Five In A Row: Night of the Moonjellies

We recently started another new-to-us book that LittleBear REALLY likes called Night of the Moonjellies.  It's about a little boy in New England who finds two moonjellies on a beach and then after a hectic day helping in his Grandparents' beachside restaurant, finds out more about where they belong.  It's out-of-print, expensive and very hard to find, but we hope to find a copy to add to our library since LittleBear likes it so much.

 the other one whose paws I could not get into our first picture...

Forgive the scarceness of pictures this week.  I'm not sure what happened there...

We also enjoyed talking about the beach, the ocean and jellyfish, including their anatomy and what they do all day.  Also, much of my family is from New England, so we learned a little bit about the regions of the US and continued our attempt to learn all 50 US States and their Capitols.

LittleBear also learned how to tell time on a clock with hands!  He expressed interest a couple weeks back and I realized we didn't have a clock like that in our house, so I found one I liked at Hobby Lobby and put it in the bathroom.  About that same time, our Math-U-See book started teaching lessons on it and now he's got a pretty good grip on it!

All in all, it was a good week and we are looking forward to the next book!!

Resources and printables I used for Night of the Moonjellies can be found at:

Five In A Row Teacher's Manual

My Five In A Row Pinterest Board

Go Along Books we used for Night of the Moonjellies (* indicate ones we especially liked):

*Hello Ocean by Pam Munoz Ryan

*Ocean Day by Shelley Rotner and Ken Kreisler

*Our Wet World by Sneed B. Collard III

*The Seashore Book by Charlotte Zoltow

*Jellyfish by Leighton Taylor

*Jellyfish by Rebecca Stefoff

*Discovering Jellyfish by Loriijo Metz

*See Under the Sea by Kate Davies

*Clam-I-Am by Tish Rabe

Southern New England by Thomas and Virginia Aylesworth

Northern New England by Thomas and Virginia Aylesworth

Connecticut by Susan Evento

Adding our story disk to New England...it's a bit crowded on our map.  Lots of great stories!

Real Life Snow Day!!

We got about two inches of snow this morning that is now all melted, but that didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves and playing in it a bit!!

Sing it with me!  "Catch a falling snowflake, put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day"...ok, maybe not.

 This one was absolutely delighted with the falling snow and super disappointed when she couldn't "make footprintses" anymore...

 At BSF this morning!!

Five In A Row: Katy and the Big Snow

For the past two weeks, we've been reading Katy and the Big Snow, which is a favorite around here for most of us.  I *almost* hoped it would snow as a great book illustration, but alas, it did not (probably just as well as LittleBear loathes anything cold).

Our calendar board for the week...

For Bible/Character Building, we talked about Responsibility and what that means.  We also talked about how Katy's responsibility was to clear the snow and I challenged LittleBear to think about what his responsibilities are.  In addition, we read stories each day out of our Children's Book of Character Building Book 2 and also out of our Read and Share Devotional.

For language arts and math, we continued to do pages out of Math-U-See Primer (lesson 25) and Explode the Code 2 (lesson 9).  We also finished our Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten book.

For Social Studies, we talked about community helpers (sing it with me! "Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?...")/running a city and then built our own city!  I had LittleBear cut out labels and then build and label each building.  We talked about what the city would be like if it didn't have an X (like a grocery store or fire station).

Cutting out labels! 

A Fire House and Pharmacy labeled...

The whole city with a pile of unused bricks in the middle...I think our white furry helper also took out a couple of buildings when his curiosity got the best of him...

Our beloved white furry helper who ALWAYS comes running when we sit on the couch to read a book together...

After that, we spent the rest of the week focusing on developing map skills.  We talked about where we are on a map from planet to street address and also reading a map, north/south/east/west, etc.  LittleBear loves maps, so this part of the week really interested him!

LittleBear's work this particular day...He did it all himself and I am crazy proud...this is huge improvement for him!

For Science, we talked a little about winter, but mostly about snow, snowflakes, etc.  LittleBear's favorite was learning about "Snowflake Bentley," a farmer in Vermont who was fascinated by snowflakes and tried to photograph them in the late 1800s-early 1900s.  When I explained that Grams' family lived in that same area of Vermont, he got super excited!

All-in-all, we enjoyed these two weeks and are already enjoying our new book this week!  Hooray for books!

Resources and printables I used for Katy and the Big Snow can be found at:

Five In A Row Teacher's Manual

My Five In A Row Pinterest Board

Snow Plow Plowing Snow on Youtube

People In Your Neighborhood on Youtube (we watched several different ones of these)

Go Along Books we used for Katy and the Big Snow (* indicate ones we especially liked):

*The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt

*The Mystery of the Missing Red Mitten by Steven Kellogg

*The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

*There's A Map on My Lap by Tish Rabe

*The Tiny Snowflake by Arthur Ginolfi

*t's Snowing by Gail Gibbons

*Flakes and Flurries by Josepha Sherman

*Snow by Uri Shultevitz

*The Secret Life of a Snowflake by Kenneth Libbrecht

*Snowplows by Jeffrey Zuehlke

*Follow that Map!  A First Book of Mapping Skills by Scot Ritchie

*North, South, East, West by Franklyn Mansfield

*Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

*The Story of Snow by Mark Cassino with Jon Nelson, PhD

*What Do People Do All Day?  by Richard Scarry

*In the Town All Year Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner

Putting our story disk on the map, since we don't have a "Geopolis," we chose NYC who was receiving record snowfall at the time...