We finished April strong with The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Crockett Johnson. Through following the little boy’s carrot gardening journey, we learned the importance of working carefully and never giving up, even when those around you don’t believe in your dream. After all, good things come to those who wait and work with patience and diligence.
I had originally planned to read The Carrot Seed at the beginning of April, but this change didn’t affect our study negatively. Though we missed the optimal carrot planting window for the spring, we live in Washington where the spring planting season is typically later depending on the plant. So, we were still able to do quite a bit of gardening and seed exploration with this book, though not specifically carrots.
I would recommend reading this book early spring, about two weeks before your region’s final frost date, if you plan to garden carrots or other such vegetables alongside. You could even read The Carrot Seed late summer, about two months before your first frost, for a fall garden. But honestly, the overarching lesson learned in The Carrot Seed allows this book to be read at any time.
But before I go into our study…
Just to Recap
We always begin our morning with our morning basket, a study time I call Morning Time. Essentially, I stage all 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 recitation, poetry reading and devotional time with some music and fun learning activities mixed in. Specifically, Micah recites the catechism questions he knows and his Bible memory verses, I introduce a new catechism question and memory verse with every new book study we do. Then, in no particular order, I read poems and verses from at least two different books, and I read a chapter of his Jesus Storybook Bible or a Bible passage.
To break up the readings, we sing or listen to various styles of music and do a simple yet fun alphabet, numbers, or shapes activity. I do our Morning Time while we are all gathered around the table for breakfast, though you can do it anytime, really. But most importantly, I keep it short!
After a break, I normally don’t have a set time, we start our daily lesson beginning with the book we are studying. We only do an actual school lesson three or four days a week, though we begin every weekday morning with Morning Time. The other days are reserved for free learning in a fun environment!
For Micah’s lessons, I use the Before Five in a Row curriculum. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I detail the plan for our first year of homeschooling in Our School Year. With this curriculum, we read a new suggested story- which quickly becomes a favorite- every two weeks. I use the guide to structure our lessons, and supplement them with activities from Homeschool Share along with other stories and nonfiction books, craft ideas, and activities. 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 question seven in the Catechism for Young Children,
“In how many persons does this one God exist? In three persons.”
And for Micah’s Bible memory verse, he learned John 3:30,
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
For our devotional time, we read scripture, and followed the Jesus Storybook Bible. For the first week, we read Luke 8:4-15, The Parable of the Sower, with emphasis on verse 15 to go along with our gardening lesson in The Carrot Seed.
“As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”
For the second week, we read Luke 17:6 to go along with our seed lesson.
“He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Poetry and Rhymes
We continued working through A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. I focused on poems about seeds and gardens. Additionally, I mixed in some fun poems from our home collection. I’d alternate reading from Sally Go Round the Stars by Sarah Webb and Claire Ranson and Otters, Snail and Tadpole Tails by Eric Ode.
Alphabet, Numbers, Shapes
For the alphabet, numbers, and shapes activities, I randomly choose something from my go-to activities in order to break up the readings.
For the alphabet, I like to work through the alphabet sounds or match letters. I have Micah tell me the sounds of each letter, then we discover things that begin with each sound. Micah really likes to use Kane Miller’s Alfie and Bet’s ABC pop-up alphabet book and Usborne’s Get Ready for School Alphabet Sticker Book. I also like to work through his flash cards, he has a few different sets, and play the Alphabet Laundry game from our Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? study.
For numbers, I like to have Micah either count objects- marshmallows and M&Ms work great- or match and identify numbers. Right now, Micah is working on counting from 1 to 20 and tens up to 100. I use a counting board I quickly made one day, and he places M&Ms or marshmallows in each block as he counts- it helps him count in order from 1 to 20. Or I have him identify numbers with our Usborne flashcards.
And for shapes, I like to have Micah identify shape cards. Sometimes we draw the shapes or even learn about their sides and points. And other times we use blocks with the shape cards to talk about two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes, and their corresponding names.
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. For Example, 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 Carrot Seed, we had two subject areas: Science and Art. We were able to do three lessons of each subject throughout the two weeks because we only focused on these two areas, and only did one lesson a day. Below is our list of subjects with activities, in no particular order. There are many ways to study The Carrot Seed, these are just things we had fun with!
Science
For our first science lesson
We learned all about care giving. We talked about how important it is to care for our plants and animals even if we don’t feel like it. Even when we are tired and wish to do something else, or we just don’t want to. Even though we don’t always feel like working, we need to be consistent in our caring. To practice this concept, I focused on having him care for our vegetable plants. There’s a helpful cutout activity of carrots with different things plants need printed on them you can laminate and use for this lesson found in the Homeschool Share lapbook- here. Every day, Micah would gather his carrots and tell me what his plants needed, then cared for them.
