Wooden Valley Homeschool Academy

I love pairing books with activities and food. When I taught preschool I loved serving blueberries when reading Blueberries for Sal or Strawberries when reading The Little Mouse the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear. So it was perfect when we read Ten Apples Up On Top with Apples in our lunch! We only successfully balanced 1 apple each, which was ok since we only had 3 apples to try with.

Book report for Aumsville PARC reading day camp.  Each week, we try to go to the summer day camp. One thing they do to encourage reading is give prizes if kids bring back a short book report.  We read: Shrek by William Steig   Ellie decided that the part she liked was the dream of the children with flowers in the meadow, which was actually a nightmare to the ogre.  She said the worst part was when Shrek's parents kicked him out. She does not recommend this book.

The Oregon Trail   In the car on the way to the library, when discussing various specialty license plates available in Oregon, Ellie's curiosity was sparked by the Oregon Trail plates. So in homeschooler fashion, we checked out some books about the Oregon Trail including: Daily Life in a Covered Wagon  and  Buffalo Gals And I remembered I had   Bound for Oregon  at home already.  Quote from Scholastic Book website: "Nine-year-old Mary Ellen Todd, filled with the pioneer spirit, treks cross country in 1852 with her family in search of a better life. The Todds survive Indians and swoll en rivers, but what will happen when mother has a new baby and winter arrives?" So we looked at some pages of Daily Life and read a bit about the example family. Then we started reading Bound for Oregon.   This helped to get some pictures in our minds of what exactly the wagons looked like and we even referred bac...