The Bee Tree
For the last two weeks we have been reading The Bee Tree by Patricia Polocco and learning about honeybees. The Bee Tree is a fun story reminiscent of Stan and Jan Berenstain's The Big Honey Hunt except it is written for an older audience and the story ends in a moral lesson. Grampa and Mary Ellen race through the Michigan country side in late spring/early summer chasing honeybees to their tree. The story introduces many interesting characters along the way and portrays the Michigan culture and geography through it's colorful illustrations. It also introduces the gold rush in the Yukon territory with one of said characters and this helps set the historical timeline for the book. I'll let you read the book to learn the moral lesson for yourself.
We primarily focused on honeybees reading many non-fiction books about them from the library. Gail Gibbons' The Honeymakers was our favorite of these. We also read some silly stories about bees. Harry's Bee and The Bee Sneeze, to name a few. We colored a Bb coloring/tracing page with a honeybee on it. We learned about the hexagon shape and how honeycombs are made. I spent a whole afternoon on the Berks County beekeepers website studying the honeybee and how to be a beekeeper. Very interesting! Your community likely has a group of beekeepers making honey at home. Worth checking out.
We also made a mini book of spring, which interested the kids for one whole morning! They were so proud of them too.
We learned the letter B and it's sound as well as the ee sound. Tristan is learning to read step by step using the book Alpha Phonics by Samuel Blumenfield. This book is very thorough and we are moving slowly. Tristan knows that one e says "eh" so at first when he saw two ees he said "eh, eh?" . By week's end we had conquered the long e sound made by ee. Exciting!
We are learning the alphabet in French and Spanish and began spelling our names in French and Spanish this week. It's pretty trippy. Gwendolyn's is the craziest in French. We also reviewed our seasons in these three languages this week.
We read about Michigan and the great lakes states and located Michigan and the lakes that surround Michigan on the map of the United States. We also colored a coloring page of Michigan and talked about all of the European peoples that settled in Michigan. We tried to identify the characters in the story with each prominent people group. Just guessing, but trying to understand that people from different parts of the world have different languages, names, styles and lifestyles. We developed our mapping skills by creating adventure maps of Grampa and Mary Ellen's journey to the honey. Tristan is getting to the age where his artwork actually looks like stuff and he knows what he's drawing. Fun stuff!
We also read about the Yukon territory and the Klondike gold rush. Tristan enjoys all things to do with the arctic, so this engaged him. We read the story of King Midas and the golden touch. This story is a little intense for 3 and 4 year olds, but they seemed to understand that it is fiction, and it is a classic story. We discussed Gold as a medal and an element, reviewing what we learned during the Olympics week about Gold.
We are taking our Five in a Row weeks a little slowly, but I've been trying to keep the kids interested in learning and allow them to derail the week with all kinds of learning. We've also been spending much of our days out of doors watering our sprouting lawn and infant flower beds as well as planting a veggie garden in a pot and some potted strawberries this week.
Also, I really want to focus on making our morning Bible time a priority. So we've been spending more time on that. We review whatever papers they bring home from Sunday School on Monday mornings and I've added coloring pages, songs and games that tie into whatever we are doing in Bible time for the rest of the week. We've done a week on The Fruits of the Spirit, Easter week, and then this past week, Zaccheus.
We primarily focused on honeybees reading many non-fiction books about them from the library. Gail Gibbons' The Honeymakers was our favorite of these. We also read some silly stories about bees. Harry's Bee and The Bee Sneeze, to name a few. We colored a Bb coloring/tracing page with a honeybee on it. We learned about the hexagon shape and how honeycombs are made. I spent a whole afternoon on the Berks County beekeepers website studying the honeybee and how to be a beekeeper. Very interesting! Your community likely has a group of beekeepers making honey at home. Worth checking out.
We also made a mini book of spring, which interested the kids for one whole morning! They were so proud of them too.
We learned the letter B and it's sound as well as the ee sound. Tristan is learning to read step by step using the book Alpha Phonics by Samuel Blumenfield. This book is very thorough and we are moving slowly. Tristan knows that one e says "eh" so at first when he saw two ees he said "eh, eh?" . By week's end we had conquered the long e sound made by ee. Exciting!
We are learning the alphabet in French and Spanish and began spelling our names in French and Spanish this week. It's pretty trippy. Gwendolyn's is the craziest in French. We also reviewed our seasons in these three languages this week.
We read about Michigan and the great lakes states and located Michigan and the lakes that surround Michigan on the map of the United States. We also colored a coloring page of Michigan and talked about all of the European peoples that settled in Michigan. We tried to identify the characters in the story with each prominent people group. Just guessing, but trying to understand that people from different parts of the world have different languages, names, styles and lifestyles. We developed our mapping skills by creating adventure maps of Grampa and Mary Ellen's journey to the honey. Tristan is getting to the age where his artwork actually looks like stuff and he knows what he's drawing. Fun stuff!
We also read about the Yukon territory and the Klondike gold rush. Tristan enjoys all things to do with the arctic, so this engaged him. We read the story of King Midas and the golden touch. This story is a little intense for 3 and 4 year olds, but they seemed to understand that it is fiction, and it is a classic story. We discussed Gold as a medal and an element, reviewing what we learned during the Olympics week about Gold.
We are taking our Five in a Row weeks a little slowly, but I've been trying to keep the kids interested in learning and allow them to derail the week with all kinds of learning. We've also been spending much of our days out of doors watering our sprouting lawn and infant flower beds as well as planting a veggie garden in a pot and some potted strawberries this week.
Also, I really want to focus on making our morning Bible time a priority. So we've been spending more time on that. We review whatever papers they bring home from Sunday School on Monday mornings and I've added coloring pages, songs and games that tie into whatever we are doing in Bible time for the rest of the week. We've done a week on The Fruits of the Spirit, Easter week, and then this past week, Zaccheus.
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