Make Way For Ducklings Lesson Plan

Hello Everyone, 

This is a little late. This was our first ever day of Little Saturday School.

How I do Little Saturday School, (LSS), is; I pick one book out to focus on. Then I find different things that will touch a bit of most subjects, to teach about. I discovered the world of lap books as I was planning the first lesson. 

*DO YOU KNOW WHAT LAP BOOKS ARE!!!!*

If not that's ok, check out this video I found on youtube, it gives you a nice little over view. I showed this to Monkey on day one, she was super excited. 

      Now that we know what lap books are, I try and make a lap book with each lesson. Monkey loves it and I truly believe they help her retain information. We did this Make Way for Ducklings lesson about a month ago, and she can still convey to me a bit of every thing we learned. And we learned a lot this time, I started this lesson out big, to kind of see what worked for us. 

Lesson Plan For Make Way For Ducklings
by Robert McCloskey

I started the day out with, our fluency sheet, Soccer Camp, I got this from TeacherSites.SchoolWorld. -They have a ton of great fluency sheets!- 

*I worked with Monkey once on Thursday (The day we started) She only got 25 wpm, by Sunday she was up to 68wpm! I can express how excited I was, in only 4 days!!*  

Little story, Monkey gets a fluency sheets at school, so back in August she got her first fluency sheet. They get a new one as soon as they can read the whole story in 1 min. It will be April in 2 days and she is still on that first fluency sheet. =( However she is not with us full time unfortunately so we do not get to help her improve. 

My process for fluency sheets

• We read it together and find all of the unknown words, or struggle words. 
• Than before we read it, we go over each of those words once.
  Eventually she has learned the word without even needing to look at them. 
• I try and have her read it twice on school days, and 3 times on the weekend.
  It may seem like a lot, but it only takes a couple mins, and is totally worth it!

We went into our Word of the Day and Number of the Day, from 2nd Grade Stuff, next

Monkey is having problems with digraph sounds and vowel sounds, so each lesson I pick a sound to focus on. We are working through the vowel sounds first. I believe they are some of the most important because the are in all words in some way. 

Vowel Sound Long "A"

I created the Word of the Day for Monkey, we used an online dictionary for the definition.

Shared Doodles

I got this great idea from, Third Grade Doodles. Every one takes a turn adding something to the picture.  We started with a blank page, and ended with this:

 <This one was original

Now to start the Book!

We read the book. 

I wasn't feeling good and I wanted to slowly ease Monkey into LSS, so I actually found a video on youtube of the book being read. Unfortunately the video I originally used was taken down.

Sentence Work Sheet.

Even though she didn't read the book, I pulled out different sentences from the book to go over, for our vowel lessons. 

We learned about Mallard Ducks, Days of the Week, and Months of the Year

I got this idea from, Home School Share, they have tons of great lap book ideas. I used a lot from there, Make Way for Ducklings, lap book.

Then we played a game of Make Way for Ducklings Candy Land!

This took a group of questions from the book, questions about long a sounds, and spelling word questions. I got the game board from, First Grade al a Carte. I created a set of cards, to go with my lesson though. 

Next we learned about Boston, also from Home School Share.

Now for math games, I gave Monkey the choice between Addition or Subtraction Board Games. 

Then we went back to some of the Home School Share activities, Food Chain, Baby and animal and their parents, put the ducklings in ABC order, and Duckling Math.

Then to end our day we awarded Monkey a Certificate of Completion!!

One thing I forgot to mention, I create a simple Power Point that keeps me on track and in order.

Here is a complete folder of the worksheets I created.

As always if you use any of the files please link it back to me. Don't forget to share me =]

Click >  Make Way for Ducklings - My Complete Lesson,

 Excluding work from others

Here are all the links to others work that I used in this lesson. They were all referenced throughout the blog, but just in case you missed one:

Lap Book Info

Soccer Camp, By Teacher Sites, School World

Number of the Day, By 2nd Grade Stuff

Shared Doodles, By Third Grade Doodles

Make Way For Duckling's Lap Book, By Home School Share

Candy Land Game Board, By First Grade al a Cart

Addition Board Game

Subtraction Board Game

***All link are to FREE downloads!!***

So far everything I use has been Free or I have created on my own. 

Thing that could have been improved!

• To much right at the beginning. I would not get rid of any thing, just spread it throughout the day. Example: Do the word of the day before or after Candy Land. But definitely keep the morning activity: Shared Doodles. 
• Spelling words, I did spelling word this first time around. However they may have been a bit much. I didn't really do anything with them. If I was completely home schooling Monkey I would encourage them. But we only do this once a week, so it becomes a side note, and unimportant, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of side notes when it comes to learning. 

