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! :)

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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.

Viking Unit Study

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share with you what we've been up to in our homeschool. The boys have been fascinated with Vikings so we started a mini unit study. Here are just some of the activities we did so far. I'll share more as we complete them.

The boys did a fun directed drawing of a Viking. We followed this video here. 

Once their drawing was complete they wrote down their narration. 

The boys also completed a map of the viking world you can grab this map here. 

completed map and narration

This was their favorite activity making the viking paper dolls. I got the printable from 

here. 

They gave their dolls traditional Viking names

We have been reading aloud from Viking Adventure by Clyde Robert. 

The boys have been turning each chapter into a diary entry. 

We write from the point of view of one of the main characters. We talked about 1st person

vs. 3rd person. We go over all the main events in the chapter and the boys write their diary entry. 

For the diaries we're using blank books I got from Michael's along time ago.

Resources:

The Usborne books are our main spines.

We've been having so much fun learning all about these warriors. I'll share more activities once we complete them.

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Weekly Wrap Up

Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley Biography Study

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share with you our biography research study on Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley. I chose to start with him for several reasons. First, we love this book and it's a classic. Second, it worked perfect with the season we're in currently. Also, it's a quick read so it's easy to take notes on. And last, the subject of snow always fascinates kids. We started off by talking about how and why we do research. The boys helped me make a list.

1. Pick your topic/Subject
2. Collect your resources (books, internet, videos, newspaper, etc.)
3. Ask questions (this will help determine what to look for)
4. Organize your research

Here are the 3 books we used. Our main text for the research was Snowflake Bentley. The other two were just fun reads. 

We also used these QR codes that I put together for the boys. You can grab your free copy here.

We talked about the importance of citing your source. The boys used index cards to do their research.

Authors Last name, first name.Title. Where it was published:Publishing company, date of publication.

Research Portion:

The research part was new to both boys. They wanted to copy everything word for word so I had to do a lot of modeling. I used this resource here to guide me and how to teach them. 

The boys had 3 index cards with three questions to lead their research. We focused on his childhood, adulthood, accomplishments, fun facts, and quotes. 

Here he is looking for some fun facts.

Turning Their Notes into Paragraphs:

After the research portion was over the boys had to turn their notes into full sentences and write each of their paragraphs. 

One thing I loved about the resource we used is after each paragraph was written the boys had

to go back and highlight their 3 must haves. They did this for each of their 5 paragraphs. 

Writing his introduction paragraph.

Final Draft:

The boys edited and chose to type out their biography report. 

Art:

We always try to incorporate some art into all our units. The boys made snowflake paper cut outs. 

The boys wrote down four character traits of Wilson Bentley around the snowflake.

The boys really loved learning all about Wilson Bentley we can't wait to learn about all the other great people we have lined up.

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Montessori Mondays

Stone Fox Activities

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share with you some of the activities that we did to go along with the book Stone Fox. My son really enjoyed this book and all the activities we worked on.

He worked on character traits about the main character. He had to pick three traits and provide evidence from the book. 

He wrote an advice letter to Willy. He was so sweet he wrote "believe in yourself and you can do it! Your grandfather is counting on you now hurry and win that race."

He compared the chores he does at home to all of Willy's responsibility on the farm 

We also compared Stone Fox and Little Willy 

Using information in the book he created a dogsled race poster. 

After doing some research online we discovered that the first race in Jackson, Wyoming was in 1932 and evidence from the book we came up with February 1, 1952 as the race date. The rest of the information is on chapter 5 and 6. 

As he read the story we added to the story map. This really helped him in writing his story summary. 

We worked on a lot more but this is what I managed to capture. Have you or your kids ever read this book?