Our Literary Exercises for Nests

We had two fun books that we used in our literary exercises for our nest lesson!

A House Is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman - a cute book about all different types of houses.

We actually first read this book at MiMi and Poppy's (I didn't get pictures down there though).  We were still at there house when we were suppose to be starting day 1 of the nest/animal habitat lesson.  Since we were going to already be missing days later in the week for the zoo and for co-op classes I thought we better do a little bit of school even though we were at Mimi and Poppy's (one of the beauties of homeschool!)  I thought reading this book would be a good introduction into talking about animal homes.

After reading the book I cut out construction paper in the shape of houses and we made a house book.  He drew Mimi and Poppy in one house, Granny and PaPa in the other, a trashcan in one and Mommy in another one...didn't quite accomplish the activity in the right way...which was suppose to be different animal homes...but what can we say - we were out of town, out of our normal environment! :-)

We made up for it when we came home though!  On our last day of the lesson I decided to read this book again.  I made up my own activity using pictures we took from the zoo.  I picked out 6 pictures showing the animal in their environment in the zoo  I then got Seth in front of my computer and pulled up a picture of the same animal in its natural environment (we made a print of that picture too)  I had him tell me what were the differences between the two environments.  I wrote down what he said on index cards.  We put the pictures and the index cards in a cheap $1 photo album I got from Wal-Mart to make a book.  We tittled the book "Is a zoo a home for me?"

Here is what Seth said about a couple of the animals:

"The lion's home in the zoo has big rocks.  The lion's real home has a bunch of grass to run on.  The lion in the zoo is sad because he wants to run with other animals and play in the grass.

The penguins at the zoo don't have as much water to swim in as the penguins in the wild.  The penguins in the zoo are happy to have water to swim in."

Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman

I love this book!!  I always have!  Of course the boys loved it too.  It is a fun one to read and really get into with different voices for the different characters.

After we read it I had the boys think of other things that the bird could have found and asked if they were his mother?  The boys decided to act like those things and for me to use my baby bird voice and ask them "Are you my mother?"  They would respond with different voices. It was too cute.  The funniest was when Seth told me he was a pumpkin.  I, in my baby bird voice, asked "Are you my mother?"  And Seth just sat there so I asked the question again.  He then said "I can't talk...I'm a pumpkin"  :-)

The curriculum also had you ask the student why these other things in the book would not be a good mother for the little bird.  I laughed at his answer so hard I had to write it down and I had to share it with you!

"The cat would eat him.
The dog would bark at him.
The hen would go "cock-a-doodle doo" in his ear (this was when I decided I need to write this down! LOL!)
The cow would stink too much.
The car would run over him.
The boat is too loud.
The airplane is too fast.
The "snort" goes too far up."

I love that kid!!