“Wishy-Washy, Rocks, Swamps, and Bread” Week 10 First Grade
Mrs. Wishy-Washy’s Tub (Fiction, Levels A-J, Stage 2) by Joy Cowley
Big Rocks, Little Rocks (Non-fiction, Level F) by Margie Burton
Bread (Fiction, Level F) by Joy Cowley
The Spooky Swamp Sound (Fiction, Level F) by Robin Cruise
“There’s Mrs. Wishy-Washy again!” said my first-grader as I pulled out the materials for this week. He was so excited to find out what his friend Mrs. Wishy-Washy was up to this time that he couldn’t wait to jump right in to Mrs. Wishy-Washy’s Tub. (Mrs. Wishy-Washy is a character that appears in several books by Joy Cowley, and it seems the folks at AlphaSkills know just when to send her our way.) In fact, we loved all of the books in this week’s kit, but our favorite this week was Big Rocks, Little Rocks because it just happened to be in the kit to help us learn some earth science and geology concepts on the very week that our family was traveling through the mountains of north Georgia and southern Tennessee. (I love it when these things happen!)
The activity I want to highlight this week is the Science Activity for Big Rocks, Little Rocks. In this activity we learned several concepts that allowed me to make our family field trip to Cloudland Canyon State Park even more educational. For example, as we hiked through the canyon, my first-grader shouted, “Look, Mama! The oldest rocks are on the bottom! And it’s sedimentary!” I was bursting with pride! Later in the hike when we came to the waterfalls, we talked about little rocks, big rocks, and huge gigantic rocks called mountains. Then, on Wednesday when we went to the library, we read a Magic Schoolbus book about classifying rocks, and we identified all the different types of rocks in Big Rocks, Little Rocks, as well as on our hike the day before. Then, throughout the rest of the week when he read this book aloud each day independently, he talked about each type of rock and where he’d seen them and what type they were. I love to see him this excited about learning!
Bread was another of our favorite books this week because Malachi surprisingly found it extremely funny. After reading through the book silently he said, “I have got to read this book to Elijah (his brother)! It is just so funny!” So he read it aloud, and his brother and I laughed with him. This was truly one of those great homeschool moments where I saw how far Malachi has come this year to be able to read a book independently, find humor in it all by himself, and then take joy in sharing the book with the rest of his family. What a drastic change from the little boy who wouldn’t even try to read anything independently without memorizing at the end of last school year! Just another reason that this homeschool family knows the Read with Sarah process works! For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.