-Monkey learned a lot and I learned a lot about how to get stuff going. Every lesson is exciting, both to plan and to do. She is asking to do more and more, very exciting.-

*If you see anything that you have a question about, please ask, I am here to help the best I can! If something looks like it was missed let me know.*

Thanks Bunches,

Hannah Elizabeth

Treasure Hunt

Hello,
I wanted to share with you one of the first activities, I did for Monkey, that really got her to enjoy learning. We did a treasure hunt, where each stop along the way had a different subject to cover. Monkey’s friend Lion was over, they are both 7, though Lion is in first grade and Monkey is in second grade. So I did have 2 different sets of Math for them. Though I think it worked out great because then they could help each other out.

Our word for the day was Bubbles, I had most activities focused on bubbles. We had ten stops along the way, the tenth stop being the Grand Prize!!!(Ice cream)

Here is a list of the clues I used.

I printed them all out and then just cut up the paper, and each time they finished a station, they got a new clue.

Our first stop was, writing station, I wanted to get this one out-of-the-way quick. Both girls don’t like to practice writing too much, but they were still excited about the idea of a treasure hunt, so they didn’t complain. For writing, I had them write their ABC, I didn’t make this one I got it from, what the teacher wants, blog. (Clue was under her shoes)

Our next stop was coloring station. The picture they colored was from bubble guppies, I think. I just Googled bubbles coloring pages and picked my favorite ones. (Inside her art set)

This is about the only picture I took that day =/

Color station

The 3rd stop was Math, honestly I didn't put much thought into this one. I just needed something for math. That weekend we had been working with Monkey a bunch with math, so I didn’t want to over load her here. I did make it so that the answers would un-scramble the word bubbles. This was a little difficult for them to understand at first, but after I showed them the first letter they were racing to put their letters in place! (Under her pillow)

For the 4th stop I had a word search, and had them find bubbles 6 times.  (In the bathroom, by her tooth-brush)

The reading station was 5th. I used the Hello Kitty A Collection For Early readers (Hello Kitty Early Readers) book. I kept it simple so both girls wouldn't have a problem reading it. This probably took me the longest, I wanted to find a story that said the word bubbles. I think I read every story in the book until I found bubbles, I ended up using the story, Hello Kitty Loves School (I got lucky the word was even there). I also had them answer some questions about the story. (Inside the book, and I had the book sitting out)

For the 6th station, I reused the coloring pages from station 2, to make the puzzles. I just cut them in to 8 pieces. The girls were real surprised that I had used their coloring page for this, but enjoyed it. I think they felt like it was really their own puzzle because of it. (By the front door)

With the 7th station, we did a little science experiment. The traditional vinegar and baking soda trick, we had to make bubbles, of course. I used, mom to 2 posh lil divas, idea to add food coloring to the spoon and then add baking soda. The girls really loved this. (At the dining room table)

Now that we have talked about bubbles all day, I had them spell it on the white board for the 8th stop. This was really quick and I was extremely happy they both were able to spell it without any help. I know it wasn’t much but they didn’t know how to spell it before we started. It was the glimpse that they were learning and having fun. (The white board)

Our 9th and last stop, before we made it to the treasure, was our art station. I kept our theme going and we painted with bubbles. I got this one from, Housing a Forest. It didn’t work quite as well as theirs did. The colors were really light, however I just guessed on the measurement, which could have been why. This station did get a little messy though, luckily I put a drop cloth down and we did this on the floor. Monkey had a little ooppsey and we now have a blue drop cloth. Overall the girls still loved it, Monkey is my little artsy girl and she didn’t want to stop. Lion is a bit more girly and was content after just a couple of bubbles. (On the floor)

Finally we completed our hunt, with our treasure, crazy cookie dough!

Here are you can download any of the pages I had made. I apologize they are not the best, I put this all together while the girls were in the bath tub.

Treasure Hunt Clues & Station order

Reading station & Word search

Math station & Coloring pages/puzzle

All in all I think the day went great! Both girls had a great time, Monkey asks me all the time for another treasure hunt (Probably a birthday treasure hunt is in our future =]). I tried to make sure that there was something fun and not to schooly every other time. I would not suggest doing reading, writing and math all in a row, the little ones probably would have got bored and not had fun. It can become over whelming to them that way.

A couple of things I would do differently next time though:

1. Have some kind of default thing to go to when one kid finishes first. Lion was just racing through the coloring and writing and would complain she was bored. So having something on had to occupy that free time, would be a plus.

2. Do the bubble art outside if possible, it can get messy.

I hope you enjoy doing your own treasure hunt and thanks bunch for stopping by,

-Hannah

p.s. I'm trying to figure out if I like word press or blogger more so I am jumping between them both still.. but I promise everything will be posted to both until I decided who to stick with.