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! :)