Learning with Five In A Row: Miss Rumphius Literature Unit

"One day, I too will live by the sea... I too, will travel to faraway places..." said Alice. "That is wonderful, Alice, but there is a third thing you must do...."

"You must make the world more beautiful"

Love!

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Miss Rumphius is such a lovely story in so many ways! It is a great reminder that we aren't just to be... but we must also do something to give back; we must leave a legacy.

It was also rich in learning activities! One of the things I have loved about our literature based Five In A Row studies have been that in all our activities, the book becomes part of us. It makes a beautiful story so much richer because you are applying things from the story by learning, experimenting, reading more-- the story comes to life and you start digging deeper in other stories as well.

Social Studies:

Found Maine on our US map & labeled 4 Oceans

Completing Landform Puzzles from our Beginning Geography workbook; we've gotten TONS of use out of this workbook lately.

Language Arts:

"Synonym" Roll match: One of the vocabulary words was "Sea," which was a synonym for ocean, so we did this fun activity with other words from the story. Don't mind my gross baking pan : ) The cinnamon bun template came from Mrs. Bi-Polar Pirate

Later in the week I made a Tic Tac Toe vocabulary board for T. The goal was to listen for the words in the story to make four in a row, but he ended up covering the whole board : )

Miss Rumphius worked in a library, which had your old school CARD CATALOUG system!! That is dated! Makes me feel a bit old! After reading, "Check It Out" by Gail Gibbons, I made a scavenger hunt T took to the library to test out his skills!

Math:

The math lesson was about a bushel & peck, and focused on the broader subject of Volume/ Capacity; this idea came from Frugal Fun for Boys. We got out the beans and several containers and T compared two containers at a time to see which one held more.

He LOVED this!! What is it about my children and playing with beans? You definitely will not see them eating beans!

Art:

Lupine Watercolor Art

Science:

Miss Rumphius planted Lupines, and we planted Sunflower seeds! I don't have a better picture, but you can see the seeds are starting to sprout here! We planted five and three of them have roots, stems, and leaves! We used a DVD case to "grow" these in so we could see the process, now we just need to transport them outside somewhere!

UPDATE: Check out my Wordless Wednesday {Attack of the Giant Sunflowers} to see them now!

Celery/ Food Coloring Experiment:

After a couple of hours, the leafy part of the celery were colored! I believe blue was the fastest!

Cutting the celery to see the veins "drinking" the colored water

Flowers Express Lapbook from A Journey Through Learning; can't beat a lapbook for $1!!

It covered:

Parts of a Flower
Types of Flower Buds
Parts of a Plant
Things Plants Need
also included several flower coloring pages!

On the back of the Lapbook, I attatched a seed/ plant matching activity from Homeschool Share. Our Usborne Science book had some great interactive explanations on plants, too!