Zack's Alligator

I have been looking online and in our house and coming up with ideas to go along with picture books in our bookcase.  It is the best way to get Shayla excited about reading anything other than her readers (which she has to read).

Zack's Alligator by Shirley Mozelle is An I Can Read Book.  Shayla was able to easily read this book, although she did better when we took turns, each reading a page at a time. 

I found a plastic alligator toy and we used this as a visual for Bridget, the alligator in the story.  Then we answered the reading comprehension questions here.  (reading, language, geography, science)

One of the questions was, if you received an alligator, like Zack's, what would you name it?  Shayla decided she would name her alligator, Allison.  We printed off a page to color and design Allison the Alligator here.  (art)

We learned that alligators are reptiles here and then completed an online alligator puzzle here. (science, computer skills)

We also practiced the ASL sign for alligator (foreign language) and sang Dr. Jean's The Alligator Song.  (music & movement)

Mother Goose Fun

Shayla is going into 2nd grade, but she still loves Mother Goose rhymes, and particuarly these Barney books:

I can't remember a time when she didn't know nursery rhymes. We said them to her when she was just a baby.

We also spent time watching these nursery rhyme videos:

We had a fun time saying the rhymes and snapping beans. Yes, I'm already teaching multi-tasking. LOL! Actually, I'm not a slave driver, she was doing the movements to the rhymes. I was snapping the beans.

Another good resource for learning nursery rhymes is Dr. Jean's Nursery Rhymes and Good Ol' Times CD. Young children seem to learn best with music - repetition.

Write your own nursery rhyme or copy your favorite and illustrate. (handwriting & language)

There are some nursery rhyme printable pages at DLTK. You could make a cute book with them.

We breezed through this because in the past we did a more in depth look at nursery rhymes. She did an activity and nursery rhyme for each day.

Do you have any more nursery rhyme suggestions or links. Please share.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Updated

Sorry, I hit that post button too early. My brain isn't back into the swing of things either! LOL!


Does anyone know if this movie has been released yet? I was hoping to see the movie soon after completing this mini-unit.


After several weeks off of homeschool, we are starting to get back into the swing of things. Although, I don't think Shayla is ready to start again. We quickly went through this literature unit study. It was very hard to hold her interest. UGH!

We started out by playing Sgetti Scatter.

After reading the story, we completed the packet from Literature Activities For Young Children - book 7.

Here we made a paper "Grandpa."

Health/fine motor skills/sorting: We discussed nutrition and sorted plastic food into food groups. No plastic food, you could always cut pictures out of the weekly grocery ads and glue them onto paper plates. We didn't spend much time doing this since we have done it many times before.

Bible: We read in Exodus the story of God feeding the Israelites manna from heaven.

Food: We finished off with porcupine meatballs for dinner, (of course!)

I had all these grand illusions of doing a whole weather related unit, but there was no interest. I did find some cool ideas for a lapbook of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs at Homeschool Share.

Homeschool Week Highlights - Monday, Feb 9 - Sat. Feb 14, 2009

Days 99-103

Music: We like to sing along with Piggyback Songs. These are songs that have different words to familiar tunes. Shayla had never heard some of these tunes before so we went here. There are many midi tunes to children's favorite songs.

Literature Unit-Study: Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse by Leo Lionni (reading)

*I was not able to find any other ideas on line, so we mostly just used the ideas from Literature Activities for Young Children by Dianna Sullivan.

Foreign Language: We learned the ASL sign for mouse and rat.

Science: We read about deer and house mice.

Bundle Crayon Mouse: I used a printable mouse, but you could draw an outline of a mouse, then we bundled 3 or 4 crayons together with a rubber band. Shayla drew all over the mouse, cut it out, then made a crayon resist by painting over the mouse with watercolors (art).

"What if. . .": Use these questions to check reading comprehension and imagination:

• Willy had not been thrown away in the junk box?



• Alexander had not found a purple pebble?



• the magic lizard could not grant a magical wish?



• Willy had not wanted to become a real mouse?

Shayla made a paper Alexander. (It looks like a rat to me, but ok). (art & fine motor). She colored a colorful magic lizard (again, we had a worksheet, but you may find one online or draw one freehand). She completed a message page. There were pebbles with numbers and letters, she had to decipher what letter to write on the line by the number.

