Month: September 2010

Read Aloud Thursday–Clown of God and Go-Alongs

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This week’s Read Aloud Thursday post is thematic, something that I don’t usually do.  This week we took a break from our normal school routine and did a light Five in a Row week.  Although we really didn’t do many of the activities in the actual FIAR instructor book, we captured the spirit by reading a book from volume one and reading several “go-alongs.”  Every one of the books we read is a winner, so I wanted to share them here, of course.
This week’s FIAR title is The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola.  I feel like I’m maybe the last to the party where this book is concerned; after all, it was reissued in the 1970s and is a retelling of an old French legend.  I was tickled to snag a copy on PaperbackSwap for our home library.  This book is just beautiful, and my girls were as captivated as I was the first time we read it.  For those who are unfamiliar with the legend, it is the stor of Giovanni, an orphan boy who joins a traveling goup of players as their juggler.  Giovanni hones his craft and becomes very good at what he does–so good, in fact, that he juggles before royalty.  He lives a full life, but in the end old age steals his talent from him and his life would have ended in brokenness and dejection, were it not for his very last performance.  I don’t want to give away the ending, but just know that this is a three or four hanky story for sure!  DePaola set the story in Italy, not France, in case you’re wondering about the name Giovanni.  😉  The illustrations are trademark DePaola.  There’s a whole lot to love about this book. 

Thanks to the FIAR manual and its suggested booklist, I found these books that also deal with the elderly in literature.  Most of these are even more obviously about the elderly than Clown of God, since that book covers just about all of Giovanni’s life, not just his latter years.  This is a topic that’s really dear to my heart because I grew up around a lot of elderly people.  The church of my childhood, teenage, and young adult years was made up of mostly elderly people, so I’ve always spent a lot of time around them.  My own grandmother lived to be 90 years old, but only Lulu was born when she died.  Thankfully, Steady Eddie’s grandmother is still living, so my girls (and the DLM, too, I hope!) will have wonderful memories of her.  Anyway, respect for the elderly, and more than that, valuing of the elderly,  is very important to me and something I want to pass on to my children.  These books are a great way to begin that conversation:

Gramma’s Walk by Anna Grossnickle Hines is the sweet story of a little boy named Donnie and his grandmother.  Gramma is wheelchair-bound, but this fact doesn’t keep her and Donnie from enjoying a “walk” together along the seashore.  The fact that the “walk” occurs only in their imaginations makes it all the more poignant and sweet.  This story is told with lots of onomatopoeia and great descriptions of the beach.  Of all the books I’ve found, this one is the most appropriate for younger readers/listeners.  My girls enjoyed this one and didn’t think it odd at all that Donnie and Gramma never actually left her home for their walk, a fact that I find encouraging.
Uncle Jed’s Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell is another three- or four-hanky story.  Told through the eyes of a young girl named Sarah Jean, it is the story of Uncle Jed, a traveling barber who postpones his dream of owning his own barbershop some day in order to help those in need.  After years of saving and setbacks, Uncle Jed finally gets his barbershop at the ripe old age of 79.   This story is set in a black sharecropping community in the South around the time of the Great Depression, so segregation is discussed lightly.  James Ransome‘s illustrations won this book a well-deserved Coretta Scott King honor designation, and it is those illustrations that truly make generous and loving Uncle Jed come to life.  Reading this book is like visiting with your own well-loved uncle.  This is simply a beautiful story.

A post about picture books with elderly characters wouldn’t be complete without one by Patricia Polacco, one of my favorite children’s book authors/illustrators.  (I’ve written about her books before here, here, and here.)  Like many of Polacco’s books, this one has an elderly Polish woman as one of its main characters.  Mrs. Katz is a lonely widow, but she is fortunate to have Larnel, a young black boy, and his mother as her friends.  They visit her frequently, and she becomes Larnel’s stand-in bubee.  She teaches him so many things–mostly about being Jewish, and particularly about the similarities between the Polish Jewish experience and the black experience in America.  Larnel and his family provide companionship in more ways than one:  they also give Mrs. Katz her very own cat–the Tush mentioned in the title.  This sweet, sweet story is just about the value and richness that cross-generational relationships add to the lives of those involved.  If you need three or four hankies for the books above, you need an even half dozen at least for this one. 

