The Plant Sitter and the Garden of Eden: Another Read Aloud to Real Challenges Lesson

As summer blooms add color to our yard, I am reminded of the fourth lesson I facilitated in the Read Aloud to Real Challenges Course that I created for a homeschool co-op a little over a year ago.   The flowers that the children fashioned in that class (as well as the ones my own children made when I repeated the same class for them at home) were as colorful as the perennial garden patch in our yard now is.  The attention and creativity with which they created their flowers was equally as beautiful.

Two ways I continually try to train up my children with happy hearts are to:

1. honor and encourage their creative genius.
2. relate how their creativity is borne of our creator’s genius

The lesson I centered on The Plant Sitter and the Garden of Eden aimed to do just that.

Materials and Tools Needed

• a copy of The Plant Sitter by Gene Zion (I believe this book is out of print.  We got our copy from the library and were thrilled with it.  If you cannot secure a used or librarycopy of the book, you could use a book on the same theme, such as Planting a Rainbow by Lois Elhert.)
• blue paper
• scissors
• yarn
• pipe cleaners
• construction paper
• recycled plastic lids
• tape
• styrofoam trays
• leftover “great stuff” from other craft and challenge times
• hole punch
• stapler and staples
• white boards and dry erase markers or scratch paper and writing tools
• a picture book or painting with the Garden of Eden for inspiration

Welcoming Prayer and Stretch

The same as in Lesson Three.

Warm-Up Challenge: April Showers Bring May Flowers

To set up the challenge, bring out a pile of blue paper pre-cut into rain drop shapes, cut shapes as you chat with students and present the challenge, or challenge students to cut some rain drop shapes.  In the spring, ask what April showers bring:  May flowers.  Or, at this time of year, ask what thunderstorms help: plants and flowers.  Finally, challenge students to create as many bloom/flower shapes as possible within five minutes using only the raindrop shaped pieces of paper (and, perhaps, some pipe cleaners.)

As tempting as it may be to guide, model or help students make blooms, be sure to honor each child’s creativity by staying quiet during the pause that may occur as students solve the problems involved with this mini-challenge in their heads.  If a child gets “stuck” and seems “too” frustrated, simply ask some questions as guidance:  Can you name any flowers?  How many petals do you notice in such a flower?  What shapes do the petals make? Etc.

Read Aloud: The Plant Sitter

Ask children if they can guess what today’s story might be about.  Then, show the cover of The Plant Sitter.  Take a picture walk through the story’s rich illustrations and ask children to predict what they think the story might be about or ask questions that the text might answer.

Read The Plant Sitter, asking individual children to help read any text that they may be capable of and taking time to stop to really notice the details within the pictures and to make connections and predictions about the story as you go.  Be sure to identify what the problems in the story are and what the boy does to solve them. 

Ask children how the boy applied the strategy for solving problems that we have used for the past few weeks. How did he identify his problems, come up with plans for solving them, test his ideas and, if necessary, adapt his approaches?

For a richer experience, also discuss themes and values related the book—responsibility, hard work, ingenuity, the value of research, etc. Maybe even liken the way the plants grew and grew in the story to the miracle of the loaves and fishes.  Isn’t it amazing the way when one child offers meager gifts and talents, plenty can be creates?

The Main Challenge: Creating A Model of the Garden of Eden

Planning the Designs

Note that in the story we read, there were lots of growing things.  If it is winter or spring, mention that as the weather warms, many folks plan and build gardens.  If it is summer, talk about all the growing things outside.  If it is autumn, discus which plants are still growing and which are dying off for the winter.  Ask who can name the parts of a plant (roots, stem, leaves, petals, seeds).  Then ask if children can think of a Bible Story about a very special garden?

Present the day’s main challenge and its guidelines:

• We will build a model of our own imaginary Garden of Eden.
• It should be a rainbow of colors and contain plants in all shapes and sizes.
• Each plant must have all its parts (stem, leaves, petals, seeds, roots).
• Each planet must be freestanding.
• Each plant must be made from materials provided, using  the tools provided (which may not actually become part of the construction).

