Books, Review, Homeschooling, Story Telling, Poetry, Library

Click here for the Puddles and Ponds Schedule and Book List.

The science experiments can be found in Nature in a Nutshell or One Small Square Pond. Use Can You Hear It for your art and music appreciation.

Make a Weather Chart to use daily. This chart should have space so that you can record your weather observations and daily temperature high (and low if you would like) for 4-5 weeks. You should work on making observations such as sunny, rainy, cloudy, windy, etc. Be sure to do it at the same time every day, preferably in the afternoon to get a more accurate high temperature recording. To take it a step further, you can then place daily temperatures on a line graph and/or use a bar graph to chart the number of sunny, rainy, cloudy, or windy days. You can get some good weather charting resources here.

Go cloud watching. Take a blanket to the park or just to your backyard. Lie down and watch the clouds for 15-20 minutes. Try to find pictures in the cloud forms. This is a great time to practice story telling with your children. Try it again at another time of day. We have some amazingly beautiful sunsets when the clouds look all pink and purple. When looking up at the sky, be sure to never look directly at the sun.

Play in the rain. As long as there is no lighting, send the kids out when it is raining. Most kids love donning their rain coats and rain boots. Not raining? Use a sprinkler to make your own rainy day. Let you kids play with an umbrella (there is something super fun about an umbrella) in the sprinkler or make mud puddles with the hose to splash in.

Put together a storm safety kit and plan for your family. Here is a link to a list of what you might want to include in your storm safety kit.

Make your own rainbow with a hose. Turn on your hose, stand with your back to the sun, use your thumb to make the water spray in droplets. You should be able to see a rainbow through the water mist. Click here for more details and other rainbow activities.

Make a Pond Journal to record your weekly observations. You can decorate the cover of a store bought journal, make your own journal with printer paper and a construction paper cover or print out several froggie journal pages and bind them together. Use your journal to make weekly observations about your Pond Square.

Wet Feather Experiment can be found in the Don't Ducks Get Wet Book.

Go outside and have fun with bubbles. Here are some Homemade Bubble recipes or store bought is fine. There is something magical about bubbles in the summer.

Practice Story Telling using A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog by Mercer Meyer. This sweet book series does not have any text. The stories are told through the illustrations. Take turns with your child making up the story to go with the pictures. If you would like to take it one step further, have your child illustrate their own wordless book.

Make the Turtles on a Log snack. This is a variation the traditional "Ants on a Log" snack. Clean and cut celery into 4" long sticks. Have your kids fill the crevice with peanut butter (or cream cheese if you are allergic to nuts)... or better yet use our Apple Stacker filling. Since my kids don't like raisins, we place several peanuts on top of the peanut butter as Turtles on a Log but of course you can use raisins or other dried fruit if you would prefer.

Poetry for this Unit:

Rain Clouds
By Elizabeth-Ellen Long
 
Along a road
Not built by man
There winds a silent
Caravan
Of camel-clouds
Whose humped gray backs
Are weighted down
With heavy packs
Of long-awaited,
Precious rain
To make the old earth
Young again,
And dress her shabby
Fields and hills
In green grass silk
With wild-flower frills.
 
A Dragonfly
By Eleanor Farjeon
 
When the heat of the summer
Made drowsy the land,
A dragonfly came
And sat on my hand.
 
With its blue-joined body,
And wings like spun glass,
It lit on my fingers
As thought they were grass.

This unit was designed to be used as a summer guide in our homeschool companion series. If you followed our other units you will notice a few differences. First there is no phonics/alphabet study included. If you child has completed the Pre-Explode the Code books A-C and you would like to continue... feel free to start on Explode the Code Book 1. I suggest getting the teachers guide book and a set of the ETC flash cards. Second, the crafts and recipes have been replaced with outdoor activity suggestions. We like to get outside and get messy in the summer. Third, it is only a ten week guide rather than covering a full 12 week term to accommodate vacations and lazy days. We love to encourage learning all year round... but do suggest that it be a bit more laid back during the summer.

Click here to go to the Activity Guide Page where you will find directions for the activities not included in a book and the poetry for memorization. If you need more information on how to use the schedule click here.

