Farewell, Five in a Row

It's certainly bittersweet, but after two wonderful years using Five in a Row in our homeschool, we are saying goodbye and going in a different direction next year.  I thought I'd take a minute and remember what we've done in FIAR.

We rowed the following books:

Volume 1:
The Story About Ping
Lentil
Madeline
A Pair of Red Clogs
The Glorious Flight
How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
Another Celebrated Dancing Bear
Papa Piccolo
Katy and the Big Snow

Volume 2:
The Giraffe That Walked to Paris
Wee Gillis
Owl Moon
A New Coat for Anna
Mrs. Katz and Tush
Mirette on the High Wire
The Story of Ferdinand
Make Way for Ducklings
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Mr Gumpy's Motorcar
Miss Rumphius
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge
Harold and the Purple Crayon

Volume 3:
The Bee Tree
Henry the Castaway
The Duchess Bakes a Cake
Andy and the Lion
The Salamander Room
Amber on the Mountain

We visited every continent but Antarctica on our literary journeys and met so many wonderful storybook characters.  We have loved these books.  They have literally become friends.

Some favorite memories:

• the shaving cream "snow" with Katy
• the wearable body activity with Madeline
• the youtube video of Russian dancers that is still requested often from Dancing Bear
• the gondola ride with Papa Piccolo
• the Global Wildlife Center field trip with Giraffe
• owl pellet dissection with Owl Moon
• yarn dyeing with New Coat for Anna (twice!)
• acting out The Story of Ferdinand
• the fact that we still shout "Mr and Mrs Mallard" EVERY TIME we see mallards around town, thanks to Make Way for Ducklings
• wildflowers in Texas with Miss Rumphius
• the diorama of The Salamander Room
• the beekeeper's field trip with The Bee Tree
• sailing small boats in Lake Pontchartrain with Henry the Castaway
• how much my kids loved the new vocabulary words "patience" and "fortitude" with Andy and the Lion

and I could go on, and on, and on.  Thank you so much to Five in a Row for a fantastic start to homeschooling here at Chaos Academy.  I'll continue to recommend you to moms who ask for suggestions for fantastic early childhood curriculum.  It's been fun!

If you use the search bar in the top left corner, every book I listed that we have rowed should be here somewhere on my blog.  I enjoyed recording our Five in a Row journey here.  Next year's curriculum won't be as neatly packaged in 1-2 week chunks by theme like FIAR has been, so I'm not sure what my blog habits will look like. I will probably not post as often, and honestly, I'm looking forward to that.  I do appreciate those of you who have followed along and cheered us on!  Happy homeschooling!

KinderGRADS

No more kindergarteners in our house! Hazel and Charlie did kindergarten graduation with our homeschool group last weekend.  It's on to first grade here at Chaos Academy!

They were so excited! 

Hazel with her display board

and Charlie with his

with their teacher ;)

Charlie walking in

and Hazel

singing their song with their class

getting their awards and diploma from Mom and Dad

Each kiddo received a diploma for finishing kindergarten along with a certificate recognizing an outstanding character quality that they displayed over the year.  We recognized Hazel for the character trait of determination and Charlie for tender-heartedness.

I spent so many years mocking all graduations for anyone under the age of 18, and I'll be honest and say that I still think it's a little silly to parade 4 and 5 year olds around in miniature cap and gowns for PK and kinder graduations, but participating in our homeschool group's kindergarten graduation the last couple of years has been such a wonderful thing for our family.  We've made some dear friends and been able to recognize some significant accomplishments that our family has made during our first couple of years homeschooling.  I'm proud of what we've done and where we're going.  Way to go, kindergrads!

Wrap Up: A Pair of Red Clogs

Our most recent Five in a Row unit was on the adorable book A Pair of Red Clogs.

In the book, the narrator remembers back to her childhood when she had a new pair of shiny red
wooden clogs and wore them to play the "weather telling game".  The weather telling game consists of kicking your shoe off and seeing how it lands.  If it landed right side up, the weather tomorrow would be fair, if upside down, then rainy, and if on its side, it would snow.  My children are HUGE fans of the weather telling game.  We spent days sending our shoes sailing every time we took them off.  It's amazing how many times crocs land on their sides, but alas. no snow in New Orleans in May. ;)  We discussed weather, forecasting, and made a chart to record our weather for a week or so.

