Caps for Sale (Before Five in a Row)

We've taken a couple of weeks off from Before Five in a Row and this is not the book that I had originally planned to row next, but it is a book that we owned, so we went for it.  This is also Arin's last week of school before our extended break - baby is due in just 11 days!!  Arin has been schooling since July and has completed 62 days!  She has done so well.  She asks for school every day and hasn't had one meltdown yet.  I am so proud of her :)

This was a light week of school as we transition into our break.  We rowed Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.  This is a story about a peddler, some monkeys and their monkey business.  We went to the zoo to see the primates.  I didn't get any good pictures, but we saw several varieties, at several ages and stages of life.

We read the book every day and we watched a video of the story on YouTube.

The girls worked on the Caps for Sale printables from Homeschool Creations. (unless otherwise noted, all of the following printables came from this printable pack)

Ella worked on the pre-writing skills printables.

Arin worked on the bible verse tracing worksheet as well as the vocabulary tracing/writing sheets.  Notice how my little monkey is wearing her cap during schooltime :)  That hat was actually made for me when I was a baby and both of my girls love wearing it now.

I took the monkey and the caps printables found in the pack and changed them up a bit.  I printed five of the monkeys, wrote numbers 1-5 on their bellies and then gave those along with several of the caps to Ella.  Ella stacked the correct number of hats on each monkey's head.

Arin worked on the beginning sounds worksheet.

Arin worked on a rhyming worksheet.

She also worked on a penny counting worksheet.

Arin learned the names and values of the different types of coins using this game (found in the above printable pack)

She also worked on measuring skills.

Because I printed extra monkey and cap pages, I had several strips of caps left over.  I let Ella cut these apart.  This was a very special activity for her because up until then, I had not let her use scissors.  Scissors scare me - there seems to always be hair or clothing getting cut instead of paper, but Ella was very anxious to be allowed to use scissors like her sister.

Arin sharpened monkey themed pencils with a monkey themed pencil sharpener.  The sharpener was a bit harder to use than I had expected.

Ella worked on a monkey counting game from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Just for fun, I gave the girls monkey themed notebooks, which they have been happily writing and drawing in all week :)

The peddler in the story has great posture and is able to carry a large stack of hats on his head without dropping them.  The girls practiced improving their posture by balancing a book on their heads while walking.

We gave the girls a Barrel of Monkeys game.  They enjoyed this game, even though it was more challenging than they expected it to be.

 There were no bananas mentioned in the story, but when I think of monkeys, I always think of bananas too.  I gave the girls each half of a banana and asked them how many sections do bananas have.  First, Arin thought they had one section.  Then, she broke the banana in half and decided that it had two sections.  I reminded her that she was only holding half of the banana, so if she broke her half in halves and Ella broke her half in half, that was already four sections.  They decided that they had no idea how many sections a banana had.

I broke the banana apart (this is easiest to do with half a banana at a time) and showed the girls that every banana has three equal sections.

We ended this book with a sweet treat - banana milk shakes :)