Farm Week: Introduction

This summer I decided to plan some topic-specific activities to do with my boys. We are not planning on taking a big family vacation, but there are a few places within driving distance that I thought would be fun to visit. So........I decided to plan some "field trips" and to spend the week before the trip doing related activities. Even better, I purchased a special book to go with each week's theme. This week we are going to visit a farm on Friday. So we'll be doing some farm activities all week. I will post about our activities each day. My book for this week is All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan & Michael Wimmer. It is truly one of the most beautiful books with the most beautiful illustrations that I think I've ever seen. Sometime tomorrow morning (Monday) the boys and I will sit down and I'll read it to them. We may then read it several times throughout the week. Homeschoolshare has a unit study for this book. It has some great ideas, but I felt they were a little advanced for what I wanted to do.







I've set up the book on top of our organizer in the office. I've also placed a "workbox" for each boy on top. (I would use the workbox system if I ever end up homeschooling......it is a great system. You can read more about it at the link I've provided or by Googling it. Many homsechool moms have written about it on their blogs.) I have the workboxes labeled with the boys' names, but didn't put the labels on until after the photo. I am planning to place each boy's activities in their tub so they can find them in the morning. We will be making a trip to our local library on Monday morning to check out some non-fiction books about farms to supplement our learning this week.







The next photo shows the tub for my youngest son. He just turned 4. He has 2 papers in his tub for Monday; both are from Enchanted Learning. If he doesn't want to do them, that's fine. However, he usually likes to do paper-pencil activities, so I think he'll be excited. I'll post more tomorrow about how he responded to it.




My oldest son has an easy reader from Reading A-Z. He is a very fluent reader, but I printed this one in French (I LOVE that you can do that!) since he is learning French at his Montessori school. (My younger son will "read" the same book in English.) His papers for Monday include a paper to alphabetize farm animals and one to label the animals in French (both from Enchanted Learning) and a farm animal crossword puzzle from KidsDomain.

We will also be doing some "farm cooking" activities this week. I will post each day about what we're doing. It should be fun.