All of Me: September 2012

For the past two week we have been working on "A Pair of Red Clogs" for our Five in a Row curriculum! It was a favorite for all of us! There were so many choices for activities to go along with this book! We tried to do as much as we could, but there were so many more things we probably could have done. We probably could have spent a month studying this book and all things Japan, if we had wanted to!

For Mako, a little Japanese girl, the new shoes were clogs painted with red lacquer that shone beautifully. This is the story of what happened after she cracked the new clogs playing the weather-telling game and so longed for a bright, shiny new pair to replace them that she almost did a dishonest thing.

*Taken from Goodreads.com

Here is Jackson pretending to be a Japanese ninja in a "kimono" aka- a backwards mario bathrobe and flip flops. ; )

For one of our Language Arts activities we talked about "storytelling and reminiscing", so Jackson told me a story and acted it out using the Little People! Little People from left to right- Grammy, daddy, mama, Papa, Alexis, and Jackson. : )

Jackson and I also played a "clogs matching game", that I found on Homeschool Share.

As a part of our discussion on Japanese culture, we read this cool book about Sushi!

...... and then made some "sushi" of our own!

Then Jackson gave them a try!

One of the things we discussed for art is a colored pencil technique called "cross-hatching"- coloring in different directions to make the picture look textured.

Here is Jackson experimenting with some "cross-hatching".

We also did some origami together! We made an origami pig!

We also read this book during our study of Japanese culture, and learned about the "Cherry Blossom Festival"!

Then we painted our own cherry trees!

Lex painting on some pink blossoms using the bottom of a 2 liter bottle!

Jackson painting the tree branches

Jack painting some blossoms.

And Jackson's finished Cherry tree!

Lexie's almost finished tree!

Found an idea for these "Japanese Carp Kites" on Pinterest! The kids really enjoyed making these! It was easy and fun!

I cut out "fish scales" for the kiddos out of different colored sheets of tissue paper.

Then they pasted them on in overlapping rows.

Alexis with her finished "fish scales"!

Then we turned the paper over and glued on different colored streamers.

Then we pasted the two ends together, and we ended up with these!!! : )

I also added a string to they could hang them up, or try to "fly" them like a kite!

We attempted to make a pair of our own red clogs out of foam and ribbon, so that Jackson could play the "weather telling game" like they did in the story. They ended up being too flimsy though, and fell apart almost immediately. I was at least able to get a quick pic of them before they were destroyed! ; )

Jackson also watched these DVD's during our study of Japan and "A Pair of Red Clogs".

Reading Rainbow- The Bicycle Man

Reading Rainbow- The Paper Crane

The Little Travelers Japan

I'm trying so hard to keep caught up with the kid's school work posts on here. I am about 2 weeks behind, but hoping to get caught up this week. I've decided to do a 6 weeks on, 1 week off school schedule, year round, except for a 2 week break for Christmas, 2 week break in May, and a 3 week break in July, before we start the new school year again! I've also worked out our weeks off around the holidays. So, that being said, we have been in school for 6 weeks now, therefore it is time for a 1 week break, which just happened to fall on labor day weekend/ week!! Yay! We get to spend some extra time with daddy on his days off!!

We ended up working on our next Five in a Row story, Madeline, for 2 weeks instead of 1. Daddy was gone for one of the weeks on a missions trip to Oregon, so we didn't get as much done as we would've liked the week he was gone. I actually kinda liked the 2 weeks per book thing, so we may continue with that! It seemed to allow us to be able to go deeper into the story, and do more extra activities without having to feel rushed!

So here goes..... "Madeline"!!

Madeline lives at an all girl's school and is not afraid of anything. One night Miss Clavel fears something is not right. Poor little Madeline has a pain in her stomach and must go to hospital, where she has her appendix out. The other girls come to visit her and see that she is feeling better with many presents surrounding her. That night Miss Clavel is awakened feeling that something else is not right. She hurries upstairs to find all the other little girls crying that they want their appendix out too. - Happily Ever After Tales

Social Studies-

Geography- We found France on the map, and colored our story disk to stick on the map.

We also colored the flag of France for a mini book for his lapbook. We made a mini book of a map of the world and colored France on it too!

Language Arts-

Vocabulary-

We talked about a few new words- appendix, solemn, and disaster.

I found some cut outs of the girls from the story on Homeschool Share, and Jackson used them to act out his own "Madeline" story!

Here is the video of his story! : )

Here are just some random pictures of Jackson and Alexis working on other things besides Five in a Row. In these pics Jack is working on Math U See and Lex is working on a preschool workbook!

Art-

Architecture-

I didn't get any pictures of us completing this, but we did the "Tour de France" minibook found here. It showed all of the famous buildings and places in Paris! It was a very cute activity!

Draw Write Now-

Jackson learned how to draw a Tiger out of one of his Draw Write Now books also!

Math-

Grouping and Dividing skills-

Jackson also used the cut outs that I showed above to do several story problems. He learned some basic division!

Size and Degree-

Jackson was already familiar with these concepts, but we just briefly touched on "large, medium, small" and " biggest, bigger, big".

Symmetry- We also looked through the book and looked for pics that were symmetrical and asymmetrical.

One day while D was gone on his mission trip, the kiddos were bouncing off the walls with energy and not wanting to have anything to do with school. They asked if they could go outside and play, and just as they were about to walk out the door it started to sprinkle rain. I just let them go for it, and play in the rain. Here are some cute pics I got of that day!

After they soaked their real clothes, they ended up changing into their swimming clothes, rain boots, and rain jacket! : )

Field Trip Day-

Earlier in the week, we had talked about how Paris was located along the Seine River. We talked about how throughout history many large cities were based along rivers so that they could use the river for boat transportation of supplies. For our field trip we decided to drive to Clinton, Tn. A small city right outside of Knoxville that is set on the Clinch River. After doing some exploring online, I found that at the turn of the century Clinton was a major pearling city in the U.S. The pearls found in the Clinch River were actually sent to the Paris Exposition, which also tied in very well with our emphasis on Paris and France! Here are some pictures of our field trip!

Explains a little about pearling in Clinton.

Running down the sidewalk in "downtown" Clinton!

Grammy came over another day too, and helped us with a few other projects. First, Jackson had learned how to read "Madeline" all by himself, so he read the story aloud to Grammy!

She also helped us make these cute Madeline figures out of TP tubes and some printable that I found on Homeschool Share.

Science-

Health and Anatomy-

We colored a sheet with the major human organs on it.

Then we made a wearable human body out of brown paper grocery bags, pasta, plastic bags, yarn, straws, and other things!! Found this idea, once again, on Homeschool Share!