Additional Books & Supplies:

Books you need to complete the unit:
One Small Square Pond (OSS), Nature in a Nutshell (NNS), and Can You Hear It (Music/Art Study), An Outdoor or Student Thermometer

Chapter Books:
Is your child ready to listen to longer chapter books? Here are a few suggestions for summer reading. By no means do you need to read them all. Pick a couple of your favorites and read a few pages at a time as your little ones get used to listening to stories without all the pictures. These books should all be readily available at the library but on the other hand, they are also great books to own and re-read. Ramona the Pest and Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary, Stuart Little by E.B. White, James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl, and  Pippi Longstockings by Astrid Lindgren.

A Family Favorite:
I also highly recommend the Boobela and Worm series. They are hard to find in the US but the kids and I adore these books. Snatch some up if you can.

We are studying American History this year. We are in the midst of the American Revolution Stories at the moment. This week we read about Betsy Ross and the First American Flag, A Flag for our Country by Eve Spencer.

The legend goes that George Washington came to Betsy with a drawing of a flag for her to sew. He suggested a flag with 6 pointed stars thinking that making perfectly even 5 pointed stars would be too difficult. Betsy showed him that with a few quick folds and a single snip of the scissors that a perfect 5 pointed star was easy to make. After a quick demonstration she was given the job to create the first American flag.

Of course we had to try it!

You can start with a plain ol' piece of 8.5" x 11" paper.

Fold it in half so it measures 8.5" x 5.5".

Fold it in half again so that it is 4.25" x 5.5".

Unfold the second fold. Fold it in half now the other way so that it is 8.5" x 2.5".

Unfold that fold. You should have a folded piece of paper that is 8.5" x 5.5" and that now has horizontal and vertical crease marks. (I added pencil lines to the creases to make them easier to see).

Align your paper so that the fold is on the top. Fold the left top corner down so that it fold with a sharp point on the top of the vertical crease down to the horizontal crease on the right side. You should have created an oblique crease on the left side.

Leaving the left side crease in place, fold that same corner back onto itself, lining up with that left side oblique crease, keeping a sharp point at the top. My kids say that this step looks like you are making a paper airplane.

Keeping a nice point at the top, now fold the right side over so that it folds over top of the current paper airplane shape.

Fold this piece back on itself so that you have that paper airplane shape again... or basically a pie shape with a sharp point on top.

Starting where the bottom corner of the top most piece is open, make one snip up on a diagonal about 2" down from the top point. I drew a line to help you see the cut mark.

"Then she took just ONE SNIP with her scissors and unfolded the paper. Betsy had done an amazing thing. She had cut a perfect five-pointed star!"

Keeping the top point portion, unfold and you should have a perfect 5 pointed flag shaped star!

After cutting out several stars, the kids took it one step further and added snowflake like details. Have fun!

I find even today, as I peruse the books at Barnes and Noble, I find myself comparing books to the classics like Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina, Blue Berries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, and The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. So, when I find a new book that I love, I am thrilled to share it with other people.

The other day I meet How Robin Save Spring written by Debbie Ouellet, illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli. It is your basic pourquoi story, answering these questions, along with many others; why do bears hibernate in winter, why do caterpillars spin cocoons, how did the skunk get a white stripe on his back, and not only why do robins have red breasts, but why do they fly south for the winter. Although the answers are a bit contrived and are not part of traditional folklore, the story is engaging and the illustrations are sweet and vibrant.

The story opens with Lady Winter refusing to reliquish her hold on the world. Sister Spring is due to wake up at any time, and Lady Winter knits a magical white blanket and keeps Sister Spring in a deep sleep. Robin witnesses the whole thing and enlists the help of the woodland inhabitants to try to wake up Sister Spring. In turn, each animal is foiled by Lady Winter and is punished for their attempt. Finally, Robin outsmarts Lady Winter, but he too must pay a price.

 

  
BTW... See that little bit of flower garland in the top photo? I'll be sharing the tutorial for it tomorrow ;)

UPDATE: Puddles and Ponds is now available online.

I have received many emails from readers asking for a summer unit to go along with the Seasonal Curriculum Units I have already created. I am happy to announce that we have now added a new unit Puddles and Ponds to our Free Homeschool Companion Guides.

I am still working on the printable PDF version (and updating the older units) but in the meantime you can use the unit by copying the pages and pasting them into a word document.

Puddles and Ponds Schedule & Book List
Puddles and Ponds Activity Guide
How to Use Puddles and Ponds

I hope you enjoy our latest additional to our Homeschool Companion Guides Pre-School/Kindergarten Seasonal Series.