Night of the Moonjellies - FIAR

Pre-warning - lots of photos below! 

Last week for our learning we read Night of the Moonjellies  by Mark Shasha.  It is a book suggested in the Five In A Row Curriculum that we use.  A lovely, rich story that is based on an actual day the author experienced as a young boy.

To hear it read online *listen here*

*Five In A Row*

 We did some activities each day.  The girls did a mapping exercise where they received a map of the United States of America with the names of the New England states.  They had to find the names on a map in an atlas and colour them in on their own map sheet.  We chatted briefly about why they are called New England states and a small smattering of history.

They also wrote a short story of their own, reflecting on an event in their own lives.  

Extra reading was books about the sea as the story is set in a coastal town and "moon jellies" are little sea creatures.

Busy Reading

I found some amazing little resources on *homeschool share* for this book. 

This game has cards with questions on them about the story.  If they weren't paying attention, they couldn't answer!  Nothing like a spot of sibling competition to up the concentration!

Math word problems - keeping it relevant.

Butterfly took Blossom and Crystal for a little art lesson using oil pastels.  We talked about colours to show moods and oil pastels to give texture to the picture.

Science covered the Aquatic Biome

As we talked about the aquatic biome regions we used stickers to help us remember them.

 This is our jellyfish in a bottle.  

Quite simply a piece of plastic in a bottle of coloured water = Fun.

Years ago when I did this book with my older children, J951 collected me as much sea glass as he could find.  It was nice to have some on hand to show the younger children, especially now we don't live very close to a beach, as we used to do.

To end our week we organised to have dinner at a diner...at home.  This was so much fun, and something the children will not forget!

On the HomeSchoolShare website there was a page to create a Restaurant Menu.  This is what Blossom and Crystal came up with.

The girls set up the outdoor diner.  It looked so amazing.

Crystal took the orders while Butterfly and Blossom were the waitresses.  We used play money to buy our meals.

The boys waiting for their food.

The waitresses doing a fabulous job.

The indoor table.

The waitresses served each other.

 Dessert was cute.  Beach Sand Buckets - a layer of ice cream, chocolate mousse, crumbled biscuit, jelly pieces and a chocolate shell.

Side View

 At the end of the story the boy has melon and chamomile tea just before falling asleep.  So we did too.

Such a lot of fun!

~Lorna