“Monkeys, Roosters, Frogs, and Numbers” Week 8 First Grade
Three Little Monkeys (Fiction, Level A-J) by Tracey Shilling
I’m Bigger Than You! (Fiction, Level E) by Joy Cowley
How Do Frogs Grow (Non-fiction, Level E) by Judy Neyer
Numbers Are Everywhere (Non-fiction, Level E) by Margie Burton
We really enjoyed all of the books in this week’s AlphaSkills kit, but our very favorite one was I’m Bigger Than You! In this book two friends go head to head arguing about which one is bigger, and page after page they climb and holler until they end up in a catastrophic crash on the very last page and decide they really shouldn’t be fighting after all. I probably don’t have to tell you why this was a favorite for a family with two boys pretty close in age, but I will tell you it was fun to see my little first grader live vicariously through the characters in the book as they scuffled with each other in a way we don’t really allow in our house.
The activities I want to highlight this week are the grammar and science activities provided for How Do Frogs Grow. Not only were we able to learn adjectives and syllabication for words from the book such as tiny, back, front, big, wide, short, eggs, tadpoles, show, and front; but we were also able to talk about his prior knowledge of frogs and tadpoles, investigate pictures of frogs and tadpoles and how they are alike and different, make an illustration of the life cycle of a frog, compare the growth of baby chicks to baby frogs, and display his work with sentences to describe the details.
I love how this curriculum not only provides a comprehensive phonics, reading, grammar, and writing curriculum that is based on books we really love, but it also provides science, math, and social studies activities from time to time as well! For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.