Creating and Testing Designs

To encourage students to plan their model plants out first (as well as to avoid a free-for-all with materials), let them know they must use white boards and markers (or scrap paper and writing utensils) to brainstorm.  Once they have sketched their ideas and/or listed the materials they would like to use to test out their designs, they may collect materials that their plans specifically require.

Once children begin using their requested materials, if they discover they need other materials, offer them freely, but ask them what each new material might be used for.  As always, encourage children to look critically at any problems they may run into with their designs and to helps each other discover ways to overcome these or to revise their plans.

Challenge Complete!

Finally, of course, have students put their plants together to form a garden!

Notes

• If you wish to add another parameter to the challenge, consider bringing one-inch cubes.  Suggest that plants may stand no taller than 12 stacked cubes and no shorter than three.
• If any students finish early, simply extend the challenge by asking them to create more plants.  Or, add related challenges, such as a suggestion to creatures that could be found in the garden.
• Inspiration for this lesson plan came from Planting a Rainbow at Children’s Engineering Educators, LLC.
• If you happen to use ideas from this plan for your own home or classroom, please point folks back to this post (or series), and, also, be sure to stop by again with a comment to let me know how it went.  I always enjoy hearing how others adapt my lesson plans and collaborating to improve them for future use.

Want more?

Check out:

·         Lesson One, when Albert’s Alphabet inspired us to build self-standing letters in honor of the Holy Spirit

·         Lesson Two, when My Friend Rabbit had us building towers to point to God.

·         Lesson Three when Mr. Bear’s Chair encouraged us to build our own Sabbath chair models.

Read Aloud to Real Challenges: Mr. Bear's Chair and Constructing A Sabbath Chair

Sharing creative ideas with one another...

Three things that I do in training my young children up to know and love God are:

1.      Regularly surround them with others who live and love our faith, such as with families in our local Catholic homeschool co-op.

2.      Weave together traditional learning (such as language and literacy studies), out-of-the-box experiences (such as engineering challenges) and faith (such as discussion of Bible stories and the Catechism).

3.      Encourage them to recognize that God made each of us with our own unique gifts, talents and creative genius, and  He expects us to share all these with others.

The other day, Amy, a Training Happy Hearts Facebook Fan, reminded me of a course I put together with these three things in mind:  the Read Aloud to Real Challenges: An Early Literacy and Challenge Course that I planned and taught for our Catholic co-op in Spring 2011.  Amy also asked me to share what books I used for the course, besides the ones that I have previously written about (Albert’s Alphabet , which inspired us to build self-standing letters in honor of the Holy Spirit and My Friend Rabbit, which brought us to building towers to point to God.)

3 Chair Designs

Determined not to let my recent computer failure prevent me from answering Amy’s question in a timely manner, I spent some time last night searching old photos that I had on a different hard drive.  Success!

Beaming over rocking chair design...

I found photos from the third lesson that I taught both at co-op to 5-7 year olds and at home on my lawn with my then 3 and 5 year olds.    These helped me to reconstruct the lesson plan for the third class session of my Read Aloud to Real Challenges Course.

Delighting in cushioned chair design...

So, today, please enjoy this plan for a class centered around Thomas Graham’s Mr. Bear’s Chair and constructing a Sabbath Chair – a plan that would work for any week, but would tie in particularly well with:

• exploration of the Creation Story.
• discussion of the Sabbath
• Father’s Day (since Dad’s work hard, but need rest, too!)

Materials Needed

To facilitate Mr. Bear’s Chair and A Sabbath Chair, you will need:

• a copy of Mr. Bear’s Chair  by Thomas Graham.  (A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams could also work.)
• a bag of mini-marshmallows (or gum drops)
• a box of toothpicks
• old magazines or catalogues
• one sheet of address labels for each child or pair of children (These can be recycled from freebies you get in the mail; we were out of those, so I used blank labels.)
• a “great stuff” box of materials and supplies leftover from prior classes or donated by children for this class
• scissors
• white boards and markers (or scrap paper and pencils)

Welcoming Prayer and Stretch

Welcome students back and ask if anyone can remember what we should do with our bodies to help our minds work. That’s right – stretch and move! Lead the following stretch, adding in movements according to students suggestions:

