My Blue Boat

The second book we "rowed" from our Before Five in a Row curriculum was My Blue Boat by Chris L. Demarest.  From the inside cover, the book is described as:

"My Blue Boat sails across the bathtub...into the harbor...between the whales...under the sun and stars...
A simple tale and light-filled watercolors together create the voyage of every child's dreams."

 While I read the story the first time, the girls colored these door hangers.

Then, I re-read the story, stopping at each of the manual's suggested vocabulary words.  I showed Arin the pictures and I asked her if she knew what each of the words meant.  This was her response:

~ channel: something that you watch on tv
~ harbor: a tugboat
~ fleet: a bunch of boats
~ swells: waves
~ whales: big animal like a dolphin
~ dolphins: animals like fish
~ steer: turn the boat and keep it straight like when you steer a car
~ drift: sail
~ beacon: lighthouse

Yes, I did discuss the words with her, so hopefully she knows the right answers to all of them now ;)

Ella learned the song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"

In the story, the boat "catches the wind".  We made pinwheels to demonstrate how wind has the power to move objects.

Also in the story, the boat sailed across the ocean.  The girls and I put together their world map floor puzzle and Arin learned the names and locations of the oceans. 

Oceans are salty, so we did a salt water experiment.  We dropped an egg into a glass of plain water and it sank.  Then, we dropped an egg into a glass of salt water and it floated.  The reason for this?  Salt water is more dense.  We talked about it being easier for us to float in the ocean than in a lake.

Boats float (we hope), so we did the classic float vs. sink activity.  Instead of doing the actual experiment (we've done it before), Arin played the file folder game.

The blue boat in the story sails under the moon, while the boat's captain looks for stars.  I made a blue star matching game for the girls.  I bought the wooden star shapes from Michael's.  I painted the backside of each with three coats of blue paint. The frontside is made with scrapbook paper and Mod Podge.  My girls always love memory type games, so this was a hit.

Of course, we had to make boats.  We bought these model sail boats at Michael's.  The girls painted them and their daddy assembled them.

We took them out to the kiddie pool for the girls to float them.  Unfortunately, Arin's did not float.  It tipped on its side.

While they were floating their boats, Arin made up this story.

Once upon a time there was a blue boat.  Then there was this monster in front of the boat, and he was chomping his teeth.  Then the monster was chasing the boat and it was going really fast.  Then, the monster got in the way and the boat turned.  And the boat was going around and around until it was chasing the monster.  The End.
I wrote out the story of My Blue Boat on sentence strips, which Arin was able to senquence in order.

Ella worked with the letter B and she learned its sound.  I wrote the letters A, B, C all over a dry erase board.  Ella found and circled the letter B.

Then, she colored in the letter B.

Arin learned how to draw a very simple sailboat. 

The story is illustrated with watercolors, so we turned Arin's boat into a watercolor resist lesson.

We later used Arin's boat picture as her illustration to go with her narration of the story, which was almost verbatum of the book.

It was another fun week :) 

Linked to: T.O.B.Y.