FIAR: Storm in the Night

by - Thursday, September 13, 2018



The boys and I started Five in a Row last week! I'm pretty sure I was a lot more enthusiastic than they were... but that's okay. For our first row, we did Storm in the Night, which is a story about a boy named Thomas and his grandfather.

Alex is currently 5 years old and Joe is only 3, so I tried not to do too much with them. Right now I just want them to start loving school and not see learning as a bad thing.

If I could have done this week again, I probably would have started out with a shorter book. Storm in the Night is unusually long for a children's book and it was very hard for two wiggly boys to sit still and listen. I really don't want them to see reading as a punishment, so hopefully The Story About Ping (which we start this week!) will be an easier read for them.

Cover Pages

Before we even read the book, I gave both of the boys a blank sheet of paper and asked them to draw what they thought the book was going to be about.


Surprisingly, this was actually one of their favorite things that we did this week! I didn't realize how much they love to draw, but I'll have to do more art lessons with them.

Joe was a tiger for about 72 hours this week
Social Studies: Emotions - Fear

We did the lesson from the book and had a short discussion. We talked about how everyone is afraid of something, even though they might say they're not, like Thomas did in the book. Then they did a "worksheet" on what they were afraid of.


 Alex insisted that he was afraid of apple juice, but I don't think he really is. He also said he was afraid of shadows (he definitely is afraid of those) and boa constrictors.  

I thought it was funny that Joe said he was afraid of 'real tigers.' Maybe he thinks that dressing up as a tiger will scare the real ones away? 

 After we finished our "worksheets," the boys and I talked about our Bible verse. I picked out Isaiah 41:10, which was perfect because Little Learning Lane has a tracing page for this verse that went specifically with Storm in the Night. This is one of my favorite verses and has really helped me conquer some of my fears. (It seemed to help Alex too because he stopped calling for me when he'd see a shadow in the middle of the night.)

 Language: Vocabulary, Poetic Device - Onomatopoeia

 Since mandarin was one of our vocabulary words, obviously we had to have some mandarin oranges!


Alex decided he doesn't like mandarin oranges, so 
Joe ate both cups
They both enjoy learning new words, so they had a lot of fun with the vocabulary lesson. Alex seemed very concerned that I would forget the definition for bough, so he made it his responsibility to remind me every day.

We also made a cute craft that I saw on School Time Snippets that went with our lesson on onomatopoeia (link at the bottom of this page).


The picture seems to be self-explanatory, but I'll go ahead and tell you what we did just in case you can't tell. First, I cut out the shapes and taped everything together (it looked like other people used a hole puncher and tied the string, but I'm too lazy to do all that). Then the boys chose some onomatopoeia words for each shape and had me write them down. The boys both really enjoyed this super cute craft!
Art: Facial Expressions
This was another thing the boys really loved this week. In one of the pictures in the book, Thomas is looking sideways. The boys and I talked about how we can tell that he's looking to the left. Then they got to practice drawing the same way!


As you can (kind of) see in the picture above, Alex did a very good job with this lesson. At least he was doing a good job until he decided he wanted everyone's skin to be gray. And colored all their faces in. Which would have been fine, but he decided to color in their eyes as well.

 This lesson was a little hard for Joe, but I was proud of him for doing it anyways. To make it easier, he decided to draw only cyclops, so he only had to color half as many eyes as Alex did.
Joe was concentrating super hard
 Math: Geometry - Quilt

 We talked about how quilts are made up of different shapes and I showed them a quilt that my great-aunt had made for me. We also talked about what shapes my quilt was made of (squares) and the shapes that Grandfather's quilt was made of (triangles). Then they got to make their own paper quilts out of triangles!

If you decide to do this craft, I would advise you to use complementary colors for the triangles to emphasize the art lesson on contrast. I would have done this, but we had skipped over that art lesson.


Joe has adored his FIAR notebook so far! He gets so excited when I tell him we're going to put something new in it. He loves sitting down and flipping through the pages.

Science: Sources of Light, Five Senses, Clouds, Water Cycle

 For our science lesson, we started out by listing as many light sources as we could think of.

After finishing the lesson on sources of light, we did a fun activity to learn about our five senses with popcorn! (I love it when I can incorporate food into our schoolwork.) While the popcorn was popping, we talked about each of our five senses and what kind of things we use them to do.

Waiting for the popcorn with a fake smile!

When the popcorn was ready, the boys described how the popcorn looked, smelled, sounded, tasted, and felt. They really loved this activity (mostly because it involved popcorn)!


I don't know why he's making that face in this picture,
but I promise that he likes popcorn. 

After that, we talked about the different types of clouds and the water cycle (sorry, I didn't get any pictures). I found a cute song about the water cycle on First Grade Parade that the boys still sing around the house. It really helps them remember the steps of the water cycle.

 Snack: Jell-O Cloud Parfaits

 This was my favorite part of the week. I doubt there is anything in this world more unhealthy than Jell-O and Cool Whip put together. (Okay, there probably is... but I haven't found it yet.)

Our parfaits were definitely not Pinterest-worthy, but they were still delicious! At least, I thought so. Alex and Joe said the Jell-O was too slimy, so they just ate straight up Cool Whip. And yes, I let them. I might be a little bit crazy.

 This week was an exciting start to Five in a Row! The boys and I are really looking forward to our next row!

 Resources Used:


Share
Tweet
Pin
Share
Tags :

You May Also Like

0 comments