The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash

As I sat down to write this post, I thought to myself, "gosh, another childhood favorite. I wonder why I'm using so many of my own books this year." And then it hit me: getting to the library with all of the children, without ruining any naps, requires a mid-size miracle. So it is that we pulled another fun one off the shelf this week: The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble.

Craft: snakes, of course! (Idea here.) Paper bag, paint, foam cut into triangles, glue, and the ever-present googly eyes.

Silas wanted in on the painting action this time.

These boys are serious about their gluing.

(Never mind the weird lighting. It was not the middle of the night, honest.)

Snakes!

Science: I got several library books on snakes -- hold up. Didn't I say above that we never get to the library? It's mostly true. But my favorite local library branch is open on Sundays, so once a month or so I sneak off by myself in the middle of a Sunday afternoon and grab everything I think might be useful for the next month or so. I go armed with my list of our upcoming animals, but am usually only able to find books on one or two of the animals. Snakes, apparently, are popular.

So. Several books on snakes: the always-favorite Gail Gibbons, Snakes are Hunters by Patricia Lauber, a generic early-reader sort, and of course a little book on boa constrictors (to go along with Jimmy's boa). In an odd turn of events, this week Levi was uninterested in the science books (he usually loves them), but Owen was fascinated. Days later, he was still repeating little tidbits about snakes -- they shed their skin, they have hundreds of tiny bones in their spines, they're reptiles, etc.

Also this week, we started a project I've been meaning to do all year: a big classification chart of all the animals we're studying. (Thanks to our recent introduction to Sid the Science Kid for the boys' enthusiasm about charts.) Levi looked up each animal group in our Kingfisher Animal Encyclopedia and told me a few facts to write down, then we listed the animals we've studied so far. It will be fun to add to it as the year progresses (and also shows me we need to do a few more non-mammal animals!).

Critical Thinking: Thanks to ABCJesusLovesMe (scroll down a bit for book of the week ideas), I used the story of Jimmy and his boa to talk about cause and effect. The site has a nice little chart you can print, but we've had major printer issues for a while now, so I just grabbed a piece of paper and wrote "cause" and "effect" at the top. On one side, Levi drew a cause-and-effect part of the story, and on the other, he was to make up a scenario of his own. The pictures were so funny to me that I'm going to include them, even though there's every chance they're only funny to me because I'm his mom. :D

First, from the book itself. On the left: the boa (that's the big purple triangular thing) eating the wash. Some pants are already inside the boa, and it is in the process of eating a red diaper. "They have diapers in case they have a baby some day." Can you tell we line-dry a lot of cloth diapers around here? The effect of the snake eating the wash is on the right, where you can see the wide-open mouth of the screaming farmer's wife. Notice that the boa has consumed ALL of the laundry from the line. Also, Levi felt that this page deserved stars at the top. I'm not sure why.

And then from his own life: Owen sitting in a chair at the table, with his milk cup in the process of tumbling to the floor. I promise, in real life, Owen's head does come above the top of the table. 

 This would be funnier if it didn't happen so often.