Our last FIAR rowing in the spring was in April and it was Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.
Mrs. Mallard was sure that the pond in the Boston Public Gardens would be a perfect place for her and her eight ducklings to live. The problem was how to get them there through the busy streets of Boston. But with a little help from the Boston police, Mrs. Mallard and Jack, Kack, Lack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack arrive safely at their new home.
We had a lot of fun with this rowing and it was the book we did for our last FIAR group meeting for this school year.
The kids enjoyed learning that the Boston Public Gardens is a real place in Massachusetts. We enjoyed looking up videos on YouTube of the swan boat rides and duck statues from around the garden. We have a local garden that has a line of duck statues that has always reminded me of the statues in Boston Garden that represent our book. We took a trip to see our local duck statues.
While at the gardens we did some duck and geese watching.
Duck and geese watching from the boathouse.
{some flowers Ally found on the ground in the gardens}
While learning a bit about Boston, we discussed, read about, and watched videos of, all of the things that contain the name Boston like the Boston Marathon, Boston Tea Party, and Boston Cream Pie. The kids drew pictures to represent each one in their lap books.
{crayon scratching of USA with Boston marked}
We made a Boston Cream Pie.
During our rowing we made one using the recipe from the FIAR cookbook and the kids and I actually didn't care for it. That surprised me as we typically love all of the FIAR cookbook recipes. For our FIAR group meeting we made one using a cake mix, boxed pudding, and canned frosting and everyone loved it. It cracked down the center, as you see here, but it was yummy and everyone loved it.
We followed an online interactive map that took us down the very streets in Boston that are mentioned in our book. I then googled our home and pulled up the satellite map and the kids drew a map of the area we live in based off of it.
Make Way for Ducklings is a Caldecott medal winner so the kids learned a bit about the history behind that.
We had a lesson on Alphabetization.
We used the names of the duck family from our book to practice.
We alphabetized our family names too.
We had a lesson on animal parenting.
And a drawing lesson on swans.
Here are a couple of pictures from our FIAR group time.
The kids made this duck costume to use to perform a dance they put together. I wish I had gotten a better picture of the costume as it was so adorable. They then gave it on to some of the younger girls in our group to take home and play with.
All of the print outs for our lapbook are from Homeschool Share. My Five in a Row Pinterest page,
HERE, has the Swan drawing lesson and interactive map of Boston.
