Sunday, April 22, 2007 - Our Adventure With Mr Gumpy's Motorcar
This week we set off on our adventure with Mr Gumpy's Motorcar. Honestly speaking, I didn't feel as excited about this unit study as I had about some of our others, but I figured the boys would be excited because this book involved a car.
On Monday we set sail for London. This is the boys very favorite place to read about. I need to find them a really good book that's there level for this city! In the meantime we colored some pictures of Paddington, Peter Pan, Big Ben, and a Double Decker Bus. The boys were so excited to learn that Paddington and Peter hail from England considering these characters sit up on the same shelf as Peter Rabbit does!
We looked at pictures online of Paddington station, all the boys felt the picture we saw of Paddington's statue looked a bit more "piggish" then "bearish". We saw the London Eye, the Hour of Parliment, and Buckingham Palace as well. Then we topped it off with reading "Paddington's Day Out". It was true Paddington style, and had some terrific art work in it as well.
We topped off Monday with an English dish of Shepherd's pie which we ate while watching Garfield 2. The boys were tripping over each other to point out all the sights we'd read about earlier. They were fascinated with the double decker buses because they finally put it together that Bulgy (from Thomas the Tank) is also a double decker.
On Tuesday we talked about Onomatopoeia, how's that for a mouthful? Again, the boys amazed me with how much they remember. We'd grazed this word and it's meaning for about two seconds when we read Peter Rabbit a month ago. They then proceeded to list off all sorts of things that can make noise on a car, we made a quick list of the onomatopoeia words and stashed it in their notebooks. We did a few vocabulary words, and then spent the day looking for a lane so they could see one up in person.
Wednesday we counted all the many animals and children that Mr Gumpy (Jayden refuses to call him anything but Mr GRumpy) gave a ride to. The boys then cut out pictures of a dog, cat, two chickens, goat, pig, lamb, rabbit, boy, girl, cow, and man. We found a car with a striking resemblance to Mr Gumpy's that we pasted on a paper and then filled up with all these friends.
We also tried our hands at using oil crayons. I remember the set we had as kids, all though I think they may have been much better quality then the ones I picked up for two dollars! Even still Morgan managed a really terrific sunset picture. He was very pleased with it even after he saw my picture. I was happy with that as he's taken to thinking his bits of art should be better once he sees how mine has turned out.
Morgan also drew a terrific picture of Big Ben (complete with 9:00 on it!) and a double decked bus full or tourists (I think they might have been us..) stopping in front for a quick picture. The picture has landed in their notebook, I really enjoyed watching him think it out as he drew it.
Thursday we finished up our week with science. This week we studied clouds. We only touched on some of the very basic clouds out there, but Morgan was thrilled with it. He was eager to take the book outside and see what clouds we had in the sky. He's been taking a good look each day since then too. The boys made little cloud books too in order to help them remember which clouds are which. Morgan wasn't seen without it until today when I was able to stick it in his notebook for safe keeping. He's enjoying watching the skies in hopes of being the first to warn us that it's going to rain or worse yet that a tornado is on it's way!
