We started March off with The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom. If I’m being completely honest, I chose this book for March because it’s about green… And, well, you know… St. Patrick’s Day and all. Even so, it ended up being the perfect book for us. It’s all about a girl and her mother just going about their day doing errands. Then, plot twist, the little girl loses her beloved green pocketbook containing her whole morning! What does she do when she realizes its missing? How does she feel? How does she respond when the kindness of a stranger prompts the return of her pocketbook? Well, that’s the best part of the book- exploring the answers with your child!
This is a story that can be enjoyed anytime of the year. However, I think it’s best experienced if you and your little one can do errands together, even visit some of the same places. It will really bring the story to life!
Just a Recap…
I kept the structure similar to what I have been doing for these last few books, it really seems to work for us. We always begin our morning with our morning basket, a study time I call Morning Time. Essentially, I stage all of our morning time study stuff for the day or week in a basket which keeps me organized and looks super cute! Our Morning Time consists of reciting the catechism and Bible memory verses, introducing a new catechism question and memory verse with every new book, reading poems and verses from at least two different books, and reading from the Jesus Storybook Bible or Bible. I break up the readings with activities and songs. I’ll either do an alphabet, number or shape activity, and I like to introduce various styles of music, including Hymns. Additionally, I throw in some activities baby Skye can do, too! I do our Morning Time while we are all gathered around the table for breakfast and try to keep it short.
After Morning Time, we do our chores and get ready for the day. Then, Micah and Skye play for a little bit. I normally don’t have a set time, but sometime before lunch we start our daily lesson, beginning with the book we are studying. We only do school lessons three or four days a week, though we begin every weekday morning with Morning Time. The other days we’ll normally go to a museum or park if we don’t have anything else going on. I try to reserve time for free learning in a fun environment!
For the daily lesson, I continue with the Before Five in a Row curriculum and used the Homeschool Share lapbook for supplementary activities. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I detail the plan for our first year of homeschooling in Our School Year. But just to recap, we read a new story- which quickly becomes a favorite- every two weeks and use the Before Five in a Row guide to structure our lessons. We also supplement it with a lap book mentioned above, found here, and use other stories and nonfiction books, craft ideas, activities, etc. that enhance each lesson. I absolutely LOVE the Before Five in a Row curriculum and explain more about it and our homeschool style here!
That’s it in a nutshell, at least until I refine it again, and again… and again. Anyway…
Let’s Dig into Our Study!
Daily Morning Time
Bible Study
I introduced the fourth question in the Catechism for Young Children,
“How can you glorify God? By loving Him and doing what He commands.”
And for Micah’s Bible memory verse John 1:1,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,”
For our Bible reading time, we continued with the Jesus Storybook Bible each day. One day during the first week, in place of the Jesus Storybook Bible, we read Luke 15:8-10, the Parable of the Lost Coin, to go alone with the lesson of the day. Another day we read Galatians 5:22-23 to discuss the kindness shown by the person who returned the little girl’s pocketbook. One day during the second week we read Luke 10, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, to talk about showing kindness toward others. And another day we read Acts 9:36 to discuss Dorcas, who was “full of good works and acts of charity.” In conjunction with these verses, we discussed and practiced using manners; like how to behave in public, being grateful and showing gratitude, saying please and thank you, and so on.
Poetry and Rhymes
We continued working through Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, for Skye really, and A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Occasionally, I’d throw in some playtime rhymes we could tell with our hands, and other rhyming books we chose from the library about green things.
Alphabet
We studied the letter “L” for lollipop, one of the little girl’s treasures. We studied “L” like the rest of the letters we’ve been learning. We say the letter and it’s sound, practice the capital and lower-case versions of it, and look and listen for things that start with our study letter throughout the day. I also continued with the ABC laundry activity found in the Homeschool Share lapbook, found here. We don’t do the ABC laundry every day, but it’s fun to do every once in a while.
Looping
In addition to these daily studies, we looped a few subjects. Looping just means doing one or two activities of a subject on your list a day, going down the list of subjects, and repeating the list until the week is over. So, if you have a list of four subjects, you can have several activities for each subject. And as you repeat the subject, you just choose different activities.
