Wrap Up: The Story of Ferdinand

We recently finished an enjoyable "row" on The Story of Ferdinand.  This is a story I remember from childhood and was excited to do with the kids.  Here is how it went, by subject:

a little bull craft we made (printable from crayola.com)

Social Studies:
We found Spain on our map and were thrilled to find there was a tree on the map! A cork tree, perhaps?  We colored the map of Spain and looked at some library books about the country.  We talked about bullfighting as a sport, and then watched the Bugs Bunny episode where he fights a bull.  "What a gulli-bull! What a nin-cow-poop!" Good times!

We also tried our hand at learning a few Spanish words that were associated with the book.  We learned el toro (bull), la madre (mother), la flor (flower), and el arbol (tree).  I think after a week of practicing, Charlie is the only one who actually knows them, but we tried.  They did very much enjoy the beginning Spanish vocab book we got from the library, though.  It was requested several days at story time. 

our flashcard for el toro got lost at some point.  Fine by me, or you'd just make fun of how bad my drawing of a bull was!  David kept saying, "el toro--the reindeer!" It did look like a reindeer. 

Applied Math:
We measured in feet and inches.  I made up a little worksheet for each of them with a few objects that they could go measure.  They would tell me if it made more sense to measure it in feet or inches, run off to do so, and then come back and write in the answer.

measuring a popsicle stick

measuring the length of the rats' cage

Language Arts:
We did our first parts of speech/grammar lesson this week.  I read them a library book about nouns, and they had no trouble figuring out what sorts of words qualified.  Then we made three columns on our big white board for people, places, and things, and read through the first half dozen or so pages of Ferdinand, putting the nouns in the proper columns.  I was surprised at how much of this they grasped! Maybe they'll be ready for formal grammar sooner than I expected.

Art:
This was everyone's favorite day with this row.  We did some drama!  I pulled one child at a time (or two, of the scene called for it) into the hall and whispered what they were to act out, and then the child(ren) left would watch the performance and guess what part of the story they had seen.  This game was repeated many, many times over the next few days. They've also been acting out other picture books recently, with Caps for Sale being the most frequent production.

Jono and Charlie, as the other bulls who lived with Ferdinand who fought and butted their heads all the time.

Hazel, as one of "men with funny hats" who jumped for joy when they found Ferdinand, who appeared to be the fiercest bull of all. 

Jono, as the very angry matador, when Ferdinand didn't fight in the bullfight

In non-FIAR news, we added a new extra curricular last week.  We started swim school!  We'll be swimming on Thursday afternoons through April and May and will likely add Tuesday along with that this summer when our Tuesday music class is on break.

Jono's class

Hazel and Charlie's class

Charlie, blowing bubbles and kicking his feet at the same time, right after he told his teacher there was no way he could do that.  He may learn ot swim after all! 

And one more cute moment that comes with homeschooling 4yos, to finish with.  Spiderman joined us for math one day.  I cracked up when Charlie bent him at the waist so that he could see his math.  You'll also notice that Charlie is in a firefighter costume.  It's the rare day that finds Charlie in regular clothes.  Where's the fun in that?!

Thanks for reading.  Our next row is Make Way for Duckings.  I love me some Robert McCloskey!