Row, Row, Row, your boat, gently through this cute book, "My Blue Boat" by: Chris Demarest.
Our first BFIAR of the homeschool year was excellent this week. Here is what we got into:
We started Monday morning off with breakfast and bible time as usual. We are currently reading through the book of John and we always start our day with prayer, scripture memory, reading God's Word, and breakfast. The memory verse for this book was Psalm 107:23-24, "Those who go down to the sea in ships have seen the works of the LORD."
Ellie usually eats cheesy eggs every morning so I decided to just put them inside a sand toy shaped like a boat she happened to have already. She thought that was "cute!"
Monday was such an incredibly lovely day here in the south. Not too hot but still warm enough for the kiddie pool which I had intended in my planning. Therefore; after breakfast, Ellie donned her swimsuit and ran out back to hop in the pool with all her toy boats while I sat beside her playing with her and reading many "go-along" books.
The go along books we read were:
Now, on Sunday night, Ellie and I prepared a blue Jello to set in the fridge over night. Her snack for Monday was to fit the theme and was also such INCREDIBLE messy play! I could have never imagined that this one snack would have turned into such an exciting and fun activity. Here's what went down: On Monday after pool play, we got the Jello out of the refrigerator and began adding Swedish Fish candies down inside the "Ocean." Well obviously it was very cold and squishy and this tickled Ellie to no end. Literally....no end. From there it escalated. She began pulling Jello out by the handfuls and throwing it and laughing SO hard. So we took this play out to the back yard and she began putting it on her face and then her hair and then she put her toy blue boat in the Jello ocean and she just ran all over the yard playing with it! It was hilarious to watch and play with her! I see more Jello play in our future. Of course, the dye in the Jello stained her face and hands and she looked like a smurf on her first day of dance for the season. Haha! Oh well! She had fun and got the awesome brain stimulating and developing messy play in! She had a good bath before dance.
We also happen to live on a small lake so we have a paddle boat and kayak. It just made sense to take out the paddle boat for a ride!
Another day, we did Ice Cube Boats. Admittedly, this was not as pretty in appearance as I desired mostly because I let Ellie be in charge and that's what counts haha! But my vision was to let Ellie color the ice cubes by dropping food dye in each individual container within the ice cube tray of water we froze ahead of time. I should have known that she would want to mix and color blot each one and as a result the colors bled together and looked more murky green and black but the point was to watch them slide about as they melted in the bin outside, play with them and color sort them and count them. We did all of this and it all turned out well, even if less like a rainbow and more like a swamp Ha!
Another Day, we did "Number Boats" with a pool noodle, toothpicks, and painter's tape. Y'all, I bought like 20 green pool noodles for less than a dollar each from Wal-Mart back in Spring when we did "Going on a Bear Hunt" and I have used them many many times since in several Ellie related projects and play. This time, I took one and cut it into little "boats" and Ellie stuck toothpicks into each one and then using painter's tape to make sails (Bright duct tape would be preferred and better but I went with what I had) and a Sharpie was used to write numbers on each sail. We had 17 total. This was a really fun way for Ellie to pay attention to math. I always tread lightly with math because I can already tell she doesn't care for numbers so I don't want to force anything and cause her to have a distaste for a subject before we even start real school. But this, she loved. For instance, we played with them in the water and would say things like, "Oh no!! Boat number 5 just had a wreck with boat number 12!" She would laugh and really pay attention. "It was not school like;" it was just fun. It was really good. I can see over the past few weeks by just taking our time and playing and focusing on play that the "school" things are working their own way in to that play time organically and nothing is forced and nothing is memorized. Everything is learned in play. This is why I love Homeschooling.
One day, we had a boat sandwich for lunch! Ellie had a pimento cheese sandwich (Hello southern women!) We stuck a poop-sicle stick in the middle for a boat mast, and used turkey slices for the sail. Her boat was surrounded by fruit to serve as other boats and sea life that the blue boat saw on its journey. Ellie thought this was also, "cute!" She ate the sail right off the mast. Funny girl.
And of course, we made a big blue boat of our own to have adventures in!! Ellie LOVES her boat! Oh she had so much creative play with this. Sadly, we had to play with this indoors because Hurricane Sally's outer bands gave us quite the torrential down pour but no problem! I turned our box fan on to make "Wind" and changed the speed of it too. The boat was a cardboard box I spray painted blue and then added "S.S. Ellie" to the sides. The mast was another cardboard box I taped up and added a pillow case a as a sail. Ellie helped in making her boat. She brought her babies on board, went fishing, tied her boat up at shore, had a shipwreck, and also rowed her boat when she decided there was not enough wind to sail. She loved the fan. Her oars were those green pool noodles, again. I also pulled her around the house in her boat. We talked about docking. Tying up the boat was done by using her pink feather boa (her rope) to the dock (the hearth). She can tie some knots like no other! It's incredible. She would go ashore, then head back out to sea. One time she left her oars at shore and jumped out of her boat and pretended to swim back to get them Hahaha!
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