This is usually our family day and our Sabbath but doing school is very much okay when it is all fun and all of us, even dad, were playing. We started out by reading our story and gathering our supplies to play bear hunt in the back yard. We had to hurry because it was going to rain by noon so we had to quickly think of how to make our snow storm and our river, and so forth. Once we got outside, we were surprised it rained two hours earlier than it was suppose to! So during our speedy quick bear hunt, it began to rain! Cold rain, at that! So mommy and daddy rain inside, and the boys played wildly in the cold rain! Ten minutes later they found a warm bubble bath was waiting for them and the playing carried over into the tub.

After we were all warm and all clean, Silas worked on cutting out circles of all sizes to make a bear. He cut and glued his circles together and picked out the size of googley eyes that best fit the description of "two big googley eyes" all on his own.

What a fun week we had. This book is going to have to be added to our library so we can always remember the days "we were going on a bear hunt, going to catch a big one". What a beautiful set of days!