We thank you God for the sky above, (Stretch onto tip toes, arms up high, really reaching for the sky. Reach with one arm way up as high as you can. Reach with the other. Reach with both.)
and for the ground below. (Bend over and touch toes or floor. Tickle your own toes. Walk your hands up your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, tickling and/or squeezing your legs with your hands.)
We thank you, God, for everything (Lunge to one side, really stretching arm out. Press toward the wall.)
that we come to know. (Lunge to the other side. Then, feet together, bend over and touch the ground again, Roll up. Stack knees on top of feet, hips on top of knees, shoulders on top of hips, head up… Scrunch shoulders up to ear together. Then, one shoulder, the other, back to the first, back to the other. Up and down with both. Wiggle the entire body, turn around and sit down.)

Warm-Up Challenge: Make a Person

Let students know that now that their bodies are warmed up, it’s time to use their minds.  Ask if they can recall the Creation Story... Who made the world? (God!)  And us?  (God!)  Why? (To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.)  Discuss how amazing God’s design for the world and for us is.  Ask them if they know in whose image God created us? (His.)  Then, take out a bag of marshmallows (or gum drops) and a box of toothpicks. 

Challenge children to take only ten minutes to make likenesses of people with only these two items, people.  Each created person should be able to sit on the edge of a table or chair without falling off.

After ten minutes, congratulate children on their creative figurine making and ask them to set their toothpick-and-marshmallow people aside until alter in the class.  If any child, however, has not finished creating a person, offer that child a choice of quietly doing so as you read the day’s story or waiting until later to do so.

Read Aloud: Mr. Bear’s Chair

Ask children if they can guess what today’s story might be about.  Then, show the cover of Mr. Bear’s Chair and take a picture walk through it.  Have children make predictions about what the text will be about.

Read Mr. Bear’s Chair, asking children to read text that they are capable of and taking time to stop to really look at the pictures and to make predictions as you go.  Be sure to identify what the problem in the story is and what Mr. Bear does to solve it.  Also ask what they think will happen next after the final page of the story.  How might Mr. Bear solve the problem suggested by the final illustration?

Ask children how Mr. Bear applied the strategy for solving problems that we have used for the past few weeks. How did he identify the problem, come up with a plan for solving it, test it and, if necessary adapt it?.

Finally, discuss themes and values related the book—loving relationships, enjoyment while eating together, care in work, serving one another, etc.

The Main Challenge: Building a Sabbath Chair

Ask what Mr. Bear and Mrs. Bear might do in a chair besides eat?  Respond to all answers, and, if no one suggests it, bring up the idea of resting.

Harken back to the Creation Story and ask if anyone knows what God did on the seventh day?  (He rested.)  What is a day when we honor God and rest?  (Sunday.)  Does anyone know another word that begins with “S” and means “a day of worship and rest from work”?  (Sabbath.)   

Suggest that just like Mr. Bear and Mrs. Bear might use their chairs for resting on the Sabbath, our newly created “people” might need a Sabbath chair. Review how to approach a problem: identify it, come up with a plan, test the plan, revise it as needed and, finally, share the results.

Present the day’s main challenge and its guidelines:

• We will design and build chairs that the people we created can sit down to rest on.
• Chairs must be self-standing.
• Each chair must be able to support a marshmallow-and-toothpick person without the person falling off or the chair falling part, breaking or collapsing.
• Only materials (address labels and magazines) and tools (scissors) provided may be used.  (You may also wish to include leftover materials from prior lessons or use items from a “Great Stuff” box.  All of the children in my class opted to go this route, and I honored their choice.)

Encourage students to plan their chairs out first on mini white boards (or scrap paper) and to meet the challenge on their own or through their collective creativity and problem-solving.  Encourage them to look critically at any problems they may run into with their designs and to helps each other discover ways to overcome these or to revise their plans.

Finally, of course, share the results!

Notes

If any students finish early, offer related mini-challenges, such as building people out of paper scraps, designing three-legged stools, creating rocking chairs, etc.

