A Visitor For Bear

Anyone who knows our family or who has followed our blog knows that our family LOVES to read books.  Our kids have naturally learned how to read pretty early and from then on dive into book after book.  We love read aloud time and even our little ones have their very favorite books that we read over and over again.  We have used the programs Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row in the years past (check out our homeschool page to see some examples of what we have done with these programs) which are literary based programs that we adore.  I knew I could repeat them, and was sure we would all gain something new, but I also knew that there must be something out there to bring more great literature to our family.

After asking some veteran homeschool moms I learned about Memoria Press's literature guides and enrichment programs.  These programs take wonderful literature and dive deep into comprehension and also applying other correlating subjects (art, science, poetry, music, etc) to these great stories.  They have these programs for each grade level but I knew that I wanted to teach our children together.  Our 6 year old is doing mostly second grade material but should "technically" be in 1st grade this year and our 4 1/2 year old is doing mostly kindergarten - 1st grade material but should "technically" be in pre-school this year.  After guessing what might work best for our family I choose the 1st grade curriculum for us all to use together and after only our first week I am pretty confident it will be a fantastic fit for us for this year! 

This week we read the story A Visitor for Bear by Bonnie Becker.  Memoria Press's Enrichment Guide gives great questions to ask to really look at the book in depth starting before you even read the first page.  Looking at the Title, Author, Illustrator and figuring out what you can learn about the story before you even begin.  Once you read the story it helps go through new vocabulary and has a fantastic list of questions to ask for comprehension.

The next part of the Enrichment Guide takes a theme from the story and enhances it with different subjects (art, poetry, music, science, etc).  In the story A Visitor for Bear the Bear is trying to make himself breakfast with tea when the mouse continues to interrupt him.  By the end of the story the Bear and the Mouse become dear friends and end having a tea party together.  This week enhanced our learning by studying the history of tea by reading The Biography of Tea, learning table etiquette during a tea party and other times, famous artwork including tea time (Five O'clock Tea by Mary Cassatt), and poetry from A Children's Book of Poems, all while listening to and studying the famous Pie Jesu!  We also had our very own tea party, which was wonderful to practice our etiquette skills and for our oldest son to practice his kitchen skills of learning how to turn on the stove and prepare food and drink.

Plus, since we had never been introduced to the author Bonny Becker before and quickly fell in love with the characters we checked out some more of her books to read during evening story time!  We read A Bedtime for Bear, A Birthday for Bear and The Sniffles for Bear and loved them all!

 

We all had such a wonderful time and I know that the children would not even think that this was a part of "school time".  I am so excited for what is to come for next week and cannot wait to share it all with our children and all of you!