Five in a Row: Very Last First Time & Volcano fun

We just completed our FIAR "Very Last First Time." This is a charming and suspenseful story of a little Inuit girl from the Ungava bay area in Northern Canada. As part of Inuit tradition, she goes alone to collect mussels at the bottom of the sea, under the ice, when the tide goes out. We did a little research and found out this is something that the Inuit people still do. We found the above video about the dangers of mussel hunting.
Click here to find out more.
Here are some of the other activities we did in our row:
*Discussed Inuit culture and the Arctic region. We found Ungava bay on the world map. We went through the illustrations in the book and compared and contrasted Inuit culture to our own.
*We looked at the illustrations of the book, and identified that they were drawn using the method of pointillism (made up of hudreds of tiny dots of paint.) I had remembered Isaac's aunt Holly drawing a picture for art class using the same method, so I asked her to send me a picture of it so I could show Isaac.

*We talked about safety and crisis thinking. When Eva goes below the surface of the frozen ocean, her candles burn out, and she hears the tide coming back in. For a moment, she panics until she remembers what to do. We talked about the five steps to remember when in a crisis situation: (1) calm down, (2) don't panic, (3) be quiet, (4) think carefully! (5) ask: what am I supposed to do?
*We identified the following scientific terms and discussed their application to the story: Tides, Biome, Echo, Ocean Life and Sea Salt. We looked through some books with pictures of an arctic biome and an ocean biome.
For Road Trip USA, we are in the state of Washington. We talked at length about the eruption of Mount St. Helens, and of course, we had to make our own volcano. We've done this before, but we added a few elements this time. We made our volcano out of dirt. In the center, we placed a plastic cup holding baking soda, dish soap and food coloring. We added vinegar and let the explosion begin!
Before eruption

Mid-eruption

Full eruption!

We are winding down for the year! I estimate we will be done with all of our subjects by May 24th. Isaac and Graham have worked especially hard this year and I am SO proud of them!

Road Trip USA: Hawaii

We've enjoyed our trip through the United States this year for geography. We have "visited" almost all of the states and are winding down our journey. Isaac is familiar with all of the regions (Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, West and Southwest) of the United States, as well as all of the capitals of each state. We learned about each state's state bird, state flag and state flower, as well as anything about the state that makes it unique. If I were to re-use this curriculum (which I probably will), I would put more effort into doing fun stuff like our "Luau" we had for supper the other night. In a few months, Isaac might not remember some of the other states we studied, but he WILL remember our Luau night!


I was going to go all-out and have ham and Dole Pineapple for supper, but because this mama had a VERY long day, and because my van drove precariously close to our favorite Chinese take-out place while we were running errands, we ended up having a Hawaain Luau with Chinese food. :) Oh well. Sweet and Sour chicken is sort of Hawaain-ish, isn't it?

Papa Piccolo and the Peabody

We just finished our FIAR "Papa Piccolo" last week. "Papa Piccolo" is the story of a tomcat who adopts two orphan kittens. The story is set in Italy, and the illustrations are done with watercolor. As part of our row, Isaac experimented with his watercolors to come up with some of the variations in color that are illustrated in the book. It was fun to see the different ranges of colors like turquoise blue or brick red he could come up with!

Isaac took the Peabody last week as well. The Peabody is a standardized test that measures proficiency in several areas of academics such as mathematics, spelling and reading. Isaac did tremendously well. He measured at a third or fourth grade level for every category. His areas of strength were reading and spelling. (Not a surprise to his mama that I have one smart cookie on my hands!) Although we weren't required to take the test, I wanted him to take it to make sure we were on the right track academically.

Curriculum choices for 2012-13

I usually have at least a couple of posts dedicated to my curriculum choices for the following year. I typically change a couple of things when it gets closer to the start of the next school year, but this is what I have picked so far.

Isaac, Third Grade

Language Arts (Language, Spelling and Penmanship (cursive)
A Beka




Bible (in addition to AWANA)
Christian Light


Math
Teaching Textbooks


World Geography
Expedition Earth


Science
Creation or Evolution? by Mission Imperative


**Various online unit studies on subjects of interest

Graham, Pre-K

Still thinking about this one, but considering "All about Reading"


And "Before Five in a Row"


I have decided one of my favorite parts of Spring is narrowing down curriculum choices for next year!

Fun with watercolors

Today Graham wanted to paint with watercolors. I had some stuff I needed to get done, so I set him loose with some paper and paint.
A few moments later, he comes and finds me to proudly present to me his watercolor he says is called "Even the wind and waves obey Him." At this point, my mama heart is bursting with pride because it shows me he is listening, REALLY listening, to those Bible verses he is memorizing for AWANA!

A few minutes later, he shows me this picture entitled "Church." He proceeds to point out the pews he and his brothers are sitting in and the band at the front of the church. (So far, so good, right?) Then, he points out the spaceship off to the side and the long, long line of people waiting to get into the spaceship at church.
Ummmm, OK.

