Welcome! The following is the 4th 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 childrens 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. Teachers 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 is a more developed concept of this same idea, geared towards 1st-3rd, and also uses mostly Five in a Row books. You can find it here, Learning through Literature, the 2nd year.
D: Make Way for Ducklings
What do I need:
- Make Way for Ducklings book
- Letter D Handwriting Sheets (printable version here)
- Map of New England, Boston area.
- Picture of
the swan boats and of the duckling statue - Construction paper and paper
fasteners for “where do I live?” - Duck
Review
If you’re following along with the ABC curriculum, take a moment to review: A is for Apple Pie, B is for Blueberries, C is for Coat (see if the class can remember the first 3 stories you’ve done. This is a good memory exercise and is helpful to continue to reinforce both letter sounds and alphabetical order, for those who don’t quite have it yet.
Introduce the Story & Letter of the Week
Setting
Our story today is located in Boston, Massachusetts. Massachusetts is in the North East part of the United States, and is connected to a group of 5 other smaller states (Maine, NH, VT, CT, RI) in a part of the country that is often called New England. If you have time, you can go into why this is called New England (English settlers coming to a new land … “New” England).The location of the story is a real place. Boston is a real city in Massachusetts. The river, the gardens, the park, the streets we’re going to read about in our story today are all real places. (In fact, because of
popularity of the book, if you ever visit you can still see the Swan Boats and
a bronze sculpture of Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings)We used our USA map to locate Boston, Massachusetts, and the New England states. After we finished reading the book, I printed out copies of this map of present day Boston and together we traced the path of the ducklings. For many kids, this was their first time seeing a map. We got to discuss cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), as well as left and right. We found all the streets talked about in the book, the Island in the Charles River where they started, the park and the pond in the park. Everything really is as it is described in the book. A great introduction to maps for little guys.
Our story today is located in Boston, Massachusetts. Massachusetts is in the North East part of the United States, and is connected to a group of 5 other smaller states (Maine, NH, VT, CT, RI) in a part of the country that is often called New England. If you have time, you can go into why this is called New England (English settlers coming to a new land … “New” England).The location of the story is a real place. Boston is a real city in Massachusetts. The river, the gardens, the park, the streets we’re going to read about in our story today are all real places. (In fact, because of
popularity of the book, if you ever visit you can still see the Swan Boats and
a bronze sculpture of Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings)We used our USA map to locate Boston, Massachusetts, and the New England states. After we finished reading the book, I printed out copies of this map of present day Boston and together we traced the path of the ducklings. For many kids, this was their first time seeing a map. We got to discuss cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), as well as left and right. We found all the streets talked about in the book, the Island in the Charles River where they started, the park and the pond in the park. Everything really is as it is described in the book. A great introduction to maps for little guys.
Map to find the path the ducks traveled inMake Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
Read Story
If you want to draw the path on the map as you read, you definitely could. We opted to find the path afterwards, but either would work
Our Habitat Craft / Map Path
- What did the mommy and daddy duck need for a safe HABITAT (home)? (food, safety for young, quiet, etc)
- What is a habitat? (simply, where an animal lives – but technically, must include shelter, protection, food,/water)
*This is where we used it when we traced the Path together as a class.
Map out the Ducks’ Journey, made their home (their address) at …
Little
Island, Public Garden, Beacon Street, BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA, North
America, Earth
Trace the Ducks path to their home
- What about us? Where do you live? (In order to do this well, have the kids bring in their address from home ahead of time so that you have all the details there in class)
My Bedroom / My House / 123 Main Street / City / State / County / Continent / Planet
(you can make this as specific or as general as you want.You can find a great sample of this here, and a free downloadable template, here, both from 123homeschool4me. I love how she did this to include pictures of things that represented each sphere.
(you can make this as specific or as general as you want.You can find a great sample of this here, and a free downloadable template, here, both from 123homeschool4me. I love how she did this to include pictures of things that represented each sphere.
Letter D Handwriting Sheet
Click here to return to the Learning the ABC’s through Literature complete booklist and see the general instructions for each lesson.