We discussed the art in Leo Lionni's books. This was in his typical style. Alexander also reminded us of Frederick. We discussed the Leo Lionni play that we went to last year.

Finally, I wrote the name of the book and the author in dotted letters. She traced over these. (This is to get her ready for book reports).

In the middle we glued paper mice we made. To make the mice, simply cut a piece of paper in a heart shape. Then cut the heart shape in half. Each half is a mouse. Then I cut little ears, she glued a googly eye on each, and drew a tail. (art, fine motor)

Game play: The Mousetrap board game.

Snack idea: cheese chunks.

To see what others are doing in their homeschool, visit Stacy's.

Homeschool Day 78 & 79 Monday & Tues, January 12 & 13, 2009

Reading: We started again with read aloud time. We read a book called I Want Your Moo: A Story for Children About Self-Esteem by Marcella Bakur Weiner. It was a funny story about a turkey that didn't like the way she sounded. She asked all the other barnyard animals to share their voices with her. In the end, she discovered that her voice was just right for her. I think we will read this book several more times to see if it helps to build up Shayla's confidence.

I'm excited to see there are many others in this particular series. Especially Cat's Got Your Tongue: A Story for Children Afraid to Speak.

Another book we started working on is Pets, Animals & Creatures of the Beginning Sign Language Series. Shayla enjoys learning new signs. If I were better at it, this might be a way to get her to come out of her shell, but I'm slow learning sign. (foreign language)

Game Play: We played an opposite cards matching game. (language)

Reading: (multi-lessons)We haven't done a literature based unit study in awhile, so I randomly picked out The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It would probably best be done in the spring, but we still

found plenty to do. First, we read the story. We talked about the illustrations. Then I got a few ideas from homeschool share. Shayla reminded me that we have some Peter Rabbit cardboard stacking blocks (from her younger years). We got these out and she had fun stacking them. We did size comparisons and counted them (math). We read the story on the sides of the blocks and practiced identifying abc's on the sides.

Next, we went to Peter Rabbit website. We played some fun games. I really liked Peter's Net Maze. It asked multiple choice questions about the story. Shayla answered them all correctly. (reading comprehension). We also printed off a color page to do.

Shayla watched an episode of Barney today that was titled "Rabbits." (multi subjects)Shayla learned more about real rabbits here. (science)

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Bible: Letter I. We started by watching Abraham Obeys from the Read N See DVD Bible. We sang Whereever you Lead. Then we learned God Will Build a Nation song from The Singing Bible. We also sang Rock My Soul. (music) We reviewed verse Psalm 141:2 - using language and sign. (memory, foreign language)

I is for infinity. This was a fun math activity. I gave Shayla an empty peanut butter jar and a bag of m&m's. I asked her to count out 10 and see if it fills the jar. It didn't even cover the bottom. I asked her how many she thought it would take to fill the jar. She thought 100. So we counted and added m&m's till the jar was full. BTW, it was much more than 100. 453 (or a whole bag to be exact.) We had fun counting and adding together. This activity goes with God telling Abraham his decendants would be like the stars. (math)

Literature: Peter Rabbit. We sang bunny songs and fingerplays. (music & movement, math) Here are some fun bunny activities. We learned all about rabbits at Hopper Home. Shayla decided she would like to have a bunny. Oh boy! Another pet! LOL! (science) We discussed what rabbits eat. We just happened to get our garden seeds in the mail the other day, so we checked off the order. We decided if Shayla does get rabbits, we will need fence around the garden! Then Shayla used some old grocery ads to cut out what rabbits like to eat. She picked out spinach, lettuce, cabbage, and carrots.

We had counter strips with seed packets, trowels, watering cans, etc on them. We used these to do simple addition and subtraction problems. (math)

Shayla made a paper Peter Rabbit. This was a really cute thing. It retells the story using pictures you color, cut and glue and put in the rabbits tummy. (fine motor, reading comprehension, memory, language). She also did a bunny dot-to-dot (1-20)and traced the word "bunny" and made a Peter Rabbit paper bag puppet.

We learned the asl sign for rabbit. (foreign language)

I wanted to do the bunny hop for music & movement, but I didn't have the cd, after all. There was no way I was braving the snow to go to the library today. Some other song ideas are: Rabbit Ain't Got and Peter Cottontail.

Snacktime: carrots, celery, radishes and cabbage (of course).

We ended the day by playing Reader Rabbit First Grade computer program.