Make Way for Ducklings Lapbook: Duck Related Literature
As we are working our way through Make Way for Ducklings, we are also reading lots of other books to compliment the different themes. Here are a few titles that I have found interesting, enjoyable, and helpful.
- Hunwick’s Egg
by Mem Fox – This is a sweet book about how Hunwick finds an “egg” and everyone waits for it to hatch.
- Cold Little Duck, Duck, Duck
by Lisa Westberg Peters – This simple book is about the change of seasons and Mallard Duck migration in rhyme.
- Dilly Duckling
by Claire Freedman – Dilly loses a feather, chases it, and learns about molting.
- Cock-A-Doodle Quack Quack
by Ivor Baddiel and Sophie Jubb – This is a fun book about a young rooster who doesn’t know how to wake everyone up in the morning. It reviews the farm animal sounds.
- Dawdle Duckling
by Toni Buzzeo – This is a cute story about a duckling who doesn’t stay close to Mother duck until… Explore the number 4 with this book. Also try Ready or Not, Dawdle Duckling by the same author.
- “Behold the Duck” by Ogden Nash – This is a simple, rhyming poem about duck behavior.
- Duck at the Door
by Jackie Urbanovic – This book is about a mallard duck who chooses not to migrate with his flock during his first winter. He knocks on Irene’s door in the middle of the night and stays for the winter. (My kids love this book! We have read it many times.)
Happy reading!
Filed under How to, Lesson Plans | Comment (1)Love Your Neighbor, Officer Michael
Here is yet another post about our Make Way for Ducklings lapbook. I hope your lapbook is coming along as nicely as ours is. When we have completely constructed ours, I will post pictures.
I managed to find a Biblical connection in Make Way for Ducklings. Our memory verse this week is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:39Matthew 22:39
English: World English Bible - WEB
39 A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (The little one is memorizing “love”.) I picked this verse out because Officer Michael is so kind to the Mallard family. In the story, he goes out of his way to help the ducks by directing the traffic and calling for other police officers to stop the traffic. He didn’t have to do this; he was just treating someone else the way he wanted to be treated.
During the week, we read other Bible stories that relate to the “be kind to others theme”. The story of Ruth and Naomi is one and the other is the story of King David and Mephibosheth. I connected the theme to these other stories. We discussed how the theme applied to the memory verse. We even talked about how the verse relates to our lives.
In order to help us remember the verse, we sang it to the tune of “Frère Jacques” and “London Bridge” adding “Just like Jesus” at the end. We sang the songs throughout the day all week long. At the end of the week, the kids were able to recite their memory verses easily. They even sang the songs to Daddy.
Then we made a book in the shape of a police officer’s hat (HT: DLTK) and glued the verse inside. We simply cut out the hat and a blank piece of paper in the same shape. I printed out the memory verse and cut it out. As my kiddo said, “We used a police officer’s hat because Officer Michael was kind to the ducks in the book. The hat helps us to remember that.”
Filed under Lapbooks | Comment (1)Mallard Math
We have practiced our math skills in a variety of ways through Make Way for Ducklings. There are a few mathematical possibilities in this particular book that you might find helpful if you are also working on this particular lapbook.
Since there are eight ducklings in the book, we have practiced counting the number eight. Since my kiddos are kinesthetic learners, I need to incorparate manipulatives into our math work, and a great manipulative for this particular lesson is plastic Easter eggs. First, we sorted the eight eggs by color and counted how many eggs there were of each color. We compared which color we had more and less of. We also dabbled in addition and subtraction by adding one more egg and removing one egg. After all of that manipulative work, we made a counting book with the numbers 1-8. It’s a graduated page book. On each page the children drew the amount of eggs that correlate with the number on the page. Creating this book is also a great way to address the unique the needs of kinesthetic learners since there is a lot of interaction involved – turning the pages, drawing the eggs, counting the eggs, and coloring the eggs. My children needed a bit of guidance with staying focused on the task, but overall, this was a hit!