We even decided to start a saltwater aquarium because Micah absolutely LOVES the ocean and we thought it would be a fun hobby for him. He helped cultivate the ocean habitat, which he named the Octopod, for our new fish Kwazii and Baby Shark, because what kid doesn’t love the Octonauts??? Then slowly integrated our fish while continuing to help cultivate an appropriate climate. Even baby sister helps feed the fish every morning!
For our second science lesson
We touched up on some more gardening while continuing to practice caregiving. We already have a ton of plants to care for, so for this lesson we just planted some easy sunflowers. The difference with this gardening lesson though, was that I let Micah do all the work. He has watched and helped me garden for many weeks, so I felt it was time he played around with a garden of his own making. Surprisingly, he did great! Sometimes I feel the need to hover over him to make sure he does things ‘perfectly,’ so this was a test of my willpower to relinquish control. So what if it doesn’t work! In reality, our children are very smart and learn quickly. And in fact, learn even more if they can hands-on do it themselves.
For our third science lesson
We explored different seeds. I had a few different types of seeds left over from all our gardening endeavors, so I poured them out and we talked about them. You can actually do a lot more here than I did. We have been gardening for a while, and I was right in the middle of potty-training baby sister, so we didn’t do as much as I would have liked. You could talk about the different seeds and what they produce, and how to care for that specific plant. You could categorize them by color and size, or practice counting.
A fun activity you could do is grow a bean in water. The great thing about this activity is that your child can actually see it sprout and grow because you don’t have to bury it. Another fun activity you could do is start a windowsill garden from carrot tops and such. Linnea’s Windowsill Garden by Christina Bark would be a great read along. And to finish it off, you could always do seed art! Seed art is fun because you can make anything you want. It would even be fun to make the plant of that seed from the seeds themselves! There’s just so much to do with this lesson.
Art
For our first art lesson
We talked about characters in stories. After we learned what characters were and talked all about the characters in his favorite stories and shows, we discussed the characters in The Carrot Seed. In The Carrot Seed, the little boy’s family kept saying that his carrot wouldn’t grow. Why did they say that? Maybe they didn’t what him to feel sad or disappointed if it didn’t grow? You can talk about how everyone must face disappointment at some point and how people respond to disappointment. What would the boy have done if his carrot didn’t come up after all? What would your child do? Cry? Give up? Or maybe plant another seed and try to figure out what else needs to be done for it to succeed.
You can also use this time to talk about having a vision for the future. The little boy’s parents didn’t seem to have one, but the boy did. Without vision, there is no hope. The boy believes in his work and is rewarded for all his hard work and patience.
For this lesson, we just had a conversation. We talked about what I mentioned above, and I had Micah try to figure things out for himself. I guided a few points to teach him important lessons in life, but for the most part I wanted him to think about things and work problems out for himself.
For our second art lesson
We observed the illustrations. The artist used pale orange and brown in every picture except for the end when the carrot popped up. In one page there is the green top, and then next he is wheeling away a reddish carrot. The Homeschool Share lapbook has a few color activities for your child to learn about things that are orange and brown. You can spend the rest of the day noticing orange and brown things.
We also talked about how the pictures are drawn flat like in coloring books. They are two-dimensional, without roundness and shading. For a hands-on activity, we found two-dimensional pictures and their corresponding three-dimensional objects. Shape cutouts and blocks work great for this. I also introduced the different names each shape takes on when they become three-dimensional.
The people in the story are also viewed from the side, which is called a profile. For a fun art project, you can draw profiles of each other, or trace a shadow profile.
For our third art lesson
We focused on the illustrations as well, but to introduce the concept of personality and humor in the story. We had fun noticing the little boy’s pupil look up at his nay-saying family and back down at his carrot garden.
Then, we talked about introducing humor in stories. At the end of The Carrot Seed, the ground ferociously rumbles as, suddenly, a huge carrot plant just pops up! Then, the boy wheels a disproportionately large carrot away with a smile on his face. Obviously, the ground doesn’t rumble then suddenly produce gigantic vegetables in a matter of seconds. This is a form of humor used to accentuate how gardeners labor over their gardens for weeks when seemingly overnight, their plants sprout and blossom. It seems like it takes FOREVER with no obvious sign that their hard work is paying off. So, when a plant does peek out of the dirt one day, it seems to us that its fully grown in a matter of days. We felt this with our sweet pepper plants!
From this lesson, we observed other forms of humor in our books and favorite shows. Then, we practiced it ourselves. Micah and I learned silly jokes, turned serious events into silly times, and tried to make baby sister feel better by making her laugh.
But Most Important… Have Fun!
The Carrot Seed 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 again though, we don’t spend much time at all ‘studying.’ I work with Micah maybe 30 minutes to an hour, three to four times a week. Mostly we are talking, playing, doing crafts or activities, and exploring fun places! It’s all about exposure and experience, and getting his little mind thinking! 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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