We did several Japanese inspired crafts for this row.  I checked out a few origami books from the library.  Charlie really liked these and now has a small collection of origami pets that we did together from those books.  We also made carp kites and practiced writing our names in Japanese.

I used these instructions for the carp kites. Super cute! For Japanese names, I put our names into this translator, printed them out, and then encouraged the kids to copy them with watercolor.  They did not really enjoy this, but I thought it was fun! 

We also made candy "sushi" one day for snack. This was HUGELY popular and I'm sure will be repeated.  I used these strange tube shaped rice cakes that we found at Costco, rolled them in fruit roll-ups, and sliced them, and then topped with sweedish fish. I read several other people who made actual Rice Krispie treats to roll for the inside of their faux-sushi, but these were faster. ;)

This is a row that I would have loved to spend more time on.  We read some good storybooks about Japan, including some compilations of Japanese fairy tales that were very popular, but we did this row around a four-day trip to Houston followed by several days of David being out of town and me single parenting and we just lost focus.  

Adorable story, fun row, could have done even more with it, but that was a wrap! 

Wrap Up: Mrs Katz and Tush

We have been CRAWLING to the end of the year with Five in a Row.  I have taken very few pictures and barely remember what we did during our last couple of rows, but I thought I'd go ahead and make posts for them, for consistency's sake. 

Mrs Katz and Tush is a book by Patricia Polacco about a boy named Larnel who befriends his elderly neighbor, Mrs Katz, gives her a kitten, and promises to help her care for it.  He grows to love her company as she shares with him about her past, her immigration from Poland to the United States, and her Jewish faith and culture.  

We did all the normal things with this row.  We found Poland on the map and talked about immigration.  When Mrs Katz tells Larnel that "your people and mine are very much alike" we discussed what she meant by that (the persecution and discrimination that both Jewish people and African Americans have faced).  We talked about Tush's babies and watched a cat give birth on YouTube.  We drew cats and made them into "lost cat" signs like the ones that Mrs Katz and Larnel posted to find Tush.  

We read storybooks about Passover and the Seder.  And then we invited some friends also use FIAR over to have a Seder with us.  Given that we are not Jewish, and neither were our friends, I'm quite sure it was not "right" but we really enjoyed the experience regardless!  I mostly used this resource for planning, and would recommend it for other Christian families who are interested in celebrating this Jewish feast day.  

Mrs Katz and Tush was very typical for Patricia Polacco books.  It was long, and a little heavy, but absolutely beautiful.  It was not one of my children's favorite FIAR selections, but I loved it.  

recent yarn work

Have you noticed that everyone is pregnant with baby boys? Or so it seems!  Almost all of my yarn orders this semester have been for boys.  Here are a few: 

monsters, now and later, for my cousin

The navy one should fit for newborn pictures, but then he'll never wear it again, since he's due mid-summer and it will be far too hot to wear yarny hats.  The larger one should fit for his first winter, and hopefully get a lot more use. 

Two newsboy and bootie sets, one in navy, the other in black.

This was a parting baby gift for Jono's occupational therapist before he graduated (yay!) and she left for maternity leave.  She actually did not know the gender of her baby, so I made my favorite gift for babies of unknown variety-- a neutral bear ear hat, with a flower that can be removed if it's a boy.  

And I made a butterfly beanie for the American Girls.  

These are my favorite types of projects--small, fast, instant gratification.  And it's a good thing I  like them, since let's face it--that's about all I have time for these days! 

Easter 2014

Catching up the blog!  Here's a review from Easter. 

We grew real grass in our Easter baskets this year, and it worked beautifully! Here are the instructions I used.  This was about a week of growth.  That would have been a nice stopping point.  

Unfortunately, we planted greass about 2 weeks before Easter, so by the time we put the grass in the baskets, it was totally overgrown and crazy! I loved it though, and will definitely do this project again next year! 

We dyed eggs, of course. 

We spent a couple of weeks going through our Resurrection Eggs at breakfast to discuss the Easter story.  Those remain my #1 favorite craft project.  Make yourself some! 

 We looked nice and springy on Easter Sunday. We were also thoroughly uncooperative for photos.

We spent the afternoon with friends and cascarones...

pinatas...

and Hulk costumes!

 Lovely day, lovely traditions.