Inspiration for this lesson plan came from I Need to Sit Down and  A Chair for Mom at childrensengineering.org.

As always, enjoy this plan, inspire creativity and remember:

• process over product
• experience and imagination over end-result and teacher-direction.
• Credit where credit is due.

Honor each child’s problem solving and teamwork abilities and give thanks for creativity and personal interpretation that God grants each one of us.  And, most of all, enjoy!

Can my chair hold me?

Plus, if you happen to borrow ideas from this plan to use in your own home or co-op, please point folks back to this post (or series), and also, be sure to stop by and let me know how it went. I always enjoy hearing how others adapt my plans and collaborating to improve plans for future use.

Read Aloud to Real Challenges: My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohamm and Building Towers to Point to Heaven

As I have been preparing for Monday’s OLQOS Co-op, I realized I never posted about the second week of our spring co-op, where I am teaching a class I designed called Read Aloud to Real Challenges: An Early Literacy and Challenge Class.

The course aims to share some engaging children’s picture books that tie into value and faith themes and act as a springboard for design challenges.

During our first class, we read, Albert’s Alphabet and built self-standing letters in honor of the Holy Spirit. This week we read My Friend Rabbit by by Eric Rohmann and built towers to point to God.

Here was the plan I used, first, in class, then, at home. (Luke and Nina have requested to “take Mommy’s class” at home each week after Co-op, so they can enjoy other teachers’ classes while co-op is in session.)

Materials Needed
To facilitate it My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohamm and Building Towers to Point to Heaven, you will need:

• a copy of My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann
• a piece of paper for each child
• a paper clip for each child
• a magazine for each child or pair of child
• one sheet of address labels for each child or pair of child (These can be recycled from freebies you get in the mail; we were out of those, so I used blank labels.)
• scissors

Welcoming Prayer and Stretch

Welcome students back and ask if anyone can remember what we should do with our bodies to help our brains work. That’s right – stretch! Lead the following stretch, adding more movements than prior week:

We thank you God for the sky above, (Stretch onto tip toes, arms up high, really reaching for the sky. Reach with one arm way up as high as you can. Reach with the other. Reach with both.)
and for the ground below. (Bend over and touch toes or floor. Tickle your own toes. Walk your hands up your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, tickling and/or squeezing your legs with your hands.)
We thank you, God, for everything (Lunge to one side, really stretching arm out. Press toward the wall.)
that we come to know. (Lunge to the other side. Then, feet together, Bend over and touch the ground again, Roll up. Stack kneed on top of feet, hips on top of knees, shoulders on top of hips, head up… Scrunch shoulders up to ear together. Then, one shoulder, the other, back to the first, back to the other. Up and down with both. Wiggle the entire body, turn around and sit down.)

Warm-Up Challenge: Make a Plane that Can Carry a Paperclip

Show the cover of My Friend Rabbit and ask children what they see and what they think the book might be about. Notice the Caldecott award and ask if anyone knows what the medal is for. Make some predictions about what the story might be about.

Then, hand out one piece of paper to each child. Explain that for their mini-challenge of the day, they must create a plane that can carry a paper clip, just like the plane on the front of the book carries the mouse. They may not use any materials besides the paper and paper clip and may not use any tools besides their imaginations and bodies (hands).

Allow students to test and modify their planes, refolding them in ways to better carry the paperclip and noting some of the ways the flight patterns change depending on how the paperclips are placed on the planes.

Read Aloud: My Friend Rabbit

Congratulate students on their designs and let them know that we will now see what kind of flight the mouse on My Friend Rabbit goes on.

Read My Friend Rabbit, asking students to read text that they are capable of and taking time to stop to really look at the pictures and to make predictions as you go, such as wondering what rabbit’s plan must be and trying to guess what he is pulling at first (an elephant!) or identifying what the problem is once he has all the animals stacked (they aren’t high enough) and predicting what he might do next, etc.

Also elicit how rabbit uses the same strategy we used last class to solve a problem. How? He identifies a problem (the plane in the tree), comes up with a plan and tests it (stacking all the animals to reach the plane), and, then, adapts the plan as necessary, before sharing the results.

