Narration: Where the Wild Things Are

We are currently doing Charlotte Mason narration style at home.  We used to do Before Five In A Row, which my son had a great time of doing all those activities related in the book.  The only problem is, they have a book list and most books in the list are out of printing.  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 [aff. link].  We read it, pin point the words he couldn’t understand (for vocabulary lesson) and I take down notes as well for words worthy of spelling practice.

First activity is the Story Sequence using pictures.  I scanned it from the book and have Mavi arranged it.  Afterwhich I asked him to tell me the story (in his own word) using the pictures.  I couldn’t believe he remembers 70% of  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.  For vocabulary, I have him read the definitions (practice reading) and then the meaning.  He figured it out that he has 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.

PS.  If you want to have a copy of the narration, please leave your email address in the comment.

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.

Linking this to:

Before FIAR: Goodnight Moon

We’ve been doing this unit for sometime now because this book 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 the pictures 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 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 a paper to practice writing skills. 

Identifying beginning letter using clip cards and shadow matching.                                                                                                              

     


Again, practicing writing skills.

We also read 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 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.  Will provide a separate post on it this weekend.

And that’s all what we had for Goodnight Moon Before FIAR.  I hope you can pick some ideas here to help you with your Before FIAR as well.  Happy weekend!

Linking this to:

 

Hey Diddle Diddle Stick Puppets

Sharing with you our activities to go along with Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme.  Actually, this is just part of our Before FIAR Goodnight Moon unit study.  We completed this today and my son loved it to bits!  So I might as well share it...

After reading the book for days (until my son can read them independently LOL), I started by collecting images from Google and printed it on a cardstock.  The characters I printed were:  the fiddler cat, dog, moon, jumping cow and the dish with the spoon.  Once ready I had Mavi color them.  I made him choose whatever color he wants.  He was so delighted to color the characters in the nursery!

The dish with the spoon is his favorite.  He tells me that the dish looks like Daddy and the spoon is Mommy. I love it that he associates me and his Dad to two objects holding hands :)

I cut each of the characters. 

Then I made him help me attach each on a popsicle stick using a sticky tape. 

And we started reciting the rhyme using these puppets! Oh aren’t they the cutest?

 

And then here’s another version wherein I made them stand using egg carton box so we can do some theatrics with out puppets. 

For reading comprehension and inference, I have my son answer these questions as we go along with the rhyme:

1. Who jumped over the moon?
2. Why do you think the cow jumped over the moon?
3. What instrument did the cat play
4. What kind of music do you think he was playing?  or What do you think his favorite song was?
5. Who laughed in the rhyme?
6. Why do you think the dog was laughing?
7. Who did the spoon run away with?
8. Why do you think they ran away together?

Some of these questions were really tough especially for a 3 year old, but it was funny to hear his answers.  And would you believe, I end up being asked as well. 

Linking this to:

B4FIAR: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?

Sharing to you the activities that we had to go along with Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? unit.  Sorry for the overdue post, we’ve been enjoying the outdoors these days... and that explains the less homeschool activities.

I dressed him in red shirt and blue pants... “Just like Jesse Bear Mommy!” he said.

  

Clipcards from Homeschool Creations.

Learning how to read, write and spell.

Sorting the foods  that Jesse Bear ate.  Surprisingly, he got it all correct.

Completing the pattern.

We use potatoes for stamping and he draw the family of Jesse Bear using oil pastels.

         

We had Bear in 4 Seasons craft.

Sort out clothing according to season.

After our sorting game, he wanted to show me his shoes too... and we arranged it according to season as well (winter, spring, summer and autumn).

Same thing with his coats and jackets LOL.

 

For math, we measure fruits and vegetables.

 

He loves to dress his bear :)

   

It was a fruitful unit.  He keeps on telling me “I love Jesse Bear Mommy, it’s my favorite!”.   And I love that fact that he enjoys the Before FIAR approach, that once in a while he gets to have an in depth knowledge of certain books and exposure to literature.