We are participating in Scholastic's Summer Reading Program, and they [nicely] put together a reading list for W's age group. Some of the books we have, but I put a large chunk on reserve at the public library. The books are hit or miss when competing for W's attention; one that he really had laser focus for was The Salamander Room by Anne Mazar. A boy finds a salamander in the woods and decides to bring it home. [Ugh. Please don't let life imitate art.] His mom asks him a ton of [very thoughtful] questions - like: where will it live, what will it eat...and the boy has all kinds of creative answers for his mom [none of them based in reality]. I think the wheels started turning in W's mind and he immediately thought we could lift the roof off of our house and create our very own salamander room [no can do].
Instead, we created a salamander habitat. We spray painted a shoe box to create our diorama type habitat. Then we found some rocks and some sticks while out on a nature walk that we used to make our forest floor [we had VERY lame tiny rocks around here, so I had to supplement with a river rock package from the store]. Rock placement was VERY important and had to be very precise. [Look at that sassy face!!]
Then we cut multi-colored green yarn and used that to create a mossy forest floor. Placement of that = not so important. We added in some sticks...and we were set.
Last step: add our salamander [from our piles of lizards, frogs, bugs, and dinosaurs that we have around the house - how did this happen???] and then admire.
Next up: make our own salamanders. We found a recipe for salt dough. We mixed, rolled, baked, and then let it cool. The mixing was very intense and I would like to go ahead and say that nap lasted THREE hours on the day that all of this salt dough salamander business went down...
We waited for them to bake. We talked about how lizard tails can be ripped off for protection and then regenerate...which led to a five fast facts sheet. We added some new words and revisited some classics [Nocturnal...Ev is nocturnal, etc...]
. 
W sat down to tell Ev all about the time he accidentally ripped off the tail of a lizard at Pop Pops' house and how Pop Pops threw the tail into the bushes. Why are boys so gross? Clearly, Ev LOVED the story...
Since these ditties take an hour or so to cook up, we also gave Ev a mound of salt dough to play with. It was all fun and games until he tried to eat it. That stuff is SAL-TY.
Once cooled, we painted our lizards and added googly eyes. W was in charge of the glue since the eyes were so tiny. We made a few of these guys so that we could paint in many colors vs. only PINK.
We did a watercolor of some salamanders. I would like to say that W did a decent job of staying close to the lines this time. He told me that he can do lots of things now that he is three. Riiiiggghhht.
Finally, You Tube offers a couple of versions of this story. Apparently Reading Rainbow did a whole 28 minute presentation on it. We didn't watch that version, but we did watch THIS version. Not the best, but W was interested in it.
So - that is an overview of our salamander lesson plan. Thank goodness summer school starts next week. I can't maintain this level of "fun"...;) Thank goodness, too, for Pinterest. Lots of good ideas floating around out there so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
So - that is an overview of our salamander lesson plan. Thank goodness summer school starts next week. I can't maintain this level of "fun"...;) Thank goodness, too, for Pinterest. Lots of good ideas floating around out there so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
