Theme: Down on the Farm

Theme: Down on the Farm

July 1-5, 2013

O and E: almost 5!

I've been letting the boys pick the theme of the week (within reason) and this week they really wanted to learn about farm animals. One of the best strategies I've had lately for getting them both invested in what we're doing is to let them choose a specific thing within the theme as their own individual focus. Eli chose a horse as his animal of the week and Owen chose a pig. They both created a tiny book about their animal, used it for their number of the week and wrote a Can/Have/Are chart about it. Worked like a charm!

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We used a set of nouns and adjectives several different ways this week. (Don't you love it when you can reuse a material?!) They sorted them into nouns vs adjectives, sorted them into syllable piles, matched a noun and a verb to make a Mad Lib and draw a picture and put them into alphabetical order in their writing notebooks. 

I found a cute scrambled sentence game on Teachers Pay Teachers. They sorted into the right color/pattern, then made the words make the most sense. They chose their favorite silly sentence, wrote it in their writing notebook and drew a picture of it.

They LOVE anything that incorporates a magnifying glass, so these I Spy sight words pages are great! I found a cut and paste middle vowel page too (both on TpT).

These tiny books are probably my favorite thing to do with the boys. They get to use their imaginations, practice writing and spelling, draw, learn sentence structure and remember facts all in the same activity. Many times we'll space it out and complete a few pages a day until they put it all together at the end of the week. 

Owen's Pig Facts: A baby pig is called a piglet. Piglets go Oink Oink. Piglets live on the farm. Do pigs like to roll in the mud? Yes!

Eli's Horse Facts: A baby horse is called a foal. Horses run fast. Horses like to eat grass. Horses find bulls. (Not sure where that one came from!) 

SCIENCE:

Can/Have/Are charts about their individual animals. They had to come up with three for each column. Eli's been really into making hats lately - here he is sporting his 'horse hat' : )

MATH:
Today's Number. They wrote down the number of legs that 'their animal' has. Then showed it in tally marks, drew a shape with that many sides, wrote the number and tally marks for one more and one less than their number, spelled their number and drew a picture of their animal.

JUST FOR FUN: 

 Next theme: Planets!