Choo! Choo!

We've started our Five in a Row studies last week and are really enjoying ourselves!  The first book we "rowed" (that's the insider lingo) was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.  With Five in a Row (FIAR), you read the book every day for a week, and do different activities related to various themes in the book.  My kids love reading the book every day!  What I love about this curriculum, well, it's really a great book list and guide book, is that it is very flexible and easy to tweak.  Even if you don't homeschool, I would suggest looking into Five in a Row for summer, or just as a fun supplement.  You can get some great ideas from the guide book, and the book list is fantastic!!

We spent the first day talking about "The Land of Make Believe", and how some books were real, and others were not.  Even at 7 and 8, my kids have a really, really hard time with this.  I often feel like Peeta in the Hunger Games...real or not real...  :)  We also moved naturally into talking about personification, and how the steam shovel has a name and human features.  That was what threw them off.  So, we took some time drawing things around the room, giving them human features, and making up stories about them.  We also found a map called "The Land of Make Believe" and placed it next to our world map.  The FIAR book has story disks that the kids can place on the map where the story takes place.  Personification is something we will continue working on, but we had a great start on the topic.

The next day was all about steam engines and steam power.  We watched videos about steam engines, and found a really cool Thomas the Train video on youtube comparing diesel vs. steam engines.  Awesome what is out there!  We also made pin wheels and made them move with steam from our kettle! 









The rest of our week was spent studying steam trains since that is what Lucas LOVES, and it ties in so nicely with the book!  We did train math, found some great word problems from www.homeschoolshare.com that related to the book, read a lot of construction and train books, and learned some new vocabulary words: canal and cellar.  We also talked about the artwork used in the book, and practiced drawing "action" or "moving" art.  The swirling clouds, billowing steam, etc.  To give them something to draw (yeah, right--it was just fun too), we did some fun science experiments with plenty of bubbly action.

 

 

We also had plenty of park time playing with our diggers and trucks.  :)

 





We ended the unit with a trip to the Rosenberg Train Museum.  This was the highlight of the week for my train obsessed child!  We were the only people at the museum, so we had a private tour of the grounds with a really nice guide.  The boys also watched a video about train safety, and had a scavenger hunt.  The best part for the boys, however, was the fact that the museum was located next to working railroad tracks.  We saw six trains pass by while we were at the museum.  Pretty fun stuff!  The best part of the week?  The kids learned a TON about steam power, history, language arts, math, art, and so much more without even trying.  Andrew even commented about how we didn't have much "school" this week.  Gotta love it!  Here are some pics from our museum visit:



This week we are rowing The Glorious Flight, so it's all about planes and flight!  This is Andrew's current obsession, and we are already having a blast.  I can't wait to post all of our fun pictures from the week, along with our AWESOME wrap-up field trip to the Air Show!