How to Use Storybook Weeks

One way to use Storybook Weeks is to schedule about a half hour each weekday for learning activities and do one of the Storybook Week activities each day. There are generally five activities in each Storybook Week, including the Read-Aloud activity of reading the book together.

Each week is designed to include a variety of activities for different skill sets or academic subjects: gross motor skills, fine motor skills, language arts, social studies, math, science, fine arts, sensory activities such as cooking or working with weights or textures, and outdoor learning.

Monday could be spent reading the storybook. You may also want to watch the storybook video, or ask questions about the book and discuss it. Sometimes children may want to read it over and over again.

Tuesday could be spent on the next activity. If there is ever a time or an activity when a child doesn't want to do it, no problem. You can try it again the next day, or Saturday, or skip it entirely. Just like blind dates, sometimes a child and a learning activity do not have chemistry together.

Wednesday could be spent on the next activity. If the weather is bad for an outdoor activity, switch the order of the activities. These activities can be adapted and used as loosely as you want. Maybe one day of the week is much better for cooking, so you can save any cooking activities for that day.

And so on. They can be used all at once or on random days. Whatever fits your life.

If you are using the Five in a Row curriculum, there are differences such as the assigning of each of five subject areas to a day of the week (social studies, language arts, art, applied math, and science). Storybook Weeks are more along the lines of the flexible, book-based play activities supplied by Before Five in a Row.

 If you are using the Charlotte Mason philosophy, some of the Storybook Weeks books overlap with the Early Years Read-Alouds list at simplycharlottemason.com. The benefits of reading good literature (e.g., long-lasting and successful story books) to children are promoted in the Charlotte Mason method and believed in here at Afterschool Homeschool.

Deb at LivingMontessoriNow has a list of Montessori-Inspired unit studies that can be used in conjunction with Storybook Weeks. For example, this Montessori-Inspired Dinosaur Unit could be used during the How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? Storybook Week.

The way that helps our family the most is to hold pretty fast to a scheduled time for "learning activities" each day. Then we hold very loosely to the planned activities by changing, rushing, extending, skipping, or repeating them as dictated by the children's interest. Sometimes "learning activities time" turns into home haircut time or time to sit and listen to the children tell me something. Or free play when they are simply obsessed with a certain type of play at the time.