Ask Mr. Bear

Our school week centered around a brand new book (thanks Grammy!) called Ask Mr. Bear. This book was reprinted in 1971 but was written in the 1930's. The book definitely had a vintage feel and was about a little boy named Danny who lived on a farm and was looking for a birthday present for his mother. He asked all the animals for help and they offered up options that his mother already had, so they suggested he ask Mr. Bear who gave a great idea of a bear hug!

On Monday, we read our story for the first time and we used our beanie babies as props. We needed to use our unicorn for the goat because we didn't have a goat haha. Luckily, we had a toy egg, cheese, milk, feather, and small toy blanket so we were able to have a lot of fun while we read the book. Ezra loved playing with the animals and wasn't really into the idea of sitting still and listening to a story.

After we talked about how cool it would be to live on a farm, we got our our Montessori animal identification cards. Silas has known farm animals for a long time so this time we talked about animal families and learned the names of daddy, mommy, and baby animals- like Boar, Sow, and Piglet for pig families. We thought the funniest family was Billy, Doe, and Kid Goat. Silas said, "I'm a kid!" and laughed so much. 

I found some farm stencils at the dollar store so after lunch, we worked a lot longer than I anticipated on making farm scenes with  colored pencils. It was just really nice to spend so much time coloring together while the babies napped. We also worked on writing letter G for gift and did some G worksheets.

Tuesday, we read our story again. This time Mouse from If You Give A Mouse A Cookie subbed in as Danny. Then we reviewed our animal families. 

We worked on measuring feathers for our math lesson. We had a little trouble on writing our numbers on our own so we decided to do more math. We used gummy bears to add and subtract. Then we found those numbers in our dry erase workbook and practiced writing numbers 1-7. 

After Math, we used our mosaic tiles to create farm animal shapes and talked about what's the same and what's different about our tiles. For art and literature, we made puppets out of Popsicle sticks and acted out our story. Silas made sure to use the same colors as the story and even colored Danny's skin yellowish like the colors of the book, haha! 

We finished up by talking about how nice Danny was to work so hard to find a present his mother would like and that the Bible tells us that "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7) and Danny was a cheerful giver!

Wednesday got off to a slow start because little brother was not feeling well and wanted to be held allllll day. This is hard when there is only one mommy and three kids! We waited to do school until Ezra took his nap and did light work while in our pjs! We read our story again, but this time we focused on the movement words in the story. We practiced skipping, running, walking, galloping, and hopping like the animals. 

We did a little social studies work and looked at videos of how farmers take shear a sheep's wool when it's ready. Silas thought it might hurt them but we saw it is just like a hair cut and it helps the sheep to have a hair cut and it helps the farmer to have the wool. We then watched another video of how to spin the wool into yarn. It was really neat. We did matching of the animals to their gift suggestions. After, Silas used his iPad to work on some learning apps for tech time.

Thursday, was a little more interesting than Wednesday because we had a long night with the kids. Ezra was in our bed all night for the first time. Silas woke in the middle of the night and wanted in our bed but Ezra was in his spot. Ezra heard and wanted brother and Mommy and Daddy just wanted sleep. Ruby also woke her two times too and everyone was up by 7. Not just up and awake but up and cranky. We were cold, tired, and Ezra was a grumpy bear. We decided we needed out of the house and fresh air so we went for a drive to the grocery store and met Daddy for lunch. When we got home, Ezra took a nap and we worked on school. We started out by building with our magnatiles. 

We read our story and I would pause and he would fill in the words. We used our spelling puzzles to spell some of the animals in our stories. I love these puzzles and know it makes Silas feel so confident in putting letters together to make words. 

Since Silas was in a building mood, we got out our peg board and worked on building shapes and patterns. 

Since it was late in the afternoon we finished our school activities on Friday by having a farm fresh breakfast and a bear treat. We pretended we had milk from Mrs. Cow, butter from Mrs. Goat, and eggs from Mrs. Hen. Ezra especially liked his bear treat. While we ate our breakfast from the farm, Silas filled Daddy in on the whole story of Ask Mr. Bear and he was so pleased he knew it all!

This week definitely had it's challenges with a teething toddler and how hard it is trying to keep everyone happy and giving everyone what they need. I think we found the grace in our days and were able to give everyone what they needed even if we didn't all feel especially happy all of the time. We had fun days, we learned, and were compassionate to each other when we had to share time or think of others. I love that schooling is becoming so much a part of what we do and that being a family is so intertwined into our learning. Where one might think that is not good because learning may have to pause for a grumpy brother or a baby sister, I find it is really great if the aim of school is not just about learning how to's, theories, and histories; but in turning out a really great whole person. And that's my greatest desire, to have whole children who love and know God, who feel as capable as they are smart, whose best and closet friends are their siblings, and who are compassionate and understand the needs and feelings of others. This week has helped me see that when it does get challenging, we are on the path we want to continue on.