X for Fox

I think it's brilliant that the My Father's World people decided to make it x for fox, and other words that end in "x", instead of saying "x for x-ray" like everyone else. Words just don't start with x! At least not words used by a 6 year old. There are plenty of CVC words to study that end in x...the most popular being "fox."
             I can't go without mentioning the ever popular song "What does the fox say?" that my boys LOVE! But that is not where the love began for my guys. Their love began at the zoo with these cuties...

and this FAVORITE stuffed animal purchased at the zoo gift shop:

Both of my boys have been BEGGING to learn about foxes. They are determined that they are going to catch a fox and make it their pet. Only problem is, I could not find a single informative book on foxes at our library. NOT ONE! There is an endless supply of storybooks about sly foxes tricking other animals, but I could not find anything helpful. Thank goodness for pinterest and www.homeschoolshare.com.

We made a lapbook from two different sources:

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/fox.php

http://creativelearningfun.com

And I made the cover using the puppet template from this website:

http://vanessadewey.com

We learned all sorts of facts, like a female fox is a "vixen" and a male fox is a "dog." We also learned that the fox actually has a lot of different sounds it makes, so the whole "what does a fox say?" question is rather complicated. We thought this video was hilarious in explaining that:

We read Fox in Socks, made a puppet, and enjoyed mommy's bright pj pants with crazy socks:).

 My 6 year old glued these pages to construction paper, and he wants to hang them on the wall in his room.

 Another pinterest find on http://www.education.com:

 Their paper foxes I made for fun:

We found this little gem at the library (spoiler alert, it is about Noah's ark):

And this was the best find of all:

They LOVED watching this film about a little girl who (like they DREAM of) befriends a fox. WARNING: Do NOT watch the last 10 minutes of this movie. Why they have to kill the beautiful friendship and have the fox mortally wound itself trying to escape out the window, I don't know. DON"T LET YOUR KIDS WATCH THE END. 

My boys also enjoyed the fox game given in our curriculum. Sing these words to the tune "The Farmer in the Dell": 

A hunting we will go,

a hunting we will go.

We'll catch a fox inside a box,

and then we'll let it go.

You are the hunter and everyone else is a fox. Walk in a circle (or in our case, crawl like a fox) and catch one of the foxes in your arms when you get to the word "catch, " and then let them go. Now he becomes the hunter and the game is repeated. My 6 year old would play this EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

The words to remember for this unit are "God's Word makes me wiser than my enemies." We talked about the armor of God, about obeying God and learning wisdom, and read many Psalms about how his commands make me wiser than my enemies. My boys love "Bibleman" so they could associate the spiritual enemies with the bad guy characters from that show. Bibleman uses bible verses as his "sword" to defeat enemies like The Cheater, the Shadow of Doubt, and Laziness. Without that show, these verses would have been a lot harder to explain to my little guys. The basic truth I wanted them to learn was that God is on our side, and God wants us to learn more about Him and be close to Him. 

So we skipped from Elephant (unit 15) to Fox (unit 23). Next, we will go to unit 21, B for Butterfly (and other bugs)! I find that now that Tobes has no trouble reading three letter words, it doesn't matter what unit we do. Even more importantly, if he gets to choose what we learn about, he is MUCH more excited and determined to learn. Win, win, WIN!