Five Senses bus unit

My youngest is enjoying the Five Senses Wonderful World Orange level curriculum this year.  We started in December, so we will come back around to the Autumn and Spooky units next year.  The author of the curriculum is an occupational therapist.  She has specifically designed the curriculum to be flexible for all kids, whatever their abilities, and to be accessible to all families.  She uses books that are commonly available at most libraries and supplies that are likely to be available in most homes.  She encourages families to make each lesson work for their individual kid and situation.  Each unit includes a main book or books, supplemental suggestions, memory work, something to do with gross motor and fine motor skills, and a field trip idea.  Here's some of what we did, and here's the Youtube playlist we made to accompany the unit.  We included read-alouds of as many books as possible.  The playlist is intended to be stretched over many, many days, and for you to stop when your child starts getting antsy or bored.

By coincidence, we were working on the bus unit around Martin Luther King, Jr., day, which made it especially easy to blend in some info on Rosa Parks and MLK.  My youngest is 4 and loves to know how things work, so those are things we included in the unit.  The main book is Last Stop on Market Street.  If you can't get the book, there are many fantastic read-alouds on Youtube.  My favorite is the one that is read by the author and reenacted by librarians and community members.  We paired this up with a discussion on poverty and homelessness, what it looks like to be homeless for kids and adults, how one can be working a full-time job and still be homeless, etc.  We also talked a lot about how individuals can make a difference, person by person, whether it's volunteering in a soup kitchen, or helping to throw a birthday party for kids living in a shelter, or helping Habitat for Humanity.  Maddi's Fridge by by Lois Brandt was very helpful in allowing us to talk about food poverty in a kid-friendly way.  I love that the child with the full fridge isn't the white kid, and that it isn't a big deal when Sofia's mom jumps in to help.  The family makes food together and plays together.  The book also tackles the problem of what to do when you make a promise to a friend that will actually hurt them in the long run.

Other suggestions included Paul Zelinsky's fabulous toy/book Wheels on the Bus.  It has flaps, pull tabs, and some astonishing interactive pages.  (The babies page is especially great.)  There is a great ongoing visual story as well.    Another option was my kid's favorite, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. So funny to watch the kids laughing at the pigeon's vain attempts at persuasion - and maybe the next time they try to convince us of something, they will think of the pigeon.  Probably not, but perhaps.

My kid absolutely knows the Wheels on the Bus song now, and honestly, he really dislikes the tune.  No idea why.  But he absolutely learned it through this unit.  We liked the Wheels on the Bus book by Steven Anderson for the diversity of its characters.  We also liked Pete the Cat: the Wheels on the Bus.  If you've read any Pete the Cat books, you have a good idea of how this one will go, but they are always a hit with my preschooler.

My kiddo likes to know how things work, and so we read several books on the specifics of riding the bus. Buses by Mari Schuh is a 4D book (so you can scan it with your phone and see additional material).  We didn't end up doing this - we just read the book, which has pictures and details of people waiting for and riding on buses in Vietnam.  I liked that it isn't pointed about it (Look! Diversity!) - you can only really tell because of the street names on the buses.  Buses (Tadpole Books) by Tessa Kenan is an emergent reader about riding the bus.  The pictures are great and the wording is factual.  On a Bus (Going Places) by Robert Hamilton has similar bright, clear photos and great text. My little guy really enjoyed these.

As far as enjoying the bus, we liked We All Go Traveling By by Sheena Roberts, which explores the many ways of getting around (including by bus).  The Bus is for Us is more lighthearted but praises the bus as the best method of transport because "the bus is for us!" Lots of different kinds of kids are shown having a great time together, and it's fun to read out loud.  Some methods are totally possible and some are not (riding on a giant fish, for example).  For school buses, Donald Crew's School Bus is fantastic (and short). The Bus for Us by Suzanne Bloom follows an ongoing cast of kids, with a running unnarrated storyline, as they wait to catch the correct bus.  The author's reading of the book on Youtube is fantastic, as she tells you things like, "that's my cat," and "that's my dog," and "keep track of the little girl with the red hair."

For math, Maisy Drives the Bus by Lucy Cousins was great for exploring first, next, and last.  My Bus by Byron Barton was excellent for early math skills.  We counted how many animals had gotten on the bus at each stop, how many cats, how many dogs, etc.  We also counted how many animals (total and of each kind) were left as creatures got off at their stops.

For fun, Marianne Dubuc's the Bus Ride is whimsical.  A little girl goes for a ride with woodland creatures on her first independent bus ride to visit her grandma.  There are lots of fun fairytale references to be found in re-reads.  Bus! Stop! by James Yang is also fun, although it falls into the temptation to group people who look alike together.  It's an interesting light scifi idea of different creatures heading to different world.

For social studies, we liked Wheels on the Bus by Melanie Williamson, which is set on a chicken bus in Guatemala.  There's a little info on chicken buses in the back of the book and a cd with the Amador family singing the song.  When we read Back of the Bus by Aaron Reynolds, I gave my guy a marble to hold, as the main character in the book is a little boy who is playing with a marble on the bus that Rosa Parks is riding on.  Faith Ringgold's If a Bus Could Talk goes into Rosa's story in more depth, from babyhood onwards.  There are references to Rosa's grandfather defending the family farm against the KKK, and to the KKK hurting/killing/scaring people.  Rosa's grandmother is worried that Rosa might someday be lynched for defending herself against a white boy.  My kids weren't upset about it, and it honestly feels like privilege for me to think my kid doesn't need to know about these things.  The book doesn't go into detail about any of these things.

The curriculum gives many options on how to have your kiddo create their own bus.  We glued yellow construction paper over a small Amazon box, and my guy went to town with a pen to draw a windshield, rear window, passengers, doors, etc.  He asked me to glue in a floor, and he made seats and drew passengers on the inside, too.  I don't have a plethora of magazines anymore, and I didn't feel like drawing a million places for the bus to go, so I just googled black and white images of potential options (bank, park, library, friend's house, aquarium, etc.) and we taped them up around the house.  All of the kids had a great time loading the bus with stuffies and taking it on involved routes all over the house.

The front of the Calvin Art Street Express 

Passengers on the side of the bus

 Space for the driver to sit, and careful drawings of passengers on the walls.

The field trip was to take some kind of bus ride.  Since we recently did this (coming back from the airport after Thanksgiving), I held off on the field trip, but I love the idea.  We are ready to launch the next unit (trucks!).