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Friday: E had her art class, then we got ready for our big neighborhood Halloween party. E made Salty Bones and Monster Toes, my husband made Witches Brooms, and I made Pumpkin Rolls and these cute gingerbread skeleton men:



Today we started our study of China by going to see a performance of Jungua: Descendants of the Dragon, a performance of martial arts and acrobatics from China. It was marvelous. Then we went to have class photos made. Oh, and oops! We weren't quite finished with Japan--I had E label a map with major landforms and cities.

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Yesterday E had her piano lesson, then we went to the library and then out to lunch at a new sushi bar, where the owner of the restaurant complimented her on her mad chopsticky skillz!

Today we said sayonara to Japan, reading The Samurai's Daughter by Robert D. San Souci, Little Fingerling by Monica Hughes, Grass Sandals: The Travels of Basho by Dawnine Spivak, and Hokusai: The Man Who Painted a Mountain by Deborah Kogan Ray, and we looked at some great stuff our neighbor's parents brought back from Japan. Then we went to Grandma's house for E's sewing lesson.

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Read The Mouse and the Apple by Stephen Butler, I Know It's Autumn by Eileen Spinelli, and Mr. Peabody's Apples by Madonna. Since it's the birthday of Jonas Salk, read Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine by Katherine Krohn. Then The Girl Who Loved Caterpillars by Jean Merrill, How to Be a Samurai Warrior by Fiona Macdonald, The Way We Do It in Japan by Geneva Cobb Iijima, and The Funny Little Woman by Arlene Mosel. After lunch, spelling and math, we made geta (Japanese clogs) from Make It Work! Japan by Andrew Haslam,



and made koi noburi (fish-shaped wind socks) from Traditional Crafts from Japan by Florence Temko.



I assigned E to read Sword of the Samurai by Eric A. Kimmel, but she already had!

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Read to T while E practiced her scales: The Accidental Zucchini by Max Grover, The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons, Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell, and It's Fall! by Linda Glaser. Then, An Illustrated History of Japan by Shigeo Nishimura, The Paper Crane by Molly Bang, and The Greatest of All by Eric A. Kimmel. After a break we read more of If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and Apples to Oregon by Deborah Hopkinson, which was really fun. After Spelling and lunch, we read What Magnets Can Do by Allan Fowler, What Makes a Magnet? by Franklyn M. Branley, and did experiments from these books and Experiments With Magnets by Salvatore Tocci. Then E did her math.

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Wednesday: Piano lesson and play dates with friends

Thursday: Grandpa showed us slides from when he was stationed near Japan in the Korean War and E had her sewing lesson with Grandma. E also did math this day.

Friday: art class and general moping about.

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Read Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington and How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara, Leonardo and the Flying Boy by Laurence Anholt, Suki's Kimono by Chieri Uegaki, and A to Zen by Ruth Wells. Also read Vote! by Eileen Christelow, and E read If I Ran for President by Chatherine Stier while we were out and about. The art museum has an exhibit of some Da Vinci drawings from the museum in Turin, so we went to see those and looked around at some other art while we were there, especially the sculpture garden, and we went to the library, where the librarian told E they were going to have to order more books if she keeps reading so many. ;)

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Read to T: The Apple Tree by Lynley Dodd, The Pumpkin Runner by Marsha Diane Arnold, and When Autumn Comes by Robert Maass. Hit Japan hard with Vicki Cobb's This Place is Crowded: Japan, A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno, The Bicycle Man by Allen Say, Momotaro the Peach Boy retold by Linda Shute, I am Shinto by Noriko S. Nomura, and In the Eyes of the Cat by Demi. E is to choose two favorite poems from this last and copy and illustrate them. We had spelling, watched a DVD: Countries Around the World: Japan, and E did math while listening to Joji Hirota's CD of Japanese Folk Songs. At lunch I cut everything up small and gave them chopsticks to eat with--E plans to use them for every meal!

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Thursday we went to see the Symphony Orchestra's "Building the Orchestra" show, then E had her sewing lesson with Grandma. Today she had art class and we watched "Families of Japan".

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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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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.

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Busy day today. With T I read My Apple by Kay Davies and Wendy Oldfield and the ingenious The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Then we read Japan ABCs by Sarah Heiman, The Terrible Eek by Patricia A. Compton, and I Live in Tokyo by Mari Takabayashi. After a break we read from ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine and Araminta's Paint Box by Karen Ackerman, which manages in the course of an interesting story to cover many of the various reasons people had for heading west. After spelling and math we did an experiment to make a cloud in a jar, which I found in The Ben Franklin Book of Easy and Incredible Experiments from the Franklin Institute Science Museum and we are now the proud possessors of our own home-made barometer, which we learned how to build in How the Weather Works by Michael Allaby.

On her own, E's been reading The Ordinary Princess by M M Kaye, The Kid Who Named Pluto by Marc McCutcheon, and The Toad on Capitol Hill by Esther Wood Brady.

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Thursday: Read Demi's Gandhi in honor of his birthday, and started Japan with Look What Came From Japan by Miles Harvey and Japan by Karen Jacobsen (a rather disappointing entry in the usually valuable New True Book series). Spelling and math.

Friday: E had Art Class

Tomorrow I'm taking both the kids to see Rapunzel at the Children's Theatre, and in the evening E is going to see Barrage with her dad.