A few weeks back we rowed Gramma's Walk, which means we read it every day and then did activities to go with it. This book was perfect to row at the same time as an ocean unit. Many of the activities you will have seen in these posts.
One thing I struggle with with the Five in a Row and Before Five in a Row books is the lapbook portion. I am trying to find a way to make these more Montessori friendly - something to leave out on the shelf for self exploration so that the activities can be more accessible to J-jo who can't participate much in lapbooks. I didn't achieve this so much with Gramma's Walk, but I've been working on it for the other books we've been rowing.
Gramma's Walk is the story of a boy and his grandmother who is in a wheelchair and how they use their imagination to take a walk along the seashore. Using their five senses, they describe their walk and it feels like you are right there, experiencing it all.
We played memory with some animal track cards.
I also found this match the tracks to the animal online game and some other matching cards. Here are the matching cards I printed out (scroll down a bit) for our memory game.
One thing I struggle with with the Five in a Row and Before Five in a Row books is the lapbook portion. I am trying to find a way to make these more Montessori friendly - something to leave out on the shelf for self exploration so that the activities can be more accessible to J-jo who can't participate much in lapbooks. I didn't achieve this so much with Gramma's Walk, but I've been working on it for the other books we've been rowing.
Gramma's Walk is the story of a boy and his grandmother who is in a wheelchair and how they use their imagination to take a walk along the seashore. Using their five senses, they describe their walk and it feels like you are right there, experiencing it all.
We played memory with some animal track cards.
We did a survey of how many handicapped parking spaces were at our Walmart, library, and Publix and then graphed it (this idea came from Sowing 3 Seeds). We talked about how a big store might need more of those spaces than a small store or building.
We played in the sand.
We acted out the story a lot. Retelling stories through play-acting is one of Bear's favorite things to do.
We colored sandpaper.
We made a barnacle (I made it - file from homeschoolshare.com)
J-jo matched shells to shell outlines. (The only way to get him to do certain work is to offer it to him at snack time.)
We did some shoreline experiments (it was a flop). Basically, the different pans represented different types of shorelines and walking with them was supposed to show displacement of water and you could see which type of shoreline might have the most weathering from wave action. We couldn't tell anything but it was fun to do on a hot day.
We even went on a ferryboat on our first day in Quebec and saw a buoy too!
(The kids are hugging their cousin.)
If you do BFIAR or FIAR and have rowed Gramma's Walk, please feel free to leave a link in the comments.
Anabel loves acting out stories, it is also her favorite thing to do. I used to be the one to initiate it and encourage it but now that she has gotten older, she almost always initiates the retelling. Or if I make her some props, she will start using them on her own. I love it! Recently she has been acting out her favorite Frog and Toad books.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great unit! We've done only a few FIAR stories. I found the whole process of rowing a bit too repetitive. We may revisit it at some point. Love your activities though. I highly recommend the book, Seashells by the Seashore if you haven't read it yet.
ReplyDeleteI am so excited to see you doing FIAR. I just got my manual for Vol 1 today. I am planning to combine montessori and the FIAR activities too! I heard about this at Walnut Hill Homeschool (new blog of My Montessori Journey) and have been hooked. I will be sharing our activities on my blog as soon as we start them in a few weeks. My plan is to set up the activities so that D can explore at her pace and when she wants. We are starting with Story of Ping!
ReplyDeleteThis book is not on my radar yet, but I loved what you did with it and will be back for inspiration when we get to it!
ReplyDeleteI am pulling together our row for How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and I think apples will be an easy theme to begin incorporating some montessori activities with our FIAR. Hoping so, anyways.
Well, I hope you have more success with your next row.
This is very timely as we are doing this book this week. I will probably write a bit about what we are doing in my review post on Friday.
ReplyDelete