Live and Learn

January 23, 2012

Mr. Gumpy’s Motor Car

Elliot has been looking forward to this book for over a year now. We’ll be learning about the automobile, clouds, the water cycle, what is means to be social and get along with others, cooperation, and we’ll be reviewing what we’ve learned about England.

Though the story doesn’t actually say it takes place in England, we are making that guess based on several clues. The license plate on the car appears to be from England, some of the phrases in the story seem a bit different and like something that might be said in England, and the author is from England. The book was also first published in England. We did our best to squish our little story disk onto England, right next to Peter Rabbit.

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January 23, 2012

‘Q’ is for Quilt

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January 23, 2012

‘P’ is also for Penguin, Pig, Pancakes, and Pudding

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January 18, 2012

Art for Harold and the Purple Crayon

Today for art we learned about perspective and how we can use this technique when drawing to reflect how things far away look smaller than things up close. We also learned about the horizon line (which also led us to discuss the difference between horizontal and vertical) and the vanishing point.

Here’s our example from the book.

We looked up some examples of pictures that exhibit a perspective view.

Elliot then set to work on his own drawing with a horizon line and a vanishing point.

Beautiful!

We added “perspective” to our Choices Artists Can Make to Add Interest notebook page.

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January 16, 2012

Elliot’s First “Report”

A little over a week ago Elliot and I found ourselves on the topic of researching and writing reports and how he’ll do those things when he’s older and he insisted he wanted to give it a try now. We decided he would “research” the differences between homeschool and public school and that since each of his parents have experience with one of those, he could interview us to get his information. He recorded each of our interviews on camera so he could play it back when he was putting together his report. At the end of last week, he wrote a rough draft of his report. I will say, this was not as easy of a task as he thought it would be. He had some trouble getting started and knowing what to say. He developed some attitude issues and I struggled with some frustration over that. I discovered he is extremely self conscious and sensitive to criticism which was contributing to his reluctance to just write what came to mind. It was a learning experience for both of us. In the end, we pushed through together, made revisions, and today he completed his final copy, which he is extremely proud of! All the hard work, frustration, and misunderstanding was worth it for the confidence he gained!

He planned ahead by writing down the questions he would ask in his interviews.

Here he is interviewing Daddy.

Rough Draft

Revisions

Final Copy!

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January 16, 2012

Language Arts for Harold and the Purple Crayon

We had a few new vocabulary words.

We learned about humor, specifically puns. Our book has several examples of puns. We also looked up some fun puns for kids which Elliot found very amusing. We loved one about a carpenter who quit because he got bored, and another about a guy who worked in a shoe store but then they gave him the boot!

We added “humor” to our Choices Writers can Make to Add Interest page.

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January 16, 2012

‘P’ is for Paper, Princess, Purple and Pink

Book Basket

She put pink and purple paperclips on the ‘P’.

She cut out pink and purple paint strips.

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January 10, 2012

Harold and the Purple Crayon

We’re finally back to school after three great weeks of break. We’re starting with Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crocket Johnson. It’s meant to be a short unit and there aren’t as many lessons for it, however we’re going to spend our typical amount of time with it and just have it be a gentle transition back into school. There’s still plenty to do and learn with it and it’s already one of Elliot’s favorites.

We’re focusing on art and creativity.

Since the setting of this book is imaginary and is progressive as Harold changes it with his crayon, we made a special place for the disk on our map.

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January 10, 2012

‘O’ is for Octopus

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December 20, 2011

Christmas Book Advent- Week Two

We did this one at the table and enjoyed hot chocolate and peppermint ice cream while Josh read. This is a great book, but it’s LONG. It took us 45 minutes to get through it all. Probably not for little ones or kids with short attention spans.

The Christmas Tree Ship (Jeanette Winter). This is definitely one of our favorites. Great story! Not too short, not too long.

This is probably the best version of the Christmas story I’ve read yet.

This one is also probably on the top of my list of the best books we’ve read. What a great story!

The kids enjoyed candy canes while listening.

This is my absolute favorite one yet.

This one is an old favorite. It’s the only book the kids were already familiar with. We read it last year and enjoyed it a lot.

We ended up changing our day 18 book at the last minute. Josh remembered a book he loved from his childhood that he really wanted to include. It’s called All is Well by Frank Peretti. We got an old copy through the mail, which unfortunately came with a very damaged cover, so it’s hard to tell what it is.

Near the end Josh got choked up by the story and I had to finish reading it for him. I love my sweet husband!

This is an excellent one too. Elliot particularly enjoyed it and flipped through it on his own for quite a while after we finished reading it together.

There sure are a lot of great books underneath that tree!

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