Jeffany: The Browns' Blog: Before Five In A Row: My Blue Boat

Friday, September 23, 2011

Before Five In A Row: My Blue Boat

I hadn't planned on doing this book until later on in the year, but it is one of the hardest books to find and Interlibrary Loan at Baylor found it a lot sooner than I anticipated :) LittleBear really liked this book and loved looking for the sailboat on each page. It's hard to know for sure, but I think he really liked the watercolor style of the illustrations. If this book weren't so hard to find and so expensive when one does find it, then I'd think about buying it and adding it to our collection. As it is, I'm thankful that the awesome librarians at Baylor were able to find it for us.

Here is what we had planned for the week:

Day 1- Read Book
Sensory bin
Marble Painting (using blue & white like the ocean)
sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat
make a laundry basket boat

Day 2- Read Book
Read the chapter about Noah and the Ark from the Jesus Storybook Bible
(also bring out the Little People Noah's Ark)
Animal Classification Cards (whales and dolphins)
Watch videos on whales & dolphins (we used: whale song, dolphins playing, dolphins talking, whale size)
watch and learn Baby Beluga
Act out the dancing whales & swimming dolphins
decorate the letter W

Day 3- Read Book
Put the stars in size order
show a picture of Van Gogh's Starry Night & compare it with the page where the boat dances with whales
paint the sailboat with watercolors
talk about stars & moon and how they are easier to see at night
Counting Star activity & sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Day 4- Read Book
look at pictures of Uncle Vic sailing
Make boats out of ice, foam and straws and float them in the tub
Have a fun picnic at the lake with a lunch like this & watch for boats

I think his favorite thing the whole week was the sensory bin again. He asked to play with that every day, multiple times a day. He did seem to really enjoy painting the boat with watercolors and also doing the paper towel water painting. The Noah's Ark is also usually a hit around here. He really liked singing the songs and even tried to sing the first line of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat!" He did very well with his counting and is now successfully counting to five on a regular basis!

He wasn't especially fond of the blue marble painting, which I was really excited about, but I think it might have been better with less baby oil. I think I'll still file the idea away for later.

My Uncle has a small sailboat and my incredibly awesome Aunt made up a photo gallery of their sailing adventures for LittleBear to look at, which he really enjoyed. Sadly, we didn't make it to the lake this week, but will for sure put that on the list as a fun thing to do in the future. Maybe tomorrow morning with Grandma :)

View a photo gallery of the week below: