We began our Thanksgiving unit study today by reading our Five in a Row book, Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin.  We read it 3 times to be exact.  Ben just loves this book!  And then tonight, we baked a Pumpkin Pie. 

I've only recently started cooking and baking with Ben.  It wasn't something that held his interest much until recently.  But he is really starting to enjoy it.  And of course there are many lessons to be learned while baking a Pumpkin Pie, including following a recipe, measuring ingredients, and the chemical reactions that occur. 

There is also just the fun part of learning about how important pumpkins were to the Native Americans and how they introduced them to the Pilgrims.  We're reading an interesting book about that as well, entitled Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla and Peter Buchard.   It appears that this unit is going to be a big hit!

Here is a quick slideshow of our pumpkin pie making.  I hope you enjoy it.

I think we're settled in with our new schedule now enough to add our artist study.  I've chosen Vincent Van Gogh as our first artist, mainly because his painting, Starry Night, is one of my all-time favorites.  Last month when Dada and I got to spend a week in NYC, we went to the Museum of Modern Art where Starry Night hangs.  You can't believe how excited I was to get to see it in person.  I could have touched it! (but of course I didn't!).  I am such a lover of art.  I hope to at least pass on an appreciation of it to Ben.

The way we'll be doing our art study is by choosing the artist, reading a few books about the artist and his or her methods, and looking at examples of their art.  We like to play a game of  "can you find it" as often as we can.  While looking at the art work, I'll find an object and say, "I see a _______, can you find it?"  And then Ben finds it!  He loves this game and it helps us both look at the details of art work.

We'll also spend some time trying to mimic the theme or method of a couple of the pieces we've chosen to study.  I'll be sure to come back and share photos of Ben's art work when we get to that.

For now, here is a compilation of the Van Gogh art we'll be studying over the next 6 weeks.  Enjoy!

For the past 2 weeks in co-op, we have been learning about owls.  The boys got to hear the hoots of different owls native to our state.  They also learned about the lifecycle of the owl, and how they  ummmmmmm....eat little rodents and then regurgitate the leftover bones, fur, and hair.  When they regugitate the leftovers, it comes up as a pellet, which some (hopefully well-paid) folks go into woods and barns and collect.  Then some brilliant mind, who realized this would be the perfect thing for homeschooled boys, sterilizes them, packages them and sells them to people like us.  And we get to dissect them in our little homeschools, or in our case, co-ops.

Ben ended up with a huge pellet.  When we started pulling it apart and finding bones, we discovered right away that this hungry owl had eaten at least 2 not so little rodents.  We knew that because we found 2 skulls and 2 sets of jawbones!  There were various other bones as well, some leg, arm, hip, and backbones.  We did our best to form the skeleton out of the bones and guess what the owl had eaten.  All 4 boys ended up with different looking skeletons, some smaller with different looking bones (birds perhaps?).  But Ben's definitely looks like a mouse or something similar.  See what you think!

This is Ben examining his pellet.  It didn't smell very good and he was a bit apprehensive at first.   I had to start pulling it apart and picking through it with him.  Once he started recognizing bones, he loved it (as did all the boys).

Here we have our finished skeleton, which we glued down on construction paper.  See the skull at the top with the eye sockets!  We pieced this skeleton together with the bones we had, we suspect that we had a mixture of at least 2 skeletons.  You can see the descrepancy in the size of the femurs (thigh bones) especially.

So, if you were wondering about doing this project (it's a great one to do if you are rowing Owl Moon), then take the dive.  Believe me, your kids will love it.  And you won't  mind it as much as you think!

First of all, let me apologize to those of you who were looking forward to our bee lapbook.  It just hasn't worked out to get that finished!  I think I had "beginning of school" excitement and might have bitten off more than I could chew!

But even without the lapbook, we have had a fun and busy first 2 weeks.  I'll recap for you most of what we have learned.

For our Five in a Row unit study using the book, The Bee Tree, by Patricia Polacco we learned.....

~all about bees, including the lifecycle, different types of bees and their jobs, how they make honey and we even got to take a trip to a local bee farm.  We also learned the differences and likenesses between bees and wasps.

