When The Earth Dragon Awakes- Figurative Language

During our novel study "The Earth Dragon Awakes" we concentrated on figurative language. This book has a lot of personification and similes. As we read, the boys and I wrote down any figurative language we came across and identified them. At the end of the novel, we made a cute dragon breathing out 'figurative language examples.' 

My boys read these two books. 

My 10-year-old decided to focus on personification and drew a dragon in his notebook with all the examples. 

Resources

1. Figurative Language Lesson PowerPoint Presentation (her resources are amazing! She has so many PowerPoint lessons and crafts)

2. Dragon Printable 

3. Dragon Directed Drawing

Examples From the Book

There are so many examples but here are just some of the ones the boys found during our reading.

My Stomach is as solid as the earth (pg. 2)

Street lamps glitter like jewels (pg. 12)

The Chest of drawers dances a jig (pg. 20)

His bed and all his furniture circle in a slow waltz around the room (pg. 20)

The tenement creaks and groans like an old giant (pg. 23)

Their bed and bureau prowl like a hungry animal (pg. 23)

They look as if they are peering over someone's shoulder (pg. 31-32)

But fear twists inside Chin like a snake (pg. 33)

Suddenly a breeze brushes his face like a soft hand (pg. 34)

You can't judge a book by its cover (pg. 37)

Flames wag out of the windows like salamander tongues (pg. 42)

The heavy machine rests on its side like a sleeping animal (pg. 43)

The Ham and Egg fire stretches one arm east and the other south. It will join its brothers (pg. 61)

The flames peer hungrily down at Henry (pg. 63-64)

Burning embers drift in the hot winds like angry butterflies (pg. 64)

It slithers across San Francisco like a dragon with red spines (pg. 71)

A tongue of fire dances on his shoulder (pg. 48)

Dust rises in ribbons like tiny ghosts (pg. 40)

Inuit of the Arctic Week 1

Hi guys! We are officially back to school this week. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed some hands on activities for our Unit Study on the Inuit. Here are some of the activities we worked on this week.

We learned all about the Arctic Tundra and made a salt dough map of the Arctic. 

I got the idea from Tina's Dynamic Homeschool

 Once the boys finished their map they worked on a foldable and watched a brainpop video

You can grab this foldable here. 

mapping activity

Narration

We talked about what a typical Inuit family looks like. 

They boys made a small diorama of a family. 

 You can grab the vocabulary cards and anchor charts here.

Some of the books we enjoyed.

You can go to this post to grab some free notebooking pages. 

Linked Up With

Weekly Wrap Up

Fairy Tale Writing Unit

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share with you all the fun we had with our fairy tale writing unit. First let me start off by saying these units are incredible. They contain book suggestions, grammar, hands on fun, anchor charts, and step by step instructions. My boys have loved each and everyone of the writing units we've done so far, and this one was no different. Amy and Hope have put so much thought and creativity into each unit I seriously recommend you check out both their blogs and TPT stores.

We read Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as our mentor text. We talked about story elements (character, setting, problem, solution, and events). We also talked about what a fairy tale is and the things it contains ( magic, talking animals, pattern of 7 and 3). Once they understood all that we started brainstorming ideas for their own stories. We created an anchor chart to gather all our initial ideas and they transferred it over to their worksheet.

The next day we took all our ideas we brainstormed and wrote the beginning, middle, and end of their stories.

They worked on an exercise to help them learn transition words in a story. 

They also created this fun mirror craft. They loved this challenge they had to break the evil queens

spell and put all the sentences and transition words back in order. If you make anything into a challenge

my boys are all in. 

taking their ideas and writing complete sentences and using transition words. We 

also worked on writing a good hook to capture the readers attention. 

This was my favorite activity. Getting rid of the choppy and boring sentences using conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions. They pull out a conjunction/subordinating conjunction and try to rewrite one of their boring sentences. 

We also replaced "said" with more of a vivid verb. 

Publishing:

Even though the file does come with a really nice craft and writing paper template to publish the final work. I thought it would be nice if they made their own story books. We used water color paper and stained it using tea bags. 

I burned the ends of the paper to make it look old (the boys didn't help with this part). They picked out their characters (we just searched for clipart online).

Coloring his story characters. 

Finished Books

Extra (not part of the unit):

I also had the boys read and listen to a lot of different fairy tales. After reading one they worked on these fairy tale pennants. 

We hung them up in our school room. They look so adorable!

Henry's Freedom Box Lapbook

Hi guys! I hope you are having a wonderful week. Since February is Black History Month the boys and I have been reading and learning a great deal about some great men and women who have made a change. We read Henry's Freedom Box which is a sad and beautiful story. The illustrations that accompany the story is breath taking, you can see all the emotions of each character. Here are some of the lapbook activities we worked on.

Sequencing Henry's freedom path

We discussed all the challenges Henry faced during his time. 

We also worked on a cause and effect foldable. 

Vocabulary from the book and facts about the Underground Railroad.

We also talked about mood and the boys picked two scenes from the book and wrote about how they felt while reading about it. 

The boys wrote how they wanted people to be treated it. "Everyone should be treated with respect."

For Grammar the boys worked on a mentor sentence from the book. We analyzed the sentence and our focus was complex sentences. 

We had a wonderful time reading Henry's Freedom Box. I highly recommend it.

Resources:

Rooted in Reading
Mentor Sentence
Lapbook

Sarah Plain and Tall Interactive Quilt

Hi guys! My 3rd grader has recently finished reading Sarah Plain and Tall. He really loved the book. As a go along activity he worked on an interactive quilt. You can grab this resources here on TPT.

He worked on one piece each day. I don't have pictures of him working on the quilt, it was a fairly simple

independent activity. 

Once it was complete he was really proud of his work. 

His favorite part was assembling all the pieces and adding details. 

The resource does not come with chapter questions so I used this resource here. I hope you enjoyed seeing our quilt! :)

Linked Up With:
Weekly Wrap Up

Cloudy With a Chance of... Writing Activity

Hi guys! We recently did a fun writing activity that goes with the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. This is one of the boys favorite books. The writing lesson was really quick and fun. Using the story as inspiration the boys wrote their own story.

After reading the story we talked about elements of a story (characters, setting, problem, solution)

The boys used a graphic organizer to plan out their story (printable found at the end of post)

Cloudy with a Chance of Juice

Cloudy with a Chance of Donuts

Both their stories were really good. Once they finished the made a little craft to go with it. 

This is was a really fun and creative activity. You can download the writing templates below.

Click on the image to download.