BFIAR: Goodnight moon (our first row!)

Last week we took some time to "row" the book goodnight moon. For those of you who don't know what that last sentence means - it is from the curriculumn Five in a Row (or in our case, Before Five in a Row which is for kids age 2-4) where you read a book over a week and do different activities with it.  I was going to share what we did through-out the week but no computer last week means you get it all in one gigantic picture filled post.

First off, just in case you missed my posts last week and think I did this because I am some sort of super-mom, let me burst that bubble right now. No, I did this because my child was driving me crazy. Seriously. We had such a bad week (or two or three, but who's counting) before I realized that it might have something to do with our messed up routine combined with my attempts to get stuff done before the baby comes. Then I wrote that weaning post and realized that she had also started sleeping through the night and weaned during this same crazy period and while I know she was ready for both, it still meant a whole lot less attention, snuggles and one-on-one time that I wasn't being intentional about replacing. And shockingly, she was being extremely whiny and clingy!

So I took a time out from everything else and we had a "Lucy week." I wasn't really going to do anything specific but she picked out Katy no-pocked from the library and I remembered it was a BFIAR book. The book ended up being okay but I didn't really like the activities I saw but the Goodnight Moon activities seemed like stuff she would like and I easily came up with additional things too.

I don't have the actual BFIAR curriculumn. If we do more in the future, I will buy the book because I don't think it is completely ethical to take all the ideas off the internet when I know they came from the book originally but in this case, I actually came up with a lot myself - not that it takes a genius to think of eating "mush" and talking about the moon when you read Goodnight moon. Okay, enough talk. Picture time.

Day 1 (Bible and Science):
We started off our first day by reading Goodnight Moon and eating cream of wheat "mush." Actually I ate mush, she tasted two bites while I took these pictures then decided she wanted cheerios :-)

And get used to this face. It's her new "smile" face. 

She had already memorized Genesis 1:1 - although every time she says ""earth and da heavens" instead of "heavens and the earth" but I figure that is close enough. If you ask her what it means she'll start naming things and won't stop..God made the moms and the dads and the flowers and the moon and the stars and the sun and the dogs and the cats and the mice and the horses... so I knew she understood the basics (as well as a 2 year old can).  When we were reviewing her verses, I realized it would be a good fit for this book so we read over the creation story from her Jesus Storybook bible again - focusing on the heavens and earth part and the day and night part.

I had a coloring sheet about the creation story but after a few minutes she turned it over and drew her own picture on the back. Coloring pages are so stifling to a two year old's creativity, you know  :-)

We also did a printable game where I put stars in the sky and she counted them and moved the right numeral into the box. The game went up to 15 but we just did numbers 1-10 (randomly). You could also do it where you give the number and they put the right number of stars in the sky which is what we do with her other counting printable but she can only count and add to about 6 before she has to stop and count each time to see if she has enough - then add one more and count again. She can do it but it ends up taking a looong time. 

We also checked out several other moon stories from the library to read: Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, Kitten's First Full Moon and Happy Birthday, Moon all of which were hits with Lucy.

Snack time was a special treat - moon cookies! (Otherwise known as oreos split in half with the filling removed to look like various phases of the moon) I've seen this on pinterest several times but wasn't really going to get into the phases concept except that Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me is about a moon that shrinks then gets bigger and I'm always up for a chocolate sandwhich cookie so I added it in. I didn't go over any specifics other than to say the big circle is called a full moon then it gets smaller and smaller until it disappears and then it comes back and gets bigger and bigger until it is a full moon again. Now Lucy loves to point out all the moons she sees in pictures books and tell me if it is a full moon or not.

Smile!

 Can I eat them now?

Not surprisingly, the "full moon" was the first to go. She shared the "new moon cookie" with me.

Day 2 (Math and Art): We read Goodnight Moon again and then put together a little printable book on the numbers of things we saw in the book (1 moon, 2 kittens, 3 bears, etc). Then  I explained what a pair was and she did a work sheet game where she sorted socks and mittens into singles and pairs and glued them. She had never used a glue stick before and really enjoyed watching it go from purple to clear and how it turned paper into "stickers". 

Then we hung up mittens I cut out from red felt. The "clothesline" is always there but normally holds her play silks. This was a bit tricky but if we worked together she could do the simple clothespins while I held the mittens or she would hold the mittens while I put the spring clothespins on. 

