A New Coat for Anna
Last week we enjoyed Harriet Zeifert's A New Coat for Anna. Based on the true story of Ingeborg Schraft Hoffman. Anna lives in post WW11 Europe and needs a new coat. The story takes you step by step through the construction of said coat and shows how determination and ingenuity pay off.
For Math this week, we continued to talk about measuring time. I am going through Franklyn M. Branley's Telling Time; doing an activity a day. We also reviewed measuring round objects with my measuring tape used for sewing.
For Language: we made instant pudding and then while the pudding set-up each of the children dictated step by step instructions for making pudding. This proved to be challenging for them but still a fun activity. Our vocabulary words all had to do with weaving, warp, woof, loom. We found repetition in the story and talked about the theme of the book.
For Social Studies/Geography: I laid tracing paper over Eastern Europe on our map and drew the countries as they looked before WW11 and then took away the paper and talked about what the countries look like now. Then I gave Tristan the opportunity to choose where Anna should live. He chose Poland, a great lead in to this week's story: Mrs. Katz and Tush, but now I'm ahead of myself! We talked about bartering and economy. How do we acquire the things we need. We also discussed the character quality of patience. Rainbow Resource has a study guide, and I printed two pages of it to use for this.
Art was fun this week. In addition to the usual, discussion about the illustrations in the book, we attempted before and after drawings, weaving paper and dyeing yarn with cranberries (left in the fridge since December, yikes!). We dyed the yarn on Friday, so we will use it this week in an activity. The paper weaving was a fun challenge for the kids and they are very proud of their work.
In Science we learned about sheep and also staying healthy. I tried to focus on wearing appropriate clothing as a way to stay healthy to add to what we've learned in the past about hygiene and healthy eating.
Some additional books we enjoyed this week:
Dinosaurs Alive and Well: A Guide to Good Health, Laurie Krasny-Brown (The kids enjoyed the illustrations by Marc Brown in this book and laughingly called the Dinosaurs Arthur and D.W.)
Sheep in a Shop, Nancy Shaw (Reinforces idea of bartering/trading for goods)
Berenstain Bears and a Job Well Done, Jan and Stan Berenstain
Charlie Needs a Cloak, Tomie dePaola (Another step by step guide to making a coat from sheep wool.)
The Art of the Loom, Ann Hecht (We used this book for the pictures. It was neat to see how in cultures around the world cloth is made in much the same manner.)
For Math this week, we continued to talk about measuring time. I am going through Franklyn M. Branley's Telling Time; doing an activity a day. We also reviewed measuring round objects with my measuring tape used for sewing.
For Language: we made instant pudding and then while the pudding set-up each of the children dictated step by step instructions for making pudding. This proved to be challenging for them but still a fun activity. Our vocabulary words all had to do with weaving, warp, woof, loom. We found repetition in the story and talked about the theme of the book.
For Social Studies/Geography: I laid tracing paper over Eastern Europe on our map and drew the countries as they looked before WW11 and then took away the paper and talked about what the countries look like now. Then I gave Tristan the opportunity to choose where Anna should live. He chose Poland, a great lead in to this week's story: Mrs. Katz and Tush, but now I'm ahead of myself! We talked about bartering and economy. How do we acquire the things we need. We also discussed the character quality of patience. Rainbow Resource has a study guide, and I printed two pages of it to use for this.
Art was fun this week. In addition to the usual, discussion about the illustrations in the book, we attempted before and after drawings, weaving paper and dyeing yarn with cranberries (left in the fridge since December, yikes!). We dyed the yarn on Friday, so we will use it this week in an activity. The paper weaving was a fun challenge for the kids and they are very proud of their work.
In Science we learned about sheep and also staying healthy. I tried to focus on wearing appropriate clothing as a way to stay healthy to add to what we've learned in the past about hygiene and healthy eating.
Some additional books we enjoyed this week:
Dinosaurs Alive and Well: A Guide to Good Health, Laurie Krasny-Brown (The kids enjoyed the illustrations by Marc Brown in this book and laughingly called the Dinosaurs Arthur and D.W.)
Sheep in a Shop, Nancy Shaw (Reinforces idea of bartering/trading for goods)
Berenstain Bears and a Job Well Done, Jan and Stan Berenstain
Charlie Needs a Cloak, Tomie dePaola (Another step by step guide to making a coat from sheep wool.)
The Art of the Loom, Ann Hecht (We used this book for the pictures. It was neat to see how in cultures around the world cloth is made in much the same manner.)
Comments
That contruction paper looks extra big is that just an optical allusion or a bigger paper?