We also used the song “Five Little Ducks” to talk about counting backwards from 5. We used it as a finger play while I a read a great picture book of the song, Five Little Ducks illustrated by Ivan Bates. They really love this song and adding a kinesthetic piece to it just makes it more engaging. Having the visuals (pictures) also makes the song more interesting. Lessons are so much more dynamic when you weave multiple disciplines together.
Get cracking on your math skills, homeschoolers!
Filed under How to, Lapbooks | Comment (0)Home School Research: Mallard Duck
In our home school we are continuing to make our lapbook for Make Way for Ducklings, and we have worked on researching Mallard Ducks this week.
We reread the book and discovered that there is a lot of true information about ducks in it, so we decided to do some research on Mallard ducks. One day we listened to songs of the mallard duck online. We looked at photos online as well, and we watched a slide show of ducklings hatching. It was really fun to see the hatching. The kids wanted to listen to the songs over and over, too!
The next time we sat down for some school work, we read a brief article about Mallard ducks and filled out a report form while I read it. We wanted to confirm information on the internet as well, so we used a “Google” search. You could try Wikipedia, too.
On another day we used many resources from Homeschool Share including the From Egg to Animal life cycle wheel and the duck parts printout. The life cycle wheel requires a third page for the back so that you can put it in the lapbook and also for ease of spinning the wheel. I cut out the piece ahead of time so that we would focus more on the life cycle rather than the act of cutting. I had the children put the four events in order and glue them in the book.
Since the children had already noticed the differences in the male and female ducks in the illustrations in Make Way for Ducklings, we colored the duck parts print out as a scientific drawing for the research and discussed the differences. I had to do a bit of directing on this lesson in order to ensure that the parts were colored correctly. Interestingly, the little one even points out the “mommy” and the “daddy” ducks when we are reading now. The children also dictated how they determine if a Mallard is a female or a male.
We also discussed what migration is and used a map to find the migration patterns of the Mallard Duck. The children dictated information about migration to include in the book. They drew a picture of a duck on the cover of the migration book. I described drawing a duck as a big circle with a smaller circle next to it and a triangle on the little circle. I think it came out nicely!
Are you going to try researching Mallard ducks this week?
Filed under How to | Comment (1)Make Way for Our Next Lapbook
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey is the subject of our next lapbook. There will be a series of posts with thoughts and photos as we go through the process of this particular lapbook. I will even include titles of other books we are using. Again, I am making up my own lapbook using library and internet resources that are available for free.
I started this lapbook unit by creating a web of ideas for what we could learn about. This is a great way to get started. Based on my web, I searched the internet to see what was available. I looked at an example of what someone else had done for their lapbook on Homeschool Share, and I printed out what I intended on using for my lessons. I put together the first mini book we were going to make as well.
I introduced the book to the kids by talking about Robert McCloskey since we just read Blueberries for Sal. I read the book just for enjoyment this first time. We simply discussed the book as we went along. My kids’ bedroom is painted in a Make Way for Ducklings theme (painted by Caroline Funchion), so we talked about that connection to the book.
The next time we read the book, I wrote the ducklings’ names on our chalkboard- Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Pack, Ouack, & Quack – to use the ducklings’ names for learning about onsets and rimes. We created a flip book with the names. I wrote the letters, and my kids traced over them. The little one did not do a page for Ouack and Quack as I think it would have been too much work.
As a note for the reasoning behind this particular lesson, rhyming is a great precursor to reading. Try playing with rhymes when you’re waiting in the grocery line or at the doctor’s office. Sing rhyming songs for fun. Using onsets and rhymes is also a great strategy for figuring out unknown words when you are reading. Try pointing them out when you see a good one in a book or on the cereal box. This strategy is also helpful with writing. You can point out that a particular word rhymes with another one while you are writing and show your kids how you use that strategy.
I hope this helps you get started on your Make Way for Ducklings lapbook!
Filed under How to | Comment (1)
