Five in a Row with the Storybook, Lentil

Truth be told, I don't have the best memory; however, I can remember some of the books I used to read growing up like The Babysitter's Club series, Amelia Bedelia, Imogene's Antlers, Bernstein Bears, R.L. Stine books, etc... but NONE of the Five In A Row titles ring a bell!

And this week's row was no different.

We read "Lentil" by Robert McCloskey. It's a cute story that includes a harmonica, patriotism, and lemons! Random, I know!

Geography:

Lentil lives in a small town of Alto, Ohio. We colored a Ohio fact sheet and placed our story disk on our U.S. map. In the story, the town of Alto gets ready to welcome home a very important citizen, Colonel Carter, by decorating the streets with American flags so we talked about Patriotism and the importance of our county. My son had learned the Pledge of Allegiance this past July, but we recited it again several times over the week. So gosh darn cute to hear him try to say, "indivisible."

Lentil Five in a Row Activities

Language Arts:
Talked about the Elements of a Story and applied them to "Lentil." This was a bit over T's head : ) But nonetheless, I tried ; )

Math:
Used a banana and our Melissa and Doug Pizza Puzzle to introduce the concept of fractions: whole vs. half vs. quarters. Let me just add, I am soooooooooooo nervous to dig deeper into this subject! Math was not my thing! But I think the concept was well received-- especially since he got to eat the banana afterwards. Hmm... I think I am on to something... food = increased willigness to learning!

Art:
We talked about the medium used for the illustrations. I didn't have any charcoal for him to use, so I had him draw a picture with a pencil. He drew a monster truck with fire around it! We also whittled soap, just like Old Sneep-- made quite a mess too!

Science:
We talked about how we use our tongue to taste things; it's one of our five senses! We learned the four different flavors our tongue can taste and where they are located on our tongue: salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. We did an experiment to show how the parts of our tongue taste things differently. First I had my son guess the flavor of our food samples: sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, chips, and lemons. He guessed three of them correctly. Initially he thought the chips would be sweet, but they ended up tasting salty.

My favorite memory of this row was when T took his harmonica and played wherever he went, just like Lentil; he even serenaded our cashier at the grocery store! And Finally, in honor of "Lentil", we made lemon cupcakes with homemade vanilla icing! Yum!