PreK Weeks 28/29 {FIAR} The Tale of Peter Rabbit

We celebrated Easter and Earth Day over the past two weeks by rowing one of our favorite books: The Tale of Peter Rabbit!  We rowed Peter Rabbit in September, and pulling it out again was like seeing an old friend.  Even my three year old was excited to dive into the world of Peter Rabbit again.  I love that we are making such rich family memories.

Math

Elizabeth is still working through Singapore Essentials Kindergarten B. Recently she has been working on numbers up to 40 and reviewing ‘tens’ and ‘ones’ groups.  She was able to fill in a worksheet by writing all her numbers 1-40.

Handwriting

Elizabeth has finished up her HWOT Kindergarten book, completing all letters, both capital and lowercase, and also numbers 1-10.  She’s started the Zaner-Bloser Kindergarten book which is similar.  So far, she has reviewed letters L, T and I.

Reading

This has been an area of great improvement!  It seems that all the sudden reading is easier and she is not having to sound out all the words – she is reading with much more fluency, and in the last two weeks I have seen her picking up books around the house and reading them to herself out loud.  We have also began to ‘tag’ read where I’ll read a page and she’ll read a page.

We are one lesson from completing Level 1 of All About Reading.  I can’t say enough good things about this program.  We reviewed syllables and learned the long vowel sounds this week.

Learning through Literature: The Tale of Peter Rabbit

We teamed up our Easter books with a Gardening focus to learn about Earth Day as well – and all the reasons plants are so important to us.

Social Studies / Geography:

We learned that the author, Beatrix Potter, lived in England.  We found England on the map and read this cute story about a tutle traveling in England.  We ended up have an unrelated movie night watching Peter Pan and I was surprised and delighted to hear them scream out “Look, Big Ben!!” as Wendy and Peter flew past the giant clock!

We also talked about rules.  Why did Peter Rabbits mother set the rule that the little bunnies were supposed to stay out of Mr. McGregor’s garden?  What are some of the rules in our house?  Why do we have them?

Language Arts:

We learned about onomatopoeia from Mr. McGregor’s scritch, scratch of his hoe.  We also discussed that this is an animal fantasy story, as bunnies don’t really talk and wear clothes.  Elizabeth made up her own animal fantasy story about a talking horse who loved to read books!

Science:

We learned about gardening and taking care of our Earth, of course!  We planted seeds for tomatoes and basil, which turned into making mud pies 🙂

We also checked out the seeds in our snacks.

We also watched several Magic School Bus episodes about plants, photosynthesis, and recycling.

Art

We learned that Beatrix Potter loved nature and it influenced her illustrations.  We went outside and used crayons to draw some nature in our yard, and then painted the pictures with water colors.

We were able to attend a program at a local art center where we made bunny masks.

We were also so happy to have Nana and Papa come to visit for Easter and Papa’s Birthday.  We visited a local state park to look at the shore and discovered many interesting rocks and shells.

Celebrating Easter with an egg hunt.  Libby had her face painted and she requested a ‘pink panda with white heart spots’.  At this point, she only had the pink part on – as the egg hunt was starting and she didn’t want to miss it.  They also had games and crafts for the kids.

Easter Dress!  Thanks Grandma Rue!

Swinging with friends

The weather has been beautiful for the most part and we’ve been enjoying it!

As I prepare things for next year, we are putting FIAR to the side and beginning to read through A Child’s History of the World as a family, along with Usborne’s Children’s Encyclopedias.  It provides an overview of world history from prehistory through modern times.  We will be reading through it all year adding it in with Sonlight A History.  Elizabeth has been begging me to tell her about “a long, long time ago” and is very interested in History in general.  We have read three chapters so far (about prehistoric peoples) and she has really been enjoying it – as have Alex and I.