The Glorious Flight

Our story this week took us back to France. This week we looked at Louis Bleriot's historic flight across the English Channel in our story, The Glorious Flight. 

Not only did the story give us the opportunity to practice our pronunciation of French names and enjoy a snack of baguettes and butter; but it also allowed us to have rich conversations about authentic apologies and not giving up when our inventions don't work out the first time or even the eighth time.

On Monday, we read our story for the first time. After, we colored our story disc, talked about geography, and we recalled what we knew about France from Madeline. We found the English Channel on the map and saw how it separates France and England and remembered that in Madeline and the Bad Hat, the girls flew across the English Channel themselves! We discussed how inventors like Mr. Bleriot have perseverance and how if we don’t’ give up, we will surely succeed! Silas then invented a kitchen that could cook everything on its own. I need one of those!

 

In Handwriting, we reviewed our Frog Jump Capitals and did extra practice on R and 5. Our math lesson was on counting by tens and we also worked with equilateral triangles. In Reading, we reviewed more sight words and read from The Runt Pig.

Tuesday began with Nature Gang and we met at the park discuss leaves and made a craft with leaves local to our area- Oak, Sea Grapes, and Umbrella leaves. We, of course, made our leaf craft in Captain America colors.

In the afternoon, we read The Glorious Flight, and talked about a sincere apology and making things right after we do wrong or make a mistake. Silas and I made up scenarios and made apologies. He, of course, wanted to draw a letter that says “I’m Sorry” so we added that to our FIAR Notebook. We tried to think of lots of ways to travel from airplane to boats and Silas drew that to go in our notebook too. Since we were feeling very artistic today, we used our new chalk pastels for the first time. They were so much more vibrant that our crayons and we are still learning different techniques. We used them to draw a skyline with a viewpoint that we are looking up like one of the pages in the book. Silas loves art, and his artwork is really getting more and more detail. It is so fun to watch. In Math we continued with counting by tens, and working with equilateral triangles. We put 10 small equilateral triangles in to a big triangle and called this the “ten triangle”. For Reading, we read more Mouse and the Motorcycle and reviewed our sight words.

On Wednesday, we started our day playing outside and it was SO nice. Afterwards, Silas did quiet time using his Action Bible. We did Handwriting, letter N and number 6. 

This time after we read The Glorious Flight, we talked about some literacy aspects of our story such as the boat’s name written in italics and why we use italics at times when typing and that if you are not typing you can underline for the same effect. Our story also had onomatopoeias like “clacketa clacketa” and so we watched a funny video with sound words and made a page of onomatopoeias of our own. We also learned about descriptive writing and the difference between simply telling what something is and describing. We played a game where I would say tell me what this is… or who this is… and then now, describe it.. There were some funny ones like “that’s a dog” and “well his name is Oso, and he is very soft and furry. Kind of like a person but walks on four legs.” 

After we described so many people and things; we built airplanes out of craft supplies with our brother and had a fun time flying them around. In the afternoon, we worked on adding in math and finished our huge word card review (Thanks, Ruby! Only took a week!) Although this wasn’t a huge review we had plan, it really helped in the confidence area of reading. The Runt Pig is much harder than Run, Bug, Run and we felt we were ready to read another story out of it. Next week, we will start our first brand new reading lesson since August and I’m so thankful for being able to adjust to what we need.

 

On Thursdays we do experiments. This makes our morning activities fly by with focus because Silas can’t wait to see what we have planned. Quiet time, Handwriting, and our story went quickly because it was time to make paper airplanes. We found a few we liked and could actually do haha. We then predicted which ones would go with the farthest and took turns flying them with Ezra. We even put cargo (money) on a few and it seemed to help them steady and fly smoother. Of course the big hit was the one that took a turn and landed on top of the stove’s vent. Then it was see where we can crash our planes. After our paper plane fun, we chose the small one to go into our notebook and glued in our week’s projects. 

In math, we reviewed counting by 10s and 2s, even and odd numbers, and writing 1 – 7. Our afternoon reading consisted of reading from The Runt Pig and Mouse and the Motorcycle. The next story on our list is How to Bake An Apple Pie And See The World and it’s a favorite so we are waiting on it for two weeks since the next two are so busy with Rocktober, surgery and recovery. We are going to take it slow and just keep up with Math and Reading. It’s so crazy to me that we have done nine weeks of school already!! We are having so much fun doing it and I’m so glad to see how much he loves learning, loves working with his mama and playing with his brother and sister and friends, and that this is the path we chose for this year. God knew this is what was in our heart and I’m glad we listened! 

I mean just look at this joy! :)

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

After the last two weeks feeling not typical it was great to get back into our typical routine. This week we got to enjoy our mornings slowly that start with playing, easing into quiet time and working on Handwriting and our FIAR book. This week we worked on the letter L, reviewed all our frog jump capitals, and numbers 3-4. Our book of the week was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. Burton is one of our favorites because we really enjoy her illustrations.

Monday, we read our story, made our story disc, and talked about personification. We drew simple machines from around our house and named them. In the afternoon, we did math, reading, and finished reading Boxcar Children! Ezra even woke up from his nap in time to hear the last chapter. 

That went faster than I anticipated! To celebrate, we made popcorn and watched the movie version on Netflix. It was very true to the book and we all enjoyed it.

