The Nativity and Story Cards

It brings me joy to recount the story of the nativity to our children. We have made it a yearly tradition to read various books of different versions, and sometimes we even watch nativity movies to fully grasp the meaning of Christmas. Now that Vito is old enough to comprehend, I incorporated story cards and activity sheets to accompany our book reading this year.

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: 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:

Goodnight Moon Storytelling Basket

Oh my, Goodnight Moon is one of my kids favourite and I can’t wait to share with you the contents of our storytelling basket!  I assembled it over the weekend and both Vito and Mavi are having fun tinkering and exploring the objects.

I read this book every night.  It’s calming, relaxing… makes them ponder what’s out there in the night, letting them observe their room and the silence of the night.  And may I just say, there is so much love in the story.  The old lady as I would always say to the boys, is lovingly watching her little kid go to sleep, just like most Mommies do!

Papa Get The Moon For Me Storytelling Basket

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I am very much inspired by The Imagination Tree of putting up objects as an additional tool for reading.  So I assembled a few objects for Vito’s current favourite book Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle.  My little guy is so fascinated with the moon and this is the best way we can explore, imagine and learn more about it through interactive reading and storytelling.

Learning Literature though Play-based Activities and {Learn & Play Link Up}

We love books and most of the time its easier to have your activities revolve around that book.  Kids will have a better understanding of the story, and at the same time explore related subjects like what we did with my Grand Father’s Journey, The Glorious Flight and other Five in a Row Activities.  I shared here how we explore and dig dipper into the stories and create engaging activities to go along with it.

                                                                          

Practical Life Activities for Toddlers (24 Months) and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Vito turned 2 years old last month.  Aside from the letter t sound and tree themed activities, here are the practical life activities Vito worked on:

B4FIAR: Jesse Bear and {Learn & Play Link Up}

I am starting Before Five in a Row with Vito.  I am a fan of FIAR and I’ve been doing it with Mavi for years. 

Last week, we did Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?  Vito loved it instantly!  He can relate to the daily activities of Jesse Bear and how amazing he recognizes most of it as part of his routines.  Like changing his shirt, high chair and mealtime, bath time and when running towards Daddy when my husband arrives from work. 

Now here are the activities we did to go along with Jesse Bear:

Morning

We played in the yard, put on his jacket and red pants  

Then try to play sand just like Jesse Bear. That is Kinetic Sand and we are loving it!

Noon Time

Lunch time, he ate some steamed veggies, then apple and drank milk.  He insisted that we place the book in his table to make sure he’s doing what Jesse Bear is doing.

 

Afternoon Time

To kill time we played with colored rice and scooping because Jesse Bear was playing with his rice! 

We also played matching shoes game!    When your child is about 1.5yrs old, they’re able to discriminate objects. Try matching games as simple as matching their shoes! Vito is such an expert!

Bedtime

Vito’s bedtime routine includes brushing his teeth (like Jesse Bear), washing his face and putting on his PJs.  I say this out loud as I do it so he’ll understand what we are doing.  And just like what I did with Mavi, I would read him books while I put him to bed.  This actually calms him down…. and make us both sleepy LOL. 

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Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured literature-based activities for this week!

 

 

Harry Potter Sorcerer’s Stone Unit from Every Star Is Different

Fall Book Basket for Preschoolers from Homeschool Preschool

Peter Pumpkin Eater Printables from Embark on the Journey

Madeline Sensory Tray Writing from Growing Book By Book

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
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• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
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• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
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• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

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Learning From Books Using Narration Style Method

We are currently doing Charlotte Mason narration style at home.  We used to do Before Five In A Row (B4FIAR), where my son had a great time doing all the activities related to the book.  The only problem is, they have a book list and most books in the list are out of print.  With the narration style, we can use any book available and attack it the Charlotte Mason way :)

 

So without further ado, my first specimen is my son’s favourite book Where the Wild Things Are (Amazon US) (Book Depository)[aff. link].  We read it, pin pointed the words he couldn’t understand (for vocabulary lesson) and I took down notes as well for words worthy of spelling practice.

First activity is the Story Sequence using pictures.  I scanned and printed pictures from the book and had Mavi arranged them.  And then, I asked him to tell me the story (in his own word) using the pictures.  I couldn’t believe he remembers 70% of the lines from the book!

 

Spelling and Vocabulary.  Then we moved on to the spelling and vocabulary.  By this time I ran out of ink so I just have to rely on my papers and sharpies LOL (I don't run out of ink these days and I always print in high quality thanks to our ECO Tank Printer from EPSON).  For vocabulary, I have him read the definitions (practice reading) and then the meaning.  He figured out that he needs to match them.  The same with the spelling, decoding the scrambled letters to form the right words.

              

Story Sequencing using Words.  We’re doing the sequencing using words only.  This is to practice his reading analysis and skills.

Creating and Acting.  After the oral narration, we printed graphics from Making Learning Fun and colored them so we could make them as puppets.  This approach is similar to our Hickory Dickory Duck Unit. 

And here they are!  To assess, I made him retell the story (this was on a separate day) using the puppets and vocabulary words. 

I was so happy that we did this!! I have never seen Mavi become interested in “home” schooling again (he’s on vacation mode LOL).  He even told me “Mommy, can we do this again?”. 

So yes! We are doing this every week.  Now I am excited for our next book narration.

B4FIAR: Ask Mr. Bear

A few weeks ago, we rowed Ask Mr Bear and pull out a Farm Animals themed as well. My son loves this book to pieces and he can almost memorize it.  There were times I can here him do a monologue using his animal figures (Safari Toobs) basing on the story.  
Here are some pictures that best describes the activities we did to go along with the book.

Story sequencing. To make it more interesting I added the objects the animals offered to Danny as a gift for his Mom.  This printable was downloaded from Homeschool Creations.

Identifying beginning sounds using the printable pack which I downloaded as mentioned previously.

Where’s the Birthday Cake game which has the same mechanism as Where’s the Easter Card game.   Another favorite math game!

 
Oh and this is exactly the reason why I seldom have time to post.  This is out of topic, but we really really love playing outdoors.
Animal farm family matching game.  The cards can be downloaded here.  Well this is just my version, I made this because I was inspired by My Montessori Moments who has a COMPLETE set of animal families for download.   

Lastly, we sort zoo and farm animals. 

I am looking forward of rowing this again, and hopefully by then I have enough idea, resources and time to carry out additional activities.
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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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