34-36

Tuesday: In preparation for our camping trip next week, read It's a Hummingbird's Life by Irene Kelly. Then we went over some of the reasons people went West that were covered in Araminta's Paint Box, and I told them there were some people who went unwillingly, then read The Trail of Tears by Joseph Bruchac. It's a good thing for Andrew Jackson that he's already dead, or E would have his head! And former slaves went, too, for their own reasons, as we learned reading Wagon Train: A Family Goes West in 1865 by Courtni C. Wright. Spelling and math, and then I read The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks by Katherine Paterson. Very rainy--we recorded 1.5" at our Weather Station.

Wednesday: Piano lesson and library.

Thursday:Read Calendar by Myra Cohn Livingston and Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington to T. Read some more of ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner. Spelling, and picked out Japan on the world map. Read Jim Haskins' Count Your Way Through Japan, The Stonecutter by Gerald McDermott, and Ina R. Friedman's charming How My Parents Learned to Eat. Then they colored Japanese flags and made little paper Japanese lanterns, and we went to mom's house for E's first sewing lesson. Currently E is reading on her own The Song of the Water Boatman by Joyce Sidman.

93-94

Yesterday E had her piano lesson and then we went to the library for storytime. I let them have the rest of the day for free play and reading.

Today was Jackie Robinson's birthday, so I read Teammates by Peter Golenbock. T requested You Are My I Love You by Maryann K. Cusimano, which is such a sweet, profound book. Then another chapter of James Cross Giblin's The Mystery of the Mammoth Bones, and then Paul Goble's The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses and Buffalo by Emilie U. Lepthien. Today's poetic form was the quatrain, which we read about in A Kick in the Head by Paul B. Janeczko. The example in the book was from William Blake:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

She traced it out on her handwriting worksheet. The only word she had to define was symmetry. Now she is doing her math, and then we're done.

92

Hoo boy! Nobody (me included) wanted to do school today. Cloudy days are not a homeschooler's friend. But we did it anyway, after I explained to E that school is mandatory after age 7 and so if she didn't want to do school with me I would have to take her to enroll in the public school ("See you at 3, dear!") She didn't like that idea much. So I read If You Lived With the Sioux Indians by Ann McGovern, and The Story of Jumping Mouse by John Steptoe. We learned about tercets in A Kick in the Head by Paul B. Janeczko, and I made a handwriting worksheet out of the tercet he used:

Kitchen crickets make a din,
sending taunts to chilly kin,
"You're outside, but we got in."

Joan Bransfield Graham

E didn't know the meanings of din, taunts, and kin, so we looked them up and she wrote them on the back of the worksheet. She also asked why "You're" had an "e" at the end, so we had an impromptu discussion about the difference between your and you're. Then she did math.

91

We felt like taking last Friday off, so we did!

Today is Jackson Pollock's birthday, so I started out by reading Jackson Pollock by Mike Venezia, and then I showed E the picture of Lee Krasner, his wife, which is on the "women doing cool things" collage I made for her when she was 3. Then, since yesterday was Mozart's birthday, I read Ann Rachlin's Mozart, and Mike Venezia's Mozart, and we listened (and danced and sang to) "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik". To kick off studying the Plains Indians, I read Bonnie Shemie's Houses of Hide and Earth and Powwow by George Ancona. Then E did her math while listening to some more Mozart. After lunch we looked at the poem she memorized last week: "I Do Not Like the Rat!" by Jack Prelutsky. She picked out the end rhymes and I pointed out the internal rhymes to her. Then we read about couplets in Paul B. Janeczko's A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms, and I found some couplets in a book of poetry and showed her how they are often used almost like a punch line to a poem. Now we are going to Dance and Tumbling for the last time.

90

T picked out Your New Potty by Joanna Cole, which may be a hopeful sign. Then I read a chapter from James Cross Giblin's The Mystery of the Mammoth Bones, "Raven Brings Fresh Water" (From Sea to Shining Sea--Amy Cohn), and Houses of Wood by Bonnie Shemie. Then E did her math and everyone watched Peep. After lunch, we ran out to the pharmacy while E read It Could Still Be Water by Allan Fowler to T. Then when we got home, E copied out and memorized the 3rd verse of her poem, learning and writing definitions for "value", "venerate", and "salute". (The definition for salute had the word "acknowledge" in it, so she learned that too). Then we put together Dover's Northwest Coast Punch-Out Indian Village by A. G. Smith. (I confess I used scotch tape on the totem poles and the canoe--it doesn't look as nice as glue, but it kept me from swearing in front of the kids, so I think it's a good trade-off). E was able to assemble the longhouse all by herself.

