B4FIAR: Jesse Bear What Will You Wear

We are continuing our Five in a Row because Vito is loving some of the stories in the book list.  In this post, I’m sharing activities to go along with the Jesse Bear What Will You Wear by Nancy White Carlstrom.  Note, I only make or prepare activities in line with the books that he loves.  So when I read Jesse Bear to him, he immediately love it because he can relate to the story.  He has routines too similar to Jesse Bear (playing, eating and waiting for Daddy) and staying with his Mom all day. 


Anyway here are the activities we worked on to explore the subject areas of Jesse Bear What Will You Wear.  Note, this was a 2-week long of rowing.  The activities here were mostly done in the morning and we only worked on one activity a day, and the rest we spend it outdoors or Vito would do something else (like work on his traditional Montessori materials).

B4FIAR: Caps for Sale! (with FREE Counting Cards)

Have you read the book Caps for Sale?  It’s one of our all time favourite classic books in the house!  I first heard of it when we were in Singapore, borrowed it from the library and Mavi immediately loved it.  Because I love the idea of Five in a Row, I decided to purchase the book so that we can do extension activities over and over again with the book.  Now that it’s Vito’s turn, I decided to prepare simple activities to go along with book that are centered around the three objects found in the book:  caps, money and monkeys.

B4FIAR: Harold and the Purple Crayon

I love book extension activities.  This is one of the reasons why I enjoy doing Before Five In a Row with the boys.  So when I introduced the book Harold and the Purple Crayon, I knew that its a story that we can explore beyond than just reading.  The book itself is enjoyable to read, engaging and the boys found it funny.  Vito was glued to it for a long time.  At times, he would even “pretend” to read it by himself, mimicking how I read it to him at night. 

If you love this book, or if you plan to get one (highly recommended!) I listed below the areas of learning we touched by just  doing this simple easy to set-up activities:

Simple Activity for Ageing

Mavi and I were discussing how and why people get old. I whipped this activity instantly to show Mavi what happens when you grow old. 

I printed out Mavi’s pictures from birth to present.  One profile picture to represent each year. 

With these pictures, I asked Mavi to arrange them according to his age.  I added labels to match the pictures.

After a few stumbles, he managed to correct his work and finally completed his timeline.  He was amazed to see his face changed! And there was some point wherein he can not tell the difference between his face (ages 4 and 5).

So this is how I demonstrated to Mavi the process of ageing.  The body changes, as well as the features.  You can also show your kids their baby’s book to show that they are gaining weight as they grow.  Talk about their milestones as well and the major development in their body. 

I am so glad I took photos of him. Will continue this for as long as I can.

Thanks for dropping by and hope that you like this post!

The Glorious Flight {FIAR}

"This book...recounts the persistence of a Frenchman, Louis Bleriot, to build a flying machine to cross the English Channel.... The text is succinct, caption-like in its directness and brevity....The paintings...add the necessary testure and tone to this marriage. This is vintage Provensen" –School Library Journal

We love this book!  I mean it. It’s funny yet full of lessons from history.  It teaches the reader of never giving up, of persistence and following dreams. And did you know that this book is based on a true story of Louis Bleriot, the first person to fly an airplane in the English Channel.
This is one book that I highly recommend reading when studying airplanes! And you get to study history as well :)
Geography

Now the setting of the story is in France. So we spot France in our Montessori Europe Puzzle Map and identify the English Channel where Louis Bleriot flew.

in addition, we check out landforms as well, as Mavi was asking me “Mommy, what is a channel?”

Since it is in France, Mavi made the flag of France. I was surprise he still remembers the colours.

And of course, the exciting part was creating the English Channel using our coloured rice, Europe Pin Flags and Learning Resources Transportation counters.
Math

The book was using Roman Numerals so we made Roman Numerals for each Montessori Number Cards.  This was a huge hit! I even learned from this… the Roman Numerals of thousands!

Science
We studied Airplanes!  Here are the books we used: 

They were all helpful!  The only thing that we didn’t do was to have an experiment on flying. Oh well, maybe next time.
Interested in learning the different parts of an airplane? I have FREE 3-part cards for you!

Mavi loves to read and match the parts.  I have yet to create definition booklet for this.  But Mavi knew all the functions of each parts by heart so he was discussing it to me while doing the work.

History
We created a timeline for the airplane. Starting from the discovery of the Wright brothers up to the very present of airliners (this was Mavi’s idea).
                  
And that’s about it!  We have a fruitful week for this! I didn’t know that rowing FIAR books could be this exciting and fun!
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Number Cards and Roman Numerals (with FREE Cards)

As you all know, we are rowing books from Five in a Row (we are loving this so far!).  This lesson in Roman Numerals is in line with the book The Glorious Flight (My son enjoyed every single page of this book! He even made a video narration of this book which you can watch here.).  This is the first time Mavi encountered such numbers and he was surprised to learn that the numbers are represented by letters!

