Learn Greatness with Spiders!

We are nearing the end of October so I wanted to share some of the fun things we are doing with Spiders, Bats, Pumpkins and Night Creatures.  First, we began by talking and learning about spiders.  I actually had an old ZooBooks magazine from when I was a kid.  

We read captions and learned all about spiders.  We also read a few books with spider characters (We are currently reading Charlotte's Web as our family chapter book)

 

After reading several stories we talked about different types of sentences.  We focused on sentences that were statements, questions, or exclamations.  We searched through our books for sentences with periods.  Then we wrote sentences with a period.  We looked for questions.  Then wrote our own question sentences.  

Finally we found some sentences with exclamations and wrote our own.  We created the craft below and wrote our sentences on the legs of the spider.

Learn Greatness in October!

We are nearing the end of October so I wanted to share some of the fun things we are doing with Fall, Spiders, Bats, Pumpkins and more.  Throughout the month of October we will talk about different types of animals and plants that we think about during this time.  I created a choice board this month to go along with all of the things we are learning.  Check it out below:

 October Choice Board 

Learn Greatness with Ocean books! (Cont.)

 In our next activity we were able to incorporate some language learning into our craft activity.  As we read each of the books, we discussed how each title used an adjective to describe the animal.  Here are the books we used:

   

        

After enjoying all of these books we created our own book cover!

 We talked about ocean animals that we could use as well as adjectives to describe our ocean animals.  This was an enjoyable way to introduce adjectives!

Fiction/Non-Fiction Sort

Throughout this learning adventure we read several non-fiction books that we chose from the public library.  After we completed all the activities we reviewed fiction and non-fiction by doing a sorting activity.  

I made a stack of all the books we read about the ocean.  I wrote Fiction on one side of the board and Non-Fiction on the other side of the board.  We discussed what each term meant.  Then I had my daughter look at each book and determine which pile to place the book.

Learn Greatness With Ocean Books (cont.)

I used our next group of books as the stage for a fun painting activity! I actually recalled doing this when I was little.  I wasn't sure how it would all turn out but we tried it and it worked!  Here are the books we read.  They are from our own library so we have read them many times before:

After reading our books, we talked about the different ocean animals we observed.  We began drawing our animals with crayons.  My son likes to look up how to draw each ocean animal, but my daughter and I just used the books.  

After we finished adding our final animal, I brought out the paint.  We used a basic water color palette.  We had to use plenty of water and the blue paint.  As we painted over our picture the magic began to happen!  The crayon repelled the water allowing only the white paper to be covered in a blue tint!  Again, use plenty of water to get a lighter tint!

    

Learning Greatness with Ocean books!

My daughter loves crafts!  As we were figuring out our learning flow, I decided to spend two days a week reading books and creating crafts.  She is 6 so it fits nicely with her reading curriculum.  

I decided I would gather all of our books about the ocean or ocean animals in them and create a little unit. We also utilized our public library to supplement what we didn't own.

I saw this fish craft that I knew she would love and I knew we had the perfect books to go with it!

We started with 3 books that had shiny fish:

We read them all and enjoyed each one!  Then we created a shiny fish craft:

Click Here for access to the directions for this craft.

The craft turned out perfectly!  

Learning Greatness with The Wild Robot

We began our learning adventure with our first family chapter book: The Wild Robot by Peter Brown  

I heard that the book was becoming a movie and thought -- what a fun way to begin reading chapter books as a family.  Our family already enjoys watching movies together!  I have a 6 year old and a 9 year old and they were both engaged and excited!

Here we are at the movie!

I did not find this wonderful resource (https://www.soulsparklettes.com/celebrate-novels-with-art-free-literarture-guide-to-the-wild-robot/) until after we read the
book and saw the movie. 

However, we did use the directions to create our own The Wild Robot - Art project.                

We are currently on the wait list at our local library for the next book: 

The Wild Robot Escapes