Pirate Adventures!

Ahoy there, Ye Mateys!   

   This month's theme for the "Poppins Book Nook" hosted by Enchanted homeschooling Mom was PIRATES! Chickadee loves this theme anyways as she likes Jake and the Neverland Pirates from Disney Jr. and also loves to visit the pirate exhibit at our local museum! She also loved the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride last year when we took our first trip to Disney. We had to ride it several times and each time she pointed out new things! We had fun this month reading different pirate books and creating an activity to go with our theme!

  First, we read "How I Became a Pirate" and its sequel "Pirates Don't Change Diapers" both by Melinda Long and illustrated by David Shannon. Chickadee and her Dad loved cuddling up and reading these books! We read a few other books too like "Exploring We Will Go" (a Backyardigans book), Little Einstein's "Pirate Treasure," and "Pirates: Adventures in Treasure Island" (a dollar store book). Chickadee loved reading different pirate themed books and using some of our old pirate theme packs from preschool.

 After reading the book we completed our lapbook component pieces for this months theme. The above is a picture of her completed ones from this month. You can find the FREE printables here.

  The activity we chose to do was to go on an actual, real life, pirate adventure!! We just happened to find one right in our own backyard (wink, wink). My husband helped me out by drawing a pretty accurate map of our backyard then I crinkled it all up and tore the edges (to make it look old) and then added a "path" with a great big X! 

  We told Chickadee that she had to follow the map exactly in order to find various tools to help her on her treasure hunt. I had also added small "X's" throughout the map at different locations where she would find these tools. (Really, I didn't want her to just open the door and go straight to the location of the biggest X). Along her journey she found a pirates hat, some swords, a bucket, and a shovel- all important treasure hunting tools! 

  
  When she finally reached the treasure, Chickadee had to dig it up from a large dirt pile in the corner of our yard! She had a blast and the laughs and giggles were well worth the work! 

 

  After she was finished, Chickadee INSISTED that Daddy to the treasure hunt and made him go inside so she could put everything back. It was a fun morning with lots of family laughs! :) (Although, I'm not sure who enjoyed the treasure hunt more... Chickadee or Dad!)

After we went inside, we took out the puppets that were included in the treasure "chest" and put on puppet shows for each other making up great pirate adventure tales of sailing the high seas and finding buried treasures! I loved hearing Chickadee use her imagination as she made up these great tales of adventure and giggle at the stories her Dad and I told. What a fun day and theme! "Yo ho, Yo ho, A pirates Life for me!" 

Until Life's Next Adventure,

~Bethany

Adventures in The Great Outdoors with Poppins Book Nook

 This month's theme for the Poppins Book Nook (more info here) was "The Great Outdoors"

Chickadee and I had a wonderful time reading books about the great great outdoors and doing our activity together! Some of the books we chose to read this time included the following:

Curious George goes Camping 
A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee
Birds (a nature book all about Birds)
Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee
 .... and several others!
   
    After we had read several books, we chose one book to focus on for our lapbook components that go along with each month's theme. Chickadee and I chose "Curious George Goes Camping" for this aspect. Chickadee filled in the answers to each booklet or colored pictures as it suggested. She is really liking making this large lapbook so far and we like to look back at each month's themes each time we pull it out! It will be a great keepsake for our school year!

After we had finished that, I gave her the activity I had created. I made up a "Nature Scavenger Hunt"  and she was so excited!  This is the scavenger hunt I created:

   We read over the list together first so that she knew what she was looking for, then Chickadee and I headed outdoors! As soon as we opened our front door she exclaimed: "I hear birds chirping!" and checked that off her list. We walked around our neighborhood for a bit and found the things we could there. The next day we headed to our local nature park to find a few of the harder things. 

Here you can see her "Smelling something Beautiful; finding a cool stick; wildflowers; 2 different types of leaves;  feeling something smooth (a rock); and something rough (tree bark)"
We had a wonderful time enjoying the great outdoors and spending time together as a family! We also headed to a local campground with some friends for the day during this month and enjoyed a hike on one of the trails and just being in "The Great Outdoors" for awhile! We had a wonderful adventure this month exploring this topic and are excitedly looking forward to next months Pirate theme! 

Until our next adventure,

Poppins Book Nook- Folktales!

   We chose to read "Stone Soup" (The 1947 version) by Marcia Brown as part of the Poppins Book Nook series with the May theme of "Folktales."  We chose to focus on this particular book for a whole week. On Monday, we simply read the book and familiarized ourselves with the story. Tuesday, we reread the book and then filled out the questions on the bookmark provided (free) here by Enchanted Homeschooling Mom. Wednesday we reread the story again, only this time I would pause at the end of a sentence or page and see if Chickadee could finish the phrase. After we finished reading the book this day, Chickadee had to fill out a shopping list for Stone Soup. 

Chickadee is sounding out the words she needs to add to her list!

This is one of her best "Inventive Spelling" papers yet! I was so proud of her for sounding out each word on her own and not asking for any help!

 On Thursday we completed a lapbook I found here, which was specifically for the version of Stone Soup (by Marcia Brown)! Chickadee had a great time adding to the lapbook and answering the questions!  

On Friday, we read the book one last time, completed the lapbook components from our Poppins Book Nook lapbook (found here) and then we made our very own STONE SOUP! There are many recipes for stone soup on the internet and we took advice from several and came up with our own recipe. 

Adding the Stone to our Stone Soup!

Adding Potatoes!

Mix it all up!

She gave it 2 thumbs up! MMMM!

While the soup was cooking, we did one final project. I created a template with a big black pot on it that said "Stone Soup" and gave her some magazines to look through and cut out ingredients for stone soup. I think this was her favorite project of the whole week! She loved cutting and gluing all the different foods she could find for her picture! (It was great fine motor/scissors skills work too!)

All we used for our stone soup collage!

Cutting in Action!

Finished Collage!!

All in all, we had a great week reading this folktale and doing various activities to go with this great book! What a fun adventure to learn to make Stone Soup!

Until life's next adventure,

~B