Angus Lost {BFIAR}

I'm up to my ears in Christmas stuff so this is a quick review of our week rowing Angus Lost by Majorie Flack!

Dog Lotto!

This got very competetive.

At one point, Tait stood up, hands on hips and declared, "I'm gonna win you!" to Piper!

Haha!

Story Sequencing.

Dog words coloring book.

Dog craft.

KWL chart.

Dog cookie cutting.

And decorating.

Pinterest idea: use syringes to decorate with icing.

Result?

2% less mess than normal!

They didn't seem to mind.

So happy to be able to get in on the cookie eating action!

Dog masks!

Short, sweet and to the point but it was a really fun week!

The girls always love anything to do with animals!

Caps For Sale {BFIAR}

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, I swear!

Instead the month of December has begun, the babe is getting ALL her teeth at once and it's that wonderful time of year when snotty noses and coughs and fevers run rampant!

Not to worry - we're doing fine but I'm just a wee bit tired by the end of the day!

Anyhow, I have two BFIAR posts to share with you before I move on to all our Christmas stuff!

Last week was our last week rowing a book until the new year (I'll share that one with you in my next post).

We have now slowed things down by carrying on with reading, math and handwriting.

In place of our rows we are daily doing things related to our Jesse Tree and Advent.

We all love this time of year so much and the slower pace is much needed!

Now that you're all filled in, let me quickly share with you our week of rowing Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.

Taitum counted monkeys.

And practiced her cutting skills by cutting strips of paper with monkeys and caps on them.

Piper counted out 50 cents in pennies, nickels and dimes and made rubbings with them.

(She was not pleased about how many pennies she had to do rubbings of. I ended up doing half! haha!)

A little monkey craft.

The monkeys are their fingerprints.

We found the countries where various monkeys live and marked them on the map.

We also watched some videos of monkeys on National Geographic Kids.

There was a really interesting one about adaptation which tied in nicely to some of the things we learned the previous week during our desert theme.

Finally, banana pops and mustaches.

Happy, happy, happy.

We also played a Monkey See, Monkey Do game.

Our vocabulary words were peddler and cap.

We took time to discuss anger and how we should react to situations that make us angry.

The kids loved this book so much.

In fact, they are still asking for me to read it!

Sadly, it's been sent back to the library.

I may just have to invest in our own copy!

The Red Carpet {BFIAR}

The week before last we 'rowed' The Red Carpet by Rex Parkin.

What was the story about?

Piper: At the hotel the man pushes the carpet out. It keeps rolling on the road. It goes all over town. The police officers try to get it and put it in jail.

Taitum: It goes to the ferry!!

Piper: The Duke thinks that's nice of them. They drive back to the city. The Duke tells all his friends.

What was your favorite part?

Piper: When they make a new part for the hotel.

Taitum: When the carpet goes to the ferry!

We pulled out our Little People town, set it up and added a red carpet!

Piper quite enjoyed creating a tangled maze of red carpet ribbon through her town!

Even our littlest student enjoyed this activity!

We learned about police officers.

We used many of the printables from Homeschool Creations' Police Printable Pack.

Taitum surprised me with how well she did with the pre-writing trace pages I gave her!

She also completed a police officer's colors book and proved that she knows most of her colors now!

Both girls did the How Many Fingerprints? booklet by adding the right number of fingerprints to each page.

Piper did a few of the printables from The Red Carpet printables, also at Homeschool Creations.

She did a sign scavenger hunt where she had to find various signs in the illustrations of the book.

She also completed a maze and a copywork sheet.

Then, of course, we had to BECOME police officers ourselves!

I printed off a hat and badge for each gal and let them have some fun pretending!

In the story, the carpet causes a vendor to overturn his pretzel cart.

Delightful Learning provided me with the idea of trying some pretzels for ourselves so one day we headed out for an extra special snack at the mall!

Neither girl was overly fond of their pretzel but it was a fun morning out nonetheless!

The girls learned some new vocabulary: arrest, statue, dock and hoarse.

For the most part, learning new vocabulary has been their own doing!

With each book we read they hear new words and inquire as to their meaning!

I love their inquisitiveness and it makes it far easier for me to decide which words we should concentrate on!

We also talked about hotels and what the purpose of them is.

We discussed what police officers do and when to call 911.

WE even talked about why cows wear bells around their necks after the girls noticed one in the illustrations!

I have to say, as much fun as the actvities are, so much learning happens simply from their questions and interest. They notice things and wonder about things I never would and it always leads to really interesting conversations! As a result, they are learning far more then I could have imagined!

