Wrap-up: Harold and the Purple Crayon

I'm woefully behind on my blog, so this is late, but I'm recording it nonetheless.  We spent a week rowing Harold and the Purple Crayon from Five in a Row in late February.  I had pooh-poohed this unit when browsing FIAR because we had read Harold many times and I just didn't think it had much meat in it.  I wasn't sure it was worth spending a school week on.  But since we did own the book, it was too convenient to pass up, especially in February when we need some easy (planning-wise).  Turns out it was a very enjoyable row!

We spread out a long piece of white butcher paper, and tried all of the purple crayons in our big crayon bin.  We sorted them into groups and found that we had the following varieties.  Then I read the story and let them doodle, if they wanted, while I read.  Hazel drew quite a bit of the story!

You can see the moon in the window, the apple tree, the boat, the buildings, the mountain, and the hot air balloon, all from Harold's adventures. 

The next day we did this wonderful color wheel activity on primary and secondary colors.  They loved seeing their color wheels develop from dropping red, yellow, and blue.  

Our science day was on the phases of the moon.  We read a wonderful library book on the moon, and then did the obligatory Oreo moon phases activity, including this worksheet. That was very popular, as you can imagine.  Thankfully, Whole Foods carries a gluten and dairy free "oreo" so that we could include it in our study.  I also made this little model of how the earth orbits the sun, while the moon orbits the earth.  They all enjoyed playing with it, and it really helped everyone to understand how the moon looks different to us at different times of the month. 

The last day we made transportation mini books.  This was not new information, so much as an opportunity to do some cutting, pasting, and labeling.  We made these little one-page booklets, and then chose our favorite forms of transportation (whether mentioned in Harold or not) from these little flashcards I printed, cut them out, glued them in, and then labeled them.  They like making books.