Saturday, April 30, 2011

"Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown

"Goodnight Moon is a short poem of goodnight wishes from a young rabbit preparing for--or attempting to postpone--his own slumber. He says goodnight to every object in sight and within earshot, including the 'quiet old lady whispering hush.'" ~ Amazon editorial review
Aubrey is playing with the "red balloon" in the vignette we set up in a corner of the room with rocking chair and bunny, mouse, little house, pictures of bears in chairs and cow jumping over the moon, hanging mittens and socks, plus a table, lamp, phone, comb, brush, and bowl (all out of picture view). Unfortunately, I forgot to take a full picture of the vignette.
Aubrey did the story-sequencing cards and other lapbook activities from Homeschool Share.
Of course the girls had to have "a bowl full of mush" (oatmeal) each morning for breakfast.

We focused on learning the letter "M" for "moon" by doing the phonics program on Starfall and word search and writing from First-School.
Aubrey and Addison both enjoyed the "M&M" activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  Aubrey did cutting and M&M pattern building,
while Addison worked on M&M sorting and pattern matching.  Guess what we ate for snack that day!

Aubrey did the lapbook activities from Homeschool Share which included learning her phone number and the basics of a clock.  She learned the phases of the moon, too.

Coloring, writing, word-search, day and night matching and story item counting from First-School, and the publishers website.

M&M activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler
We borrowed Papa Nash's telescope and spent several nights looking at the moon.



I was very pleased with the photo I was able to capture with the 22x zoom on my Nikon P100 bridge camera.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

"The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown

Easter was coming soon so we decided to "row" a story about a bunny rabbit.

"The Runaway Bunny begins with a young bunny who decides to run away: "'If you run away,' said his mother, 'I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.'" And so begins a delightful, imaginary game of chase. No matter how many forms the little bunny takes--a fish in a stream, a crocus in a hidden garden, a rock on a mountain--his steadfast, adoring, protective mother finds a way of retrieving him."
~ Amazon review

After reading The Runaway Bunny, Aubrey followed along with a video of one of the companion stories, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, on YouTube.

One of the ways the book is illustrated is by the art medium called pen and ink.  Aubrey picked a page in the book and tried to copy the picture (using a regular pen, though).

Some of the other pages are illustrated in color, so Aubrey learned about using various shades of green and other colors.

She completed lapbook activities such as the Bunny Silhouette Matching, Rabbit Pattern Building, and "If..., then...." Story Cards from Homeschool Share.


Aubrey's writing and word search activities came from First-School.


The girls scooped cotton to represent "Peter Cottontail,"
Since Easter was around the corner, we got out the plastic eggs and colored pom-poms.  Aubrey put a pom-pom in each egg then closed it, and Addison opened each egg and removed the pom-pom.

Many different shapes can be identified in the illustrations.  The parent's guide and lapbook activities suggested teaching the differences in shapes that otherwise look similar - like circle, disk, and sphere, or cube and square, etc. 
Aubrey figured out the pattern of one of the Mastermind shapes cards and cut out some basic shapes for scissor practice.

Addison watched an educational video about shapes, and then she and Mommy played the Candy Land Castle Game that matches shapes on to the gingerbread game cards. 



The story mentions how the bunny lives in a burrow under a tree.  We explored what other animals might live in trees:
We looked in every nook and crany.
We found mostly ants in the tree trunks.
We found an empty bird's nest and the remnants of a hornets nest.
We found lots of squirrels' nests in the trees and spotted Barbie dangling from a tree across the street from our house.
For our field trip, we went to the pet store to see the bunny rabbits.  Aubrey has wanted a bunny rabbit since she was about 2 years old.  We'd love to give her one, but just can't make the commitment for a pet just yet.



We checked out many of the other pets that they have as well.



They even had baby ducks.  Going to the pet store is one of our favorite field trips/family outings - - and it's FREE!