Homeschool Talk: Literature Units

I love literature. I have a degree in English and I just love teaching it to my kids. My son is an avid reader so when he was in 3rd grade I started doing literature units with him. Then, I started a book club for him. Basically, we take a break from our English/Grammar workbook and read a book and do lessons on that book for 1-3 weeks. Sometimes I find lesson plans online, sometimes I make my own.

This year Claire is in the 1st grade so I decided literature units would be fun for her too. So, each month we are going to concentrate on a different fairy tale. I do literature once a week with her. So each Wednesday I'm reading her a different version of the same fairy tale and we will do an activity that goes along with it.

I'm sharing what we are doing on my blog because these units are so much fun! They are very easy to add to your curriculum or use if your child is already reading that book. I hope others will find my information helpful. I'd also like to hear your ideas for activities too.

In the "Homeschooling Corner" in my margin I have listed the literature selections for both kids for the month along with links to lesson plans and activities. I'll update this section each month.

This month Claire and I are reading The Little Red Hen. Below is our schedule for the month.

Week 1. The Little Red Hen by Byron Barton
Activity: Bake Bread


Week 2. The Little Red Hen by Jerry Pinkney
Activity: Make your own Little Red Hen Story Book


Week 3. Little Red Hen Gets Help by Kenneth Spengler
Activity: Stick puppets


Week 4. You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You:
The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat
Activity: Field Trip to the Mrs. Baird's Bakery!
(We have a factory in Fort Worth)



I preread all of these books during the summer. I found most of them at the library. We have the You Read to Me, I'll Read to You book. (If you've never seen this its really cute. They have the text in two different colors. One color the child reads, one color the adult reads.) I tried to find different versions. For example, the animals that say "not I" are all different in each of these books. I made a chart for Claire so we can compare that. The patterns for the stick puppets and story book are in a Little Red Hen Unit book that I have. A link to it can be found in my "homeschool corner" section of my blog.



The activity for the first week was to bake bread. My husband has never baked bread from scratch so I told him we'd wait until the weekend to do it so he could be home to join in. So, that is what we are doing this afternoon. On Wednesday, I let Claire bake bread using frozen bread dough. I cut it into 3 strips and let her braid it. Here is how it turned out. It was a big hit at dinner!

At the end of the month I'll try to do another post that shows all of the finished activities that went along with this unit.