Truman's Aunt Farm

Our next Five in a Row book was Truman's Aunt Farm.  The first time we read the story, after we got through it, I thought, 'this story makes no sense.'  But I was still in a fog from being sick.  It really is a cute little story about a boy who thinks he's getting an ant farm but ends up caring for lots of aunts.

This was a short unit.  The activities were:

~K wrote a letter to her aunts.
~We revisited homonyms.  K had a good understanding of these, so one night at dinner I read aloud the double homonym riddles from the FIAR archives.  (George was hungry enough to devour six pieces of pizza.  But I was hungrier.  I... [ate eight]. )  Most of these were beyond K's ability to solve, but a good challenge for Daddy.  Then the two of them thought of more double homonym riddles.  K thought that was fun, though she just liked the sound of same words together and her riddle solutions didn't quite make sense.
~I went to the post office and bought a variety of stamps.  At home, K practiced counting out change needed to buy selected ones.  Then she enjoyed making a mini stamp book to look at.
~We made a list of the aunts' activities in the book.  T enjoyed looking at the pictures and helping find things to list, too.
~K made a cute drawing of a person in the stylized manner of the book illustrations.
~We studied ants!  We read some books about ants and both K and T made pompom ants to show the three body parts and the way the legs are attached at the thorax.

~I asked K to design an ant hill, and she made an (orderly) drawing of ants in their underground home.
~And an ant day wouldn't be complete without an ants on a log snack!

~When birthday shopping for K, I knew we would be rowing this book.  So one of her gifts was Rainbow Ants from Rainbow Resource, and it was a good cumulation to this study.

It was fascinating to watch how the ants organized themselves and in short order began building their tunnels. 

I've learned some things about ants since having this farm.  One is that they live quite a long time in a closed environment.  It's going on two months and we've only given them tiny pieces of fruit twice.  They are also remarkably adept at climbing the slippery sides of their cage, and one has to have great care if one attempts to have the top open for any amount of time.

This was a good book, a short, fun row.