Our youngest is enjoying a wide variety of picture books each week of his first grade year. Most of these books we have had for years. A good portion of them are widely recommended. The Ox-Cart Man is one. A sweet poem valuing hard work and economizing by Donald Hall set to the folk art illustrations of Barbara Cooney make for a lovely book to share with any youngster.
The book itself can easily stand on its own as a story. You don't really need to add anything to it. In fact, I wasn't going to. I was simply going to have my child orally narrate or answer a few comprehension questions after the reading. Then, we would move on. However, this day, we moved onto a lesson in grammar. This lesson happened to be on the months of the year. Having been through this grammar book several (OK, three) times before, I knew we would eventually be covering the seasons as well. This all led to an inspiration and impromptu creation. Well, first I combed the internet for what I wanted. Why re-invent the wheel, eh?
After a brief search, I couldn't find just what I wanted. {I did find this great resource for teaching the book, though.} I ended up creating a simple worksheet. The worksheet is a chart with four rows, one for each season. The months are listed under each season. {Technically, some months overlap two season, but for simplicity, I included those months in the season in which the majority of the days occur.}
The idea was for my child to use the book which clearly states the families' activities throughout the year during various months and seasons and chart these on the worksheet. To make it easier for my first grader, I included free clip art depicting many of the activities. He completed the chart on his own.
It turned out to be a great cross-curricula activity!
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