Okay, that’s it for today. I don’t think I could stand any more heart-warming, heart-rending tales, anyway.  🙂  Link your Read Aloud Thursday posts up below!

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Sketch Tuesday

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Barb‘s challenge for this week’s Sketch Tuesday is to sketch something that floats.  The girls (mostly under Lulu’s guidance) at first thought they’d sketch the Niña or the Pinta (scroll down to see the pictures), but when it came down to it last Thursday, they decided to go with something simpler:  a leaf.  Again, I intended to contribute a sketch, too, but Thursday was already a pretty hairy day without throwing my own attempt at artwork into the mix.  😉

Lulu’s leaf:

Louise’s leaf:


You know, I love this book.  I really do.  However, I’m beginning to think I don’t possess enough artistic knowledge myself to use Drawing With Children it to its full potential.  That, or my children are still too young to really get the concepts (under my own feeble instruction, anyway).  This is where my lack of confidence in my own abilities and knowledge are really a hindrance.  How do I handle this as a homeschooling mother?  Sure, this particular subject is not a necessity–it’s really more something I just want to expose them to.  And in our state, in public school their art education would be sketchy (ha, ha) at best.  Still, I want their experience to be broad and rich.  I think I need a chance to really read the book (instead of hurriedly reading the portion I’m trying to “teach” the night before or just before the lesson) and grasp the philosophy.  I’m thinking about giving it a rest for a while and trying something else.  Maybe I’ll just vary what we do by media types–i.e. try painting one week, drawing one week, collage one week, etc.  I’ve mentioned Storybook Art before (here and here).  I love the idea of copying a children’s book illustrator’s style or method.  Maybe I’ll make our fun read alouds be the books and illustrators that are highlighted in Storybook Art and make it a little project at the end of every week to create a piece of art that mimics that of our illustrator of the week.  Another idea swimming around in my brain right now is to use the blog Deep Space Sparkle as my curriculum.  This is a fantastic resource, so if you have any interest in art of children at all, be sure to click over and check it out!  I do want to continue participating in Sketch Tuesday, but I think we need a little variety in our art experiences right now.

Those are my thoughts on this Tuesday, anyway.  🙂

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Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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What can I say?  I read it and I loved it.  Rather than purchase my own copy, I queued up at the library and waited my turn.  I’ve changed my spending habits in lots of ways since we’ve become mainly a one-income household, but perhaps the largest has been my book-buying habits.  (Well, that and my shoe-buying habit. 😉 )  I still buy plenty of books, but they are almost exclusively for the girls’ schooling or fun reads for them.  However, I’m seriously considering buying the Hunger Games boxed set I saw at Sam’s this past Saturday because Mockingjay elevated this series for me to something just a little bit above what I originally thought of it as:  a thrill ride, enjoyable and unforgettable, but certainly not substantial.  Mockingjay is the clincher in more ways than one.  Obviously, it ends the series and ties up the loose ends rather neatly (although certainly not predictably!).  More than that, though, it brings the story and the characterization to an end emotionally, and that is why I love it.   Up until this last book, I didn’t really feel much for Katniss.  I suspect that Collins developed her in this way so that we, the readers, would come to like and/or love her in the end.  Like most everyone who has read this book, I’m sure, I thought more about war and its effects after reading it than I ever have.  My dad is a Vietnam veteran, and reading this book makes me consider him in a little different light than I have before.  Just last night after church I was talking with one of my closest friends about her nephew, a soldier headed back to Afghanistan in a few weeks.  The cliche “war is hell” certainly applies to all of these men’s experiences, and it applies to the experiences of Katniss and her friends/comrades-in-arms/enemies as well.  I know there are spiritual implications to this novel, too, but I’ll leave the spiritual parallel drawing to Sherry for now.  This is one thrill ride that provides plenty of material for rumination. 

