Rowing our Favourite Story: The Milk Moustache

It has been years since we did any Five in a row activity. you have to do activities on literature, art, math, science and social studies one per day.  This is called rowing a story. Recently, we read ‘The Milk Moustache’ and it has become one of the favorite books of my little one. It’s a very simple story by Chef.Vikas khanna.  Children of a village refuse to drink milk, and it upsets a cow named Kali.  Jassi, the local milk man’s daughter, and Kali’s best friend found a way to end this strike and made Kali happy again.

 

Math

 We buy milk from the milk man who comes around 7AM.  I asked my little one to watch his measuring cups, and how he measures with the three cups 500ml, 200ml and 100ml.  Then, we had a puzzle session like,

                  How will he measure 300ml?

              200ml+100ml

            How will he measure 700ml?

                500ml+200ml

                    How about 1l?

                2 cups of 500ml

4                 Let us assume that he has only two cups- the  500ml cup and the 200ml cup, how will he  measure 300ml?

                200ml+ ½ of it (I was expecting the grownup’s answer like 500ml – 200ml. :D)

She likes these puzzles very much and started asking her dad similar questions.

Language Work

 The author introduces the characters as Kali the cow, Rang the butterfly and Sur the nightingale, and it helped us to learn about common nouns and proper nouns.  My little one learnt that the proper nouns should be capitalized, and the common nouns are generally preceded by the article or article+adjective. We arranged this using the story characters and few cartoon characters.

Art

My little one drew this cow.

Science

My little one loves paneer.  So, we made some paneer (richotta cheese), and I told her the science behind the curdling process. She learnt that the protein in milk called casein curdles when the lemon juice is added in the hot boiling milk.

Social Studies

I told her about Mr. Verghese Kurien the father of the white revolution (1970) in India.

You can view our previous posts on FIAR here.

FIAR: The Story About Ping

After rowing our favorite stories, this week we rowed a story from original FIAR curriculum - ‘The Story about Ping.”  It is a classic by Marjorie Flack. It is the story of a duck named ‘Ping’ which lives on a boat roaming in the Yangtze River, China.  Ping has a large family and a master.  Their master let the ducks leave the boat to hunt for food and they return to the boat when the master called them back. The last duck usually gets spank on its back.  One day, Ping run out of the boat to avoid the punishment for being late.  It explores life in the river and reunited with its family the next day.

You can download the pdf of the story here and here.

Here is the summary of our Five in a Row activities.

Language art:

My little one tried reading few sentences.  Then I asked her to mark the words which I dictated.  We also sang the rhyme “5 little ducks went out one day”

We also discussed about the relationships like siblings, cousins, half brother …..

Math:

My little one practiced comparing number values using ping family members. I made a simple worksheet by writing the number of brothers and sisters, father and mother, uncles and aunts, siblings and cousins.  She put the symbols like =, < or > by comparing the number values.

(sorry for the poor quality of  photo)

Art and Craft:

We made some simple Origami boats and my little one drew the eyes to make it a ‘wise eyed boat’. Then, kids enjoyed playing with the boats in rain water.

Science- Buoyancy:

We did a simple experiment on ‘Float or Sink’.  We used wooden scale, rubber duck, plastic container, stainless steel spoons, metal keys and some natural things like leaf, seed, log, stone and tree barks.

In the story, ping was caught by the boy with a barrel on his back.  To explain the use of barrel on the back, first we put a stone in the water tub and it sank.  Then I tied the stone in a plastic container and put it in the water tub and it floated.

Social Studies:

We saw a video ‘Introduction to China in 10minutes”

Identified china - our neighboring nation in the globe and also drew the Chinese flag  - 5 star red flag.

We also discussed about the similarities in the food styles of India and china like rice, rice cakes etc.

and saw the pictures of ‘Yangtze river’ in Google images.

Rowing our Favorite Stories 2: The Little Red Hen

Here is my second post on FIAR (Five In A Row). 

We rowed the story “The little red Hen” which is again not in the actual FIAR curriculum.

It’s the story of a hen who worked hard to plant, grow and harvest wheat while her friends, the cow, the dog and the pig were lazy and not ready to help her. But, after baking the breads, she asks them who will help her  to eat the breads.  All the three happily volunteer.  But, the little red hen declines it. The story teaches about helping and cooperation in doing a work. Those who do not contribute cannot enjoy the result.