89

The Plan was, the PLAN was that I would read a chapter a day from James Cross Giblin's The Mystery of the Mammoth Bones, since it's a bit thick and wordy for a seven-year-old (so I thought), and that would lead into some fossil studying and so forth. But I guess I wasn't remembering how I devoured the whole dinosaur section of James Michener's Centennial when I was in first grade--anyhow E sat right down last night and plowed through 2 more chapters all by herself, so I guess I'll just have to pick up the story tomorrow at Chapter 4, and hope she can fill me in on what's going on...so much for plans!

This morning we went to E's piano lesson, then the library, and we went to Pizza Hut for lunch with one of her Book-It coupons (E: "Did I meet my reading goal, then, Mommy?" Me: "Yes, sweetie, if your reading goal was 'Read constantly', you certainly met it..."). When we got back E traced out and memorized the second verse of her poem, learning and writing definitions for "cotton to", "dote upon" and "stately". I read Clamshell Boy: A Makah Legend by Terri Cohlene and (in anticipation of the arrival of the microscope which I knew was on the porch already) Greg's Microscope by Millicent E. Selsam. She and T watched Peep while I got the microscope unpacked and then we looked at many many small and tiny things. Actually, the microscope we got is really cool; it's called a duoscope, and you can use it as a regular compound microscope, or as a stereo or dissecting microscope, for looking at small solid things, like bugs or rocks, without the use of slides. After that, I let her look through a neat book of mine called Then and Now, which has photos of ancient ruins paired with acetate overlays that show what they might have looked like when new. E's verdict: "I think the new looks much better than the ruins!"

Yesterday she was asking about holograms, because there is one on one of her bookmarks. I tried without success to find a suitable book at the library or a website that wasn't too confusing, but then, oh joy! I remembered that I had bought for them years ago a copy of David Macauley's The Way Things Work--and it has a section about holograms! Yay for the Ann Arbor friends of the library book sale all those years ago--they thought I was crazy buying all those books for my 6 month old! Who's laughing now?

87-88

I couldn't post yesterday because my modem was down. I was getting pretty jittery without my internet fix! Yesterday we took an easy day since it was MLK Jr. Day. I read My Dream of Martin Luther King by Faith Ringgold. Then since last Sat. was Cezanne's birthday, I read Mike Venezia's biography, Paul Cezanne, and we looked at some pictures in a book I have about Cezanne. We made Bull Roarers (More Than Moccasins, Laurie Carlson) and played and sang "Song of Happiness" in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy Cohn. Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for lunch and played Fast Track (Games for Math, Peggy Kaye).

Today T picked When the Sky is Like Lace by Elinor Lander Horowitz. (E read it to T last night too. Last night the sky really was like lace! And with the full moon, it was perfectly bimulous. But too cold to go outside barefoot in our nightgowns, though I did let them go out in their coats and shoes for a bit, after checking to make sure they weren't wearing any orange, not even underneath.) Then I read the first chapter of The Mystery of the Mammoth Bones by James Cross Giblin, and If You Lived with the Indians of the Northwest Coast by Anne Kamma. E did her math, and T played with the Cuisenaire Rods. They both watched Peep. E started memorizing a new poem, "I Do Not Like the Rat!" from The New Kid on the Block: Poems by Jack Prelutsky:

I praise the hippopotamus,
I celebrate the bat,
I hold the bream in high esteem--
I DO NOT LIKE THE RAT!

I cotton to the octopus,
I tolerate the gnat,
I dote upon the stately swan--
I SHUDDER AT THE RAT!

I value the rhinoceros,
I venerate the cat,
I quite salute the simple newt--
I CANNOT STAND THE RAT!

I gave a suitably dramatic reading, then gave E a Handwriting Worksheet Wizard worksheet with the first verse on it, to copy over. I also asked her which words she didn't know (bream and esteem) and had her write them with their definitions on the back of the page.

85

Today has been one of those days. The kids haven't been exactly uncooperative, but they haven't been enthusiastic, either. Going from activity to activity has seemed like pushing water uphill. But we got a lot accomplished anyway. I guess there's only so much you can expect on a gloomy winter day.

