This week, I am "loosely" doing some summer homeschooling by working through one of the BFIAR books with "Bean" - Blueberries For Sal
Here's a look at our activities & books for the week:
Blueberries For Sal by Robert McCloskey
Molly and The Strawberry Day by Pam Conrad
Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington
In The Beginning, adapted by Maxine Nodel
I read these four books back-to-back, and as I am reading we take time to look at the illustrations, discuss the story in depth, I point out things mentioned in the story and mention similarities between all of the stories.
For example: in Molly & The Strawberry Day a little girl and her mommy & daddy go strawberry picking for the day. Molly eats a lot of strawberries while she should be picking them, and then her family returns home to make strawberry jam, eat strawberries, etc.
In Blueberries for Sal, a little girl and her mommy go blueberry picking for the day, Sal eats a lot of blueberries when she should be picking them, and they return home to make blueberry jam.
In the beginning of Molly & The Strawberry Day, the author mentions that Molly and her parents are using baskets to put their berries in: a large one for her father, a medium one for her mother, and a small one for Molly. In the beginning of Blueberries for Sal, the author tells us that the characters are using tin pails to put their berries in: a large one for her mother and a small one for Sal.
Pumpkin Pumpkin is a story about a boy who plants a pumpkin seed in spring, and it grows into a sprout, a plant, a flower, a small pumpkin and the pumpkin grows & grows. The boy picks the pumpkin, scoops out the pulp and seeds, carves a face, and saves seeds for planting. I read this story to Bean and then asked him what he thought would happen to the seeds that the little boy will plant... and he said "Grow!" Very cool, because he totally got the concept that the book was teaching him. I thought this was a nice book to go along with the other two stories because it talks about the growing cycle of food, planting, picking, etc. I will definitely use this story again in the October so we can use it to relate to fall time activities like pumpkin picking, carving and saving the seeds.
In The Beginning is the story of Creation. We read through the story and then talked about the Third Day, when God created plants, grass, trees and fruits. God created blueberries, strawberries and pumpkins for us to eat... and seeds, dirt, sun and water for our food to grow!
Science
The author in Blueberries For Sal mentions when the blueberries are dropped into a tin pail, they make a "kuplink" sound. I asked Bean what does he think it sounds like when blueberries are dropped into a basket instead? After we read the stories, we tried this "experiment" by dropping blueberries into a tin pail and into a basket and listening to the different sounds they make!
We will plant seeds (not sure what kind yet since it's late in the season) into a small pot filled with dirt. We'll water our seeds, put them in the sunshine and watch our seeds grow into sprouts!!
Math & Cooking
These stories are easy for Bean to relate to because we have black raspberry and raspberry bushes here at our house, and he & I were doing a whole lot of berry picking during July. And since it's blueberry season right now, we also have a few quarts of blueberries here at home that we purchased from the farmer's market. We will also be going blueberry picking later on this week and I will be making blueberry jam... and, if Bean is interested in helping me make jam, I'll have him help measure (this can be worked into counting: 2 scoops of sugar), stirring, etc. We will also probably make blueberry bread, a blueberry pie, and blueberry pancakes for breakfast - I'll have Bean help me if he'd like to.
We will also use blueberries as a "tool" for counting - a great activity to do during snack time! And, I'll use strawberries, roasted pumpkin seeds, and some other types of berries & fruits (raspberries, blackberries and grapes) and use them for a sorting game - we will sort them into a muffin tin. Again, another fun activity that doubles as a snack!
The stories also provide a good time to talk about and introduce sizes: small, medium and large... and do activities associated with sorting by size.
Our letter of the week is B
Blue, blueberry, berry, baskets, boy, bath, bubbles, Bible, etc. We will talk about things that begin with the letter B and the sound that the letter B makes: buh
I will also introduce him to the letter B several times by showing him the letter, writing it for him, etc (repetitive = rhythm; recognition, familiar, comfortable). We also have bathtime tub letters and will use B often this week during bathtime. We'll talk about the story Blueberries For Sal and the color blue during bath time; we'll use bubbles and maybe we'll even dye the water blue one night!
Art
Anything blue, of course!
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