Sunday, August 26, 2012

Rowing: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel


This week we rowed Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel



I knew from the very beginning Ethan would love this book.  He is, of course, a five year old boy.  He loves all things dirty, digging and dinosaur-like! 
Here is an overview of how we rowed this awesome book.

Our first science lesson of the week was learning about the stages of matter.  He loved the illistration of looking at ice cubes (solid), melting them into water (liquid), then boiling them to create steam (gas).  He really understood this lesson and took it with him all week.  He would call out at random objects and then state if they were solid, liquid or gas.  I’m beginning to see how much this boy loves science!
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You can’t really see it, but he is observing steam in this picture…
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We followed the FIAR art lessons this week, which included drawing trees.  I had just purchased some oil pastels, so he was introduced to them during his “tree drawing” lesson on perspective.

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His sensory activity this week has been using construction vehicles in his bean box (as we call it).  He can do this for hours.  He also still asked to play in the cloud dough we made last week.

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Another first for this week was modeling clay.  He has played with play-doh since he was much younger, but the texture of modeling clay is different and requires a little more strength to mold and shape.  He played with modeling clay for almost two hours one afternoon after we finished lessons.
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We made a Mike Mulligan cake and dug the cellar “nice and square”.  He absolutely loved this cake!

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We are blessed to have a neighbor just down the road who is also homeschooling.  He and Ethan are a little over a year apart in age, but they love playing together, so we are going to try to get together one morning a week and let the boys play and read to each other.  The weather was nice, so we walked to his house on this day.
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They have a blast learning from each other.  We are letting them take turns picking the theme of the activities and which book they would like to read.

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In addition to the FIAR activities, we did a few more and one of Ethan’s favorites was making this digger.  He also LOVED watching the Mike Mulligan video on YouTube.  It is broken up into three parts, so be sure to find all three if you plan on watching it.  You can find the links on my Mike Mulligan pinterest board here.
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*This, of course, is not a complete and total list of all Ethan competed and worked on, but it is what I managed to get photographed and on this blog.  In addition to these activities, he did the math word problems from Homeschool Share, the FIAR suggested lessons and Bible Study. 

We got the cool printable for the movable parts digger HERE (scroll down to #5).

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