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Friday: art class


Monday-Wednesday: we took a "field trip" down to the Gulf Shores, where we camped for two nights, played on the beach, observed the banding of migratory birds (E got to hold and release a hummingbird!), visited (and climbed around on) the "Mystery Ship" washed ashore by Hurricane Ike, and toured Fort Morgan. E fished (and was very very excited when she caught one all by herself) and we had a great time. On the way down and back she read 4 books: The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck, Molly Pitcher: Young Patriot by Augusta Stevenson, The Mystery at Mt. Fuji by Carole Marsh, and Facing the Lion by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton.

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This week has been a mess with caring for my parents' (ailing) dogs and our neighbors' dog...but here goes:

Monday: Celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday (even though it was actually last Friday) -- read The Story of Johnny Appleseed by Aliki, and assigned E to read Who Was Johnny Appleseed? by Joan Holub on her own. I also baked an apple pie. This was meant to be a shared experience but, let's face it, peeling and coring a dozen apples lacks the allure of cooking a full multi-course Indian meal. So I did almost all of it myself, but for the eating of course! I read selections from the January '08 issue of Calliope magazine, "Spark Along the Indus", and E went through this neat interactive virtual adventure at Mohenjo-Daro. She did her math on the way to my parents' vet to pick up their doggies.

Today I read the chapter on India in What Your Second Grader Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch Jr., and then Scott Russell Sanders' The Floating House. Then we made a model of a canal lock from Carol A. Johmann's Going West!: Journey on a Wagon Train to Settle a Frontier Town
(my advice: do the demonstration in the bathtub...it leaked) and I played and sang "The Erie Canal" which I found in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy Cohn. After taking a break to take care of the neighbors' dog (during which T let him out and he ran away) I read How's the Weather? by Melvin and Gilda Berger, and gave E a weather map reading activity sheet I found, um, somewhere on the internet. After lunch, spelling and math. I was hoping to build a barometer with the kids this afternoon, but went out to catch the neighbors' dog instead. Sigh.

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Yesterday we read The Butterfly Alphabet Book by Brian Cassie (excellent), Isabel's House of Butterflies by Tony Johnston, and I Wish I Were a Butterfly by James Howe. We started learning about the branches of the US Government by reading Congress by Patricia Ryon Quiri. E had a spelling lesson and we measured our caterpillars and added to the growth graph. Then we watched "The Birth of the Constitution" on the DVD This is America, Charlie Brown, and on their own the kids chose to watch the segments on the Wright Bros and the Space Station. Then we went to the library.

Today we read some of Where Did the Butterfly Get Its Name? by Melvin and Gilda Berger, and The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci. Also The Presidency by Patricia Ryon Quiri. E had her spelling lesson, and when we came upstairs, one of the caterpillars was pupating! So we watched that for a while. After lunch I'm going to have E do some grammar pages while I work with T and then maybe we'll play a game of Fast Track.

The kids have been looking through Egg: A Photographic Story of Hatching by Robert Burton on their own.

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We are easing back into school today, and hopefully I can keep up with the blog better--I really let it lapse at the end of last year. We started out with First Flight by George Shea and Plane Song by Diane Siebert in honor of Orville Wright's birthday and National Aviation Day today. Then we started in on our study of life cycles with First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, and A Nest Full of Eggs by Priscilla Belz Jenkins. Then I was curious how much of her geography from last year E remembered, so I gave her a blank outline map of the world and asked her to label the 7 continents and 4 oceans. She did great! She missed Australia and the Arctic Ocean but got everything else. While she was doing that, T and I went over how to draw the capital letter A, and he did several pages in his book of Preschool Basics. Then we all went to the zoo to see the new baby giraffe.

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Friday we read more about Jamestown in the excellent John Smith Escapes Again! by Rosalyn Schanzer. I read a biography of Sandra Day O'Connor by Mary Hill (O'Connor's birthday was actually last Wednesday, but we didn't get to it then), and we began our study of plants reading A Seed Is a Promise by Claire Merrill. I also showed them some pollen I got cleaning the clothesline and we looked at some flowers and identified the pistil and stamens. Later this week I hope to look at both under the microscope. I also read a few pages of Kids Discover Magazine Volume 18 Issue 3 about Stars & Nebulae, and E did her math.

Today I read the first chapter of Mary Pope Osbourne's Pilgrims and the first 2 chapters of Margaret Pumphrey's Pilgrim Stories revised and expanded by Elvajean Hall, and a book about Bees by Susan Ashley. E is doing a math review and after lunch we're going to start the Tops Green Thumbs: Radishes #38 activity sheet series.

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Monday: read The New Americans by Betsy Maestro, E did math, we looked at the results of an experiment left over the weekend (celery stalk sliced vertically and left soaking in red and blue colored water).
Tuesday: read Roanoke: The Lost Colony by Jane Yolen and Harry Houdini: Escape Artist by Patricia Lakin. Learned about clerihews in Paul Janezcko's A Kick in the Head, and E did a worksheet on this one:

Edgar Allan Poe
Was passionately fond of roe.
He always liked to chew some
When writing anything gruesome.

E. C. Bentley

The only word she needed to look up was roe. I gave her The Houdini Box by Brian Selznick to read on her own. She did math.
Wednesday: (today) E went with her Daddy to see an iron pour at an old iron foundry. She and her dad got to make little sand molds which had iron poured into them and became plaques. Very cool. T and I played several games, including Max the Cat and Harvest Time and he also played with the legos.

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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.

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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.

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Since it's A. A. Milne's birthday, I read A. A. Milne: Author of Winnie the Pooh by Marlene Toby. Then E worked on writing another copy of her poem (with SO much bellyaching! Why does the girl hate handwriting so much?). Then it was time to get her dressed up and take her to the portrait studio for her school picture. She had so many good ones it was hard to pick! I can't wait to get them. Then we ran errands. She has basketball practice tonight.

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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.

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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.

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Today is Louis Braille's birthday, so we read about him in A Picture Book of Louis Braille by David A. Adler, which has a page with a tactile Braille alphabet in the back. I read Caves by Larry Dane Brimner, which was much better than the Gail Gibbons book. E did her math and an extra page of work on her addition facts. She's having some trouble with her numbers, so I made up a handwriting page to practice them at this neat site which allows you to design your own handwriting worksheets. She labeled a blank outline map of North America, and read on her own Mae Jemison: Astronaut by Garnet Nelson Jackson. She also had basketball practice today and we practiced with her note flashcards for piano.