Learning at Home with {Tops and Bottoms}

Spring is finally here!  We finished our Letter of the Week back in February and with life getting in the way, I didn't do much with Kai at home for more than two months!

Kai is now 4 years old.  He recognises all uppercase/lowercase letters and the associated sounds, numbers 1-10, shapes, colours, rote counts to 30 and able to make ABAB patterns.  Before he enters "big school" in August this year, I was thinking of exposing him to beginning letter sounds, rhyming words and recognising numbers 11-20.

With inspiration from 1+1+1=1, I decided to do a literature based unit study with Kai this week, using the book Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens.

Literacy

Vocabulary ~ Learning the names of vegetables and whether they grow above or under the ground 

Beginning sounds, letter writing (noticed how he drew a carrot on a plate!)

Math

Rolling the dice, making his vegetable garden emergent reader book (he was very proud that he wrote the word "carrot" on his own - of course I had to spell it out for him!)

Patterning (making ABAB patterns - tops/bottoms/tops/bottoms using vegetable clipart), sorting and matching vegetables to plant in the garden, veggie number puzzles 1-10 

Science

Growing a carrot top ~ Kai was super amazed that his carrot top has grown within 5 days!  He kept saying, "It's growing!" and got a gray marker on Day 5 to draw a line on the popsicle stick to show the growth of his carrot top.

Mandarin

Kai has been learning how to recognise the Chinese numbers 1-10 for weeks!  He can recognise all the characters now except for the number 9.

Craft

I wanted to make a craft with Kai that can help him recall the story.  So I came up with a craft showing Bear sleeping in his house and the crops that Hare grew in Bear's field -- carrots (made slits on the paper to put the carrot in to show that it was growing under the ground), lettuce (made of crumpled crepe paper) and corn.

Just for Fun

And just for fun, Kai helped me make vegetable salad for his dad's dinner.  He enjoyed breaking the lettuce leaves into pieces, pouring the veggies into the bowl, plucking off cherry tomatoes from the vines, and finally pouring sesame dressing onto the salad.

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