Madeline Five In A Row Unit Study

Sometimes life gets in the way, so our "row" of the book "Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelmans actually took two weeks to cover. I wasn't sure if my son would like this book, as the main character is a girl, but who wouldn't love the catchy rhyme and the girl who--

"was not afraid of mice, ...loved winter, snow, and ice. To the tiger in the zoo Madeline just said, "Pooh-pooh," and ... knew so well how to frighten Miss Clavel."

Madeline Five in a Row Go Along Activities

I found this book quite endearing, and will make a note to read this (and other Madeline books) with little sis when she gets a little older.

French flag (before the glue dried!)

Social Studies: The main reason I wanted to read Madeline was because she lived in Paris, France. I had to show T the Eiffel Tower! I brought out some pics of my trip there some 7 years ago and I reminisced how myself and three other girls took the stairs down after checking out the sights of Paris from the viewing deck... that was a workout!

My son made a French flag and we found it on the map.

We looked at some books about the Eiffel Tower, and even made one ourselves! We also talked about manners, read "Madeline Says Merci," and completed a worksheet from Homeschool Share.

Try #1: Fail!

Try #2: Success!

Language Arts: Since the book is written in rhyming text, we worked on rhyming words. Rhyming is still a concept we are working on!

Math: We did the suggested activities in our FIAR manual by working on beginning grouping/ division. We worked on the different ways to make a goup of 12.

We also worked on symmetry. I had introduced the concept when we did a butterfly unit earlier this year, so he kind of remembered it.

I printed off a worksheet where he had to complete the picture and he loved it, and asked me to make another one! So fun when he enjoys what he is learning!

Art: Introduced the concept of "monochromatic" art; my colored a picture of the Eiffel Tower in full color and I colored one using one color. He isn't the biggest fan of coloring right now, so I helped! We also talked about Claude Monet and looked at his artwork.

I found a great resource at our library, "Art Explorers: Picture This! Activities and Adventures in Impressionism" by Joyce Raimondo that showed several techniques used in Impressionist paintings; he chose to paint a picture using the technique "Pointillism." Pointillism is a picture using thousands of dots of color.

Pointillism painting

Science: We talked about the location of one's Appendix and that no on is quite sure what it is for. I described it as a little "tip," and that is how T refers to it now! We drew a life size model of my son and labeled his intestines and appendix, and here is where our human body unit begins!

As we read more about our body parts in upcoming readings, we'll add more! Miss Clavel ends the story with, "Thank the Lord you are well..." and so we talked about germs and how important it is to wash our hands and everything else to keep us from spreading germs. I had put some paint on my son's hand and had him try to get it all off by making handprint stamps, but in the end he just couldn't get rid of all the paint (germs).

We know germs are EVERYWHERE and stick to everything! In the cute book, "Germs, Germs, Germs" by Bobbi Katz, it begins and ends with a cute rhyme:

"We're on the ground. We're in the air. We're GERMS and we live everywhere."

AHH! Germs!

We had fun with this book as you can see! And my son has remembered the Eiffel Tower and pointed it out on a box of crackers at the grocery store!

Ideas and Inspiration:
Walking by the Way-- Eiffel Tower Monochromatic Art and Wafer Tower