Katy No Pocket {BFIAR}

Two weeks ago we rowed Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne.

Since then life went a little crazy. 

But this was a fun row and worth sharing.

The story is about a kangaroo mother who doesn't have a pocket for her joey and sets out on a mission to find a solution.

We learned that kangaroos are found in Australia.

We found it on the map and watched some youtube videos of kangaroos jumping around.

We were all giggling at their antics! They're so cute!

Then we watched some videos of aboriginal dot art being created.

Of course, we had to try our hand at it too!

We learned that kangaroos can jump up to 30 feet!

We measured it outside on the sidewalk...

Then made our own attempts!

When it was my turn, Taitum had just fallen and scraped her hand so I did my jump with my little joey attached!

It wasn't easy! 

We recorded our jumps and weren't surprised to find that we didn't even come close to the kangaroos jumping ability!

The girls made kangaroo pouches to put their babies in!

We learned that the story of Katy No-Pocket is very much a fictional one -

a baby kangaroo is about the size of a bumblebee when it is born and it climbs up the mother's fur into her pouch.

Without the mother's pouch, the baby would not survive.

In the story, Katy finds a man with an apron full of pockets.

He kindly dumps all of his tools out of it and gives it to Katy.

We talked about kindness and being generous to others.

We also took a trip to the tool store to browse at all the different kinds of tools!

Piper was very interested in everything and wanted to know what each thing was used for.

I think I did alright figuring out what most of the tools were but I was definitely out of my element!

What is the story about?

Piper: She (Katy) doesn't have a pocket. She needs one to put her baby in. She asks the monkey, the crocodile and the owl. She goes to the town. She finds lots of pockets on the apron. All the animals come and go in her pockets.

What was your favorite part of the story?

Piper: When she fits all the animals in!

Taitum: When the owl goes back to sleep.

I loved Tait's answer. So random but she was very certain of her answer!

Prayer For A Child {BFIAR}

Last week we rowed Prayer For a Child by Rachel Field.

This is a little girl's prayer written as a poem.

With its vintage picture and rhyming couplets, this book is absolutely charming!

Both my girls adored it but especially Piper.

There were certain lines I'd read and she would stop me and say, "Oh, Mama! Can you write that down for me, please?!"

I ended up typing up the whole poem for her and highlighting her favorite parts.

She drew a picture on it, we laminated it and it is now hanging beside her bed.

I thought this was just so sweet and I love how she connects with the books we read!

Her favorite parts?

"Through the darkness, through the night

Let no danger come to fright

My sleep till morning once again 

Beckons at the window pane"

and...

"Bless the hands that never tire 

In their loving care of me"

and...

"Bless my Father and my Mother 

And keep us close to one another"

The girls also traced their hands, cut them out and I wrote on each of the fingers the names of people they are praying for.

Then they glued it all together and added some glitter (just because!).

One line of the book says:

"Bless other children, far and near

And keep them safe and free from fear"

To go along with this, we took some time to learn all about our sponsor child, Joel.

We found the country he lives in, Burkina Faso, on the map and made the country's flag.

We talked about his family and what he does each day.

We chatted about his birthday while making birthday cake crafts to pin up by his birth date and a picture of him on his last birthday.

The girls also drew pictures for him that we will send with our next letter!

(That's what they are holding up.) 

Using the Compassion International homeschool lesson plans, we talked about how kids in places like Burkina Faso like to play sports and games, just like us.

But because they have very little money, they don't have easy access to sports equipment.

Instead, they are very creative and make things using items they have on hand.

The girls gave this a try by making a ball out of grocery bags and twine!

We then found a box that was headed for the garbage to use as our goal.

And then began our first ever game of bag ball!

Both girls had a blast with this!

There was lots of hooping and hollering for each goal they made and because the ball was made of bags, nothing was broken (and no one was hurt!) during this rambunctious little game!

Because the poem refers to things that the little girl is thankful for, I figured it was a good time to start our thankful wall.

Every year I mean to do this but by the time I remember, Thanksgiving is upon us!

This year, we've got a good start!

Each morning the girls tell me something they are thankful for.

I write it down, they decorate their card and we add it to the wall!

So simple but we have all enjoyed this daily activity!

The girls learned the song "Jesus Loves the Little Children" this week, too.

This song has now been echoing through our home for the last week and half!

I tried to capture it on video for you because their little voices singing in unison are oh-so-cute but alas, my camera hates me.

If I'm able to get it in the days to come, I'll share it in another post!

That's all for this book!

We are now on to rowing How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World - our very first FIAR row!