Mike Mullican and his Steam Shove (FI♥AR)

FI♥AR - Mike Mulligan and His Steam shovel

August 27-31

Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel Mary Anne are a remarkable team. Mike is so faithful to his steam shovel that even the new and improved gasoline, electric, and diesel shovels do not interest him. Soon, Mike and Mary Anne find themselves without work. In an attempt to prove that Mary Anne is still able to work with the best of them, Mike makes a proposal to the town of Popperville. He and Mary Anne will dig the cellar for the new town hall in one day or it’s free of charge. When a glitch prevents the task from being accomplished, it looks as though Mike and Mary Anne will not get paid. Then, a clever suggestion by a little boy creates a home for Mike and Mary Anne in Popperville forever. ~ Rainbow Resources

Our first book we are rowing from Five In A Row will be Mike Mulligan and His Steam shovel by Virginia Lee Burton.  Monday we started out by introducing our world map.  Each new book we read from FIAR has a little disk to stick on the location of the book.  

Monday: Social Studies - Character- Stewardship and flexibility, and History.

Fluttershy enjoyed our little history lesson today.  We looked and talked about the pictures in the book of a milk truck pulled by horses, old cars, the cloths people were wearing, and the wagon people rode in.   In the book, Mike mulligan took excellent care of Mary Anne.  This opened up the subject of stewardship. We covered how we should take care of the things we own and how to take care of them.  

After our social studies lesson we watch a couple of videos:

A working steam shovel-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjGIAe8zUj8&NR=1.

Storybook Classics video Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel.

Science Play

-Color Walk-

We took our box of crayons and went for a walk today.  To make the activity fun, I let Fluttershy pick a color from the box and let her try to find a match.  She did this very easily.  To add our own twist to the activity we took pictures of all our color matches and plan on printing our pictures to make a color book.  

 

 

 

      To make our 1st day of preschool extra fun, we ended our color walk at the park and played for a while.

Sensory bin:  colored rice

A simple and fun sensory bin idea. 

Ingredients:

1 cup rice

1/2 tsp vinegar

5-8 drops of food color

Place rice, vinegar, and food coloring in a plastic container with a lid and shake in for a minute.  Let rice dry on a plate for a hour or two.

To end our fun day we made a yummy batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies.  We tried a new recipe today that I found at

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/best-big-fat-chewy-chocolate-chip-cookie/.  I'd rate them 5 stars.