Making Literacy Meaningful - A Three Part Series

Part 3


Stone Soup is an amazing story that has stood the test of time.  There are many versions of Stone Soup, but the lesson remains the same: sharing what we have makes us feel happy.

I absolutely adore Jon Muth's version because his art is spectacular.  The delicate Asian landscapes offer an airy and gentle path to understanding the story.

To reinforce the lesson of the story, the Bunny Rabbit children became chefs.  Each child brought an ingredient from home to contribute to the soup. 

They took turns adding their ingredient to the pot.  Our actions were "opening", "pouring", and "stirring".

There was so much stirring - no shortage of helping hands!  We quickly realized that this soup was going to be yummy because it smelled delicious.

Oh, yes, we put a stone in the soup.  It's the main ingredient after all!  No worries, parents, we scrubbed it with soap before we put it in the pot.

After we returned from the playground, our soup was ready and we gobbled it up!  Two girls said they did not like their soup, but one of them ate her whole serving as she told me she didn't like it.  Hilarious! 

We used science to reinforce literacy.  Cooking is science!  We experienced the properties of mixtures and heat while we renacted the story of Stone Soup.  It was the perfect lead up to Thanksgiving!!

Making Literacy Meaningful - A Three Part Series

Part 2

The Apple Pie Tree is a book that teaches how apples grow on an apple tree.  The seasons are beautifully depicted, and the illustrations show clearly how the tree buds in spring, gets gorgeous pink blossoms, grows tiny green apples, and people harvest ripe red apples.  The children saw how the apple tree moves through one complete growing cycle in a year.   At the end of the book, the apples become a yummy apple pie.

To reinforce the concept of the life cycle of an apple, we had an apple tasting.  Each child got a slice of a red apple and a slice of a green apple to taste.

After they ate their apples, they got to vote for which color they preferred.  To graphically represent their votes, we wrote their name on an apple of their choice and they glued it onto a large chart.  When the chart was full, we tallied the votes.  The winner: red!  We connected literacy and math.

Making Literacy Meaningful - A Three Part Series

Part 1


Leaf Man is a great book.  It gets kids to look at everyday things, like leaves, in new and novel ways.   The pictures in this book are amazing!  There are cows, roosters, fish, turtles, birds, butterflies and other animals all made of leaves.  So creative!

In our Bunny Rabbit class we read the story and examined the pictures.  We talked about how the author made the art in the book.  To make a connection between the art in the book and our own artistic talents, we made our own version of Leaf Man.  The children gathered a box full of leaves from the playground.  They chose leaves to glue together to create their own leaf people or animals.

Art is one of several tangible ways to reinforce literacy skills.

Hat

How stinkin' cute is this?!!

Friends

It takes a long time to make a friend.  Many people think kids develop instant friendships, but it is no more true for children than for adults.  Children may know each other's names, share the same toys, read the same books, but until they really begin to talk to each other, they are simply acquaintances. 

This is the time of year when we really see friendships bloom.  We've all been together for a few months now and we know each other's ways.  It's wonderful!

The Not-So-Great Pumpkin Experiment

Despite the children's best efforts, we are sad to report disappointing results with this year's Great Pumpkin Experiment.  See that little sprig above?  We got about 4 more of those and that was it before the bottom rotted out of our pumkin.  Ick!
There's always next year...

God Made Plants

Along with encouraging our pumpkin seeds to grow, we planted grass seed.  We filled a tray with soil and sprinkled winter grass seed on the top.  We had interesting results.

Grass grew in half of the tray, but not the other half.  We have no explanation for this.  That's the way science works sometimes, isn't it?  Nontheless, the Bunnies enjoyed petting this soft grass.

The Great Pumpkin Experiment

A few weeks ago when we were talking about plants, we did this...

We cut open our pumpkin and we checked out what was inside.  Everyone thought it looked gooey so we left all the insides right inside.  Antd then we did this...

We filled the whole thing with dirt - all the way to the top.  Last, we watered it. 

Squirt bottles are a great way for young children to water plants.  The squeeze action is great for strengthening little hands and the controlled water flow is great for a low mess factor.  It's hard to overwater when using a squirt bottle.

Stay tuned to see what happened to our dirt pumpkin.