FIAR-Night of the Moonjellies

This week we read Night of the Moonjellies, by Mark Shasha. This was a very cute book. It can be hard to find right now because it is now an out of print book, but it is worth finding. The author tells a story of his life when he was a young boy. He finds a moonjelly on the seashore, and goes on a fun surprise trip with his grandmother.

We went to Nag's Head a few weeks ago. While we were there, we saw some moonjellies on the beach. Lily was excited to see them. She didn't touch them, even though they don't have tentacles. They were all over the beach!

The first thing we did was place our story disk-the book did not specify what state the story took place in. It just said New England, so Lily chose Maine. 

After this, we discussed the New England states, and located them on a map. We also did the pages from the FIAR Fold N Learn that talked about the New England states. We are going to start notebooking, so we are saving all of our completed pages and art work for the notebook.



  I made an ocean sensory bin this week. I colored some rice blue and added some ocean creatures. Lily informed me that I needed a layer of black rice underneath the blue to make the Midnight Zone. (She's been watching the Octonauts a lot lately.)

We made some "moonjellies" for the tub. (They are just glow in the dark bracelets in zip up sandwich baggies.)  Lily soaked with the moonjellies for a while.

After her bath, we had some popcorn and orange soda while I read the book.

Lily pretended that she had her own restaurant like the one in the story. She made menus and passed them out to all of us. She was to use descriptive words for the food. She got a little silly with that. :)  She spent a lot of time pretending that she was getting me food this week. We talked about owning her own restaurant. Lily said she wanted to be the person who served the food, not the person that cooked it.

We made a jellyfish. This turned into a hat later on in the week. The legs also became ribbons after our cat ripped the legs off of this one. I don't have a picture of the finished product. 

For math this week, we focused on money. We discussed the different coins and how much they are worth. We are using Right Start Math this year, and this was our lesson this week-it worked out perfectly! We also watched our Rock N Learn movie about money. Lily LOVES her Rock N Learn movies!

 We talked about the responsibility of taking payment for the foods in the restaurant in the story. We also talked about each person's responsibilities in the restaurant, and then we discussed Lily's responsibilities at home: Keeping her toys picked up, feeding the dogs at night, etc.

I found a  jellyfish packed on Teachers Pay Teachers, and we did some activities in that. One of Lily's favorite activities was to make sentences out of the different ocean creatures.
You can grab the jellyfish pack here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/What-Are-Jellyfish-Nonfiction-Informational-Reading-Packet-CCSS-740711

 Having fun!

The FIAR cookbook had a recipe for a lobster roll, but I couldn't find the lobster I needed. I found this lobster spread in the seafood section, so we tried it instead. 

Lily did NOT like it. (Neither did I.)  We will have to try a real lobster roll later on down the road. I'm sure the real thing is great!

We played Ocean Limbo-a super fun game with ocean creatures. I am actually a Playologist with SimplyFun educational games, and we use them in our schooling whenever possible. If you have never heard of SimplyFun, check out my site here:  http://simplyfun.com/pws/tfredo/tabs/playologist-home.aspx There is even a deal for homeschoolers!

Lily worked on a coloring book page that had information about the state of Maine.We have a coloring book that has info on all of the states.

We watched "The Octonauts and the Jellyfish Bloom"  Octonauts is one of Lily's favorite shows. 

We made the rest of the recipes in the FIAR cookbook-French fries and onion rings. They were very good! 

 

  We did a few more art projects, and pages for our notebook. We made a watercolor jellyfish, and labeld the New England states. This was a fun week. We could have added a bit more, but Lily was going to VBS in the evenings. I was thinking of extending the book out for another week, but Lily was excited to get started on our next book-Madeline! We may come back and row this book again next year. ;)