The Letter F!

Baby Boo wearing her fish dress :)

This week we have been studying the letter F and Fish.

We have also taken a Five in a Row approach to teaching. Five in a Row is a style of teaching that incorporates reading a book five days in a row and completing crafts, projects, etc. that correlate with the story. Five in a Row has a list of books (all awesome classics) that they recommend and give suggestions for projects to go along with them. We are using this style of teaching with our own choices of books.

The books we've read this week are Rainbow Fish and Jonah and the Whale. Rainbow Fish teaches us that it is OK to be different and the story of Jonah teaches us that we need to obey God and we cannot run away or hide from God.

On Wednesday we visited Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. The girls had a great time! G was very interested in the various types of fish and sea creatures. Her favorites are Lion Fish, sea turtles, jelly fish, and of course "Dory" (Regal Blue Tang Fish) and "Nemo" (Clown Fish).

We did the experiment "Sink or Float" which I found here on Mommy Moment one night in the bath tub. It was fun having G guess or form a hypothesis about what she thought would sink versus float and then testing it out. Using a cup was a tricky one- it floats when empty then sinks after it is filled with water. I also asked her if she sinks or floats.... made her think!

Today we had our official weekly school day. We started by playing this fun fishing game by Circo from Target.

The fish have magnets on them as does the fishing pole. It was good practice on colors also.

Then we sang some songs, including Laurie Berkner's "Goldfish" song. Laurie Berkner is an awesome children's musician who sells CDs and DVDs of her songs.

We read about Rainbow Fish again and then we made a glittering Rainbow Fish:

All this took was blue paper plates, tissue paper, aluminum foil, elmer's glue, paint brushes, and googly eyes. It was easy and fun!

The next thing we did was some Goldfish math! I got the idea and worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler. G always asks for these little boxes of Goldfish crackers at Fresh & Easy (my favorite grocery store by the way) and she was so excited to see I finally caved in and got some! They were only $0.89 too! The girls had fun deciding which fish was the longest, which was the shortest, and which was the medium-sized one. Then we used the Goldfish crackers to measure and count how long each fish was. And the bonus: you get to eat the crackers and color the coloring page when you're finished!

Do-a-Dot Art. Attention Moms of preschoolers and kids almost any age: If you do not have Do-a-Dot Art markers yet you need to get some! These are so fun for kids and adults of all ages. They are paint-like without all the mess. I printed this "F" page from Confessions of a Homeschooler but you can also find Do-a-Dot Art coloring books online or at Michael's.

We read the story of Jonah again and watched a short DVD video about Jonah (about 9 minutes) that I picked up from the Dollar Tree- great find! It tells the story with words (great reading practice) and has a couple cute songs too. They still had some left at the Dollar Tree when I was there yesterday. We discussed how we must obey God (and our Mommy and Daddy) and that we cannot run or hide from God, He sees everything.

We practiced drawing fish and the letter F on a white board, which is really fun, but a little messy! Here G is with the "F"s she made all by herself and signing the letter F!

Mama is so proud!

Our final project was making Rainbow Fish Cookies!

*Quick tip: to make quick and easy (yet unhealthy) cookies use a box cake mix, 1 egg, and 1 room-temperature stick of butter.

Okay so they did not turn out very fish-looking but the girls did not seem to mind! ;-)