Before FIAR: Goodnight Moon

We’ve been doing this unit for sometime now because this book, Goodnight Moon, is one of my son’s favorite  and he loves the activities that we do to go along with it.  Since we spent most of our afternoon outdoors, I seldom have the time to write about our updates.  To cut my rant short, this has been a week-long overdue and I just have to post it so I can brush it off my mind.  Here are the activities we did for Goodnight Moon (B4FIAR):

Identifying the things that we see inside the little bunny’s room.  I got this printables from Homeschool Share.

As we read along the book, he would take a picture from the left and matched it to the object in the book.

And here, he went inside his room to identify the things that we can see there, just like in the book.

We worked on the printables that I got from Homeschool Creations.  This is the Read, Write and Spell... and instead of forming the words using magnetic letters like we used to, this time I had him write it on paper to practice his writing skills.

Identifying beginning letter using clip cards and shadow matching.

Again, practice of writing skills.

We also read the book, Hey Diddle Diddle, which I got from the library.  And made these stick puppets as we recite the rhyme.  Read about the whole activity here. 

For math, we learned about the clock faces and time :) Here’s my post for this.

We also had number cards and counters.

For science, we studied the phases of the moon.  You can read more about the activity here.

And that’s all what we had for Goodnight Moon Before FIAR.  I hope you can get some ideas here to help you with your Before FIAR as well.  Happy weekend!

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The Clock

We’ve had this before, and I decided to revisit it again to go along with our Before FIAR: Goodnight Moon.

We talked about the face of the clock again, the long and short hands and the numbers around it.  We created our own version of a clock using paper plate, number chips that I cut around ahead of time, and the two hands.

He also worked through the 3-part cards which I made for him to learn the time.  We had a couple of activities related to this before, but in my son’s case, nomenclature cards are really his favorite.  He just loves to match!  On a personal note, I love nomenclature cards because they’re such an effective way for a child to learn. We only did the hour... for I am not sure yet if he’s ready to understand the half-hour. My son finished the work in a breeze, so I guess I might introduce the half-hour and quarter in the next few weeks.

Here’s another activity which we did after he finished the nomenclature cards, I would say the time and he’ll steer the hands on the proper position.  He enjoyed it to bits!

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Hey Diddle Diddle Stick Puppets

Sharing with you our activities to go along with Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme.  Actually, this is just part of our Before FIAR Goodnight Moon unit study.  We completed this today and my son loved it to bits!  So I might as well share it...

After reading the book for days (until my son can read them independently LOL), I started by collecting images from Google and printed it on a cardstock.  The characters I printed were:  the fiddler cat, dog, moon, jumping cow and the dish with the spoon.  Once ready I had Mavi color them.  I made him choose whatever color he wants.  He was so delighted to color the characters in the nursery!

The dish with the spoon is his favorite.  He tells me that the dish looks like Daddy and the spoon is Mommy. I love it that he associates me and his Dad to two objects holding hands :)

I cut each of the characters. 

Then I made him help me attach each on a popsicle stick using a sticky tape. 

And we started reciting the rhyme using these puppets! Oh aren’t they the cutest?

 

And then here’s another version wherein I made them stand using egg carton box so we can do some theatrics with out puppets. 

For reading comprehension and inference, I have my son answer these questions as we go along with the rhyme:

1. Who jumped over the moon?
2. Why do you think the cow jumped over the moon?
3. What instrument did the cat play
4. What kind of music do you think he was playing?  or What do you think his favorite song was?
5. Who laughed in the rhyme?
6. Why do you think the dog was laughing?
7. Who did the spoon run away with?
8. Why do you think they ran away together?

Some of these questions were really tough especially for a 3 year old, but it was funny to hear his answers.  And would you believe, I end up being asked as well. 

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Our Looong Weekend

Hello everyone! How was your weekend? As I mentioned earlier, our little family went to the city center to “supposedly” watch the parade in celebration of the St. Patrick’s Day.  But look! We can see nothing but sea of green leprechaun hats! LOL.  The parade has already started by the time we arrived and we couldn’t get a decent spot to at least view the parade float.

So we ended walking around, and view the people celebrating LOL. 

 

At home, we did a few crafts.. we made a rainbow using our fingers.  It was a total hit!

And we also made a flag... Ireland’s flag.  I attached this to a stick and we place it on our veranda.

 

On Mother’s Day (UK and Ireland), we went to the park to play football.  You see, we do a lot of outdoor activities but I don’t usually bring a camera when we play outside... but I realize that I should bring at least our P&S so I can capture precious moments such as these:

 

Then today is a holiday, so we started our Blue Series for reading.  I forgot to mention that my son has started reading (not pretend) a few weeks ago.  He can read... mostly CVC words.  And I’m happy to say that since he knows “how to do it” already, it’s easier for him this time to blend the letters in the blue series. 

For reading, I borrowed books from the library and am happy to say that they have an amazing collection of reading books for preschoolers.  Currently we’re using this books.  We’re using the Reading Corner Phonics set for grade 1 and at times would include those from grade 2 now that we’re beginning the blue series.

New week.. fresh start! We’re doing Before FIAR this week:  Goodnight Moon.

Happy Monday!

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Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day

I’ve been busy these days, my son will be starting Montessori preschool this coming September so I’ve been running around processing papers and requirements. So pardon me if I have no relevant updates at the moment.

Anyway we did some crafts today... one in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day this coming Saturday and the other one is dinosaur related, which my son still can’t get other (see our activities here and here).

Since last week, we’ve been reading books about Ireland, talk about it’s culture and the festivals they celebrated. And from here, we chose among some crafts I pinned on my Pinterest and made him choose what he wanted to do.

He wanted to make paper-plate shamrocks. Instead of using paper-plates, I decided to use an empty cardboard box.

Cut out three circles and paint them with green using sponges.

At first he wanted to use our paintbrush because he doesn’t want to stain his hands. Eventually, he realized that it was fun. (We’re using Crayola’s Washable paint)

We added glitters.

And glued them together. Sorry the the glitters weren’t visible enough.

This is what we ended up later on. We made several of these and placed them around the house.

This was just a simple craft, tomorrow we’ll do another one... hope it will be more interesting though LOL.

We’ll be heading out to the city center this weekend to enjoy the fun and celebration. Hope I can get some decent photos to share :) Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!