One last thought:  I thought this book had one of the best closing lines ever.  I won’t reveal it, although to spell it out wouldn’t actually be much of a spoiler, but maybe my mention of it will encourage someone to pick up this series who otherwise might not give it a second glance.  Although reading in this genre is somewhat out of my comfort zone (I abhor violence!), I am very glad I read this series.  My only regret, if I can call it that, is that I didn’t wait and read all three books in quick succession.  I have a bad memory for details, so sometimes I was a little fuzzy when references were made back to things that happened in previous books.  Since all three are published now, that’s no excuse any more.

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Weekly Wrap-Up–September 20-24, 2010

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I can’t believe we’re finishing up week 8 of Lulu’s first grade year!  Someone pointed out on the WTM boards that at 9 weeks, they were 1/4 of the way through the school year.  Wow.  My girls will be grown before I know it.  🙁

This week was very productive, even if I felt at times like I was herding cats.  Here’s a little peek at our week:

Bible and Devotions

We’re still reading about Elisha in our Bible story book, and on Thursday we had to read two stories–we simply couldn’t let the Shunemite woman’s son stay dead!  😉  We’re still working on learning verse one of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”–the lyrics are fairly complex.  Hopefully we’ve nailed it this week, though, and we’ll move on to another verse.  (I’m thinking now that we won’t learn all four verses.)  I floundered a bit with our memory work–we’ve got Psalm 24 down, but I wasn’t sure what to pick next.  We’ve memorized quite a few long passages over the past couple of years, but I really need to work on a system of review for us.  (I’m planning to implement Simply Charlotte Mason’s Scripture Memory System.)  Anyway, I think I’ve settled on 1 Corinthians 13 as our next passage, but now I’m torn about whether to have the girls work on it in NIV or KJV.  Growing up, we always used the KJV, and I never felt like I had a problem understanding it, most of the time.  We’ve adopted the NIV here at home mostly because we use it for Bible quiz at church.  However, I feel like there’s something to be gained from learning some things in KJV, so we might go that route with 1 Corinthians 13.  I appreciate the beauty of the language, and I want my girls to have that, too.

Reading

We’re still plugging along in OPGTTR. Lulu has completed through lesson 105 and Louise through lesson 36.  The highlight of the week here was the Crossing the River game from the book.  Since it was from Lulu’s lesson, I had to make one up for Louise, of course.  🙂

This week, Lulu read the following books for reading:

Math

I’m really loving RightStart Math, and so is Lulu!  Sometimes I feel like I complain about it (primarily to the longsuffering Steady Eddie) because it is very teacher intensive (as it should be in grade 1!), but I am blown away by how it introduces concepts gradually and really helps Lulu “see” how math works.  (I”ll admit, I’ve had a few revelations myself!)  This week, Lulu discovered the commutative property on her own!  Hundreds and thousands were introduced this week, and we discussed rectangles and patterning.  We squeezed Math Mammoth in a couple of days this week, too.  Louise counted to 100 again with the number chart.  It was a good week for math!

History

History is the one subject that I feel like gets short shrift each week.  We did manage one night to finally finish up with our mummified apples.  The girls were impressed enough to suggest later in the week that if one of the kittens at my parents’ house were to die, we could mummify it.  🙂  Although we didn’t do everything I had hoped to do pertaining to Egypt, we finally left it behind this week and moved on to Sumer and its unification under Sargon.  The girls really enjoy history, but I’m wondering if they’re getting as much from it as they could.  I haven’t been requiring Lulu to do any narration at all since we’re using WWE, but I think it might be time to add narrations to our history study.  In terms of projects, we also started making our seal as per the SOTW Activity Guide.  It would’ve helped if I had read the instructions on the clay container in advance and noted that air-drying clay doesn’t dry instantaneously.  😉  We’ll have to finish them next week.

