We’re finishing up our last week of reading Grandfather’s Journey before we take a break from homeschooling for a while for Christmas break. We’ve learned even more about Japan than we already knew from when we read A Pair of Red Clogs. We’ve also been learning about birds and Elliot has really taken interest in them. Elliot says that his favorite bird is the Chickadee, because he likes that they are small and that they say their own name when they chirp. Unfortunately with it being Winter, there aren’t a lot of birds around to observe. We bought a little bird treat to put in our backyard, in the hopes that we might attract some birds to watch, but no such luck. I’m making a mental note that when we do this book with Caroline in a few years, we might want to do it in the Spring!
Today was our language arts day for Grandfather’s Journey. We used our favorite method of learning our vocabulary words….a memory game! I simply write the words on half the cards and the definitions on the others, and we try to find matches. Our vocabulary words this time were: astonish, enormous, explore, marvel, bewilder, and homesick. After the game I asked him some questions to check his understanding of the words again. I asked him to tell me something he marveled at. He said “My Mom….because I admire her!” He’s such a sweet kid!
We also did our typical discussion on setting, characters, and plot. We have been discussing point of view a little bit too with the last few books and he finally has a solid understanding of what that means. About half of our books have been in first person point of view and half have been third person.