Then she decided she wanted to put her play silks on instead and I found since they drapped over the string, she could do that herself - which was nice to know since normally she brings them to me and I hang them up and now that can become her responsability.

She alsp sorted the mittens into pairs. That wasn't planned but she enjoyed it and kept making them one big pile then resorting them into pairs while counting one, two...one, two.

Then we colored a balloon sheet. I pre-colored the color names (since she can't read :-) and she colored the balloon to match. The last page asks "What color was the balloon?" and she told me red but was upset because they didn't have a purple balloon to color so instead of telling her to color it red like I think she was supposed to, I let her color it purple and  just circle the red balloon - I'm all about compromise :-)

After going over the colors, we went on a color hunt. This is something we had done before and Lucy loves it but I always forget about. She picks one of her color tables (but you could use anything, crayons, pieces of construction paper, etc) and goes from room to room finding all the blue items (if it's a blue tablet), then we repeat. We normally do 3-4 colors before she loses steam. And I can now tell you where every single purple item in our house is because we don't have many and I've had to strategically plant a purple book, item of clothing, etc so she doensn't get upset if we do purple :-)

We also painted the moon. I'd seen thick paint made with white tempera paint and flour but I didn't have white tempera paint so I mixed flour, white glue and shaving cream and it worked well. I traced a small plate to make a circle and she filled it in and added stars. Then she wanted to do a daytime sky (since God created day and night, mommy) so we did some clouds on a blue page. The paint dried very foamy and textured and was pretty cool.

Day 3 (Literature) : Our last day was pretty low key. We read through Goodnight Moon yet again and then did a few paper activities. I'm not really a fan of these types of activities for such a little tot but Lucy loved them. Here she is picking out the items as we read the book and said goodnight to them. 

We read Hey Diddle Diddle from our Mother Goose book (to go with the cow jumping over the moon picture) and then we sorted items into daddy bear, mama bear and baby bear sized groups (to go with the three bears picture - she already knew the story of Goldilocks or I would have read it prior to that activity).

We also did a few activities with the letter M - luckily m is one of the fourletter/letter sounds she knows (we are following Tim Seldin's letter order but she only has her first four sandpaper letters out). We made a little M book and colored the smallest and circled the largest m item (moon, monkey, etc). That was actually Lucy's favorite although I'm not quite sure why.

The last thing we did was a narration sheet. Lucy's never done narration before but she loves to tell stories so I think she could do it easily for almost any other story but Goodnight Moon is probably the worst book to start with - there's no plot! But she did pretty well considering. I read the questions from the sheet and here are her answers

Mommy: What happened in the story?
Lucy: Big red balloon and bunnies and bears and the cow then goodnight.

Mommy: What was your favorite part of the book?
Lucy: The cow jumping over the moon.

Since that was a kinda lame way to end, I asked her to draw a picture of Goodnight Moon. Here is what she came up with - she asked me to label the items, she's a big fan of labeling these days.

On a funny toddler drama note, she told me what to write but then got really mad when I wrote "green wall" because it was "two times." I tried to explain that green wall was two words but everytime she told me what to write after that, she would remind me to only write it "just one time, mommy!"

I think my favorite item is the comb. She drew the short lines then tried to connect them with the long line. And if you just scoot the long line up a bit, it really would look like a comb. 

And after drawing the stars, she told me she wanted to draw the air but then took a minute to stare at the paper before giving me a crayon and telling me to draw the air. I told her air was difficult to draw and that we should try something else but she caught me in my own trap. If she tells me she can't do something or its too tricky, I normally ask her to "just try" so of course, when I said I couldn't draw air she said "but you'll try mommy?" I'd like to say that I was a great example to her and actually tried but I can not tell a lie - I just suggested we eat a few more moon cookies to distract her. 

And that was our first row. I hadn't heard great things about BFIAR (although I have about FIAR) and it often times seems to depend heavily upon printables - or at least that is the impression I get from blogs - so I didn't think it would be a good fit for us but we really had a good time exploring Goodnight Moon. If I wasn't about to have a newborn, I think I would probably buy the book and continue on. Perhaps in the spring we will.

*I used ideas for a couple blog posts as well as printables from two different sources, all of which I carefully kept track of so I could share with you - on the other computer. So sadly, you get nothing. But it really only took me an hour or two internet searching to find everything so you shouldn't have trouble finding it either.