You can download the pdf of the story here.

Here is how we rowed the story.

Literature:

`My little one knows the phonics sound and she has just started to connect sounds to make simple words.  So, I asked her to write the words like hen, cow, pig and dog. 

I also asked her to point out the sight words I dictate.

We sang the rhyme ‘Old McDonald had a form’

Math:

I thought of introducing fractions to my little one. We made some sand breads  (Sand buns????)  and i asked her to cut them  into pieces to see the fractions like ½, 1/4, 1/5 and 1/8. She shared the pieces with her friends and they pretended eating it.

Art & Craft:

My little one drew this little red hen.

She also made this cotton chicken with my help.

Here is our paper little red hen. You can find the tutorial at krokotak.com

Science:

When we are reading the story, my little one asked what a mill is. So, i wanted to show her how a basic grist mill works.

First, we spend some time in our traditional stone mills.  We tried to make rice flour in our stone mill. 

My little one tried to rotate it.  She couldn't.  She found this from her wooden toy set and played with it.

 We also see how the mortar and pestle is used to grind the wet grains.

We watched these videos (video 1 , Video 2) which show how the same principle is used in the old flour mills.

Social Studies:

As Madhya Pradesh is the highest wheat producing state in India, we located the state in our India map.

Small World Play:

I thought of including a small world of farm animals as the sixth activity for my little one to play. Here is our small world of farm animals.  I wanted to put farm animals and foods what they eat. I put rice straws for cows, grass for goats and sheep , grass and horse gram for horses and some cereals for poultry.

My little one feed the horses with cereals i put for the poultry and started giving them bath.

FIAR: Rowing Our Favorite Stories - Ugly Duckling

First of all, what is FIAR? I came to know about Five In A Row(FIAR) here.  It is a detailed review on FIAR. The original FIAR curriculum has given a list of books and one has to choose a book from the list and read it with the child for five consecutive days. While reading the book, you have to do activities on literature, art, math, science and social studies one per day.  This is called rowing a story. The rowing is an interesting opening for many topics. You can find the list of FIAR books here.

 I haven’t yet bought the curriculum.  But I started collecting the stories as could as possible.

People who work on five in a row curriculum may wonder when they see the title.  Ugly duckling is not in the FIAR books list.

The idea of rowing a story is excellent.  Isn’t it? So, I started rowing some of my little one’s favorite stories.

Ugly Duckling is an evergreen children’s classic and it opens the gate for endless activities. We have the 'Ugly Duckling' story book, but my little one loves this one for the beautiful illustrations.  You can also download the story here. Honestly, we didn't row a story for 5 consecutive days.  My little one is on summer vacation and she is a kinda “Give me more.”  So, we rowed this story only in two days.

Literature art:

Reading a book with beautiful illustration itself is a great literature art. Then, what else have we to do?  We named the farm birds and farm animals like duck, goose, hen, rooster, turkey, horse, sheep, horse, pigs …..  We also named their young ones. We watched a video on sounds of animals.

Maths:

 I drew a picture of a duckling with dots from 1 to 25.  My little one connected the dots which she always loves.  I also made this worksheet with duckling and ugly duckling to introduce the concept of skip counting like 1, 3, 5 7… and 2,4,6,8…

We also did some patterns using the duckling and ugly duckling pictures.

Art:

My little one colored the duckling picture she connected.  Then she called me, “Amma One more connect the dots duckling.” I drew it and gave her.  After connecting the dots, she started coloring it in a hurry burry.

“Slow. Slow.  Color it neatly.”

“Amma. It’s an ugly duckling. It should look ugly.”

Science:

My little one pasted the pictures for ‘life cycle of duck’ then I wrote the descriptions.

Since, the ugly duckling travels in different seasons, four season activities are also best to do.  But, when I started doing the four season activities, my little one said, “It’s boring.” So, I didn’t continue it.

Social Studies:

I told my little one about Abraham Lincoln who wasn't good looking but became one of the greatest US presidents.

Small World Play:

I finally set a pond in a tray for a small world play. A frozen pond was the first sensory bin I set for my little one before I started blogging. I set a pond with turtle, tortoise, fishes, frogs, lotus and of course a duckling.  I also set a frozen pond with a swan.