No, we are not part of the "Heaven's Gate" denomination, I promise.

Sihouettes

As our last Pioneer project before we hit the states of the Southwest United States, we did silouettes this morning. I have seen tutorials on several different websites on doing this the old-fashioned way, and they never tell you how hard it is. Trying to get a four year old to sit still enough to trace his shadow on the wall is challenging to the say the least. Nevertheless, this is what our "finished product" looked like. Sad, I know.


Because I want to do this totally awesome silhouette necklace for myself from The Nester

I decided to engage the help of good, old-fashioned technology in the way of Photoshop.
Here are the new and improved silhouettes that will be hanging around my neck (haven't done baby's yet).
Graham

Isaac

Making Butter (and other cool stuff we're doing)

We are in the midwest for our US Geography studies, and we have been learning all about pioneer life.
One of the things I thought it would be neat for the boys to do is to make butter! Well, I first tried it with buttermilk (read this on a website that I wouldn't recommend). As all of YOU probably know (and I did not), buttermilk is the product you get AFTER making butter from cream. Duh. No wonder we shook and we shook and we shook, and nothing seemed to be happening. Pioneer woman I am not. We finally got some good old fashioned whipping cream, which we shook...

and shook...

A few minutes later we had this!

Beautiful, beautiful butter. Mmmmmmm.

Our geography studies also took us to Ohio, birthplace of Neil Armstrong. We studied the moon's phases for a few days, and made this moon mobile for the boys' rooms.

For Five in a Row, we read "How to make an Apple Pie and See the World."

The story follows a girl around the world as she gets all the ingredients she needs to make an apple pie. She travels to Jamaica on a Banana boat where she says, "You can pick up some salt. Fill a jar with salty seawater...evaporate the seawater from the salt..." So we did! We mixed 1/4 cup of salt into water and let it sit in a pan for a few days. Then, we had this!

Looking forward

I have been thinking a little bit lately about next year. This year has felt like such a whirwind that I feel like I am still catching my breath from having a baby. I am trying to go easy on myself and not constantly be thinking of all the things I "wish" I was doing differently this year. That being said, I still have a few things I definitely want to improve upon for next year.
One of the things I want to see the biggest improvement in for Isaac's third grade year is a bigger emphasis on our Bible time. I feel like I have let that really slide this year. In the past, we did our Bible time at the beginning of our school day. This year, because I have been busy with baby, Isaac has had to get started on his school alone, and we have let our Bible time fall by the wayside. I need to do a little research to find out what sort of curriculum to go with. I want to do something in addition to AWANA.
We will continue with A beka language arts.
I want him to continue penmanship (cursive), and I may keep using A beka, but I am not sure yet. It has worked fine for us.
For spelling, I may look into doing something a little more challenging. Isaac is a good speller in general, and I feel like we have zoomed through A beka second grade spelling. I also want him to learn the spelling for synonymns and antonymns. So far, A beka has not touched on those, and I feel like it is lacking in that area.
Math is my biggest question mark for next year, and I need to pray about the right curriculum. I am considering a video-based curriculum for third grade as I don't want my own math inadequecies to hinder him in any way.
We will definitely be doing Expedition Earth for world geography.
I want to find a good science curriculum for next year as well. This probably also needs to be an area of prayer and research.
For our reading curriculum, I may just work on finding books Isaac is interested in and possibly having him start writing book reports for me. I'll probably keep reading pretty simple as Isaac is an excellent reader, and I mostly just want to foster a love for reading above anything else.
So, unless something changes, the core subjects we will cover for third grade will be as follows: Language arts, reading, spelling, Bible, math, science and world geography.
Next year, Graham will be doing 5 year old preschool. I plan on doing Before five in a Row for him for sure. I may look into purchasing a curriculum for him, or we may just go through the letters of the alphabet again like we did this year. I will evaluate where he is at the end of this year and then decide what he can handle.

Gideon

Isaac had to write a paragraph about Gideon today. Here is what he wrote:
"Gideon was an ordinary guy until an angel appeared. He said, "Hello warrier." Gideon said "I am not a warrier, I am a farmer." Until one day Gideon and his men were sneaking outside the castle. They blew their horns and smashed pitchers. The bad guys were so confused that they started to kill themselves."
God saw Gideon as a warrier before he had lifted one weapon. God sees my children for what they will become someday, not just for the children they are now. I hope and pray that one day, they will be warriers for Him. Lord, please help me to point my children to You.

Hornbachers

We've done a few field trips with our homeschooling group, but the trip to Hornbacher's has been one of our favorites! We toured the entire store...from the produce department, to the bakery and deli, to the refridgerators and floral department. Isaac and Graham had fun learning about the inner workings of a grocery store, and catching a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.
Double click the collage to see!