Science

Science was all about kangaroos, koalas, and beavers this week.  The girls were really enthralled with the marsupials and their tiny babies that find their way into their mama’s pouches to continue developing.  We intended to take a field trip to observe a beaver dam, but we decided to wait for next week and the cooler temperatures the weather man has been promising.  (It’s still HOT here, folks!)  Our favorite science related book this week is Percy and Five Houses  by Else Homelund Minarik.  This fun picture book reiterates the idea that a lodge is the perfect home for a beaver.  Louise read a few nonfiction titles aloud, and I read to them from both our spine (The Kingfisher First Encyclopedia of Animals) and related nonfiction titles from the library.  We are consistently doing narration (both Lulu and Louise!) for our science notebooks.  We had a science experiment/demonstration on our schedule for this week, too, but it just didn’t happen. 

Language

WWE and FLL continue to be a good fit for us, although I have gotten a little bit smarter and omitted the FLL when it’s narration.  Both girls look forward to the story excerpts from WWE, although it does frustrate them (especially Louise!) that we can’t keep reading the stories.  This week the excerp was from The Tale of Peter Rabbit.  This is such a gentle approach to teaching language that I can’t help but love it.  We continued with All About Spelling this week, too.  I’ve moved Lulu up to step four, while I’m keeping Lulu on step two for a while.  This hands-on approach seems to work well so far. 

Other Learning and Fun

This week we’ve continued on in Pinky Pye as our read-aloud.  I’ve enjoyed this book so much, and if the reader enjoys it, it’s hard for the listeners to not enjoy it!  My main problem is keeping my eyes open if we happen to read it after lunch time, no matter how much I’m enjoying it.  😉  The girls have listened to more Cam Jansen stories this week during rest time, although they did branch out and listen to The Rescuers this week, too.  We went for walks three nights this week after supper, for a total of about three miles.  The girls and I even made it out to my parents’ house for a visit this week on Wednesday afternoon.  My parents have some new kittens, and the girls are hoping to bring one home once it is old enough to leave its mama.  In preparation for this, the girls (mainly Louise) have been working on a house for the kitten.  Steady Eddie brought some boxes home from Aldi this week, and the girls have had a good time decorating them and outfitting them for occupancy.  I try not to interrupt their play times when they get going on a project like this just to do school work because I feel that at their young ages, play time is every bit as important as reading, spelling, or math. 

Ready for Occupancy

It has been a productive week, but I am in dire need of a break.  I’m feeling very stressed out lately, although there’s not an obvious  reason for me to feel this way.  (I mean there’s nothing unusual going on, etc.)  I want to be one of those homeschool moms who goes the distance, so I need to be careful here.  I’m planning to make next week a light week.  We’re going to take a break from everything except maybe a little bit of math and reading aloud and “row” The Clown of God.  I envision several baking projects and some artwork here, in addition to a field trip or two and lots of read alouds.  I’m going to breathe next week and try to figure out how I can make our days a little shorter but still feel like I’m exposing my girls to everything they need this year. 

Here’s to a restful weekend!  🙂

(For more Weekly Wrap-Up posts, visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.)

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Eight Weeks In (with Baby in Tow)

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Warning:  brain purge ahead!  Please rid yourselves of any expectation that this will be well-organized or logical, and proceed with caution!  🙂

I’m composing this post as the girls have their rest time and the DLM is (blessedly!) asleep.  What a day it has been!  I have the foolish, persistent notion that Thursdays are a day that I can treat differently from other days because I always plan an art activity on Thursday and I try to make Thursday a “reading day” in which we don’t do a formal phonics lesson but the girls both (or Lulu, at the very least) read a book aloud to me.  Of course, Lulu already does this almost every day, so truthfully, I’m just easing up a bit on Thursdays.  Also, if there are any leftover projects, experiments, or demonstrations that we haven’t gotten to from our history or science lessons, we do them on Thursdays.  In theory, at least.

