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.

Geography

For our FIAR class, we've been using some books in class or at home that we've been enjoying as we travel to different cities and countries












We learned about the Eiffel Tower and the Great Wall of China.


And a new series that I discovered is great. They're books by Miroslav Sasek.










We'll be using this one when we row Papa Piccolo. Other ones in the series include This is Paris, This is London, This is Israel, among others.

And The Usborne Internet-Linked Introduction to Asia has beautiful pictures that give you a good feel for what the countries are like.













Here's another interesting one. It's called Anno's Spain. It's a wordless picture book, with two page spreads, covering different historical periods, different regions, etc.... It's quite beautiful and interesting. If you look carefully, there's a lot of interesting details. We'll have to check this one out again to take a closer look.

Schedule 2008-09

Well, it' only the middle of October (almost a full quarter of school for some) but I've finally got a schedule down on paper for us. I've written up an outline for our days, a checklist for B, and checklist for me. Now, we don't get to nearly half of what's on paper, but it's ideally what I'd like to be able to accomplish. At least if I have it on paper, it helps me to somewhat structure our day and fall into a routine (which btw, we desperately need). I want to provide lots of time for "masterly inactivity" as Charlotte Mason would put it, but too much time with no structure plus three little boys equals too much fighting and bickering.

The first part of our day is for the basic three r's (although even that, we don't get to all of it with the toddler and all). The second part is for the more fun stuff like history and science. We're not getting past the three r's yet but I'm not stressing (at least trying not to) since B is only in the second grade. Sometimes I wonder though if all the history & science planning and researching is necessary. Is it what's really good for my boys or is it me giving into my inner pressures and trying to satisfy my desires. I mean really, they would love to just go to the park, or go climb trees, or do some digging. I guess I have to strike a balance.

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.

Listening & Memorization

I wanted to make a note of this article by Andrew Pudewa who states that the two most important skills needed for children to become good writers are (1) listening (being read to out loud) and
(2) memorization. This article reinforces my desire to and belief in reading out loud to my children (although right now it's next to impossible with a toddler around). And now I'm going to actively add poetry to our read-a-louds.

My Bat Vehicle

(A post by Batman, dictated to Mom)

This is a picture of my batmobile before we broke it. We broke it because there was this bat contest and I wanted to enter and then my Dad gave me the idea of breaking this batmobile. So I broke it and I built a batmobile to enter the contest but then my Mom and Dad said that I needed to make something more creative so I am going to do that.














Things my batmobile can do.
First of all, there's a little steering wheel on the inside and if you turn it, you open the front mask and the mask will go up and in it's place will be two turbines. And if you move the batmobile, these turbines will spin.











And inside there is a seat that can move and the steering wheel that moves the mask up and down.















Another thing that my batmobile can do.
Although I didn't put any lego fires in, if you move the car back and forth, and you have lego fires inside those turbines, the turbines will spin the lego fires.


























And if you're wondering who built this, I, my Dad and my brother helped me.












This is the picture of the batmobile that I'm probably going to use to enter the contest. And also, if you're wondering who built this, Idid.











And do you know what that little bomb shooting thing is? It's a bomb. If you pull back the lever it will shoot the bomb.












































And this is what you win if you win the contest. For grand prize, which is what I'm trying to get, you get Xbox 360, and a copy of the Lego Batman video game! And then if you win one of the 25 second prizes, you get a copy of the Lego Batman video game, and a package of Lego Batmans sets. And if you win third prize, you just get a copy of the Lego Batman video game.

A Trip to the Beach