Preschool at Home: Caps for Sale

With the arrival of cooler fall temperatures in Cental Iowa, increased exposure to GERMS has naturally begun as well.  The last two weeks, both of my sweeties had a miserable, drawn-out upper respiratory cold that resulted in sinus and ear infections.  Truly, this made me pause and realize that our family has enjoyed a long HEALTHY stretch for some time and I am so glad that we made it through the summer and most of the fall with virtually no sickness (at least none that I can remember) and this is indeed something to be thankful for.

We stretched out our next Before Five in a Row unit, Caps for Sale, over the course of two weeks and enjoyed reading, learning and playing in between coughing, sneezing, washing hands, doctor visits and slurping down medicine.  

I am so glad we had such a fun and spirited book to learn along with, as Lucy and Collin were often needing cheering up.

This is the classic story of a cap peddler who makes a poor decision to sleep on the job and ends up losing his wares to a treeful of monkeys!  As the story goes, the peddler unsuccessfully tries to get his hats back by making angry demands of the monkeys and ends up accidentally getting them back when they mimic his frustrated act of throwing his own hat to the ground and storming off.  I remember this book capturing my attention as a young child in elementary school and it did the same for my two little "monkeys". We definitely enjoyed multiple readings and it was especially fun to "act" out the story together.

We enjoyed lap book activities from Homeschool Share as well as the trusty printable pack from Homeschool Creations. Notice that the majority of our school times in this unit were spent in our PJs and with rumpled hair (mommy was no exception!).  Yep, that's how we roll on sick days. : )

This little activity from Homeschool Creations was a great exercise in fine motor/cutting skills as well as sequencing.  They did a great job with the task of ordering the caps just the way they were in the book. I expected them to need more of my help, but it turns out they didn't need my guidance at all with this little project.

Simple fun trying different hats on our monkey "paper doll".

We of course, had to try our hand at balancing a stack of hats on our heads, just like the peddler.  That's no easy task!  No wonder the guy was tired and had to take a nap. : )

Poor Lucy, you can tell by her face that she felt miserable that morning!

My hat-loving boy loved this activity the best.  No surprise there.

Despite being sick, these sweeties were happy and engaged with our Caps for Sale unit.  I think it definitely helped that we stretched it over two weeks and took a very relaxed approach.  This week they are back to their normal, healthy selves and we are currently taking another break from Before Five in a Row to enjoy a Thanksgiving-themed unit.  More on that to come. 

xoxo,