Picture Book Explorers: Paddington Bear is a literature-based unit for children of ages 5-10 that will take your family on a journey to the countries of England and Peru. Our five-year-old son and I had a fun time reviewing the Picture Book Explorers unit from Branch Out World. We completed many of the 30-plus activities, leaving some to go back to when he is older.
Branch Out World is a UK-based company that was founded by "a home educating family" that loves books. Their "literature-based units are designed so that you can tailor them to your child's needs." What is great is that you could use one unit with all your children – if they fit into the age range – or use it again and again as your children grow. All of the books that are part of their literature studies have a link to the United Kingdom which make them especially educational for us living in the United States. Branch Out World also produces lapbooks which allow you to study topics from Christmas in Europe to Volcanoes.
There are over 20 units to choose in the Picture Book Explorers series including the unit we reviewed – Paddington Bear – and others such as The Day The Crayons Quit and The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck.
How Picture Book Explorers: Paddington Bear is Organized
The idea behind Picture Book Explorers is that "a particular picture book is read every day for five days and then followed up by activities chosen from a suggested selection." There are five different sections corresponding to five days with a multitude of various learning activities to complete.
In the paragraphs that follow, I will provide a brief sampling of the activities as organized by the days and how we used the material.
Day One – Exploring the Setting
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| I printed the maps on the same page so I stapled it at the to the page of our logbook. |
In addition to reading the book, we discussed the flags of England and Peru, colored them in, and later attached them to our logbook.
We also located England and Peru on a map of the world, South America, and the United Kingdom.
I printed out two coloring pages to include in the logbook as we did not have easy access to travel posters/brochures as suggested by Picture Book Explorers. This way both our 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter could participate together, too!
There is also a section on Migration factors including push and pull factors that we skipped for now because I knew it would be too difficult for our 5-year-old. But in my opinion that makes the Picture Book Explorers: Paddington Bear more valuable because we can go back during a later year and do the activities that we skipped.
Day Two – Exploring the Words
The theme of Helping Others is addressed in Picture Book Explorers, so our son and I talked about how each person in our family helps others. We then talked about how Mr. and Mrs. Brown help Paddington Bear. There are many opportunities in the story to discuss the theme of helping others as Paddington gets into a few problems – even over-filling the bathtub!
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| One of the activities we completed was creating vocabulary cards for our logbook. |
Day Three – Exploring the Pictures
One of the activities we spent some time on was examining the different architectural features of not only the Brown's home but also our own home and others in the neighborhood. We looked at examples online, read the definitions provided in Picture Book Explorers, and completed the mini-book together. (My recommendation is to remember that – when putting together the mini-book – you will be turning and flipping the pages. Some of the pages ended up sideways or upside down because we filled it all out before cutting the pages out.)
Day Four – Exploring Science
As a former zoo educator, I loved that we were able to talk about Spectacled bears during the study of Paddington Bear! As our son is younger, I wrote the information about the bears on the activity sheet as we read facts from the provided fact sheet. We also looked at information we found during a bit of research.
There was an opportunity to explore shaving foam and soap to compare the two in a sensory activity. This was a perfect tie-in to the event in the story when Paddington Bear overfilled the bathtub.
Day Five – Exploring Math, Crafts, and More
There are a great number of activities included – from working with parallel lines to baking your own strawberry tarts. We had fun packing an imaginary suitcase and talking about what items can and cannot fit into the case.
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| Some of the additional ideas provided for your family! |
What We Liked
- The directions are very thorough – great examples of how to record your child's work
- List of optional activities and supplies needed
- Inclusion of printables like the maps and flags
- Inclusion of fact sheets to provide parents with additional information
- Activities to pick and choose that span the age range
- Art lessons about design discussing overlapping and emphasis
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| Some of the information provided on the facts sheets in Picture Book Explorers: Paddington Bear. |
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| The picture we colored in to represent Peru and the facts on the right about bears. |
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| Our logbook in the process of being completed. Still room for photos and science experiment notes! |
Things to Note
- Picture Book Explorers is published in the United Kingdom so the spelling of the some of the words (like color) are different (colour) (Our 5-year-old son asked why some of the words were spelled the way they were!)
- It is a digital file – you will need to print the lengthy PDFs yourself
- You will need to have a copy of the book (this one suggested a specific edition of Paddington Bear as there are some activities to complete that required specific features)
- Review the items necessary for the recipes (like caster sugar) – some of them may not be familiar to people living outside of the UK
To learn more please visit the following:
To see more examples of the activities from Picture Book Explorers: Paddington Bear, please visit the Homeschool Review Crew's reviews!
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