We finished the Hopi Pueblo Village model, and glued some cornmeal all around it on the base to look like desert sand. Since it's Ben Franklin's birthday, we read Aliki's The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin, and Bryna Stevens' Ben Franklin's Glass Armonica. Then we watched a video of William Zeitler playing "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from the Nutcracker on an armonica (which it was originally written for) and a short little History Channel bit about the armonica. They also tooled around on a virtual armonica, and we got out the wine glasses and played around with different levels of water to get different pitches and so forth. This really entranced E for a long time, but T didn't like having to keep his fingers wet, so he went back to the virtual version. E did her math, and everyone watched Peep, and then after lunch we explored more homonyms in Allan Fowler's 1-One-Won! and did some reading and experiments with Salvatore Tocci's Experiments With Air. Finally, E copied out her poem, and I made her a Hopi dress (following the very simple directions in More Than Mocassins by Laurie Carlson--only I used some fabric ("Too itchy!"--it figures!) I had instead of a towel.) Oh, and we made pine cone bird feeders and watched birds for a bit. I really don't know how we managed to do so much--some days it works. Today didn't feel like a day that was working, but I guess it couldn't have been that bad.

84

This morning E had her piano lesson, and we ran errands. She read One Whole Doughnut, One Doughnut Hole by Valjean McLenighan to T. I read Bonnie Shemie's Houses of Adobe, and we started putting together Dover's Easy to Make Pueblo Village.

83

This is E's recipe for "A really yummy drink!" that she wanted to make first thing this morning. So I got down the things she couldn't reach and let her at it. Frankly, the "Green Shuger" made it look a bit ghastly, but she was pleased as punch and she and T drank it down happily. Which gave me some time to make chocolate pancakes without starving children pestering me, so she can make her "yummy drink" any time she likes for all of me!

Since it's Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday today, we started out with David A. Adler's A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Martin's Big Words, by Doreen Rappaport. Then T wanted me to read The Amazing Animal Alphabet Book by Roger and Mariko Chouinard. This is a fabulous, super-fun book. It's out of print, but in a just world everyone would have at least one copy. This is my favorite page:



I wish I had a poster of it. This is another good one:


Don't even get me started on the "Kangaroos kissing in kayaks" and the "Frog feeling forlorn". The whole thing is brilliant.

After that fun interlude, we read The Warrior Maiden: A Hopi Legend by Ellen Schecter, and Air is All Around You by Franklyn M. Branley. Then E did her math. After lunch we did a bunch of fun air experiments from 101 Great Science Experiments by Neil Ardley, and E did a Draw Write Now page.

I want to start doing more with poetry, and E really needs to work on her handwriting--she hates it and so whenever she has some writing to do it takes an eternity. So I got a book of fun poems by Jack Prelutsky called The New Kid on the Block, and I used the Handwriting Worksheets Wizard to make handwriting practice sheets of some of the poems. I figure I'll read a poem, have her read it, have her trace it out on the worksheet, copy it again on lined paper, and memorize it. Maybe one a week. If we can, we'll start tomorrow with "Cuckoo!":

The cuckoo in our cuckoo clock
was wedded to an octopus,
she laid a single wooden egg,
and hatched a cuckooclocktopus.

There's some great vocabulary to be found in the poems, too.

82

Mondays are always kind of tough because we have Dance and Tumbling class in the afternoon, so I can't plan on having any time for experiments or fun projects. But we read If You Lived With the Hopi by Anne Kamma, and a Hopi legend, "Coyote Helps Decorate the Night" in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy L. Cohn. And I read Zoom Away! by Tim Wynne-Jones for T. E is finishing her grammar workbook today. If we have time and energy this afternoon after class, we'll play Fast Track for math.

81

Well, today I decided to bail on my friend Jennifer, who wanted us to go with them to Park Day. But, we got a lot done, so it was good. E read Blizzard! The 1888 Whiteout by Jacqueline A. Ball, I read Terrible Storm by Carol Otis Hurst, and T wanted me to read Kevin Henke's Sheila Rae the Brave and Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney. Then we read the Cherokee legend "Grandmother Spider Steals the Sun" in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy L. Cohn, and Mounds of Earth and Shell from Bonnie Shemie's Native Dwellings series. We made "birch" baskets (out of paper), a craft I found in Laurie Carlson's More Than Mocassins. Then E did her math. After some Peep, and some lunch, we got back to work with What is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids and Gases by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld, and we did a demonstration from 365 Simple Science Experiments by E. Richard Churchill et al, which used a box and some marbles to show how molecules move in solids, liquids and gases. We went to the library and got some books, and E made a birthday card for her basketball coach. Tonight she has basketball practice.

