We finished March with The Little Rabbit by Judy Dunn, a level one Step into Reading. I loved this book because the words and sentences were so simple, Micah began ‘reading’ along with me. He was really just reciting what he memorized, but he pointed to pictures as he ‘read’ and started making connections. We followed Sarah as she told everyone about her new rabbit, Buttercup. This was also the first photograph book we’ve read so far, so it was fun to compare the illustrations from The Little Rabbit to other rabbit books we’ve read so far, like The Runaway Bunny.
The Little Rabbit came at a perfect time, too! The same week we started reading, we found a nest of bunnies right in our backyard! In the story, Buttercup had cute little babies. So, it was wonderful to see how wild rabbits build nests and care for their young. And with social distancing and sheltering in place orders, it was great to have such a blessing right in our very own backyard!
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 fifth question in the Catechism for Young Children,
“Why ought you to glorify God? Because he made me and takes care of me.”
And for Micah’s Bible memory verse, we continued with 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 both weeks, in place of the Jesus Storybook Bible, we read Proverbs 12:10a, “Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast,” and talked about how we should care for and be kind to our animals.
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 rabbits or baby animals.
Alphabet, Numbers, Shapes
We would normally do a specific letter here, but at this point, Micah has an excellent grasp on his letters. Instead we did a mini loop (explanation below) that included the alphabet, numbers and shapes.
If we were doing the alphabet that day, we worked through the alphabet sounds or match letters. I had him tell me the sounds of each letter and discover things that begin with each sound. If it was a numbers day, Micah either counted objects, matched numbers or identified numbers. Right now, we stick to 1 to 20 and tens up to 100. And for shape days, Micah would identify shape cards, draw shapes or learn about their sides and points.
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 Little Rabbit, we had two subject areas: Art and Science. We were able to do many, many lessons of each because we only focused on two areas. But because of the unfolding coronavirus pandemic, we didn’t strictly stick to our original plan. We just did what we could, when we could considering social distancing, shelter in place orders, quarantine, and weather. Below is our list of subjects with activities, in no particular order. There’s a ton of ways to study The Little Rabbit, these are just things we had fun with!
Art
The illustrations in The Little Rabbit are photographs, which is different from the other illustrations we studied. So, for two of our art lessons, we explored this concept. For one lesson we observed the photographs and other books that use photographs for their illustrations. I just asked Micah questions about the differences and his preference. Then, we dug through our photographs and picked out some of our favorites to make a story of our own. A fun idea would be to print them out and type or write a story, then glue pictures to some card stock to make your own story. We just collected pictures on my phone and Micah narrated a story for us, but next time I will have photographs prepared to make our own book!
For another illustration study we revisited The Runaway Bunny. Runaway Bunny’s illustrations are a mixture of colorless sketches followed by beautiful vibrant and bold colored pictures. In both stories, the bunny is white and fluffy, but either drawn or photographed. I found a few other rabbit stories to view different ways someone can capture a rabbit on paper, like Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. The great thing about Peter Rabbit is that it was retold in a live-action film. So, we were able to reread Peter Rabbit from our Runaway Bunny study, watch an animation video retelling of in, and watch a live-action version of it. This was a fun way to discover various ways we could capture a rabbit to tell its story.
For our third art lesson, we practiced color awareness. This was simple, but fun! I grabbed a box of crayons and spilled them out in from of Micah. Then, as we read the story, I pointed out different objects or characters and asked Micah to find the crayons of the colors he sees. For the bunny, he was able to quickly grab the white crayon, but I had to prompt him to find the colors in the rabbit’s ears, nose, eyes, and mouth. Eventually, he even saw colors I didn’t necessarily see at first!
For the last art lesson, we viewed the rabbit from all angles. We focused on different angles in pictures, but I would have rather used a real rabbit or stuffed animal rabbit that resembled a real one. Because of our quarantine, we couldn’t leave the house so we used what we had. It’s a good thing there are so many wildlife videos on YouTube! As Micah gets older, we could do more with this concept, but right now I just wanted to introduce him to angles.
Science
For our first lesson, we explored the concept of camouflage. We talked about predators and how other animals have different colorings and features as a means of protection from predators. In the story, there’s a page with a picture of a brownish wild rabbit, so we talked about why this rabbit, and the ones in our backyard, looked this way. Then, we explored all kinds of animals and their camouflaging.
For another study, we observed the rabbit in detail. This study actually pairs nicely with the art lesson on angles. We observed that rabbits’ eyes are on the sides of their heads, to see nearly 360 degrees. We observed their ears, how they stick up and move toward sound. We observed their big teeth for biting food or removing fur for nests. And we observed their big legs for running and jumping. Again, YouTube came in handy for this lesson!
Then, we talked all about baby animals! This lesson was so fun because we had our own nest of bunnies in the backyard, so we had the privilege of watching how mommy rabbits care for their babies in real life! We, luckily, had a few good books on baby animals which we read and a baby animal photograph book to view. We just had fun with this lesson and talked about baby animals, their names and how animal parents care for their young.
Lastly, for the sake of having the same number of lessons in each study, we talked about something not so sciency- problem-solving. In the story, buttercup had babies who grew and grew until they were too big for their home. So, Sarah had to find them good homes. How could you find good homes for the bunnies? We brainstormed serval ways we could find homes, how we could advertise them, and who we thought would be good pet owners to ask. This is a good lesson to have following your morning time with Proverbs 12:10a, about how we should care for and be kind to our animals.
But Most Important… Have Fun!
The Little Rabbit 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.
I love it! It is wonderful how nature was able to play a role with the book! I just love the art work!!!