Madeline unit for boys?

[Melissa3]

This year I'm homeschooling my son as I've gone through all the girls I'm not sure how to make this unit stand out for him. Any suggestions? He is a typical boy I'd assume...prefers to cut things out instead of color (does some coloring) and LOVES to build things. I have a really cool block puzzle my sister gave me one year as a hand me down and she still doesn't understand how important this puzzle is for my family with homeschooling. It has 6 puzzles all together...each side of the blocks has one picture from a different Madeline story book. I've kept this aside for my son to do during the unit study because he loves puzzles as well, this will be something new for him to do with the story. Are there any other boy related ideas to use with this unit that would interest him? We have the cloth dolls and clothes but hubby would prefer that son not play with the dress up dolls much.

His favorite unit so far has been Caps for Sale and asks to do it over and over again.

[Paige P]

Maybe you could build an Eiffel tower out of something? (Or maybe just a tower in general? It could be a fun one like one made of styrofoam cups and newspaper and masking tape?)

I know the symmetry paint project (I don't now if it's in the book or not) -- we did lots of painting. We made butterflies and painted on side with "dots" or a pattern and then folded it in half so the other side had the symmetrical pattern. You could just do paper and fold it in half to get the same type image.

How 'bout the "body part" project that I've posted before (don't know if you've seen it or not), but my girls loved it, and I got the idea from my nephew's teacher, and he loved it, too:

Instructions on making a "wearable" body parts outfit.
I thought this was a cute, easy way to introduct the main body parts. You will need:
* brown paper bag,
* 3 sandwich baggies
* paper towel tube
* long flexible straws (I found some at Dollar General)
* glue
* tape
* yarn
* dry manicotti noodles (and rigattoni noodles if you want)
* construction paper heart
* labels for each body part if you want
Instruction:
1) Cut arm holes and a neck hole into the paper bag. This will be the wearable "body."
2) Cut out a construction paper heart and glue it into position onto the body.
3) Label the paper towel tube "esophagus" and thoroughly tape a plastic baggie onto the bottom of the tube. Label the baggie "stomach." Glue the "esophagus" down the center front of the "body." Once the body is worn, have the child "drop" a piece of candy from the mouth, into the esophagus, and watch it fall into the stomach.
4) Take 2 flexible straws and thoroughly tape baggies to the ends of the straws. Tape/Glue the baggies to the chest area of each side of the body -- they will be the lungs. Once the body is worn, the child can blow into the straws and see how the lungs inflate and deflate.
5) Under the stomach, glue lots of yarn to show the intestines. You could make a "glob" of yard at one point on the right side to show the appendix (it's actually where your small intestines and large intestines join). Your appendix "ruptures" or gets infected and needs to come out when food (well, poop, really) gets trapped in there and gets "infected" (I think that's right -- if I'm wrong, please let me know).
6) On the back, glue the dry manicotti noodles to show the vertebrate of the spine. You can do one vertically and one horizontally to show the vertebrate and the disc in between. I'm going to use manicotti noodes for the vertebrate and rigattoni noodles for the disc.


Hope some of these ideas help.......

[Candace C]

Paige suggested some thing I thought of too!

*Build some sort of tower, I know I've seen online ideas for making Eiffel towers. Get a book or two on the Eiffel Tower to read that day.

*Focus on the human body aspect of it - there are lots of things you could do here! Paige's body craft thing seems great too! :)

*Here's another Eiffel Tower. It might be too small for little hands to work with, but you could maybe blow it up a bit and he could cut it out.

http://papertoys.com/eiffel.htm

*When we did Madeline we also went to our local hospital and they gave us a tour. We looked in a room with the bed like Madeline would have layed on, as well as the other parts of the hospital.

[Melissa]

Instructions on making a "wearable" body parts outfit.
I thought this was a cute, easy way to introduct the main body parts.

That's so cool! I wonder if ds would get into that.
He wasn't so into putting geopolis/popperville on the "Land of Make Believe" map today. :unsure: Oh well.
Thanks!

[Rachel in MD]

Don't forget about that wonderful game called Operation.

Let your son play dress-up by being a doctor while playing this game. Even if you don't have the actual game, he can still dress up and pretend.

Rachel

[MicheleNJ]

We rowed Madeline last April. Justin loved it! (he is 6). We learned alot about Paris and did things like make french toast with french bread. Read lots of good books about Paris, went on a virtual tour of the Eiffel Tower, made a madeline puppet. Learned where our appendix was.
Learned about rhyming words, learned to count in groups/pairs. We also learned about symetrical and asmetrical!
We had so much fun! Also check the archives here on the boards for more ideas.

