Saturday, July 21, 2012

July Virtual Book club - Don and Audrey Wood: The Napping House

 
We loved July's virtual Book Club challenge to read books by Don and Audrey Wood. The book we chose to work our activities on is The Napping House 
We read the book online for several times and discussed topics related to housinga and day and night. All activities we did have some connection to the story. These activities give us opportunities to discuss the book and also use the children's imagination to relate to other situations. 

Build a Scene with toys


L searched for toys in the house to build the scene of the story. I can say he was rather fast to identify where to look for .... the Doll house!!! He found a granny, a child, a dog and the cat. For the mouse he used a stick puppet of the mouse from The Gruffalo story. We had difficulties to find the flea so we searched online for a picture and printed it. K did the activity too.









Day and Night 


I have laminated pictures related to day and night situations. K and L had to sort them into their category. We discussed opposites like: dark - light, day - night, sun - moon, awake - asleep .....







Which animals sleep at night/in the day


K and L had to draw a day and night scene and glue pictures of the animals where they think is appropriate.






Houses


We talked about different houses in the world and watched a video on You Tube about different houses. We also talked about different houses in Malta and the stone used to build these houses. The stone used locally is  the limestone and we plan to visit a park describing the process of the stone from the quarry to a house http://www.limestoneheritage.com/home.aspx.

 These photos show .....


malta town houses  
 a traditional town house in an old city in Malta.


 
 a typical house in Malta nowadays.

Sequencing

I printed lots of activities related to The Napping House from http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/NappingHousePrintables.htm

L put the story in sequence with this  printable worksheet.







Rhyming words


K practised words that rhyme with nap using a printable rhyming strip.



I also laminated a picture where she could write the words that rhymed. It was a very good activity as she is working on reading and writing skills.






Build a word ....

We have some wooden letters which K used to build words from the story.



Activities related to size

We used objects in the house to discuss size. We ordered smallest to biggest, big to small and same.




Add caption







Other activites .....


 Tracing worksheet

 Colour in by number worksheet

We are so happy to be participating in the Virtual Book Club as it has enhanced learning opportunities in a different way. Follow this blog hop to learn more.




Thursday, July 19, 2012

E is for Ecology

Ecology is something we wished to cover this Summer. This week we read the book What does it mean to be Green Meme Tales. It was a good book to help us understand ways to help Mother Earth ..... so after reading this book we will be practising some of the suggestions: use containers for lunch, we use recycling bins, eat ice-cream in cones .........
memetales small logo
What Does It Me...
See more at memetales

Thursday, July 12, 2012

K is for Kaleidoscope (work in progress)

We are doing an online readathon with Memetales. This week the topic is Immagination and the story K and L enjoyed most is Night Boy.





This book is a unique and playful picture book 
about a brother and sister named Night and Day who are brother and sister. Night cannot wait until dark to play with his sister ......


We are also working on our Virtual Book Club book which is The Napping House. This story tells us what happens during nap time!!!











Therefore we are learning a lot about activities at day and night. We talked about what happens and what we do during each of the times. Since Night Boy talks about Night's adventure in the night sky we managed to learn more about constellations, milky way, the moon, the sun ....... I just realised how vast is this topic and how interested the children became. So tonight we spent some time observing the night sky and creating designs with the stars. The next craft activity is going to be the Kaleidoscope!!! So today was the warming up so next time K and L can use their own Kaleidoscope.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Summer Holidays

Today was my last day at work before the Summer Holidays.Will miss all the students at my school but also happy to have some well deserved time to break from the busy days of trying to Schedule everything in our busy lives. Now I will be able to dedicate more time to my family and enjoy our beautiful sea and sun. Still so much to do but at a slower pace!!!

L is for Lapbooking




This year we discovered Lapbooking.Lapbooking can be done by any learner from preschoolers to adults. With this educational method, you make mini-books covering details that you've studied. After making a variety of mini-books about a larger topic, all the books are put together in a large folder. The finished product is called a lapbook because it's large and covers your lap.




The two topics we are working on are Fire Safety with L and Spain with K. L is so interested in Firefighters and safety issues. Whilst K is so excited that we are visiting Spain. I found info which she can find interesting and included it in the Lapbook.

Here are the Lapbook covers.


L had a set of flashcards with firefighter words and he matched toys to them.


Here he is practising the number to call in an emergency.


This is a sequencing game.



Colouring in of his favourite hero Fireman Sam.


Pre-writing task of name.







K is working on Spanish customs which include: flamenco, castanettes, bull running, bull fighting, tomatoe festival and footbal (she included the winning score of the Euro Cup). She also put on a dressing up costume of a Spanish girl and did the matching of the customs with things found in the house. We have more mini books which we are still working on in the Lapbooks.