Wrap up: Papa Piccolo

Papa Piccolo was one of my kids' favorite Five in a Row units we've ever done!  We had a wonderful couple of weeks with it.  Here was the plan:

History/Geography: Venice! Papa Piccolo is about a cat who roams around Venice, finding adventures and befriending the gondoliers who feed him. We read There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal, which was super silly, but had a really good overview of the geography of the city.  Google Earth then gave us a good close up view of the canals, boats, and landmarks in Papa Piccolo.  We are familiar with the concept of a city with canals, here in New Orleans, but to use them as "roads" for transportation? The kids were fascinated!

We also spent a day studying the travels of Marco Polo, who was from Venice. In the story, Piccolo names his kittens Marco and Polo, so it seemed like a good topic to discuss.  The kids colored a picture of Marco Polo while I read a story about him. 

Art: We looked at the bright happy illustrations in Papa Piccolo and noticed how many of them included complimentary colors.  We painted color wheels to see what all the complimentary color combinations were.  We did a different color wheel activity about a year ago, but they enjoyed this one all the same. Mixing paint to make new colors is always fun!

Science: cats! Charlie asked specifically for this book so that we could spend some time studying cats.  He is quite the cat lover. We read library books on caring for pet cats and then took a field trip to the New Orleans SPCA to see their kitties.  I so wish we could have a cat, but I am just too allergic to invite one into our home. :(

Field trips! We went to the SPCA, but our most exciting field trip by far was to NOLA Gondola. Robert, our local gondolier, had his gondola made in Venice and shipped here, to run tours through the waterways in New Orleans' Cit Park.  He was happy to work out a "homeschool package" for me and my kids that was about half the cost of his regular romantic evening cruise.  We didn't need 50 minutes out on the water, or the wine, cheese, and crackers.  It was perfect!  Robert was so nice, great wit the kids, and they had a blast! Such a treat to have a real Venetian experience so close to home.

Jono loved it when we went under the bridges! 

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During this row we also took a field trip with our homeschool group to tour the teaching garden at our local garden and nature center.  So fun! I had my boys in my group, but Hazel was in someone else's, so she's conspicuously absent form my pictures.  She was there, though--just playing with some girlfriends.

Planning and designing their garden

adding plants to their bed

all done!

boys!

beautiful spot for a picnic!

We've moved on to Miss Rumphius now, which we're rowing with a Texas twist. I'll be excited to share how we did that in a couple of weeks!

Spelling City

The kindergarteners and I made Spelling City today!

Last summer I heard Andrew Pudewa speak on spelling. He mentioned a teacher that he admired had a wall in her classroom for what she called Sound City with places to record words that they had learned in word families to help kids remember which words are spelled alike.  I thought that was cute, and maybe useful, and filed it away in the idea bank in case we needed it later.  This is the talk I heard, if you want to buy the MP3 download and listen to it.  Totally worth it, in my opinion. 

The spelling curriculum that the twins are working through uses the Ayres list of the 1000 most frequently used words in English writing.  They learn those in order (most frequent to less frequent), and since they're just getting started, the words are all fairly small and simple.  But they're not grouped in word families at all, and I noticed that Hazel and Charlie weren't necessarily noticing which words were spelled alike from day to day.  They're doing really well with the program regardless, but I thought this little exercise--taking some of the trickier words they're learning and putting them in groups with like sounds--might help.  

Here are some close ups of our Spelling City board. I apologize for the photo quality.  I cannot get good pictures in my mud room, no matter how hard I try.

Month Mountain, with the days of the week and the months of the year.  That "Day Hike" sign might be my very favorite part of the whole city. I crack myself up! Also seen here are the edge of Homophone Hill and the pond at the top of the Silent-E Stream.  Are live/live homophones or homonyms?  Whatever.  I can never keep homonym/phone/graph straight, so I just picked one for the label and we'll throw them all up there.  These kids are too young to care, right?!

I should probably have found a way to divide out the silent final E words into their different rules, but I just started writing them all in the pond, mixed together. Maybe we'll tweak that later. 

