Preschool at Home: Blueberries for Sal

So I went into this week of preschool with lots of personal excitement, mainly because of our book for the week:

Blueberries for Sal

This particular book wasn't one that I had read before, but the book One Morning in Maine (also by Robert McCloskey and with the same main character) was a special part of my childhood. So being the sentimental soul that I am, I was eager to connect my children to "Sal", her mother and their delightful day of picking blueberries on a hillside. Also, between the suggested ideas from the BFIAR manual, the online resources available and a few original ideas of my own, I *may* have gone a little overboard in my preparations and visions for all we would do this week.

However, the week we've had could hardly be characterized as having the same "storybook charm" that we see when we open the pages of this book.  Due to some changes in our normal routine including several more outings and appointments than we have in a typical week, we as a family were just a little bit "off".  The kids' bedtimes did not go as smoothly as they normally do, resulting in sleep deprivation for most of us.  To top it off, Miss Lucy seemed to be experiencing more sensory challenges than normal.  This all resulted in irritable children and a grumpy mommy who all had to apologize to each other on several occasions.  

Despite it all, I think we still managed to have some meaningful learning experiences with Blueberries for Sal and I'll share the highlights here:

Naturally our letter for this week was "B". We made our own blueberry and leaf stamps  and used them to fill our letter "B" pictures with blueberry prints.

Last week, Lucy's Speech-Language pathologist and I talked about how we could work on her vocabulary expansion goal at home.  She made the suggestion that we work on a small set of vocabulary words each week that corresponds with the books we are using. This is a really easy approach, especially since the BFIAR printables available from Homeschool Creations include readymade cards with words and images from each unit.  I wanted to find a fun way to work on this, so I decided to use this magnetic fishing game that I originally found through Pinterest.

 I decided to print out the pictures from the cards provided by Homeschool Creations and attach them to our metal circles (frozen juice concentrate lids!) with a repositionable adhesive so I can easily swap in and out each week's vocabulary set.  This proved to be a truly fun activity that the kids enjoyed doing every day despite the general grumpiness and inflexibility that reigned for most of the week! By the end of the week they could accurately "label" most of the pictures by recalling the words from memory, which is the goal.

Both kids really enjoyed counting out pom pom "blueberries" and "feeding" them to the bear.  I used a template found here (another Pinterest find) to make the bear face for this activity.

After some good counting practice with the "Feed the Bear" game, we attempted to introduce the concept of addition with this printable, also from Homeschool Creations. This activity was one that didn't go over so well given the week we had, but they tolerated at least one round before that morning's meltdown occurred!  We'll keep it around and try again in the future!

On one morning we took a break from the more "academic" activities and after reading the book and practicing our verse for the week (Ruth 1:16),we  enjoyed a game of memory with our Ravensburger  "Teddy Mix & Match" game.

Here Lucy is holding up a match she made: the two grumpy bears. How fitting!! : )

One idea I came across for this unit was to can our own blueberries, just like "Sal" and her mother did in the story... yeah that wasn't happening. Instead we went to one of our favorite local coffee shops and shared a blueberry scone. That went alright until they started rolling their napkins up into balls and throwing them all over the place. They also ran a few laps around our table for good measure.  Wasn't long before I got the "can't you control your children in public?" stares.  Ehh... the scones tasted great anyways.

Despite the less-than-perfect, real-life nature of our week, I still felt like there was value to our learning times together, and I do think they formed an attachment with the book.  Plus, the extra practice in loving each other despite grumpiness and showing forgiveness when it was needed was perhaps a more valuable learning experience than what I planned and prepared for. Here's to the theme of this blog: a NEW day! Looking forward to a new day... or rather a new week with our next book, Good Night Moon.  : )

xoxo,