We had a fantastic week using the new Download N Go study, Sunny Seashells!
My boys have been asking to explore the topic of seashells for a few months.
Books We Read
Gramma's Walk by Anna Grossnickle Hines
One Small Square Seashore by Donald Silver
Science Nature Guides Seashells (a great book for identifying shells!)
Slugs and Snails (we read this to learn more about mollusks) by Claire Llewellyn
The Burgess Seashore Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess
I just want to say that we (all three of us!) are loving The Burgess Seashore Book for Children! You will learn so much about the critters living on the seashore. It is the perfect read aloud for this unit.
A Box of Shells!
Monday started off on the right foot. I ordered a small package of shells, and it arrived that afternoon! My kids were pretty excited.
Table Cloth Making
On Tuesday the boys painted an ocean-themed table cloth for our shell party. This is one of the project ideas in the Family Fun section of the unit.
We stamped a few shells and fishy hands, but other than that, the boys just painted whatever they wanted. I had to chant process not product to myself while this was happening!
Shell Matching Game
The boys used Simon's shell matching game (from O is for Ocean) to play a few rounds on Thursday. Simon is ridiculously good at this game.
On Friday we prepared some shell cupcakes for our party! These are easy to make. You can find my tutorial in this blog post.
Using the Download N Go Unit
Each Download N Go unit comes with a lot of printable pages. A lot. After our test-run DNG, Benjamin Franklin, I decided that the worksheets = too much writing for Elijah. By Day 4, he didn't even want to continue with the study, and he wanted to learn about Ben Franklin (his idea, not mine).
However, I was not willing to give up on the product because the videos, the links, the projects. . .everything was really great and would make for some easy (for me!) delight-directed studies.
I decided for our next try, I would only print a few pages for Elijah plus the lapbook. I printed 22 pages total this time.
It didn't take much time for me to go through the unit and decide what to print. Then I split the work up by the day in this handy folder (I found mine at Wal-mart).
Inside it has pockets and more pockets. Each page is a large pocket with a smaller pocket below. This is wonderful for lapbooking. I have it open to Thursday and Friday in the picture below. Thursday's work (left side) is done. It goes BACK IN the folder until the end of the unit when Elijah is ready to assemble his notebook. Friday's work (right side) is still waiting on Elijah.
Elijah knew what to do each day. He pulled his work out of the folder, went through the Download N Go unit, narrated what he learned (instead of filling out all the worksheets), and completed the notebooking/lapbooking pages for that day.
It worked really, really well for us!
Sunny Seashells Notebook Pictures
Elijah picked a Bare Book to use as the base for his lap/notebook. We did add some copywork pages (see pages 4, 5, & 7 of the notebook) to the unit. You can download these here.
Once Elijah had finished all the work in the purple folder, he laid everything out on the table to start on his notebook lay-out. I always have to leave the room so I won't put my grubby fingers all over it. I only helped when he asked for my opinion.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6 (from Draw Write Now Book 6)
Page 7
Page 8
We printed the Tide Pool Activity on cardstock and made flaps out of the creature cut-outs. Elijah wrote the name of each creature under the corresponding flap.
Page 9
You can read about Simon's week here.
Thanks for the review. We did a Benjamin Franklin one last year, and it was so much printing and writing for our then 1st and 2nd graders, that I gave up on everything. This review helps me to see the wisdom in picking out the videos, links, and a FEW pages for our children to do. I have about 2 other Download N Go files, so I’ll have to pull them out and see if we can work them in somewhere. Thanks!