~about hexagons and made a honeycomb with our hexagonal pattern blocks.

~about onomatopoeia.   For those of you wondering, onomatopoeia is the use of words that imitate the sounds something makes (for example "buzz" for a bee).

~where Michigan is on the map and where Canada, KY, NY, and CA are in relationship to Michigan (north, south, east, and west).  We also learned Michigan's capital city, state flower, state tree, state bird, and state motto.

~about the string section of the orchestra and which instruments are in the string section.   We also listened for violins in some music composed by Vivaldi, one of the 2 composers we are studying this session.

Apart from our unit study, we also learned about nouns, compound words, globes and maps, the continents of North America and South America.  In math, we are reviewing what we learned last year, but that is going quickly, so soon we'll be on to some new concepts.  Ben really enjoys our math program, Right Start Math, and using the abacus to figure out the math problems.

For Bible, we've been learning about who God is, that He was there in the beginning before the world, how He loves us, how to talk to Him through prayer and hear Him speak to us through reading His word, how He knows all and sees all.  Ben has memorized 3 Bible verses as well. 

At co-op he learned about  Baroque music, had an intro to the orchestra and to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and we began our history notebooks by learning about 3 Native American tribes...The Inuit, The Tlingit, and The Nez Perce.   We drew pictures of a scene in the life of an Inuit on an igloo, made a Potlatch mask, and made a totem pole for our history notebooks.  We also discussed things about Ben, what he loves, what he looks like, and came up with a Native American name for him....Boy who loves animals, after reading the book, Knots on a Counting Rope.

While listening to Bach's music and hearing a biographical story about him, Ben used water-colors to paint a pipe-organ.  And he also spent some time drawing a scene from the Revolutionary War to decorate the front of his history notebook.

Much of our bee study was also done at co-op.  The children also learned how to play Red Rover and Simon Says during PE  time.

  

We also got to enjoy seeing a production of The Princess and the Pauper at a local children's theatre with the co-op kids.  We really enjoyed that! 

I'm finding that the new schedule I've implemented is working really well.  It keeps Ben on target and constantly busy, which he really needs.  I find on days that we are not using the schedule (field trip days,etc) that he is more easily distracted and we don't accomplish as much.  I'd still like to add Spanish and an artist study at some point, maybe in a few more weeks, once our new schedule is more routine. 

I'm still not getting as much done around the house as I would like, but I'm moving toward the goal of getting the house decluttered so I can implement my new chore schedule!  And soon I'll start working from home, which should give me a little more time to get things done.  Of course there is work involved with getting ready to work from home, like getting the room ready.  But I know it'll be worth it.  I'm really looking forward to being home every night to tuck Ben in and not missing him while I'm at work.

Today was Ben's first day of First Grade.  We had a wonderful day.  It began with picture taking on the front porch.  Last week, Ben picked out his "first day of school" outfit.  So we took a picture on the front porch in that outfit holding our First Day of First Grade sign.  Of course he wanted some silly face pictures after that!

After the picture-taking ceremony, we headed out to Waffle House for brunch.  The server was nice enough to make a Mickey Mouse out of Ben's waffle, which was a huge hit.

After we ate our wonderful waffles, he headed over to Half Price Books.  Ben's Nana had given him a giftcard when he graduated from Kindergarten, so we thought today would be a great day to spend it.  Ben chose 2 things.  The first was a harmonica with CD and book.  He grabbed that first thing, exclaiming, "I'm going to learn how to play Red River Valley!!"  Not sure how many 6-year-old boys today even know the song, but it tickled me.  He also chose a Spider sticker book.  Ben was bitten by a spider earlier this summer and thus has developed a horrible fear of them.  I think buying the sticker book was his way of trying to overcome that.

After our purchases, we headed home where we worked on an "All About Me" lapbook.  In case anyone is interested, Ben weighs 47 pounds AND is 47inches tall, his favorite color is red, his favorite food is Lemon Sorbet from Graeter's, Alex is his best friend, and his favorite animal is the puppy.

After we finished the book, he practiced on his new harmonica and watched a couple episodes of Gilligan's Island.

All in all a perfect first day of school I think.