I made use of our wooden Montessori number cards for this lesson and roman numerals handwritten on a paper (I ran out of printer ink!).  We started off with the units (ones).  He got the pattern right away and continued working up to the hundreds.




We stumbled on the thousands as I myself was not knowledgeable of the the Roman Numerals in thousands LOL.  We searched the web for the corresponding symbol for this.

He realized that he only needs to memorize a few letters because the representation is almost the same as counting 1,2,3. According to him, he just have to remember that…

ones is for I

five is V

ten is X

fifty is L

hundred is C

five hundred is D

thousand is M

five thousand is V with one bar on top

 
He worked on the rest of the numbers with less assistance from me and here he is so proud of his work! 

And now, if you are interested you can download your FREE printables of the Number Cards and Roman Numerals by clicking this link. Hope you find this helpful. Thank you! Don’t forget to like and pin this!

More Math activities from my Pinterest board!
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Grandfather’s Journey {FIAR}

We started Five in a Row late last week.  If you have been skimming through my blog, I am a fan of this curriculum.  Mavi was around 3years old, we did Before Five in a Row (Caps for Sale, Goodnight Moon, Going on a Bear Hunt) and both of us enjoyed learning through literature.  If you want to know more about Five in Row curriculum, visit their website here.

This 2015, I am including it once again in our homeschool. So last week, I came across Grandfather’s Journey in the library and I was a bit hesitant to start FIAR with this book  (more of that in my book review). But because Mavi wants to read it, I gave in. It is the story about the author’s grandfather who moved to California from Japan.  We read the story every single day before we would start our activities.

Note that I did not purchase Five in a Row manual.  Because of my location, I have no access to it and can’t afford the shipping cost.  So what I did here is create my own activities that’s in line with the book and borrowed other activities from FIAR Moms as well. 

Family Relationships

Expose your child to your genealogy! We talked about how the author Allen Say loves his grandfather and how close they are as a family. So I told Mavi that we are going to trace his family(maternal side) starting from my grandparents.  Here’s how we worked them out.

Mavi was enchanted by this activity.  He enjoyed putting up together photos of his grandparents (and great grandparents!) and wished he knew his grandfathers even more.

Geography

The story’s settings are in Japan and United States.  So we traced how the grandfather travelled to California from Japan via a steamship in the Pacific Ocean.  I have to explain to Mavi that long time ago, there were no airlines yet, so travelling is quite difficult. 

 Social Studies:  Japanese Culture

We explored the Japanese culture using our Asia in a Nutshell fact cards.  Then we made kimono paper crafts which we printed out from Crayola.  We also tried origami (the art of folding paper in Japan).  Mavi’s origami was a flapping bird (in yellow) and mine was a crane (in red), and it WAS NOT EASY!!  The chopsticks in the picture was from Japan, given to me by my brother (who also travels a lot!). 

Landmarks of United States

We have not been to the United States yet.  So he was interested learning about the famous landmarks that was mentioned in the story.  We traced the places the grandfather visited in the story. The book did not mention any places but he only describes them.  And that’s what we did, we looked for those places in the web and identified each of them.

Math: Calendar

The grandfather travelled for 3 weeks to get to United States.  As a review of his knowledge with the calendar, I asked him to arrange the months in a year.   After which, we talked about the number of days in a month.  We identified the months with 30 days, and those with 31 days.  February is always a special month because it’s neither 30 or 31!

Math: Multiplication

Using the concept of multiplication (Montessori multiplication), we counted how many days did the grandfather travelled.  In the story, it took him 3 weeks. So how many days are there in 3 weeks? 

More of this Montessori Multiplication soon!  You can get this Montessori Multiplication board from Amazon or from Tower High Learning (UK)

Science: Learning about Birds

Birds  play a special role in the story.  So we reviewed parts of the birds using Montessori concept. This Bird Puzzle can be purchased at Amazon or from Tower High Learning.  We also checked our bird figure collections.  This set is from Safari Toob Exotic Birds. How I wish I have the Backyard Birds so we can explore birds that you can find in your yards or at home.  The cards are from here.

You might also want to check our past activities on birds, Bird Unit.

History:  World War II I got Mavi some books about World Wars to give him a little bit of idea what it is all about. We would skip the rest of the topic and go straight to the war in Japan.  Here I’m showing Mavi the effects of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan. 

Here are the links for the books in case you are interested:

• Usborne World Wars from Amazon.
• The Second World War (Young Readers series) from Amazon.  I HIGHLY recommend this book.  It is easier to read for a 6 years old and got lots of beautiful pictures. 

You can also get the books from Book Depository, Abe Books or Barnes and Noble.

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And that’s about it! Next on our list is The Glorious Flight and we’ll be exploring France, UK and airplanes!