Before FIAR - Corduroy

Preamble:
We'll be rowing four bear books in a row so I can keep out most of the Montessori work out for the month and rotate in new works.  Corduroy, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Blueberries for Sal (there's a farm where we can go blueberry picking right down the street!), Jesse Bear, What Will you Wear, and finally Goodnight Moon (which has the story of the Three Little Bears as part of it).  Goodnight Moon will transition us out of the bear theme and into the moon theme.  We may row some books outside of the FIAR book list to extend the moon theme. Of course, we may be tired of bears by then, so we may have to change course, but I keep finding more and more fun stuff for bears!

 Here is our bear habitat sensory bin. 

 Lisa counted all the coins in her piggy bank.  J-jo gets to put all his coins IN his piggy bank.

Bear sorted all her coins and then counted them with my help.

 Above you can see various Montessori trays to go with Corduroy. 

From top right clockwise: coins in the piggy bank, small, medium, and large bears (J-jo does this work with me and I simply ask him to cuddle, kiss, tickle, pass me, etc one of the sizes), buttons in a box for sorting, counting or making patterns, basket of pairs of matching textured fabric with a blindfold, coin sorting, and the bear habitat sensory bin.

 French: animal puzzles.  This was mostly J-jo's work.

 Corduroy inspired preposition presentation and work for Bear.  J-jo and I also played with this minus the grammar symbols and preposition cards.  I would ask him to put the bear on the bag, in the bag, under the bag, etc.  He loved it.

 Button patterns and the animal classification cards for Corduroy from Homeschool Share.

Rolling the die and finding the right colored bear card(from abcteach)  We also played memory with these bears.

And of course, if I had thought it out right, I would have coordinated the button work we did to be done the same week as Corduroy!

To finish off the week we watched the Corduroy movie on YouTube.  There are two parts.  Here is the link to the first part.  It was neat to talk about what was the same and different as the book.

Here are some other blogs with Corduroy activities:
Delightful Learning
Homeschool Blogger
My Pursuit of

and Mrs. Kilburn's Kiddos has lots of links for bears.

Linked to Tot School at 1+1+1=1; Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations; Mom 2 lil Posh Divas; Beneath the Rowan Tree and the Weekly Wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.