Showing posts with label Ruth Krauss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ruth Krauss. Show all posts

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Rowing {Four} Days

We have been "rowing" The Carrot Seed, by Ruth Krauss, for four days now. This morning I thought it would be fun to get Vada started with an orange sensory bubble bath. Everything in the tub besides "Baby" and Vada was some shade of orange. We even had a carrot, which went perfectly with our  theme for the week.





After playing in the bath and then getting ready for the day Vada and I sat down with Vada's oldest sister, Jasmine and shared what we've completed so far in Vada's Carrot Seed Lapbook/Journal.


All of the Carrot Seed Lapbook printable were downloaded from Homeschool Share.


Below, Jasmine and Vada are looking at pictures of the seed that were "planted" in a mason jar back when we celebrated and learned about Earth Day for a whole week (part two). 


The seed eventually outgrew the jar and is now growing in our garden!


Next, we talked about what a plant and all living things needs to survive. We did this while coloring these labeled carrots.


Together, Vada and I cut two of the carrots out and then I finished by doing the remaining two on my own. Afterward, Vada used a glue stick for the very first time. I think that she really liked it! I did too! It was a lot less messy!!! 



I had a page empty and ready for Vada to paste her carrots into her lapbook/journal once she was done putting glue onto them. 


Then I had Vada work on multitasking. I wanted her to hold the "fruit" or "vegetable" in one hand while trying to cut it with the other. This was semi difficult for her to do, depending on the actual piece that she had. Sometimes, she would just pull it apart by hand if it were too hard to actually slice and I let her because she always tried to slice it with the "knife" first. During this activity I always named each fruit or vegetable and labeled it for her as either a fruit or a vegetable. This activity will play into tomorrows activities.





After we went through every piece of "slicing fruit" I had Vada put each piece back together and then back into the bag. Once they were all picked up we moved onto one of Vada's all time favorites, Counting Cans. 


We went through each can once, except the carrots. Per Vada's request, we had to count the carrots again. Which I thought was pretty neat!



Another activity that we did today that will also play into tomorrow's activities is this Vegetable matching and labeling game. Each vegetable card had a match and after putting all of the originals onto the board I would hand a match to Vada and ask her to find the match. I always told her the name of the vegetable and that it was in fact a vegetable that she had. I often pointed to the vegetable that she needed to match with but I just wanted her to get the concept. This was the first time that we have done this and over all I think that she did very well, especially since this clearly more was difficult for her than some of our other activities from today.




After matching all of the photo's together I got the name labels out and read them and then I would ask Vada to "show me" or "point to" that specific vegetable. If she couldn't, I would show her and then ask her again to point to it, then I would put the label in the correct spot.


I downloaded these awesome cards from Homeschool Creations


Now I know that it is summer and here its in the mid ninety's but that didn't stop us from making today lunch, nor did it stop us from enjoying it either and with Vada and Jasmine's help, the homemade, straight from the garden, carrot soup tasted delicious!



JAsmine and Vada began sauteing the onions, celery and carrots in butter that was seasoned with vegetable bouillon, Natures Seasons and a black truffle sea salt. 





After about twenty minutes of simmering, I added extra water and it was ready to eat!


It. Was. SO. GOOD!!!


We all had seconds, even Jasmine and that really says something!



Sunday, July 14, 2013

The Carrot Seed: Day One


In May we planted our garden. Over this last week we have been watching the carrots push up through the soil and we have even taste tested some of our carrots -just to be sure that without a doubt they are ready to be harvested and guess what, they are! That's why I decided to begin "rowing" our first book with Ruth Krauss' 1942 classic, The Carrot Seed.


First we had to soften up our soil, so we watered the carrots and made a nice muddy mess to work with. 

Vada loves to help water the garden!


She was slightly hesitant of getting muddy, however.


The texture of all of the soft carrot leaves also threw Vada off but she did help pull up several of her own carrots! 



I think that overall, Kiliegh had the best time at harvesting these carrots. It was like opening a gift with each pull. You never knew just what size or shape of carrot you were going to get and Kiliegh seemed genuinely surprised with each new carrot. I loved her enthusiasm. 


I found two carrots that were intertwined together and thought of them as "lovers" (I kept that to myself though). The girls all thought that this find was by far the coolest.





We planted "baby" carrots of some sort... I cant remember the actual name but they don't grow too big, Jasmine found the biggest and called it her prize winner.


Vada became very uncomfortable with all of the dirtiness, so we washed off a carrot and showed her that they were "good" and that we could eat them. She liked that.




Before the girls came out I filled up Vada's water table with water and brought out some old tooth brushes and after we had pulled a good amount of carrots, I had the girls bring the them to the "cleaning station" to be cleaned.


Vada, Kiliegh and even my (almost) fourteen year old Jasmine enjoyed doing this. Vada caught on quickly and loved playing in the water. 




I even joined in!



We even gave Vada one more job as a way of working on listening skills and following directions. Once the carrots had been cleaned we asked Vada to put them onto the sidewalk to dry.


She followed the task each and every time!




Look! My "lovers" all cleaned up.



After all of our carrots were cleaned and dried I got out orange and green paint and a piece of paper for each of us. Using the carrots as our brushes we painted carrots of our own.





This was a fun project and it was so neat to see the individuality between all of them come out in their art. They were all given the same task and tools to work with but in the end the results were all very different and beautifully unique - just like them!


Mine

Jasmine's

Vada's

Kiliegh's
I will continue to read The Carrot Seed to Vada every day throughout this week as well as other books that may have carrots in them by doing this the book will become familiar, the story line and plot will as well but so will other things, such as colors that we talk about, projects that we work on even the taste and sound from eating an actual carrot. Most importantly we are creating memories.

Oh, I almost forgot a really important detail...I got a ton of of my ideas for this weeks activities through a fantastic homeschooling blog called Delightful Learning. Actually, I often link back to this blog for ideas and will be doing so as I continue to "row".