The barn on the farm will hold our words that use the /ar/ phonogram.  We're putting /ee/ words with the sheep and /or/ words with the horse. Don't laugh at my sheep and my horse!

The spellings of the sound /er/ are in this area.  I feel like I broke some cardinal rule by not using the /er/ phonogram sentence from Spalding--Her first nurse works early, but this is cuter. ;) Words with an -er go on the hill with "her flowers".  Words with an -ir and -(w)or are with the bird and worm.  Words with an -ear are in the sun, and -ur words are on the church. 

The largest part of the board is made up of houses on Vowel Team Parkway.  Pictured are the homes for oy/oi and ay/ai.  The kids wanted a train station and train for ay/ai, but I ran out of steam (pun, ha!).  Maybe another future tweak.

So, this will be a bit elastic as we change it to suit our needs and continue to add words, but I'm very pleased with our first draft!  Now, any bets on how long it'll take before someone gets mischievous and tears all that paper down?  I hope it's longer than I fear! I'd like to use this for a while! 

Wrap Up: Duchess Bakes a Cake

Duchess Bakes a Cake was such a fun row! Our FIAR units had started to feel a little redundant lately (settings either in large European cities or in rural USA, lots of overlap in science and language arts topics, etc) but this one had a totally different feel.  It was just what we needed during the February homeschooling doldrums! Here's what we did with it:

Social Studies:
Knights, castles, archery, catapults, kings, queens, the feudal system, and all things Middle Ages! We had so much fun reading library book after library book about Medieval Times.  We spent a day doing the activity recommended by this blogger on the feudal system.

We built popsicle stick and rubber band catapults.

Instructions here and here.

Ready, Aim, FIRE!

We also made some popsicle stick and Q-tip bows and arrows, although the kids didn't like these as much.

Instructions here.

We spent many days dressed in our knight and king costumes waging war on invisible foes.

Langauge arts:
We studied alliteration.  I read them the book If You Were Alliteration, and asked them if they knew an example of alliteration in the Duchess. Jonathan identified it immediately! "A lovely light luscious delectable cake!" They each composed an alliterative sentence about themselves and then copied them for handwriting that day.

Art: Drama! The kids acted out the story of the Duchess while I read it aloud. This was the most fun part of the row, in their opinion.  Every time we act out a story, it is enormously popular. I need to remember to do that more often!

Science: We briefly touched on nutrition as suggested in the manual, but we didn't do as much with it as I had planned.  I suspect we'll have another opportunity down the road.

Toward the end of this row, Grandma and Grandpa came in town for Mardi Gras.  One day while they were here, the kids and David made a cake to finish off our study.  I'm not sure it was lovely, light, or luscious, since gluten-free cakes are generally pretty dense, but it was tasty! (I forgot to take pictures, though.)

(added) hey! Grandma took pics of cake-making!

Go-along books that we enjoyed:

We have found two new family favorites in Good Night, Good Knight and The Seven Silly Eaters.  I suspect we'll be owners of both of those before long. That has really been one of the most fun parts of Five in a Row for us, meeting so many other wonderful story books along the way!

Another couple of pictures from the row:

We have a new family favorite board game--No Stress Chess!  This a teaching version of chess that removes the strategy element by having you draw a card and move the piece illustrated on the card.  The cards explain the moves that each piece can make.  The kids love it!  There are instructions for how to add in the strategy element slowly, as the players get used to the the different pieces and their moves. We have loved it!

Since our weather has been warming up, Jono had asked to visit one of our local parks, Storyland, where the plantings are all from nursery rhymes and fairy tales.  The kids enjoyed playing kings and queens on the throne in the castle in the middle of the park. It was a great day to go, too--we practically had the place to ourselves!

Super fun row, just the change in pace we needed, and next we're on to a "cat book" by Charlie's request--Papa Piccolo!

A few Mardi Gras pictures, just for fun:

We took the grandparents to the zoo, and they were brave enough to climb down the spider web at Monkey Hill.

"Throw me something, Mister!"