For The Big Green Pocketbook, we had four subject areas: Literature, Art, Science and Math. We addressed each subject area twice, though for the most part our second lesson just reaffirmed the first. Below is our list of subjects with activities, in no particular order. There’s a ton of ways to study The Big Green Pocketbook, these are just things we had fun with!
Literature
I categorized our lessons as Literature, though you may have a different perspective- it can be difficult to figure out how to classify our activities sometimes! Essentially, for both lessons, I planed an outing of errands. These weren’t errands I necessarily had to do, though some were. I tried to plan a few ‘errands’ for Micah to experience new places, like the one’s in the story. Before each outing, we discussed where we were going and learned about the businesses we were visiting. I reaffirmed how we should behave in public and how we can talk to the people who work in these places. Then, I had Micah grab his backpack, and Skye her purse, and figure out what he should wear considering the weather- a refresher from Jesse Bear!
During our outing, Micah collected things that reminded him of each place. Then, when we got back home I had him tell Dad and me all about his day using his collected objects as reminders. That’s where the literature part comes in! We did this once each week. From each outing Micah learned about different businesses, how to interact with people and behave in public, and narration. Also, there’s a fun activity from the corresponding lapbook for those who love a simple project!
Art
For our art lessons, we observed certain illustrations within the story for art discussion, then experimented with colors for a hands-on portion.
For the first lesson, we discussed the illustration of the little girl sitting on the floor after she discovered that her pocketbook was lost. We talked about what emotions she might feel- disappointment, grief, anger, sadness, etc. We also talked about how she could react or deal with her feelings and the situation. I love when we can discuss emotions and feelings, but I really loved the problem-solving element within this scenario. We talked about all the things she could do, including praying. This really helped me show Micah show to incorporate prayer in all aspects of his little life.
For the second lesson, we observed the cover page. The trees on this page are bent from the wind, rather than straight up like we are used to. So, we observed the effects of wind outside and in other books. You can do this with so many elements, like sunshine! There are shadows through the illustrations which allowed us to have fun with our own shadows at different points during the day!
For both studies, we followed our lesson with free art time were Micah experimented with making colors on a nonspecific project- anything will work. He experimented with making green and different shades of green, then quickly moved on to creating different colors using the primary colors we learned about in The Runaway Bunny study.
Science
Our science lessons were simple for The Big Green Pocketbook, which is great because we’ve been very science centric for the last two studies. For the first lesson, I had Micah find the animals on each page and if one piqued his interest, we studied it.
While at the dry cleaners, the little girl gets a small calendar with a koala on it. So, for our second lesson, we studied koalas and marsupials. As it turns out, marsupial is a hilariously entertaining word for toddlers- don’t be surprised if its all your little one wants to say for a bit!
Math
For both lessons we discussed shapes again, but this time we focused on the octagon. I thought this was going to be difficult because Micah already has trouble differentiating pentagons from hexagons, but it really wasn’t. He still doesn’t always get the pentagon or hexagon correct, but he always knows his octagon. Why, you ask? Stop signs. Stop signs are why. I got lucky and did our first shape lesson before our first outing, so Micah was prepped and excited to find every octagon stop sign along the way!
During our Math day, usually during snack time, Micah also practiced counting. The lapbook has a cute ice cream counting activity; however, we needed something a little more. Marshmallows and M&Ms usually do the trick! I wish I could say Micah just LOVED counting carrots or peas, but half the fun is eating the counters! And carrots and peas don’t seem to motivate a toddler like marshmallows and M&Ms.
But Most Important… Have Fun!
The Big Green Pocketbook is yet another treasured book we have had the opportunity to add to our collection. It never ceases to amaze me how much we can get out of our stories! Seriously, I know I keep talking about it, but the Before Five in a Row curriculum is amazing! It’s so perfect for our pre-preschool studies! I just want to mention, though, that we don’t spend much time at all ‘studying.’ I work with Micah maybe 30 minutes to an hour, and not every day, mostly we are talking, playing, doing crafts or activities, or going places. It’s all about exposure and experience and getting his little mind thinking! Our goal is to have fun, and my goal is to make learning something fun that he wants to do and not just something he feels he must do to get good grades.
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