79-80

Yesterday was a sort of half day, but E did a math lesson and a spelling lesson.

Today she got 100% on her end-of-book math review! and we read You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Great Wall of China by Jacqueline Morley and Maples in the Mist: Children's Poems from the Tang Dynasty by Minfong Ho. Then we read a bit of Long is a Dragon: Chinese Writing for Children by Peggy Goldstein and E worked on drawing several Chinese characters from the book. She was really taken by it--and I almost didn't bring it out today!

54

Yesterday we all took a break and after Alan and I voted, we went out for lunch and then to the art museum. Last night I got E out of bed so she could watch our first black president elect deliver his victory speech.

Today we read The Apple Pie That Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson, and Autumn: an Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur. Then we wrote some of our own acrostics (Nemo and Sheila are the names of our dogs):

She is a dog;
Her friend is Nemo.
Every morning she jumps
Into E's bed for
Love
And a scratch.

Not as small as he thinks he is
Every time someone is on the floor he jumps on them.
Mushy, lovey dog
On my lap.

Doorknob rattles
And
Daddy is home!
Delight!
Young monkeys jump on his head!

I've asked E to write two more on her own before Friday. Then I read some more of If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr. After a break we had spelling, lunch, and math, then read Look What Came from China by Miles Harvey (what came from China? A whole lot more than you think!) Also The Cloudmakers by James Rumsford and A Song of Stars by Tom Birdseye (this is an Asian legend about the stars Vega and Altair and the Milky Way between them--we looked the stars up on Stellarium, an amazing free planetarium for your computer). And finally, we started learning about electricity with Melvin Berger's Switch On, Switch Off! (My copy a little out of date, so I had to explain how CF bulbs work, but still a very good intro).

50-51

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.

43

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!

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.

123-125

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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A few days there I was just too lazy to post. And then we took a week's worth of days off for spring break, partly because of my laziness! and partly because we were taking care of E and T's cousin who was on spring break from her school. We finished learning about explorers and did math and some art on GeeArt, and music, too. Umm, also some poetry, from A Kick in the Head by Paul Janeczko. Today, we did a bunch of experiments with water, from Graham Peacock's Water and from Neil Ardley's 101 Great Science Experiments. Oh and one from 365 Simple Science Experiments by E. Richard Churchill et. al. Then E started learning about measuring length with metric units in math, and they helped their Daddy do yard work. Tonight E starts her first real job, taking care of a neighbor's dog while he is out of town--she is very excited.

117

Much better day today, helped no doubt by the fact that I had my act together and we started in good time... It's Michelangelo's birthday, so I read Mike Venezia's biography, Michelangelo. Then Explorers of North America by Brendan January, and we searched for a Northwest Passage on the globe. E wanted to know why they didn't build the Panama Canal sooner. Our poetry form for the day was the cinquain. I didn't particularly care for the example in Paul Janeczko's A Kick in the Head, so I found some more (google "cinquain") and printed them up to read to her. I chose this one, unfortunately unattributed, from this site for her copy work:

Moonbeams
Lighting the sea
On a still cloudless night
Illuminate the seaponies
At play

This is another good cinquain site.
She needed to look up and define "illuminate" and I explained to her that the seaponies were the foam on the waves, not seahorses as she originally thought! Then she did her math--much more expeditiously today, so after lunch I let her go over to G's to play for the afternoon. This evening she gifted us with her first real cartwheels!

111

Oh, so tired today--we were rudely awakened by the tornado siren last night and had to move everyone downstairs. Anyway, we got up early so we could go on a tour of the Bud's Best Cookies Factory.





When we got home I read The Aztec by Andrew Santella and Aztec Indians by Patricia McKissack. T wanted Valorie Fisher's very clever Ellsworth's Extraordinary Electric Ears, and we learned about the Tanka poetic form in Jameczko's A Kick in the Head. E is doing her math now.

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Wouldn't you know it, no sooner do I get my computer fixed than a storm brings down our utility pole and we have no power/phone service! Here's a wrap-up of the last week or so. Thursday 2/14: Native American festival and Valentine's party with Grandma and Grandpa. Friday: sick day (me), Monday: Presidents' Day--holiday/play day with their cousin and half the neighborhood kids. Tuesday-Friday we learned about the ancient Maya. We read The Maya by Robert Nicholson, You Wouldn't Want to Be a Mayan Soothsayer! by Rupert Matthews, Secrets in Stone: All About Maya Hieroglyphs by Laurie Coulter, and Technology in the Time of the Maya by Judith Crosher. E learned about and copied out a Senryu from A Kick in the Head by Paul B. Janeczko, and did math every (school) day. She can now add 3 digit numbers with carrying over in her head!
E had 2 basketball practices and 2 games. Sadly, basketball is over now. Yesterday we saw Cirque-Works Birdhouse Factory, an amazing show, and went to a first, organizational meeting for Earth Scouts. Today E and I went to the planetarium to see "Ancient Skywatchers of Mexico" which just happened to be showing as we are studying the Meso-American Indians. Too cool! She also did some easy Mayan math worksheets--I'm too lazy to link to them; just Google "Mayan math worksheet" and a bunch of stuff pops up.

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.

86

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.

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.