Moving Beyond the Page/BFIAR-Blueberries for Sal

This week was Blueberries for sal. I was REALLY wanting to do this book when we could go blueberry picking along with it, but blueberry season is about 6 months off. We made the best of it, and used frozen berries for our snacks.

I did something a little different this week, and included my daycare kids as much as possible in the activities. (No pics of them.) I am actually going to be using Before Five in a Row with them, and this just happens to be one of the BFIAR books. :) Most of the kids are 2 and 3 years old, so I just had to adjust and add activities to keep it on their level. They are getting old enough to tag along in our homeschooling adventure now, and this looked like a really fun book to start out with.


On our first day, we read the book and discussed it. We also had a  book about bears to read later in the week.

Lily LOVED the first activity in the MBTP workbook this week-making Blueberry Freezer Jam. We talked about how the characters in the book were going to can some blueberries for Winter, and how this would be one thing you can make with the blueberries.

                             Crushing the berries.

 Mixing in the sugar.

                   Stirring in the pectin.                                   

 Finished!

For our math this week, we made little "tin" pails, and counted "blueberries." Lily spent a good deal of time adding different amounts of blueberries, and figuring out different ways to make them add up to ten.

I added in a fun little craft that I had found on Pinterest: Blueberry pies. We used bingo daubers as our blueberries.

The second day was pretty fun,  but it was mostly a conversational lesson. We talked about whether the book took place now or in the past. (The past)  We pointed out the different items in the pictures that helped us figure that out. Lily also had fun with a movement activity. We looked through the book, and found all the different ways the characters moved. Lily got to move in the way that SHE interpreted those words. (A lot of them looked pretty similar.) ;)

We made dye out of blueberries and their juice. I had the kids crush up the blueberries and I added a bit of water. We put a white cloth in the juice, and let it sit overnight. The kids thought it was pretty awesome that the cloth was purple the next day.

 We made some blueberry muffins for snack. Lily LOVED this. She just couldn't wait to try them, and she approved of the final product.

We researched bears, and read a book about bears. We talked about the fiction and non-fiction aspects of the bears in Blueberries for Sal, and made a chart to compare. We had fun singing The Bear Went Over the Mountain. (Mommy can't sing, so we found a video on Youtube)

We made a bear craft. Lily is still developing her fine motor skills, so I found an outline of a teddy  bear online, and we just tore some brown paper and glued it on. The tearing is good for developing fine motor skills.

I set up a variety of activities with the counting bears. The grabbers in the sensory bin, and the tweezers for the "feed the bear" game are also great for fine motor skills.

 
We had a couple of KinderBach piano lessons this week. Lily loves KinderBach days. KinderBach is a DVD based piano lesson program for kids age 3-7. There is cutting/pasting, coloring, piano practice and more. It's super cute!

 

Another activity that I found on Pinterest was these blueberry basket crafts. Just paint the berries on the paper, and glue craft sticks on them to make it look like a basket.

We have the Draw Write Now series, and I love when I find something that goes along with our theme. Lily drew a bear, and practiced the little handwriting paragraph that was in the book.

Our final activity was another snack-Blueberry Parfaits! Yum! Yogurt, blueberries and whipped topping. Lily definitely approved!

So, that was our fun week! Lots of fun activities. Lily also works on her Singapore Math and McRuffy phonics/reading every week in addition to the other activities. She is having a great time!