READY TO ROW:

Kick-off Breakfast:

My attempt at creating “pancake art”. We’re calling this a topiary tree, but that’s debatable. At least, they tasted good.

Cover Art:

Parker created an elephant on his cover art page for Grandpa Green.

Story Disk:

He colored our story disk and placed it on France.

BIBLE:

Memory Verse:

My daughter Haley often creates digital art for my printables. She helped me with this beautiful layered cover art. I used it to create a Bible verse printable for Grandpa Green.

You can purchase your copy here by at our TPT Store.

Parker traced his Bible verse and we added it in his FIAR notebook.

SOCIAL STUDIES:

Aging:

We read Grandpa Monty’s Muddles and A Doll for Grandma on our Epic app. Both books addressed aging in grandparents, especially memory loss and dementia.

Living on a Farm:

Grandpa Green grew up on a farm, so we took a day to read all about farms. I really enjoyed Farming by Gail Gibbons and Look Inside a Farm. Both were excellent choices for older children.

World War II:

We recently read World War II Days while rowing Hanna’s Cold Winter. This was an excellent activity book with much to read and do.

We finished reading The Night Journey, a magical retelling of a family’s escape from Russia during World War II.

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Story Review:

We created a Story Review printable for Grandpa Green.

You can purchase your copy here at our TPT Store.

Parker worked on some of the story retention questions. This is always a great exercise!

Literature:

We finished Pippi Longstocking and started reading The Secret Garden while rowing this book.

Story Telling:

I collected flat stones last year to paint with the kids. I pulled them out for this activity. Parker and I painted random images on the stones.

We used the “story stones” to create a fantastical short story. Afterwards, Parker drew the story like a cave painting. This was a wonderful creative writing assignment!

MATH:

Calendar:

Parker helped me update our calendar for May.

Afterwards, Parker filled in his May calendar worksheet.

I read the May poem from from A Child’s Calendar.

3-D Shapes:

We tackled 3D shapes as well as topiaries.

First, we read The Curious Garden which was a wonderful story with plenty of examples of topiaries.

Next, Parker formed 3D shapes using reference cards (ABC.com). We slid them on a skewer to form a topiary tree. This was a fun way to practice our shapes.

We ended our 3D review with a fun game of shapes match (Twinkl.com).

SCIENCE:

We started reading this book while rowing The Tree Lady. There was quite a bit of cross-over, because our planting unit crossed both books.

Soil:

We started from the bottom to the top. First, we explored soil.

First, we read Soil and Dirt. Afterwards, Parker completed the layers of the dirt worksheet from The Tree Lady Story Review.

Digging In:

We read several wonderful stories about digging in the dirt and planting a garden.

We also read Compost Stew An A to Z Recipe for the Earth. It provided great information about what to put in your compost pile.

We also read about beneficial bugs in the garden. We purchased ladybugs from the garden center and released them in the garden.

Experiments:

Seedlings:

I created seed markers with coffee stir sticks and glued paper tops.

Parker created markers for all the seed packets we bought from the nursery.

We read several wonderful books about seeds.

I reserved the egg shells from breakfast, rinsed them with water and placed them in our egg carton. Parker filled each egg with soil and seeds.

After a week, we started seeing little sprouts.

After two weeks, our seedlings were ready to move outside!

I moved all of Parker’s seedling outside. Since there was extra plants, I added some in the back box too!

After a week, his seedlings were growing big, beautiful green leaves! Perhaps, we’ll see lovely pumpkins this fall!

Growing Carrot Tops:

We read a few book about carrots before sprouting our carrot top.

Parker cut off the top of our carrot and we placed it near the kitchen window.

Sure enough, our carrot top sprouted and we added a turnip friend.

We sowed carrot seeds in our garden boxes too! You can see the little seedlings sprouting.

ARTS, CRAFTS & FUN:

Pointellism:

Since we were studying about Paris and French artists, we took a moment to read about George Seurat.

First, we read Katie’s Sunday Afternoon. I made a copy of the pointillism page from Get Coloring with Katie.

While I read aloud, Parker colored his worksheet.

Croissants:

We couldn’t wrap up this row until we made chocolate croissants. Since his older brother was planning to make croissants from scratch, we took a shortcut with the crescent dough and chocolate chips!

These were SUPER easy to make and such a tasty treat!

HELPFUL LINKS:

Pinterest Board:

You can find most of the activities, ideas, and printables from this post on our Grandpa Green Pinterest Board.

https://pin.it/TjWUgZE

Youtube Playlist:

As with our other rows, we created Grandpa Green Playlist with read-alouds, music, science, and other clips.