Little Homeschool on the Prairie: Branch Out World Paddington Bear Review

I have fond memories of Paddington Bear as a child. The adorable signature stuffed bear and all the adventures in his books. Recently, we have been reviewing Paddington Bear a lit-based unit studies from Branch Out World.

Paddington Bear is part of the Picture Book Explorers series. I received Paddington Bear as a Digital Download in a PDF format. Branch Out World is a British company created by a homeschool mom. I love the different perceptive coming from a British mind set. The age intended for this is around 5-10 and some older kids may enjoy the study as well.

You will need to get a copy of the book Paddington Bear which the author gives you information on the book with the ISBN and publishing date as you can imagine you have lots of version of Paddington Bear out there. There are other recommended resources for books on Peru and films for Paddington Bear to use with this study.

There is a lot of hands on activities in this lit-based unit studies. The PDF is 69 pages. The unit study gives you a list of all the supplies you may need listed by day.

There are five different sections of activities that are intended for five days. The author recommends that you try to do it five consecutive days, but it can be used to fit your homeschool if that doesn’t work for your schedule.

You start out reading the entire book of Paddington Bear and every time you start out your study over the next five days you go over the book again. Remember that this isn’t a long story to read.

She gives you a few different ideas on how to record the work in this unit study which explores, history, geography, math, science, and language arts.

There are several activities using formats of mini books, maps, flags, timelines, and notebooking pages. You can even make your own marmalade or enjoy a hot steaming cup of British Tea. For the more adventurous younger kids you can play in shaving cream with a hands on experiment.

The five days of exploring are:

Day 1- Explore the Setting

Day 2- Exploring the Words

Day 3- Exploring the Pictures

Day 4- Exploring Science

Day 5- Exploring Maths, Crafts & More

How did I use Branch Out World Paddington Bear in my homeschool?

After I downloaded the PDF I spent a bit looking over the information and printing out the components for the projects.

My 15 year old with special needs has been a bit under the weather with some medical issues and we snuggled up on the couch and read Paddington Bear. Even though my daughter was outside of the age range she still enjoys this lovable story.

Since my daughter is older I let her choose which activities she wanted to do. She was pretty adamant about setting the activities up lapbook style. She wanted to glue all the mini books and other components into 2 folders. She spent a lot of time after reading the book putting this together. I pre-cut all the parts for her out prior to use starting.

Day 1 we located Peru and England on a map that is provided in the study. She highlighted the countries. You are suppose to color the flag for Peru and England(She colored them a few days into the study). Since cutting is hard for her with her arthritis we looked for pictures of England and Peru and she created her own Tourist poster. We explored England and Peru in more depth. We even learned some information about migration. We read up on the history era of the time period. That is just some of the things we did.

Day 2 we learned more about the author. I already knew why Michael Bond wrote Paddington Bear and the history behind it. My daughter didn't and she thought it was fascinating. We went over a few vocabulary words and wrote them down to put in her pocket mini book. It went over some grammar, themes and narration.

Day 3 is where you study the pictures in the pages of the book. This is where the correct publication is going to make a difference. There are many versions of Paddington Bear out there. We did Day 3 orally as my daughter wasn’t able to draw. We talked about the architecture of the building and looked at the different aspects of it. We spent some time looking them up online also as she was curious about learning more information.

Day 4 we looked up the different bears of Peru. She plans on looking to see which bears we have at our zoo. Another activity is that you can create shaving cream art which my daughter wanted nothing to do with which, didn’t surprise me. There are a few other experiments with creating foam and steam.

Day 5 you explore parallel lines and numbers. You also get to create masterpieces using shaving cream. You can try some of the recipes on Day 5. Since my daughter can’t eat to many things we just read about the recipes and looked them up to see what the finished recipes looked like. It sure did make me hungry looking at the food online. You can even have your on tea party.

Branch Out World does a great job on this unit study. I also seen another book that is a favorite in our home and I know my 12 year son would enjoy doing Floss in Picture Book Explorers series. It was one of his favorite stories when he was younger.

Other Homeschool Review Crew are reviewing Branch Out World, Paddington Bear. I can’t wait to see what they think.