Dogs and Cats

I haven't given a full list of Levi's curriculum for this year, but I've been mentioning his subjects here and there. I don't think I've touched on his literature study yet: First Favorites Guide (Vol. 2) by Veritas Press. We don't do this every week; I've mixed the books from this guide in with other books I want to spend time on. These literature guides -- a mixture of all sorts of activities, like answering questions (full sentences!), fill-in-the-blanks, write a postcard, color a map -- are really perfect for Levi right now. Most of the time I'm a big fan of reading just to enjoy reading, plus a craft or activity to make it fun. Levi started reading so early, however, that I've never been quite certain about his comprehension level, and this is helping me know what to expect when he reads books on his own.

Included in this guide are two selections from a series I'd never heard of: Nate the Great. They're longer stories but not yet chapter books, funny mysteries with simple but clever solutions, and lots of extra activities included at the back of the book (including jokes, which of course Levi loves).

Nate the Great solves the mystery of the missing dog picture, and Nate the Great and the Lost List involves a cat pancake party (yes, really), so over the past two weeks (minus a few days in the middle for turkeys), we focused on dogs and cats.

[Spoiler alert] The missing picture of the dog is found when Nate realizes that his friend's little brother took her yellow picture while it was still wet and painted over it in red, producing an orange dog. So we did a little color experimenting of our own: pick one color, paint your dog, then pick another and paint it again! (This paper is out of the literature guide.)

Owen chose red then yellow to make an orange dog.

Levi chose blue then red to make a purple dog.

The Sunday following dog week, Owen drew a dog on his church bulletin during the sermon. I showed it to my father-in-law, who immediately said, "have you been using Ed Emberley?" Why yes, yes we have! Owen is such a little artist, so focused and detailed in his work.

One of Nate the Great's friends is a strange girl named Rosamond who loves cats. I randomly searched pinterest for a cat craft and settled on this paper plate craft. (Many thanks to Papa John's, who supplies us with a stack of paper plates every time we order a pizza . . . which is more often than it probably should be.) The craft post provides a template for cutting the body, head, and tail out of the same plate. Paint it black (or whatever color), cut it out, glue on some eyes, a pink pom-pom nose, and some whiskers (also cut from the plate, but I briefly considered digging out pipe cleaners or something similar). Pretty simple!

Cutting out the head using the pattern. I did this part.

Gluing on eyes and nose.

(I just noticed poor Mary the finger puppet lying face-down on the table . . . )

Gluing on head and tail.

I was especially amused by Levi's cat drawings this week. Some weeks he does better than others at following the visual clues (as I mentioned earlier, Owen is my visual guy!), but these made me chuckle!

Running cat and sitting cat.