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.