The Story About Ping

This week, we read The Story About Ping. This is a cute little story about a little duck who, trying to avoid getting a spanking (he was last to get on the boat), leaves his master & his big family. He soon finds out that it might be worth taking the punishment by someone who cares about him than to be out in the big scary world all by himself. He sees all sorts of strange sights, including fishing birds. Their necks are tied off so they cannot eat the fish they catch; they rely on their masters to feed them little bits of fish as a reward for their work. We were pleasantly surprised that the TV show, The Amazing Race, had those same fishing birds on the China leg of their race - aired right before we started this week! God has great timing! The book is set in China on the Yangtze River. We looked up China on the globe & found the Yangtze. We listened to Chinese music in the background while we worked. Besides the geography and the study on punishment vs. being alone, we had a great time talking about the opening line - "Once upon a time..." Jimmy learned that this phrase means that the story is fictional. He wrote some of his own little stories starting with "once upon a time" and had great fun. I used it a few times to help him tell me when he was making up a story or telling me something that actually happened. (He's got a great imagination & sometimes tells make-believe stories as if they were true. Thankfully, it's usually pretty easy to tell when a 5 year old says it...)

For math this week, we had a test on Monday - telling shortest & longest & measuring a strip of paper using linking cubes. Then we "bought" items using pennies, nickels, & dimes (trying to find many different combinations of coins for each amount). We did this lesson twice to help drive it home. We ended the week playing dominoes (work on identifying & matching doubles).

Our letter this week was X. Jimmy memorized the Bible verse & practiced his handwriting, as usual. He's getting good at this stuff!

Jimmy skipped German school this week so that we could attend AG-Field Day at Rutgers, my alma mater. We saw the animals on the farm, lots of plants at the plant sale, a shark & a flounder at the Marine Science building, and lots of other cool things. Jimmy & Caleb were both too chicken to touch the shark, but they'll be totally into it in a few years, I'm sure. The day was stinky hot, but we all survived.

Italy

We read Papa Piccolo for this week & a half. It's been crazy, schedule-wise, so I didn't want to push this through. We enjoyed our lazy trip through Venice with Piccolo. First, as we do with all of our non-American settings, we got out the globe. Jimmy learned how to find Italy on the map (he liked the boot but wondered why it was that shape) & then made an Italian flag. For our next reading, we did vocabulatory work - Jimmy asked me what all of the unfamiliar words were. He didn't have to ask about many of them. The boy surprises me with the words he already knows (I called him on several, and he was ready with answers). Finally, we talked about peripherial vision. I even made him learn how to say it - too precious! Anyway, I had him stare at a fixed point while I wiggled my fingers next to him temple. He understood why Piccolo saw the kittens as little blurs when he saw them "out of the corner of his eye." I had planned for him to listen to some Italian children's songs, but he absolutely hated them. We had a much better time listening to the Russian music, so I'll be trying my best to find classic/traditional music to represent new cultures instead of children's songs.

Our letter this week was W. Jimmy did fabulous on handwriting, and the Bible verse came very easily to him this week. He didn't do so well on reading his copy words, tho, but that was mainly because Mean Mommy had him write crazy words like "worm" - should have known better!

We had a very full week with math. Even though we had less days of school, we still did all of the scheduled math lessons. We covered half of a shape with rectangle construction paper pieces, we used our tangram pieces again (Jimmy remembered "parallelogram"), and we reviewed nickels & counting by 5's. Counting by 5's is proving to be very difficult. Jimmy is having a little trouble remembering how to get to 20, but once there, he flies through the rest. The lessons are teaching him through games, like paying for items. We worked with nickels twice this week, and I noticed a marked improvement from one lesson to the next.

Besides our failed attempt to listen to Italian children's songs, we had a blast playing with our stash of musical instruments. Jimmy got a harmonica from his Oma for his birthday (which actually works, unlike the dollar store ones the boys got in their stockings this Christmas). Caleb loved playing Jimmy's harmonica, too, which has given me the idea to celebrate his potty training (whenever that's done) with a new harmonica of his own.

Russia

I started last week with a pretty nasty sore throat. I, of course, lost my voice. I tend to lose my voice for 2 weeks at a time, so I cancelled lessons for last week. Thankfully, my voice returned later in the week (much to my grateful surprise), so we were able to hold lessons this week.

This week's FIAR book was Another Celebrated Dancing Bear. There are a lot of good learning opportunities in this book. First, it is set in Russia. We looked up Russia on the map (much easier to find than France) & made a Russian flag. We talked a bit about the Russian teapot (the samovar), Russian cities (Moscow, where the book is set, and St. Petersburg, where one of the characters visits), Russian dancing (we found several great videos on YouTube), and Russian music (we listened to classical Russian songs several times during the week - I may have to play it more often as great soothing background music). On Tuesday, I had planned to discuss some new vocabulary words, but I had forgotten to bring the list with me when we read the book. So, winging it, I asked the boys to point out any new words they didn't know as we read it. This turned out to be a fabulous way to learn new words! They felt more involved in the learning process (being able to ask questions vs. being "lectured" to) and - bonus - they paid much closer attention to the story. We will definitely use this technique in the future. What a fabulous life skill to teach a life-long reader, too! I also liked doing this earlier in the week. We spend the rest of the week's readings pointing out the new words we learned. Caleb especially latched onto "samovar" - he kept pointing out the pictures of the samovar. Jimmy loved "embraced" - I had to be ready to receive a Jimmy-powered hug every time that word came up in the book (and a few other times, too). We also discussed how the illustrator made etchings, and we had a great opportunity to link our math studies of the calendar into the scheduled lessons of the dancing bears in the books. We even talked a little about time management ("if Boris has to be at Max's at 7pm, and it takes 1 hour to get to Max's house, when should he leave his house?"). All in all, this was one of my favorite weeks this school year.

This week's letter was V. It's a very easy letter to write, so we focused a lot on the rather difficult Bible verse (it was in the King James version) & on writing some longer words (like "vegetable"). I saw a huge improvement in Jimmy's writing, which reminded me that he often makes huge leaps in reading & writing after a short break.

In math, we worked a little more with tangrams (learning what a parallelogram is & how to pronounce it), measured length using linking cubes (Jimmy chose to measure the height & width of his rocket ship cup), introduced the nickel, & learned how to count by 5's. We still need some more work on counting by 5's. We ended the week with a math test - acting out addition & subtraction using counting bears. Jimmy aced it. He's really a pro at the hands-on, application-type math.

I got some fabulous feedback from Jimmy's German school teachers last week. They pulled me aside to tell me that he mastered a pretty complicated word ("servielte" - the German word for napkin). They told me that he has an ear for language, picking up nuances very easily & really listening & trying to say things as correctly as possible. I think this has decided me - if we're still in the area next year (and have income), I would really like to keep him going there.