BFIAR Preschool – Post from the Past August 2015:

Parker officially started preschool this fall!  All the kids were curious and excited about BFIAR (Before Five in a Row) and were eager to see the books we planned to row (study) with Parker.

We chose to start the school year with Corduroy by Don Freeman.  This is one of Parker’s favorite picture books.  He received the Corduroy book and bear gift set from his Auntie when he was a baby.

Ready To Row:

We’ve read this story before, but this time we savored each page.

There’s nothing like starting off on a VERY sweet note! We had a Bear, Button, & Berry breakfast.

The kids enjoyed every bite! With full tummies we were ready to row!

Bible:

Since friendship was a theme in Corduroy, we decided to use Proverbs 17:17 “A friend loves at all times.” as our memory verse for this unit.

Parker worked on his memory verse throughout this unit.  You can download your FREE copy here at our TPT Store.

Language Arts:

I put together a busy work packet for each child with various math, tracing, phonics and other themed worksheets to use whenever I was teaching one-on-one.

Parker used the 3-part cards from our  Corduroy preschool pack (Homeschool Creations) to work on vocabulary and phonics.We also used the button cards to practice his listening skills.

I would ask him to find a shape and he would reach in our bucket and grab the correct button.

He kept working on his button bucket.  What a cutie pie!

Math

We worked on coin recognition while we rowed this book.

Parker loved matching his toy coins to a set of money cards we found online (imagineourlife.com).

We also played a coin game (themeasuredmom.com), using his blue dot paint!

We worked on patterns….

We worked on sorting…

We even did some gummy bear math…though I’m not quite certain all the gummies ended up on their graphs…hmmmm.

There were many hands-on math activities during this row.

The older kids joined in on many of our math activities.

They really enjoyed our teddy bear exploration activity.

They each measured and weighed their teddies.

The older kids filled out their teddy stats using an adorable worksheet we downloaded at TPT.

Science

We pulled out our BFIAR animal classification cards (homeschoolcreations.com).

Homeschool Creations has so many wonderful printables to use alongside our BFIAR units.

We read through Corduroy, looking for any/all animals we could find.

We pulled out our animal classification cards and our collection of toob animals.

Parker matched the toy animal to the classification cards.

On other occasions, we talked about animal habitats and they worked on coloring our animal habitat booklets.

You can download your FREE Habitat Book here at our TPT Store.  We’ve also created the My-Go-Along Animals for Corduroy.

Click here to download your FREE copy.

Other Fun Activities:

In between subjects, we would take moments to dance with teddy bears,

Run up our flight of stairs like Lisa,

And munch on teddy bear treats.

Corduroy Craft:

I set up a Corduroy craft for the kids to work on.

First we painted green tempura paint with a fork on green construction paper.  It gave the illusion of corduroy texture to our paper.

Next the kids painted brown tempura paint with a pom-pom on our brown construction paper, giving the illusion of fur.  We set both papers aside to dry.

Once dry, I cut out the overalls, bear parts, and added everything to the kid’s trays.

They glued the bear and overalls together.

Next, we punched two holes into the orange circles.  They looked like cute buttons!  The kids glued them to the overalls.

Last they added the final details on Corduroy’s head.

They turned out ADORABLE!

The older kids wrote their names as well as the book title and author and the date they created them.  I hope they will hold on to these with fond memories from our BFIAR days!

I LOVE when they work together on things!

Corduroy Scavenger Hunt:

At the end of our unit, we did a teddy bear scavenger hunt.  I printed and attached our worksheet with their mini clip boards.

They walked through the house counting various items and marking their clipboards with tally marks.

I love their faces as they take this task to heart….VERY serious work going on!

Parker and his Wonder Pet are taking a rest from hard work!

When everyone was done, we sat together and compared our results….SO cute!  Hopefully these are memories that they will cherish FOREVER!

I created a Corduroy Scavenger Hunt printable to go along with this activity.  You can download this FREEbie at our TPT Store.

We ended our Corduroy unit on a sweet note.

I whipped up a batch of boxed cookie mix.  While hot, I lightly pressed a circle shape in the center and stuck 4 mini chocolate chips in the center.

It was a fast and easy sweet treat to finish our Corduroy unit.  They munched on their cookies while watching our Corduroy playlist on youtube.

This was a really wonderful book to start to our BFIAR journey!  Looking forward to our next row.

Helpful Links:

Check out our Corduroy youtube playlist:

Check out our Corduroy Pinterest boardhere:

You’ll find the books, printables, and ideas in these links.