Note how rabbit just goes ahead with his plan and tries it, while Albert from Albert’s Alphabet last week approached things in a different way. (Albert used written plans.)  Discuss how different folks creatively solve problems in different ways according to the gifts God has given them.

Also, discuss other themes and values related the book—that we accept our friends for their good points and their more challenging ones. That problems can be solved.  That teamwork can be helpful.

Further, identify and discuss how rabbit might solve the new problem presented by the final illustration in the book.

The Main Challenge: Building Towers to Point to God

Jack wants in on the building.

Review again how Rabbit approached his problem: identifying it, coming up with a plan, testing the plan and revising it as needed and, finally, sharing the results. Then, ask what rabbit’s plan was(to build a tower).

Suggest that towers point toward Heaven. We should always reach toward Heaven and, through God’s grace will get there one day. Might we build a tower towards Heave, pointing to God, today, say, one as high as our belly buttons?

Present the challenge and its guidelines:

• We will build towers, individually or together, that point to God.
• They must be able to stand on their own.
• They must be made using only the materials (recycled magazines and sheets of address labels) and tools (scissors) provided.

Success!

Encourage students to meet the challenge, noting difficulties they run into and asking questions to help them discover ways to overcome these or to revise their plans.

Have children pause occasionally to note each other’s ideas and talk about ones they might borrow from one another to adapt.

Finally, of course, share the results!

Notes

If you have extra time at the end of class, which I never seem to, try making other paper airplane designs, building towers from other materials or seeing if built towers can bear the weight of paper clips, paper airplanes, etc.  Re-design towers as necessary to help them bear weight.

The main challenge idea is from p. 32 of Team Challenges by Kris Bordessa.

As always, have fun, inspire creativity and remember:

• process over product
• experience and imagination over end-result and teacher-direction.

Honor the children’s problem solving abilities and the gift of creativity and personal interpretation that God grants each one of us. 

For example, one of my students is on the Autism spectrum.  He's a creative and spiritual young man who moves forward with such concentration once he gets something in his mind.  As soon as he noticed a photo of Pope John Paul II in the magazines we had, he decided to use some of his stickies to make a cross.

Then, he modified our challenge of building a tower to point God to be building a church.  He spent much of the rest of the class intent on building one complete with stained glass windows on its walls.

He even invited a classmate to take her tower (below) to combine with his church.  What a joy it was to see them working together at their own creation, employing gifts of problem-solving and teamwork!

Inspired by that student's invitation of collaboration, I request:  If you happen to borrow ideas from this plan to use in your own home or co-op, please be sure to stop by and let me know how it went. I always enjoy collaborating to improve and adapt plans for future use.

Read Aloud to Real Challenges: An Early Literacy and Challenge Class with a Christian Flair

This spring, at our spring co-op, I am teaching a course for 5-8 year olds that I planned called Read Aloud to Real Challenges: An Early Literacy and Challenge Class. Basically, it is a hands-on storyhour, where we read a story together each week before doing a related challenge that is tied in to some tradition or story within our faith.

This past week I facilitated our first class – and, boy, did we have fun. For those who would like to borrow my ideas, I am sharing a detailed description of the lesson below.

Welcoming Prayer and Stretch
Welcome students to the class, explaining that we plan to have a lot of fun in the coming weeks reading stories, doing challenges and using our gifts of creativity and problem solving, among others. Explain that we’ll have to really use our mind during class, and that I believe one of the best ways to get our brains going is by stretching our bodies. Teach the following prayer and stretching exercise which will begin each class:

 We thank you God for the sky above, (Stretch onto tip toes, arms up high, really reaching for the sky) and for the ground below. (Bend over and touch toes or floor.)  We thank you, God, (lunge to one side, really stretching arm out) for everything (do the same to the other side)  that we come to know. (spin around and sit down).


Warm-Up Challenge
Explain that now that we have stretched our bodies, it is time to stretch our brains with a little mini-challenge. Place a pile of foam letter stickers (which actually contains the letters for each child’s name in it) in front of the students and tell them their challenge is to organize the stickers into as many groups as there are children. For example, if there are only three children in the group, let them know that they must organize the stickers into three groups that make sense.