Today I feel like a bonafide cat herder.  🙂

Our schooling today got off to a shaky start because I took too many phone calls.  I had a call from a friend at church (who also homeschools and was driving her children to a field trip as we talked) about her son’s involvement with our Bible quiz team at church.  Then I took a call from a friend who is about 36 weeks pregnant.  It is unusual for her to call during the day since she is usually at work, so I wanted to make sure everything is okay with her.  (It turns out that she is on bed-rest until the first of next week.)  I fielded a call from the dentist office and also a call from my mom.  (She was returning my call from when I called her early this morning.)  I took all these calls because the girls were happily engaged in their own play time, and really, at their young ages of 6 and 4, I give this as much importance as phonics or mathematics or history or science. 

Anyway, I was discombobulated. 

As of right now, we have completed Bible time, a bit of a history project, a read-aloud chapter from our current chapter book, Lulu’s math lesson, a sketch for Sketch Tuesday, and Lulu has read aloud to us for ten minutes.  Still on the schedule are a science experiment, some narration and copywork, a spelling lesson for Lulu, and mapwork for history.  When I type it all out, I realize that we have completed a lot and that we do a lot in one day. 

Okay, so where is this post going, aside from being merely therapeutic for me and painful, probably, for you all to read?

I’m thinking about what I can do to avoid the cat-herding feeling.  (Aside from shipping my children off, that is.  🙂 )  Our days lack a logical order/flow, and I usually attribute that to having an infant in the house.  The DLM has turned out to be a happy and content fellow on most days, but he runs the schedule.  For example, some days we start with math (even before we do Bible or devotions!) because he’s still asleep and it takes all of my concentration to navigate the world of first grade math manipulatives!  On other days (and most are like this), we start with me in the rocking chair and the DLM reclining on the nursing pillow in my lap, the girls lounging wrestling at my feet.  We do as much of our reading aloud as possible like this–usually Bible (including our memory work, hymn, etc.), science, and fun read-alouds.  At this time either the DLM goes back to sleep and we resume our schedule, getting as much done as possible before awakens.  If he doesn’t go back to sleep, he’s usually pretty happy to sit in his bouncy seat and watch our lessons for a while, so we head to the school room.  Things usually go pretty well until lunch, and after lunch it’s back to trying to do damage control–What should I axe from the schedule today?  Spelling (newly started this week) or history?–because truthfully, I’m just about done. 

On days like today, I have to think about why we’re doing this.  Why are we?

  • We are homeschooling because it is a highly efficient method of education.  We can cut right to the chase without jumping through all the hoops traditional schooling requires.  Do you remember yesterday’s lesson?  Good. No need to review that particular skill/information/whatever.
  • We are homeschooling because it draws us close together as a family.  Being with each other as much as we are necessitates learning to not only love, but like each other.
  • We are homeschooling because we love to read and we love books, not just the mechanics of reading (and the subsequent testing of those mechanical skills), but real, actual stories.  This is so very important to me.  The girls are listening to The Rescuers in audiobook right now.  Would they be listening to a fifty-some-odd year old children’s book if they were in traditional school right now?  Probably not.
  • We are homeschooling because praying (admittedly often in desperation!) is a natural part of our day.  So is God’s Word.  Most important, this. 
  • We are homeschooling because our children  have sharp, inquisitive minds, and education is just what we do as a normal part of our day.  I can’t imagine not doing it.
  • We are homeschooling because giving our children a rigorous education is very important to us.  School ain’t what it used to be. 

Okay, I’m feeling the love a little more now.  🙂 

I’m thinking our schedule, nay, even our materials list, might need a little tweaking.  I’ll let you know how it turns out. 

The girls are up, and it’s time for me to be “on” again.  Science, history, and spelling are calling my name.  🙂

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