Wrap Up: Andy and the Lion

We just finished up a short row of Andy and the Lion, from FIAR volume 3.  My kids LOVED this book. They loved the story and they especially loved the illustrations.  It's an early Caldecott honor book from 1939--only the 2nd year the award was given!  We only spent a week on this, where we usually savor a row for a couple of weeks, so we didn't do it all, but we certainly enjoyed what we did!

Social Studies:
We chose to focus for geography on the dedication inside the book instead of on the setting of the story itself.  The book is dedicated "To Lady Astor and Lord Lenox, the Library Lions" who sit in front of the New York Public Library. I read the dedication, and then we looked up the lions in Google images, and learned that their names have changed!  From the page about the lions on the New York Public Library's website:

Their nicknames have changed over the decades. First they were called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after The New York Public Library founders John Jacob Astor and James Lenox. Later, they were known as Lady Astor and Lord Lenox (even though they are both male lions). During the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named them Patience and Fortitude, for the qualities he felt New Yorkers would need to survive the economic depression. These names have stood the test of time: Patience still guards the south side of the Library's steps and Fortitude sits unwaveringly to the north.

My kids were fascinated by this--more so than I expected them to be! They were also adamant that we go visit the very similar lion statues that sit in City Park.  We did go, later in the week when the rain let up, and had our nature study while we were there, too.

Nature study mostly consisted of investigations into the use of spanish moss hanging from sticks as nets to catch ducks.  They did not have much success in these endeavors. ;)  We did identify a new species of waterfowl--the American Coot! I was much more excited about finally remembering to look up the name for this little bird that is at every park we go to than the kids were, though.  

Language Arts: 

We read Aesop's The Lion and the Mouse and Androcles and the Lion, discussed the genre of fables (although it's one they're familiar with) and discussed parallels between those two stories and our FIAR book.  Then we made lions from three different cut-out hearts, with it being Valentine's week and all.  

Charlie lobbied to put the lion heads on sticks so that they could be masks, so we did that, too!

Science:

We read some library books about lions, their habitat, life cycle, diet, etc.  Each of the kids told me some things they learned from our reading and I wrote them down. They then took a couple of their sentences and used them for copywork (handwriting practice).  

Hazel also got a quick discussion about contractions. ;) 

That's about all we did for Andy! Short week, short row, but a delightful story.  We read some other go-along books that were much enjoyed, too.  We recommend Lions at Lunchtime (Magic Treehouse), Jan Brett's Honey, Honey, Lion!, Library Lion, and I'm Going to New York to Visit the Lions.  

Looking at the pictures above, you'd think I was missing a child for a week.  I wasn't! Here's some of what Charlie's been up to: 

overjoyed by the arrival of the cursive workbook he asked for

deep in thought with those tangrams that came in the Chick-fil-A kids' meal 

 I'm not sure how he escaped the lion pictures, but I promise he was there! Thanks for reading about our row.  We enjoyed it!

birthday present crafting

We bought some clementines in a little wooden crate a few weeks ago.  I happen to think those are completely adorable and struggle to throw them away.  We have a little girl's birthday party coming up, so Hazel and I decided to make another Princess and the Pea playset with it.  I made one about 3 years ago, and it's been one of my all-time favorite craft projects.  This time, Hazel selected the fabrics from my fabric stash and helped me plan out the project.  

Seven 1/2" thick mattresses, stuffed with craft foam, pillow, knit pink blanket, crocheted green pea and a little patch pocket on the blanket to store it in, plus a story book to finish the set. Came out so cute!

wrap up: Owl Moon

We just finished a delightful Five in a Row unit on Owl Moon! This story is simply gorgeous! The text is pretty simple, but the pictures are amazing, which is unsurprising, since it is a Caldecott medal winner.  We enjoyed some animal science, did some fun art projects, and even had a "snow" day (mostly sleet and some flurries), which is very rare in New Orleans, and was perfect for this snowy book choice!  I couldn't have planned it better.

For our first reading of the book, I turned out all the lights and closed all the blinds in the house to make it as dark as we could in the middle of the morning and had all the kids get a flashlight.  I hid our owl puppet up high in the mud room, and after we read the book, I told the kids to go owling and see if they could spot the owl we had hidden in our house.  So fun! They took turns after that and hid the owl for each other to find.

