Adventure Reading Kick Off!

For Drawing into the Heart of Reading - this month we did Adventure reading. So to kick this off we had a fun school day of adventure. This was eye opening to me. We really did all the same things we normally do we just started off "heading out" on this train of adventure. And fallowing our "map" which I made ahead of time

the boys LOVED it! I thought they would see right though it, and complain but they didn't they imagined right along with me and it was a lot of fun. After taking off on our train we head over the "mountains of math" and did our math work, then we went on the "reading rail road" and did reading lessons (for Ryan) and the older ones started their DIHR assignment. Next we journeyed through the "land of Language" and did our LA assignments. Last we dove deep into the "cleaning waters" and cleaned up the house. We had breaks, and snacks and lunch etc. The boys made up creative names for these things.

At the end of it all we talked about and cover the questions in the DIHR teachers guide and they got there treasure. Fun pencils and new books! We also talked about loving to learn in the real treasure in life because then your possibilities are endless!

Dallin did not want to be in the Pic so Aaron is holding his book and Ethan is holding the two older boys books. These are fun stories full of adventure, the younger boys LOVE the snowman books.

At the end of the 6 weeks or so that is takes us to finish a section of DIHR they do a book project. This was Ethan's he likes to do this, he makes the charters and seen from card stock and then you use a hole punch to make little circles then snap on Lego's to hole it up. Yes I too got this idea from Pinterest.

Then he Narrated his favorite parts of the story, and went over the character development things we covered this month.

Non- Fiction Study Day -

I love the Drawing into the Heart of Reading program. We do this off and on too. This time we learned about non-fiction and for our kick off day we talked about what it covered in the teacher book, and for the activity they looked through out set one One Small Square books, they each got some note cards

 on the cards they wrote a question, and then fallowed it up with, is this true or false? I helped the younger ones with the writing. Then they each took turns drawing cards and then making a guess. They used the books to look up the answer and read the facts. It was a lot of fun.

Nothing but Silliness!

For our Drawing into the Heart of Reading each time we start a new genera we have a "kick off day" to introduce that genera of reading. This time the book were Humor books! so we did nothing but silliness! They dressed funny and did funny faces! 

We played some funny card, games, and did spoons.

We also played a game where they acted out silly noises that animals make and they had to guess what they were being.

We made silly sandwich men :)

We had a lot of fun with this, The books that they read for this section were. Frindle, tooter peperday, and Mr McBroom one Acre Farm . Along with enjoying these fun books we learned about cause and effect, and other things. I am really enjoying this program. There are many books that we read just to enjoy them, but I also think it is "fun" to break stories down and think about the different elements as well.

Biography Kick off day

One of the Things we do is Drawing into the Heart of Reading by Heart of Dakota This program teaching the different Genres of reading, it also teaching biblical character traits and how to "direct" reading, thinking about "moods" "cause and effect" etc. The program starts for 2nd graders but the teacher is very hands on, starting 4th grade it is much more independent. I so adapt it, and we work together as much as we can on it. This program forces my kids to "slow down, and think" about their reading, it is a very different approach then what we normally do, and I like that. We only do this twice a week. We work on a new Genre, every couple months. At the start of the new genre we have a "kick off day" doing fun things to introduce that Genre. This time we did Biography. We talked about what a biography was, a true story of a personals life, written by another person 

Our first Activity was to look at some "family biographies" scrapbooks, of them, and other family History scrapbooks.

Then they each got to pick out the book they were reading. Ethan a book on Milton Hershey, Aaron picked Shark Lady, and Ryan a book on Benjamin Franklin (he does not really do the program) this was just for this day, and we were already learning about Ben Franklin in history. Another activity we did was they went through the house and found 5 things that they would want someone to write about them, and took turns telling there favorite things. As they did this I wrote these things on little strips of paper. After words I picked one of out a bowl and they had to guess who that thing match too. We had a lot of fun.

When we are done with the books they each do an activity from something they enjoyed about the book, Ethan of course wanted to make some Hershey chocolates, and Aaron and I made shark pancakes.  (no pictures of the pancakes but the turned out awesome!) Ethan also wrote a summery of what he learned from it, and Aaron drew a picture of his favorite seen from the book.

we made homemade peanut butter cups and almond Hershey chocolate bars. YUMMO!

wonderful job boys on your projects!

we did this Genre August through september