Jenny’s Surprise Summer – Before Five in a Row

This was Joe’s first official week of 1st grade, and my first time rowing with both Jack and Joe together.  We had fun, and Jack didn’t seem to mind sharing me with Joe.  I wanted to make this a ‘light’ row since it was Joe’s first week getting back into school mode so I still chose a selection from B4FIAR (Jenny’s Surprise Summer), but I combined it with the book Comet’s Nine Lives by Jan Brett to ‘beef it up’ a little.  Plus, Joe and Jack had both expressed to me they wanted to study cats and both of these books are about cats.  I am trying to get all that I can out of what’s left of our summer.  We are rowing our last beach themed book this week (and our first Five in a Row selection).  I’ve loved our Summer, it’s been such a fun and memorable one.

Joe completed work each day in Singapore Math, Explode the Code, Language Lessons and as always, enjoyed reading in some of his spare time.  Our row activities consisted of…SCIENCE:

We conducted an experiment on absorbent/non-absorbent objects.  We did this in the bathtub, we had such a rainy week, and with the kids being sick we weren’t outside much.  Joe was surprised by what actually held water and what did not.  He was baffled that you could ‘wring’ water out of a piece of paper.  I got out a book that shows the process of making paper from start to finish to help him better understand why it’s absorbent.

Jack just thought it was fun dropping objects into the bathtub.  For him, I did sink/float instead of absorbent/non-absorbent. Jack completed a fun activity on counting cats.  He had to match the correct number of sticks with the correct number of cats, cat noses, eyes, ears, etc. from a stack of cat pictures.  This was a game from HSS from Jenny’s Surprise Summer unit.  He did so good with it and enjoyed it.

I had Jack paint a picture of his favorite cat from the book—Pumpkin.  Of course, he chose to fingerpaint.  I thought it would be fun to have him put together his cat.  He painted a sheet of construction paper and then Hanna cut out cat body parts and he glued them down to make Pumpkin.  I love how his cat turned out.  It is precious the way he put it together.    “Jenny gots to run and hide in a cave because there was a thunderstorm.  She found some kittens.  She was talking on the phone.  The mom said you can’t keep the kitties.  She keeped Pumpkin and Grandma keeped Smoky.”  ~Jack, 3 years and 6 months old~

We talked about caring for cats and read a couple books about cat care and veterinarians.  Jack enjoyed brushing and helping to feed and water Baby O.From Comet’s Nine Lives we learned a bit about Massachusetts and lighthouses.  Joe completed several lapjournal pages from HSS including a flag of Massachusetts.We had ice cream just like Comet did.  I’d wanted to go to an ice cream shop, but 3 out of 4 kids were sick, so that didn’t happen.  I pulled out our ice cream cups set instead and served it up at home while I read the story one afternoon.  This made them just as happy.For our memory the kids made lighthouses out of plastic cups, white craft tape, black construction paper and LED battery operated tea lights.  They turned out adorable and they’ve had them turned on in their rooms each night since.  They were so excited to find out that they actually work.We had a good first week back to school.  This week is already off to a great start and I am excited to share all that I’ve planned with the kids.

Inspiration, ideas and printables I used for Jenny and Comet can be found at:

• Before Five in a Row Manual
• Homeschool Share – Jenny’s Surprise Summer and Comet’s Nine Lives
• Family Fun – lighthouse craft

I am linking this post to Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.