FIAR Week 8 & 9 - Owl Moon & Another Celebrated Dancing Bear

I have so much catching up to do. Well, the first twelve weeks of FIAR are now over. And we're now into the next twelve weeks with new teachers. It was a great first semester. So that I don't totally forget what we did, here's a brief summary.

For Owl Moon, the highlight was the owl pellets. I had to get over the weebie jeebies but it was very cool. We also learned about the phases of the moon and I talked a bit about gravity, demonstrating it with a falling hat and all. Then I took a little experiment from Apologia Astronomy about how the earth and the moon revolve and rotate, and had the kids demonstrate by "spinning" about. I'm sure there was more but those were the big things.

Another Celebrated Dancing Bear was another fun book. We had a lot of fun kicking up our legs and doing the Russian dance to a song that I had downloaded. To learn about the days of the weeks, I made a linear timeline for a visual and we sang some songs, one to the tune of "The Adams Family" and another to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". The kids really enjoyed the songs.

I've missed out a book and we were away for the last couple books, so that's all the catching up for now.

[Edit
For Owl Moon, here's a list of books we read at home:
When The Moon Is High
When Moon Fell Down
Kitten's First Full Moon

Oh, I forgot. We made "moon cookies" in class from The Moon Might Be Milk.
Here's the recipe:

Gran's Sugar Moon Cookies

2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking power
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla

Flatten the separated cookie dough with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar to make it sparkly, like the moon. Yummy! The kids really enjoyed this!

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.

FIAR Week #6 - The Story of Ferdinand

The boys were sick, so we missed today's co-op class which is too bad because I love this book. It's a story about a bull that enjoys smelling flowers over bullfighting. I like this story for the simple illustrations, for the love of flowers, and for being content with oneself. We own this book and have read it many times before so it's all right, although we missed out on some great activities like smelling flowers and learning it's different parts, having empanadas and horchata for snack, and drawing outlines of our bodies on huge butcher paper to measure our height! We'll have to enjoy the book at home.

FIAR Week #5 - Mirette on the High Wire

Due to miscommunication, we didn't have the book for class ! So we had to improvise and read The Happy Lion (which is a good book too, by Roger Duviosin, the author of Petunia). We colored the flag of France and mapped Europe. We learned some french expressions and drank hot cocoa with chocolate eclairs, pretending we were sitting in a Parisian cafe! It was fun, especially for the little girls. And then we built the Eiffel Tower out of clay for our art.

At home, we read a couple of nice books.


















A really beautiful book, illustrated with watercolors. There are some scenes that are really beautiful. But there was one page with cancan dancers that I didn't care for.




















Another cute book with photographic illustrations and a recipe for crepes at the back!

Btw, we read Mirette at home and out of all the FIAR books, Superman seems to like this book the best so far!

FIAR Week #4 - The Story of Ping

This week we rowed The Story of Ping at co-op. We're getting into a rhythm so it's good. We start by reviewing our geography and our animals. And that leads nicely into where we'll be visiting today and any animals that might be in the story. So today we looked at some books on Asia and China (particularly The Great Wall) and then headed into our story. Today's art lesson was learning to make water ripples and blending with colored pencils. Most of the art we've been doing seems to be going over the kids' heads. A few catch on but most of them, they just do their own thing. We concluded the first hour with the buoyancy test. That was really fun and the kids seemed to really enjoy it. The second hour was supposed to be spent doing some math, but our math today included cutting out ducks and the cutting completely absorbed all the time. We didn't even get to our rice cakes and our chopsticks. So it was a little rushed at the end but it was fun.

At home, we supplemented by reading The Hungry Duckling, The Five Chinese Brothers, and The Story of Noodles (which by the way, Superman really, really liked). He learned how to say noodles in Chinese "mian tiao".

FIAR Week #3 - Night of the Moonjellies

Today we read Night of the Moonjellies. I don't know why but this book seemed to be a little over the kids heads. We looked at the New England states for geography and for science we looked at this book Creatures That Glow. We sat back to back to feel our vertebrae , and we squished jello to feel what a moon jelly might feel like. For art, we colored an ocean scene with oil pastels. Then we had fun playing store (or Mar-Gra's) with monopoly money. We also read this book Surrounded by Sea: Life on a New England Fishing Island.
















Here is Superman's re-creation of the ocean scene from the book. He decided to add a sun though. He likes bright and cheery, I guess.
















Batman decided to try his hands at oil pastels as well when we got home.

FIAR Week #2 - How To Make An Apple Pie & See The World

Today was our second class at co-op. I think the kids are getting the idea. Not one asked, "When's playtime?" I think last week, we were asked that all throughout.

Today was a fun class. We read the book and colored the flag of Sri Lanka. We looked at the map and at some farm animals. We pantomimed some of the action words for language arts. The fun part was baking mini apple pies and taste testing different apples. We baked mini apple pies in muffin tins and taste tested four different apples and graphed the results. Fuji came out on top. We read a go-along book called Tiny, Tiny Boy and Big, Big Cow, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman.
















Superman eating his creation.

















Going over the results of our taste test.

FIAR Week #1 - Petunia

This was our first week at FIAR co-op and we rowed Petunia.
We have 17 kids in the class and though they're mostly kindergardeners and first graders, they seemed really young. We read Petunia and the books below. As well, we did coloring sheets for the USA flag and for the continent of North America. We also did math using this from Homeschool Share. And cut out a cute barn as well. We talked about teeth and I showed them the experiment for eggs in vinegar (the acid eats away at the shell made of calcium).
I realized I have to simplify and plan for longer time for the activities. All in all, it was a good first class.

Let's Read & Find Out Science : How Many Teeth





Dr. DeSoto

A mouse dentist that treats and outwits a fox.

FIAR Co-op

I will be teaching a FIAR class at our co-op this year for Superman's class. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm excited to be doing something for and with Superman. I hope to log our journey through FIAR here as well.