FIAR Week #7 - Papa Piccolo

This was a fun week ! A lot of work though. We started out with our review as usual (I'll have to take a picture of our boards and post them some time). We colored the Italian flag and did some map work. For art, we used watercolor paints to paint a picture of the grand canal in the style of the book, and we glued a cutout of a gondola as well. For snack, we ate spaghetti while listening to opera. Several said " I don't like it", refering to the opera. Then the fun part was painting these little dogs and cats I found at Walmart. They were told to name their pets, and at the end of class, we had an adoption ceremony. They held up their right hands and pledged to take care of their pet, and were rewarded with a certificate. We made little boxes filled with tissue paper for them to take their pets home in. The kids were really excited. Except Superman. He didn't like how his puppy turned out, so he didn't want to bring it home he said. Sigh.

We also read:
















But didn't have time to get to The Gondolier of Venice. It's a cute book with a good story line about the city of Venice sinking. But the ending is not satisfying, in my opinion.

At home we also read Gabriella's Song.















I really enjoyed reading (and singing some parts) this book to the boys. It's a beautiful book about the city of music. This one was satisfying.


There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal!













Superman likeed this book above the others. It's a more modern book with comical, watercolor pictures. It's not as descriptive in writing or in art of Venice, but S seemed to enjoy this book. He asked for it again as soon as I read it. On a side note, it's authored by the grandson of the Bemelmans (of Madeline).

[edit: After a second read, I like it better. It's a fun and exciting book. It does make mention of the historic buildings and bridges, and there's a lot of Italian interspersed through out the book. A fun page was where the tourists makes exclamations in their own language. However, I did not like the inference made that it is boring to hang out with your parents, and the author uses "stupid" and "dumb" once. Oh, an interesting thing about this book is you learn the sea animals that live in the Grand Canal.]

Zoe Sophia's Scrapbook: An Adventure in Venice was another book I checked out from the Library but we ended up not reading that one. It looked interesting (it's in a diary format) but was a little too lengthy and descriptive for my 5 year old, I think.

















And of course, we've been listening to Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery a lot this week.