Tuesday, the Nature Gang went to a nature center and park on Merrit Island. We had so much fun! In the afternoon, we made a steam shovel of our own and put in a picture of Silas, Ezra, and Ruby. Our steam shovel even had moving arms. We worked on a Halloween sight word sheet for reading and made a Birthday Card for our friend Landon.

 

On Wednesday, we looked at another story of Burton's called The Little House. We found some surprises in this story like she also personified the house like the steam shovel and hidden in the book was a steam shovel and it was red just like Mary Ann! We both knew it was Mary Ann and Mike!

We also practiced drawing trees that look like they are real and moving. In the afternoon, Ruby got to our reading cards and spilled ALL of them on the ground. Since we had to organize them again we decided to review from card 1 til where we are now. We reviewed all of our phonograph sounds that we know so far. We also continued with math.

Thursday, we were excited that we had experiments! We made a pinwheel and saw how steam could make an object move. We also looked at squares and cubes and made our own cube drawings and 3d cubes with toothpicks and marshmallows. Ezra wanted to help with this part...and the eating of the marshmallows. 

We worked on putting our projects in our special notebook for FIAR, practiced frog jump capitals, more sight words, and did math games in the afternoon.

Our day was so productive that we even began reading a new chapter book, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and to say it was a hit might just be an understatement. We read three chapters in one day because someone keeps begging...just..one..more! This was a wonderful way to end a great school week!

Who Owns The Sun? Wks 1-2

Week One.
This week brought our first short school week because of Labor Day. Oddly enough, the next week would also be a short week because of a vacation day so we decided to stretch out our story over two weeks and take a field trip to Disney World. Ahh, the joys of homeschool AND living in Florida! Labor Day was a nice family day and we saw our cousin Ava in Orlando. Tuesday kicked off with our Nature Gang meeting and this time we met Turkey Creek Sanctuary and Nature Center.

We observed the Florida wild life and journaled about what we saw with our friends. We also continued with our math lessons, reading review, and started our first chapter book, Boxcar Children. This week in Handwriting we focused on the letter B and number 1.

Wednesday, we started our story, Who Owns The Sun?, which touches on how man is too wonderful to be owned ( like the sun, the stars, or the wind) and our first look at slavery. 

It breaks my heart to talk to Silas about bad things in mankind's past and to know that he will understand not everything is right and safe and good in the world but how special is it that we get to have these kinds of conversations together. We talked about the book, history, slavery, civil war and read a biography of Harriet Tubman. We discussed the author and illustrator who was a young girl and how amazing that was. We did copy work, made a book of questions, and did a water color painting of the sun- just like the cover of the book.

On Thursday, we read another book about slavery- Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt. This book was very exciting to us because it was about another brave child and also involved quilts and we just learned about quilts last week! We compared our quilt from last week to Clara's Freedom quilt. How amazing was it that she could map a quilt from her what she heard that led hundreds of people to freedom. Silas really wishes he had a quilt too. This week was super short (I told you) but next week begins with a field trip to Epcot and continues our look at slavey.

Week Two.
Monday was a vacation day and since we just renewed our disney passes (yay!!) we decided to enjoy Magic Kingdom and spend the afternoon in Epcot, exploring all the countries, we have studied so far this year! When we went to Epcot, it was pretty late in the day and HOT. We were excited to check out China and see if we could find the Yangtze River on a map and some of the culture that Ping saw. In China we found really awesome architecture, China hats, Ninja swords, panda bears, and paper fans. Next on our journey was France. We noticed right away the flag and saw the Eiffel Tower. As we left France, we approached Japan and saw sushi carts, wood clogs just like our book, and traditional Japanese suits, and a lot of superhero toys that come from Japan. We wanted to look at the old America section that had great patriotic flags just like in Lentil but we were just TOO HOT. We decided we could come back and explore more of Epcot another time.

Nature Gang was the next day and this time it was at a Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Rescue and Hospital. Silas enjoyed learning all about Loggerheads, other turtles, and tortoises too. Ask him to tell you all about the differences between turtles and tortoises, because trust me, He knows A LOT. They also saw hermit crabs and played games in the park afterwards.

After Nature Gang, we read Henry's Freedom Box, another account of a heroic man who mailed himself to freedom. We read more of Boxcar Children, and continued with our math.

Wednesday, felt like our first normal morning of the week, that began with quiet time, handwriting and the letter H and the number 2.

We read about Ruby Bridges and we continued talking about freedom. After, we watched a movie about her that helped us realize she was a real little girl.

In the afternoon, we read more of our chapter book, reviewed stories out of Run, Bug, Run, and continued with math which is getting into taking away and adding numbers.

On Thursdays, we usually do experiments but since we didn't have any to go with this story, we fit in an extra art day and did more watercolors to practice blending colors like our favorite pictures in Who Owns the Sun?. Ezra joined in and it is always fun when he actually wants to participate with us!

I was a little unsure how the talks about slavery would go and how much a five year old could comprehend how someone could own another person but I am really pleased with who it went. I'm glad we read so many go along books because it really brought validity to our focus book and helped us understand how this sad part of history affected so many. Silas even recognized that he is brown and his mommy is a brown and his daddy is not, and his brother and sister are not as brown as us and how that "it might not have been good for us, mom" if we lived back then. We decided we are thankful we don't live back then and that he is just as brave as the kids we read about who helped save so many lives and one day his bravery would help others too!