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!