Goodnight Moon B4FIAR

"In the great green room, there was a telephone,

and a red balloon,

and a picture of a cow jumping over the moon..."

-Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon

This past week we read the book, "Goodnight Moon" by: Margaret Wise Brown. Big Boy really loved this book and all the activities we did. We read a lot of supplemental/ go along books too, classics as well as science. Before I jump in though, I just wanted to explain why I decided to start blogging our adventures. First, so friends and family could see what we've been up to and second, I want to provide some resources and ideas for anyone who might be on their own homeschooling adventures! If you have any questions, thoughts, or deep theological input please feel free to let me know in the comments! Also if you decide to do any of these books or activities I would love to hear how they went for you.

Over the past few weeks I have noticed that having an activity for Big Boy to do WHILE we read the book has been a HUGE hit. This week I printed out pictures for the items mentioned in the book. There are two "sections" of the book, the first, is mentioning items that are in the room, the second, where each item is told goodnight. During the first section Big Boy would point out each picture as I read. When it came time to say "goodnight" to each item he would move them from the top of the folder to the velcro on the bottom.  Having something to do with his hands he has been able to focus better on the words of the story and by the end of the week he was able to tell me which things came next in the story.

 One of the first items that are mentioned in the book is a picture of a cow jumping over the moon. We pulled out a book I got from Chick-Fil-A (our favorite place to eat!) with the classic nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" by: Mother Goose. We read it several times, sang the song over and over and then created our own little book.. Big Boy colored a picture of a cat, fiddle, cow, moon, dog, and  spoon, then glued them into his book to make the rhyme. Little man enjoyed coloring his own picture of the rhyme. It's so cool to see how Little Man learns from his big brother. Big Boy was NEVER into coloring or reading, or even sitting down and playing with toys the way that Little Man is. I know part of it is simply because they are different people, but I believe part of it is Little Man watching and soaking up everything his brother does. This afternoon Little Man climbed up the slide right behind brother, and he can't even walk yet! He wants nothing more than to keep up with him.


We also made a book of different colored balloons, talked about our phone number, and the letter M.

The next "extra" book we read was "Goldilocks and the three bears" by Alex Toys. This particular version has a fun interactive finger puppets/ felt story board. I found it at the thrift store and it was missing a few pieces so I decided to make my own. If you missed my blog post about making felt story board pieces you can check it out here. We also played a sorting game where Big Boy identified which items belonged to which bear. 

The last "classic" story we read was "The three little kittens" by: Mother Goose. We hung up a clothes line, similar to the one in "Goodnight Moon" and played a math matching game with mittens. I think I'm going to pull this one out again when we read "The Snowy Day"by: Ezra Jack Keats. We first put the numbers in order, then clipped the snowflakes on. I didn't make the clothes line long enough to put them side-by-side, but live and learn. I think he would have played this game over and over had we had the time.  We also reviewed his left and right hands with this cute little mitten fold out. What is it about tracing hands that is SO exciting??

The next few days we talked about rhyming words and did match up games to explain the concept. We also started our All About Reading Pre-Reading program which also talked about rhyming words. 

Finally, we spent the rest of our time talking about and exploring the moon. I found a cool book at the thrift store called, "Does the moon change shapes?" by Meish Goldish which had a great, simple, explanation about the sun's light on the moon. It talks about if you are holding a ball and your friend shines a flashlight on the ball, when you move, the ball stays the same shape but the amount of light shining on the ball is different. We then talked about how the moon goes in a cycle of new moon, half moon, full moon, half moon, etc... 

 For a review we made a moon cycle with some Oreos! Big Boy thought this was so cool and recited the cycle to Daddy.

For a special treat, Daddy and I, let Big Boy stay up a little later than normal and we made these fun toilet paper tube star charts. Basically you take some foil, cut out some holes as best you can, then tape the foil to a TP tube. Go into a dark room and shine a flash light through the tube and voila! stars. So fun! We made several of these, but it was pretty difficult to punch holes with out the foil ripping. 

Our verse this week was from Psalms 8:3 "The moon and the stars, you set in their place." I've been looking up the signs for our verses each week and Big Boy is really catching on. I've seen him, on several different occasions, sitting at the table and "reading" the memory verse board. Having the signs to go along with the verse really helps solidify it to memory. I just hope I'm not teaching him the wrong words!! Sign language is something Daddy and I frequently talk about wanting to become more fluent in, and we are having a good time repeating the verses and signs back to each other, a family effort!

This next week we are taking a break from the Before Five in a Row curriculum and reading one of my favorite halloween books, "Popcorn" by: Frank Asch. Have you read it?? Stay tuned to see if we over-flow our house with popcorn!!