Then, allow the students to work together, trying different approaches to organization. Expect them to do such things as sort the letters into some kind of alphabetical order, into piles by color, into groups of the same letters. As they do so, comment only on what they are doing, not on what they could or should be doing, and if their efforts meet the challenge guidelines. For example, “Oh, you have all the A’s together, and the L’s, and a J, and two S’s. That’s one way to sort the stickers. Do you have more than three groups though?”

If the students seems to be getting frustrated, offer increasingly less-subtle hints until you note one student “discovering” the key. (A big hint might b taking attendance and noting that there are four A’s among all the names on the list.) Once a child starts to “get it”, encourage others to note what that student is doing and to follow suit.

After everyone has taken their own stickers, offer each student construction paper, so they can choose a color they like to make a name plate for themselves. Note that “we don’t have a trash bin for the pieces we are ripping off. What could we use to collect our trash until we can get to a trash can?” Let a student solve the problem, perhaps suggesting putting all small scraps on a piece of newspaper.

Read Aloud: Albert’s Alphabet
Congratulate students on working well individually and as a team to meet their first challenge. Explain that you will now read a book about a duck that has his own letter challenge to meet. Then, read Albert’s Alphabet slowly, really inviting the students to look at the detailed illustrations on each page, noting how Albert attacks his challenge, how creatively he used materials, etc. Have fun talking about the strategies and materials he uses, his creative ideas, etc., as well as predicting in what ways Albert might make the next letters – especially the “Z” at the end. Also be sure to point out the paper plans Albert sometimes uses if no student notes them first.


The Main Challenge: Building the Holy Spirit

Referring to Albert, comment that he sure had a gift of creativity and that God gives each of us gifts. Ask if anyone knows about the gifts related to something the Church honors this month. Ask if anyone knows what this month is dedicated to. (The Holy Spirit).

Elicit and expand upon what the students know about he Holy Spirit, using print outs from Catholic Culture for background and visuals if you wish. Ask if anyone knows a symbol for the Holy Spirit, perhaps one that is a bird, like Albert is a bird. (Dove). Then, explain that the word D-O-V-E will be the basis of our Big Challenge today, but that, first, we need to think about how to approach any challenge.

Using Albert’s challenge, as well as the mini-challenge from the beginning of the class as examples, briefly discuss the approach we will take to challenges in our course:

1. Identify the challenge or problem.
2. Brainstorm ideas on paper, through discussion or just by trying things out.
3. Testing our ideas and revising them as necessary.
4. Sharing our results.

Offer white boards and highlighters or dry-erase markers for students who might like to write about or sketch their plans as Albert did in building some of the letters he did in the book.

Finally, draw attention to a set of materials – paper scraps, cardboard tubes, tape and craft sticks – and a set of tools – scissors, glue, pencils and crayons, and offer the challenge guidelines:

Your challenge is to build the letters D-O-V-E using the materials and tools provided. The letters must be freestanding and they can only be made using the materials provided.

Let the students use their creativity to do so, stepping in only to offer guidance about respecting the space your are in (for example, putting newspaper under constructions that are being built with messy dripping glue) or using each other for help when needed (for example, “You can work individually or as a team. Either way, go ahead and ask each other for help or suggest ideas to each other.) Focus on process over product, being aware that some students may not be able to complete the entire word before the end of the class period.

If there is time at the end, which is unlikely, have each student share how they approached the challenge – their ideas, revisions and successes. If there is ample time, offer a second challenge: Now, build your own name.

Notes:
For larger groups, consider making Design Brief Hand Outs, such as the one found at one of the sites that inspired this plan.

Have fun, enjoy and be amazed, as I was, at the creativity God gifts each and every one of us and the gusto with which children work together to use it!

And, if you happen to try this out, be sure to stop by and let me know how it went.  I always enjoy collaborating to tweak and improve plans for future use!

This post is being shared at We Are THAT Family's Works for Me Wednesday, since both co-op, and free resources online that can be adapted for our lesson plans, really work for me.  What works for you at home, school or work?  Link up to share at WFMW.