One of our favorite books was
The Inside Outside Book of Paris by Roxie Murano

Another good book was
Madeline Says Merci
It is a book on manners. Excellent!

We also watched several Madeline videos

Here is my post about Madeline on my blog: http://koreamom.blogspot.com/2007/04/our-week-with-madeline.html

Here are some of the websites we used

Make a Madeline Puppet
http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/cartoons/mmadeline.html

Appendicitis:
http://kidshealth.org/kid/ill_injure/sick/appendicitis.html

Take a trip to Paris with Barnaby Bear. This is really cute!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/barnabybear/stories/paris.shtml

Eiffel Tower Cut out:
http://papertoys.com/eiffel.htm

Famous Paris Landmarks
http://www.louvre-paris-hotel.com/english/location.htm

Louve Museum:
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en

We also made a Madeline lapbook you can see ours in the link above. Here are a couple more lapbooks where I got some ideas from

http://www.geocities.com/mamabrown_1122/madeline.htm

http://www.fiarcircle.com/lapbooks/madeline_2005/madeline_2005.html

Eiffiel Tower official website. This is a wonderful site with lots of great info! Make sure to check out the kids section and watch Eiffel tower at night
http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/#

Paris info
http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/france.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paris/hist/river.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paris/
http://fromparis.com/html/panoramas.php?pano=000017_01

Official Madeline Website
http://www.madeline.com/

Another Madeline Website
http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/yreaders/madeline/fun.htm


Justin still talks about our Madeline adventures!

[AndreaD]

I was worried about Madeline- but all my boys have LOVED Madeline- My oldest even asked if we could re-row this one. Ds build an eifel tower out of legos- I think we found instructions online somewhere- google eifel tower legos- and I think it'll come up. We did a lot on the human body,- skeleton puzzle, magic school bus inside the body book, learning french words, rhyming words, etc. My boys didn't realize it was supposed to be a "girls" book. :D

[ValerieC]

What great ideas! I also was wondering how to make Medeline more fun for my boys!

Michele- Wow! I believe I am going to just use your unit word for word! What great ideas! Justin and Kaden are too cute! I enjoyed looking at your blog entry!

[Jane Claire]

I was wondering if any of the boys (not that there aren't girls this applies to, as well) read this book and wanted to become Paramedics or be involved in ambulance rescue or were interested in becoming doctors? There is great potential for lessons involving career choices--visiting with Paramedic units, etc.

Just finding out about one's appendix is interesting, too.

And, as has been mentioned before one cool tower can lead to another. Learning about tall structures is amazing!

This is also a book chosen for its rhyming text. Many children love the sounds of the words as they read a book written in verse rather than prose.

Enjoy!

[Sasha]

I was wondering if any of the boys (not that there aren't girls this applies to, as well) read this book and wanted to become Paramedics or be involved in ambulance rescue or were interested in becoming doctors? There is great potential for lessons involving career choices--visiting with Paramedic units, etc.

Just finding out about one's appendix is interesting, too.

And, as has been mentioned before one cool tower can lead to another. Learning about tall structures is amazing!

This is also a book chosen for its rhyming text. Many children love the sounds of the words as they read a book written in verse rather than prose.

Enjoy!
Madeline is Gavin's favorite book, he was most interested in the anatomy book we got at the library to look up an appendix and then spent hours looking through the whole book, we finally had to buy him his own.

[Kendra AU]

Yup my boys loved this book as well. They checked various Madeline movies out of the library for AGES. My four year old still walks around saying "And to the Lion at the Zoo, Madeline just said "poo poo"." My husband can't believe he can still remember the line so well. :lol:

We focused in a lot on the body. My kids were fascinated and haven't stopped checking "body books" out of the library.

They loved writing their own stories. Being young they told me the story and I wrote it down. While they forgot to 'repeat' they came up with a funny story about the Great Wall Of China..

I also had them make a "healthy shopping list" by putting down their favorite veggie, fruit, grain, etc.. Then I let them each pick a healthy recipe to make a REAL shopping list for. We went, purchased the items and then came home and made the recipe.

One of them made strawberry yogurt popsicles, and the other one made a healthy snack mix.

Kendra

[Mary S]

If you can find it a fun "Madaline" type book about boys is The Story of Zachary Zween by Mabel Watts.

[Melissa]

It occurred to me yesterday as my son was listening to it on CD that Curious George Goes to the Hospital might go along with Madeline. He loves that little monkey. :-)

[NicoleinWA]

Michelle! Your blog page is so helpful in many ways (doing our first lapbook, etc)! Thank you for posting.:)

[SheilaB]

These are all great ideas, everyone!! :clap:

[Sue in MN]

Bumping so I can read it again

[Becca P]

I love everyone's idea:clap: