February Read Aloud

Last month we finished our first successful read-aloud in our homeschool, The Cricket in Times Square. Cute. My six and four year old were engaged and had a blast. We read a chapter a day and each would dictate what they could at the end of each chapter. Then, at dinnertime each night, they would enthusiastically share with dad what they remembered from the day's chapter! We had such a blast that when the book was finished I was itching to get the library and find a new story! I have the Burgess Bird Book for Children waiting on my bookshelf to be explored but the attention span of my four year old is not at that level yet. Soooo, I finally picked up Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne. Two chapters in and the boys are enthralled! Interestingly enough, they have never seen the cartoon so this is their first exposure to these characters!

Of course I've seen many episodes in my lifetime and a question that has always lingered is what in the world is up with his name? What is a Pooh, why is he called that? Well. Now I know! Glad that mystery is solved! And no, I'm not going to tell you! You'll have to read the book to find out, hehe!

So the first chapter is when Pooh Bear is trying to get honey in a tree and tries to disguise himself as a cloud in the sky to hide from the bees. Using Christopher Robin's balloon from a party the day before, he hovers in the air next to the hive. We just happened to have a helium balloon in the house the day we read this chapter so we had fun with this! The boys tried tying a stuffed animal to the balloon to see if it would float, to no avail. They kept weighing different objects to see if they were lighter or heavier than this toy until they found what worked. After many tries with different objects around the house,  they discovered that three Lego bricks made the balloon hover halfway to the ceiling in our living room!