The other just-for-fun thing I did one day was make an Owl Moon themed lunch.  I am not normally the sort of mom who makes cutesy food.  My daughter was very impressed and appreciative, and all of the kids thought it was fun. Maybe I'll do something like that again?  But probably not soon.

Here's what else we did, by subject:

Social Studies
We located New Jersey on the map for our story disc, and colored a map page for our notebooks.  We discussed how it must be colder in New Jersey than it is here, since the story is set in a snowy winter wonderland, the likes of which New Orleans has never seen.  This gave us a chance to talk a little bit about how different parts of the country have different weather.

We did a second social studies day on kid/dad relationships.  This was SO fun.  In the story, the child has been looking forward to going out at night to look for owls with her father for a long time, has heard stories about it from her older siblings, etc.  I asked each of the kids to tell me one thing they like doing with their dad, and I wrote down their answers and had them illustrate them.  We gave them to David when he came home from work that day.  They were so sweet!  Here's Jono's:

I participated in this assignment too, and mailed my memory to my dad.  I'm sure he got a good laugh at my very juvenile art work.  

Art
We did two different art projects, neither of which were in the FIAR manual for this story.  They were just ideas I saw on Pinterest or other FIAR blogs about this book and thought looked fun.  Jonathan declined to participate in both of these (art is not a hill I'm going to die on for a 6yo boy), but I made one of each along with the twins.

Snowy evening scene with owl eyes:

Hazel's top left, mine bottom left, Charlie's right

We also used this tutorial to draw some owls!

Hazel's left, mine right, before coloring

Charlie was much more into the scene he was drawing with exploding stars than his owl.

Hazel's with some color

mine, finished

Science
We love animal science days!  After we read All About Owls, the kids did this Owls Can/Have/Are page.  That was a great notebook page to record what they picked up about an animal. I'm going to have to use that Can/Have/Are idea again when we do lions in a few weeks! Here's Hazel's:

Our big science activity this week though, was dissecting owl pellets!  This was a BLAST!! I ordered this kit from a homeschool science supplier and was very happy with the size of the pellets, how detailed the instructions and bone identification key were, etc.  The kids did one pellet together and we determined that it held the remains of 3 mice and one rat.  Later, I did a second pellet that included 3 mice.  So fascinating!

intact owl pellet, with visible mouse shoulder blade (I think?) 

see that little mousie skull?

I love Hazel's face here!

aftermath

one full-ish skeleton (rat) and the three mouse skulls and jawbones above

After a couple of days cooped up in the house due to sleet, we went to the zoo in search of owls.  We found two different owl species at our zoo! I didn't take pictures of them, but they have an Asian Bay Owl  and a whole family of Spectacled Owls.  The kids were thrilled to see the two white fuzzy baby owls.  Adorable!

The big surprise at the zoo, though, was the table set up in the kids' discovery area about owls! They had several owl pellets, some feathers, some talons, and some skull bones from rodents that local owls might eat (mice, rats, nutria).  It was meant to be! The volunteer working the table said that we were the first visitors to stop by that morning, and that she was pretty sure my kids knew more about owls than she did. ;) My kids loved to see the talons and feathers.  We had talked about both of those when we read owl books earlier in the week, but to see the two talons facing front and two curving back for grabbing prey and to see the serrated edges of feathers to aid in silent flight was really meaningful!

checking out feathers at the owl display table at the zoo

We enjoyed the go-along books Owl Babies and Wait Till the Moon is Full, as well as All About Owls that I mentioned earlier.  Such a fantastic unit!

A couple more random pictures this week, not related to FIAR:

Jono has been doing a word search puzzle almost daily. His occupational therapist did one with him and he loved it, so we got him a book of them to do at home.  

Charlie's written phonogram practice.  The phonograms had to be part of a "sound train" going to the factory to make words.  This is what doing spelling with a 5yo boy is like. LOL

sleet on the trampoline!

icicles on the bird feeder!

remains of ice at the zoo!

Next week, we're taking a break from FIAR to spend a week on the winter olympics, and then we tackle Andy and Lion after that!  I hope you'll follow along!