Gracessential: BFIAR: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?

This is Adelaide's first year homeschooling. She is beyond excited to begin. We are using 'Before Five in a Row' by Jane Claire Lambert. This curriculum offers the flexibility that definitely benefits a preschooler! Let us share with you our first week.

Good morning! Each day we wake up, get dressed, brush our teeth and hair, eat our breakfast, and head to our schoolroom.

Prayer! We begin our school day with a morning prayer. I borrowed this preschool prayer.

Calendar time! We use a hanging calendar to discuss the month, day, and year. We also discuss yesterday, today, and tomorrow and the weather.

My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt This wonderful book showcases a new letter each week. Each story has an accompanying Bible verse and First Catechism questions. Before we begin "Rowing the Day," I like to focus on the verse and First Catechism questions for the week. Repetition is a wonderful way to hide God's word in our hearts.

Before Five in a Row: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?

Here is an overview of our first week with BFIAR.

Reading
We read "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?" by Nancy White Carlstrom, with our own teddy bears. She absolutely loved the story! We pointed out details and illustrations; tidiness, orderliness, loving relationships between family members, similarities and differences between Jesse's house and our own, and anything else she found interesting. We also read Proverbs 15:13 and 17:22 in a cheerful way.

By the end of the week, we had read 'Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?" countless times. I found a fantastic, free preschool book report from Teachers Pay Teachers.

Poems
These bear-themed classic poems went along perfectly.

"Furry Bear" by A.A. Milne
"Teddy Bear" by A.A. Milne
"Three Brown Bears" by Judith McNitt

Books
Here are some of my all-time favorites!

The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach
Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson
Big Smelly Bear by Britta Teckentrup
Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear by Lindsay Mattick
A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond
Corduroy by Don Freeman
We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
Little Bear by Elsa Holmelund Minarik
The Teddy Bear by David McPhail
The Teddy Bears' Picnic by Jimmy Kennedy
Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr.
The Berenstain Bears series by Stan and Jan Berenstain
The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

Rhyming
This printable from Homeschool Share includes two pages of rhyming cards that I cut out. The rhyme pattern was difficult for her at first, but now she has a good grasp on it.

Letter of the Week: A
We made a construction paper tree and stuck apple stickers all over it. Then we sorted between uppercase/lowercase letter A's with this cute project!

Science: Weather
We watched Starfall's "What's the Weather?" with an adorable singing bear going through the seasons and changing outfits. She then dressed up our own paper bear with different outfits made from construction paper. The felt weather spinner was used to pick different conditions. She giggled the entire time.

She also liked pulling out her wooden, magnetic dress-up dolls and dressing them up for different weather too! Our friend came over for a play-date and he laughed along with us!

Patterns
In Jesse Bear's kitchen, he has a wonderful patterned tile floor. We talked about the shapes on the floor. We played with play-dough and made lots of patterns ourselves! I love hearing her point out patterns she notices now.