Tonight Elliot did another art lesson with Dad. Together they did some drawing with charcoal, which is what was used in the illustrations in Lentil. It was a lot messier than I expected and we may not do it again until it’s Caroline’s turn to read this book in a few years, but overall it was a good experience.
A finished work of art (Josh did a lot of it and Elliot did the smudging.)
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Today was our language arts day. I’m really getting into a routine of doing a lot of the same type of lessons for each story that aren’t necessarily in the FIAR manual. I made another memory game with some vocabulary words from the story, since Elliot enjoyed that so much last time. (All this planning will be completely done for me when I do this again with Caroline. That will be nice!) The new words he has learned this time are Colonel, expert, whittle, indignant, alley, citizen, and monument. We also discussed the elements of the story as usual, but this time we learned about a new one, the conflict. Elliot understood the concept immediately and wanted to go back to all our previous books to determine what the conflicts were in them.
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Last week we learned about sound and how it is produced by vibrations traveling through the air. We did a couple activities to help Elliot better understand what vibrations are. The first thing we did was try to feel our vocal cords vibrating while talking loudly. Elliot was unsure whether or not he was feeling the vibrations. Then we tried holding a ruler over the edge of the table and pushing it down and letting it vibrate. We also played with Daddy’s guitar and strummed the strings and then gentle put our hands on them to feel the way they were vibrating.
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Today we learned all about the five senses and we did a couple fun experiments which Elliot really enjoyed. In this first one, I gathered up a bunch of items from around the house that he should be able to feel, smell, hear, or taste and I blindfolded him. One by one, I put the items in front of him and told him which of his senses he could use to figure out what it is. By touch he identified a truck, Caroline’s blankey, a bag of ice and a hairbrush. With hearing and touch, he identified keys, bells, and a spray bottle of water. With smell he identified pizza sauce, and with taste he identified ginger snaps. The only thing he couldn’t figure out was peanut butter, with smell nor taste. I thought that was interesting, but I guess he isn’t much of a peanut butter fan these days and doesn’t eat it very often anymore. He had so much fun with this experiment that when I took the blindfold off of him, the first thing he said was “When can we do that again?”
We also did a little experiment with the four different tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter. I put things with these tastes in four separate bowls and had Elliot taste them one at a time to see if he could determine which was which. He had no problem with this! He discovered that he really doesn’t care for bitter or salty all that much, but he loves sweet and sour things, specifically lemons. He wanted to suck on them the rest of the afternoon. I already knew he had a sweet tooth, but didn’t realize he enjoyed sour tastes too.
I told Elliot he’d better enjoy this because it will probably be the only time in his life that I ask him to eat a spoonful of sugar.
“Yep, it makes your lips pucker!” (something we learned from reading Lentil)
bitter tasting unsweetened cocoa powder
“What in the world is that?! I thought it looked like powdered sugar!” he said.
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Today we discussed life in a small town, like Alto, where Lentil lives. We made the observation that the upside to living in a small town is the ability to walk to everything, the way Lentil does in the story, however, the downside is that you have far fewer choices (Just one park, church, and library…..that’s crazy!). Elliot declared that he is very happy living in a bigger town because we can go to so many different stores, parks, and other places.
He made a map of the small town of Alto. (I am aware that the side pieces were supposed to stay attached and fold over the map, however I realized that just doesn’t work well for easy viewing when it goes into the page protector in our notebook, so we make some adjustments.)
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Today we read about the United States and also learned some interesting things about Ohio. Elliot even sent an e-mail to his Grammy, who grew up in Ohio, to ask her more about it.
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This week we’re starting a new Five in a Row book, which is Lentil by Robert McCloskey. We’ll be doing some more studying of the United States and focusing a bit of Ohio (where the story takes place). I think we may end up going off onto a bit of a rabbit trail and read up on the presidents of the United States because Elliot is fascinated by them. We’ll also be studying the five senses, paying special attention to the sense of taste and we’ll also be learning about sound as well.
I bought Elliot a harmonica so he could be like Lentil. It’s fun to incorporate little surprises into our lessons.
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