79

Today E had her piano lesson in the morning, then we went to the art museum to visit a neat hands-on exhibit which recreates a town of the Creek nation circa 1790. E and T made a clay pot, listened in on a council session, listened to music and shook rattles, worked with beads and designed a clan symbol for our family. On the way back from the bathroom, she got sucked into the new acquisitions room. There are still gouges on the floor from my having to drag her out to go home--I think I'll start a "Things to do when it's gloomy" list and put "visit the art museum" at the top!

77-78

Yesterday T had a really bad crick or something in his neck, so we didn't go to dance or tumbling and we took it really easy (in fact he and I spent most of the afternoon napping--woe is me). I finished reading Owl At Home by Arnold Lobel, and introduced the concept of atoms with Robert E. Wells' excellent What's Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew? Then we read Who Were the First North Americans? by Philippa Wingate and Struan Reid, and E did her math. She spent the rest of the day reading (mostly ahead in the Native Americans books: Me: "You know we are going to be reading them all over again in school so T can learn about it" Her: "I don't mind" oh well--I did put them out where she could get to them...)

Today we started with the Cherokee Indians: ...If You Lived With the Cherokee by Peter and Connie Roop, and we read The First Strawberries: A Cherokee Story by Joseph Bruchac. Then we talked about synonyms and antonyms, and looked at two books about opposites: Nina Crews' A High, Low, Near, Far, Loud, Quiet Story and Tana Hoban's Exactly the Opposite, which I loved because it is wordless, so you have to come up with your own antonyms, and sometimes more than one set will work. I had her list synonyms and antonyms for 5 words I wrote in her notebook, and then we read about Mercury by Larry Dane Brimner. After lunch she answered questions about Mercury in her notebook, while I started making a game called Fast Track which I found in Peggy Kaye's Games for Math. E of course was VERY interested in what I was doing as I took care to do it on the same table she was working on, using colorful index cards and colored pencils and pens for the game board. She finished her Mercury questions as quickly as she could so she could help with the game board and then we all played the game. The game is a brilliant, sneaky way to use flash cards for addition and subtraction facts without being boring drill. You advance around the board by completing the math sentence on the card, ie. a card with 2+4=? would let you advance 6 spaces. She had to answer T's cards as well, which was a bonus. They both enjoyed it and we played till we'd all won several times. Tomorrow we will play again with a slightly more difficult set of cards. I need to think if I can come up with a game to practice her note flash cards for piano...

75

Back at school today and brrr is it cold! Actually I should say that yesterday even though we had no school, she read Straight Hair, Curly Hair by Augusta Goldin to T and then they spent what seemed like a couple of hours testing her hair's strength by weighing various objects on the kitchen scale and suspending them from a single hair (T got to break them off of her head, which was a big thrill, apparently). They spent AGES on this--it always amazes me how long children can spend doing the same thing, over and over and over again. Anyway, this morning we got up and officially started school again. I read Pluto by Larry Dane Brimner, (an older book, which gave us the opportunity to talk about how scientific knowledge is always expanding and so you should always read science books as "what is known at that time"--Pluto is now a dwarf planet) and we read about the canceled Pluto-Kuiper Express mission and the replacement New Horizons mission on wikipedia. We also read a chapter from Owl At Home by Arnold Lobel, and North America by David Petersen. We started our study of American Indians with Aliki's Corn is Maize, E did her math, and then she answered questions about Pluto in her notebook. Finally, we read Caves and Caverns by Gail Gibbons and did a demonstration of limestone cave formation with sand, water and sugar.

35

Yesterday we went to the Tannehill Native American Festival and learned about Native Americans, (and I bought a choker and headband for when we study them over the New Year) and then we went to Oktoberfest and learned about beer. No, really we learned about German culture! And today our neighbor came over with about 30-40 books for the kids that her kid had outgrown. There's always a big danger of getting a load of crappy Disney books when someone says they want to give you a bunch of kids books, and there were a few of those, but the vast majority (about 20-25) were Let's Read and Find Out Science books! Many of which are on our curriculum plan for this year! Yippee! Now I have to enter them all into LibraryThing...