"If You Give A..." Unit--Day 2: "If You Give a Pig a Pancake"

Monday we started our 'If You Give A...' series homeschooling unit, based on the 'If You Give A...' book series by Laura Numeroff. Additional days in this unit are linked at the bottom of the post!

Tuesday I had a meeting in the morning and then we headed to the park for a playdate with some friends. By the time we got home, we didn't have lots of time for 'school,' but we did manage to re-read the story, do the "Mouse Cookie" dance a few times, and Ezra used some large felt 'chocolate chips' to make paths and jump across the floor, which I am adding to Monday's post.

Our next book in the unit was If You Give a Pig a Pancake. Early Wednesday morning, Ezra and I were up before Ellie and we read the book before making pancakes for breakfast. Ellie must have known we were going to make a special breakfast, because she was up in a few minutes!

My nearly naked kiddos...don't judge me, it was morning and they don't like clothes!

My mom found this pig pancake pan at TJ Maxx a few years back.
I still spy one every now and then there. I think it's made by Nordic Ware.
How perfect is it for this unit?!

I only made two 'pig' pancakes because they took longer.

He didn't look especially pig-like. You could just do a regular pancake with two smaller 'ears.'
(Much like we do to make 'Mickey Mouse' pancakes...)

mmmm.....

Ellie approved!

Always sure to blow on her bites...

For our activity, we made a pig face from shapes, an idea I got from the Mom 2 Two Posh Lil Divas blog. I made a letter 'P' for Ezra to trace. He traced it and then wanted to make some of his own. After he was finished, I wrote, "P is for pig," across the top.

note the tiny hand that is about to steal his crayon, hehehe...

Next, we played a game, using the pig and some 'pancakes' I'd made the night before. I just used a cup to trace circles onto brown construction paper, cut them out, and wrote letters on each one. Then I used a small plate and Ezra's toy spatula to make the game play more fun. He would scoop a pancake, tell me the letter, and feed it to the pig. He surprised me with how many letters he was fluent with. The few he didn't know went back into the stack and rotated back through until he could name them correctly. Later I laminated the letter pancakes so they would be more durable (a tiny sister wanted to wad them all up, not surprisingly). He enjoyed showing his Daddy how he played this game when he got home.

The Mouse, Cookies, and More treasury CD came out once again for Music Time! We sang, "Flippin' the Flapjacks" several times and did the "Piggy Polka" too!

They are both 'flipping flapjacks!'

Thursday, I had errands to run and we bought some of our groceries, so we didn't have a whole lot of school time. We did play the pig pancake game some more and I wanted Ez to practice his letters (M and P, since that's what we've been focusing on this week), so I got out one of our small dry erase boards (sold in a two-pack on the Target dollar aisle during back-to-school) and a marker out. I wrote the upper and lower-case M for him and then had him copy. Unfortunately, the bulkiness of the dry-erase marker made it hard for him to do and he got discouraged. I'm going to try to remember to pick up some thin markers when we go to the store this week.

We've started our If You Give a Moose a Muffin day today, but we took a breather so I could work on this post and Ezra could watch a Leap Frog movie. Now Miss Ellie needs some lovin' (and a NAP), so I'd better get us some lunch and get her to sleep!

If you have any questions or additional activity suggestions, please let me know! :)

Check out the other posts from this unit!

Day 1, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

Day 3, If You Give a Moose A Muffin (part 1)