B: Blueberries for Sal

Welcome! The following is the first in a series of 24 lesson plans, Learning the ABC’s through Literature, the 1st year. It was written especially for classroom use within a homeschool co-op, and was designed to teach the alphabet, over the course of a school year, using classic children’s literature. The books are primarily taken from the Five in a Row Curriculum by Jane Lambert, with several others added as well. The plans were designed to give just a little bit more, so it could be more usable within a classroom setting. Teacher’s questions, printables, craft ideas, classroom handouts, etc are included within all the lessons. This is geared towards a K-1st grade class. If you are interested in something similar for older children, the Learning through Literature series uses more Five-in-a-Row (FIAR) books and is a more developed concept of this same idea and also uses mostly Five in a Row books. You can find it here, Learning through Literature, the 2nd year, geared for 1st-3rd and Learning the USA through Literature – the 3rd year, geared for 2nd-4th and using books from Volume 4 of Five in a Row.

Week Two: B

Blueberries for Sal

by Robert McCloskey

What do I need for the class:

Tin buckets or pails (at least 2)
chalk pastels or chalk (various shades of blue, black, purple, white)
paper
instructions to draw a bear
YouTube Video OR memorize “going on a bear hunt”
Letter “B” Handwriting sheets

(printable here)

Blueberries, Teddy Grahams

Introduce the Book, Blueberries for Sal

This is a fun read-aloud. Take a moment to open the front page and notice the older kitchen. How long ago was this book written? Maybe when your grandparents were growing up? Can we spot anything different in this kitchen from your own kitchen? (old stove, canning jars, etc)

We wanted to make this read aloud a little more interactive. So I brought along a couple of tin pails (easily found at a craft or dollar store, if you don’t have some already) and kept a container of blueberries next to my chair. I let the students take turns holding “Sal’s bucket” while I held “Mother’s bucket”. Each time Sal grabbed a handful, the students would grab a handful. If she ate some, they ate some. If she dropped 3 into the bucket, they would drop 3 into the bucket. This made the book a little more memorable and kept the students’ attention. We also used the opportunity to count the berries and use the famous phrase, “kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk” as we dropped the berries in.

Around the middle of the story, we introduced the concept of hibernation. We talked about how some animals (bears being one of them) spend the winter sleeping. And before they sleep, the fill up on food. (snakes, groundhogs, bees, ladybugs, turtles, and sometimes skunks are also a few other known hibernators if you want to mention them). Sal and her mother aren’t hibernating, but winter is coming, and the growing season will soon be over, so they are going to be storing up and probably canning blueberries and jam for the winter as well. I thought this fit well to stop and introduce in the middle of the story, but if you prefer to mention it at the beginning before you begin to read – that would work fine as well.

Draw a bear or a blueberry

I love working with chalk and charcoal. It’s fun, easy for little hands to manipulate, messy … and somehow it just feels satisfying to smear some color around and somehow end up with something that is perfectly shaded. So when I found this idea for chalk blueberries from, www.hodgepodge.me … I thought it was perfect for this book

We tried our hand at this, and had some not-so-bad results, even with the littles. First with multiples colors, then with just a single color.

added a strip of black on the left, and a strip of blue and white in the middle(in retrospect, i may not have added the black in the future, but i was working with limited colors)

blend from side to side, up and down, and then come back around to outline the edges,leaving a spot untouched in the middle

a final outline around the edges after your done blending finishes out the result nicely

not a Monet, but it will work for a simple exposure to chalk and shading with little ones

Going on a Bear Hunt

If you have time, check out this video of “Going on a Bear Hunt”. We didn’t have time to include this into our class, but if you did – this is always a favorite with Pre-K/Kindergarten/1st graders