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Sister Sara's Life and Poetry
Feb. 18, 2009
Five in a Row - Grass Sandals
My son likes astronomy and rockets and so I wasn't sure how he would respond to this story about about a Japanese poet. He has done well studying it though and even worked with me, hesitantly, to write two haikus. So now we will have a little more poetry for the blog. Here they are.
Winter haiku #1
It was cold outside
I was walking in the snow
Ice cracked under me
Winter haiku #2
Deer climbed down the hill
looking for something to eat
paws dig crunchy snow
These truly describe the outdoors around our house right now. |
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Dec. 29, 2008
Five in a Row - Wee Gillis
In between Christmas and New Year's Day we took one day to finish up Wee Gillis from Five in a Row. We learned about Scotland and listened to a great bagpipe demonstration from YouTube. We have a bagpipe band where we live and I wanted to go see them but it just didn't happen. It is starting to snow and snow and snow. I am not motivated to try sliding down our driveway right now (I go only if I have to). Today we talked about the difference between wool (like they wear in Scotland), cotton and synthetic fibers. We also learned where Scotland is on the world map. We did more but those are the highlights of our Scotland study. With Christmas we kind of did a bare bones study but I hope some learning was still accomplished. |
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Dec. 12, 2008
Five in a Row - Mailing May
| Wow, I've gotten behind on my homeschool blogging. I guess I'll just start where I am. This week we decided to do Mailing May mostly because the lady from the bookmobile brought it and we have it checked out. Mailing May is a book I've looked forward to reading though because it takes place in Idaho and it takes place in the winter. We're in Idaho too and our first big snow is starting right now. It was perfect timing. My student got to paint a snowman on black paper this week for his art project. It turned out nice. We also talked in more detail about Idaho. It's funny because most people think of potatoes when they hear Idaho but we don't talk about it that much. I guess we take it for granted because my student did not know that Idaho produced the most potatoes in the United States or that Idaho was even famous for potatoes. Mailing May is the first of the Five in a Row books that we've done that takes two weeks. I'm not sure if we'll do two weeks in a row with it or skip around. We might work on something else and then do it again in January. |
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Nov. 17, 2008
Five in a Row - They were Strong and Good
| Last week we did They were Strong and Good. We decided not to do the family day activity for the week and might try to do another week later on and incorporate that aspect of the lesson. We got off to a rough start because the printer wouldn't work the first day and I was going to do my vocabulary cards. That didn't work out so we switched to Art day. We finished the week with my student watching a nice Bee DVD from the Library while eating bread with honey. It was a nice tie-in for science Friday. |
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Nov. 8, 2008
Five in a Row - Down, Down the Mountain
| This week we studied from the book Down, Down the Mountain. Sometimes I wonder if my child will make a connection with the books since some of them are from a different time and lifestyle. I wasn't sure if Appalachia would interest him. This is my paraphrase of what he said. "It's kind of opposite for us and them. We live in the mountains and see the train all the time and we have to go into town all the time to get our food. They live in the mountains and hardly ever go into town and get their food where they are and they never see trains." He also talked about us living in the mountains but I never really thought about us being "mountain people" like the Appalachians are "mountain people" because our lives are more entwined with the outside world. He enjoyed their way of talking and has mentioned several times, once on our way into town, that they would say "We're a-goin' into town." I was surprised the last time we did an Appalachian theme book The Rag Coat that he really got into it and then he really clicked with this study too. I thought that maybe this would be Appalachia overkill especially since we don't live anywhere near the region but I think it just reinforced the Rag Coat lesson from the past and if sometime my student ever gets to go anywhere in the Appalachian region he will already have a nice mental connection with it. Maybe someday we will have to watch a Christy video. |
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Oct. 27, 2008
Five in a Row - Owl Moon
Last week's school was cut short because we went to the Seattle area to attend my grandma's funeral. Her final words before her death were "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah!" I like that.
Anyway, we are back to our Owl Moon week in Five in a Row. There are a couple of web sites where my student will be able to dissect an owl pellet that I think I will try to do. I might do something a little different and do an owl craft too. I've heard owls around here hooting at night just like the book talks about. The next time I hear one maybe we will try to go out and see it; even if it is late.  |
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Oct. 7, 2008
Five in a Row - The Giraffe that Walked to Paris
| This week for Five in a Row we are reading The Giraffe that Walked to Paris. My oldest child has not shown much interest in the past in giraffes. It's probably because he hasn't been to a zoo since he was one. It was one of those drive through zoos where you drive 5 miles an hour. He was in the front seat so we could show him the animals. We were disappointed because he played with the knobs on the radio and didn't seem interested in the animals at all. Now he's more interested in outer space, science in general, ants and frogs and things like that so I wasn't sure how he would respond to this. He responded more positively than I expected. Today we will work with some of the vocabulary from the story. Then we will have repetition of learning the new words for three more days. Kristian really enjoys how we take note cards with the definition of different words and he gets to pull out the right note card when the word comes up in the story. I write out the word and definition and find a picture to glue onto the note card that has to do with the word. That visual connection plus the definition and meaning in the story really makes the words click in my student's brain. |
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Oct. 2, 2008
Five in a Row - Daniel's Duck
| A couple of weeks ago for school we read Make Way for Ducklings. I was pleased because we had an unexpected field trip to go along with the book. There is a couple who lives in our area and the man does carvings of birds. I found these people by searching for Ducks Unlimited and the name of our town. I called them and they were happy to let us come over and see his artwork including ducks. He also had some stuffed birds on display. We asked him questions about ducks and he knew everything we wanted to know. This week I decided to continue in the same duck vein and read Daniel's Duck. It is about a boy who carves a duck. I have a wooden carved duck that belonged to my grandfather and I get it down each day for when we read the story. |
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Sep. 23, 2008
Five in a Row - Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car
This is a homeschool blog site so I might as well tell you what Kristian and I are doing with homeschool. We've returned to using Five in a Row this year. It is a literature based unit study. We are taking one great children's book and studying one book per week. We also do Shiller Math, copywork for handwriting and Kristian is reading the Christian Liberty Press Reader about different animals for reading. He has just read, on his own, a children's version of Treasure Island too. After Five in a Row we have been studying Apologia Science's elementary astronomy book.
This week with our Five in a Row we have been reading Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car. Our vocabulary word for today was convertible (the motor car is a convertible) and we are going to try to use the word convert in our conversation this week. I got a signed copy of this book from E-Bay for under $10.00, including the shipping. That was fun.
Today Kristian also helped me write a speech about why we should not look directly at the Sun. I wrote some key words down on a note card and had him give the speech and he did quite well. |
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