Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 28, 2011

Creative Writing

Since Elliot has been practicing writing sentences for sometime now and is getting used to spelling words on his own and basic sentence structure, I came up with the idea of setting aside some time on Friday for him to write any kind of story he’d like. He does this all on his own (meaning, it’s not copywork), only asking for help if he really can’t figure out the spelling of a word (I asked him to let me know when he needed help so that as much as possible we can avoid seeing misspelled words and having them accidently memorized, rather than the correct spelling.) With the exception of just a few words, like “knew”, “Titanic”, “iceberg” and “library”, he did all the spelling on his own. Way to go, Elliot!

His story accompanied by its illustration

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January 28, 2011

He who is kind to the poor…

lends to the Lord, and He will reward him for what he has done. – Proverbs 19:17

We end each story with the Bible lesson from our Five in a Row Bible Study Supplement, and the lesson for The Clown of God was the importance of being aware of the suffering of others and taking care of the poor. This reminded of me that I have been meaning to start taking the kids to donate food to those in need, because it’s very important to us that they learn to think of others, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to start that habit. We went grocery shopping and then this morning we made a visit to Keller’s Community Storehouse to donate our food. It was a good experience for all of us and we are planning on making several visits a month.

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January 28, 2011

Art for The Clown of God

Elliot’s art assignment for The Clown of God was to create a pencil drawing and then use watercolors to fill it in, similar to the way Tomie DePaola created the illustrations in the book. He did a great job!

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January 25, 2011

Language Arts for The Clown of God

We’ve done so much with The Clown of God. For our language arts day, we read a book about Tomie DePaola and learned some interesting things about how he decided he wanted to be a children’s author and an illustrator. We also discussed the meaning of repetition. Before I could even finish explaining what that is, Elliot knew exactly what line in the book was an example of repetition. Then we learned our vocabulary words and did a little matching exercise for that. Last, as usual, we ended by writing out the setting, characters, point of view, and conflict in our story and Elliot narrated the plot summary to me perfectly.

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January 25, 2011

Is it just me….

or is he starting to look so grown up? He’s such a hard little worker.

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January 25, 2011

The Renaissance

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January 21, 2011

Bringing Glory to God

This week we’ve been discussing how our skills and talents can be used not only to bring joy to others, but also to bring glory to God, just like Giovanni in our story. Though this seems like a pretty simple concept, Elliot is still a bit confused about this and still can’t wrap his mind around the idea that things outside of praying and reading the Bible can be pleasing to God. When I asked him about what special talents he has that can be used to bring glory to God, he shrugged and said “I don’t think I have any.” So….we’ll continue the discussion. It’s interesting to me that the concepts I think will be complex end up being crystal clear to him while some of the ones that seem simple in my mind are harder for him to grasp. I love how Five in a Row has helped me discover more about the way my child’s mind works.


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January 21, 2011

Juggling!

I surprised Elliot with some juggling balls, to go along with The Clown of God. We each had a fun time giving them a try.











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January 18, 2011

Social Studies for The Clown of God

Today we read The Clown of God and did our social studies lessons to go with it. We talked briefly about what an orphan is and what the Renaissance period was. We learned about Italy and Elliot colored a map and we added the Italian flag to our collection that hangs in his room. We’ll continue with learning more about the Renaissance period this week, as there is a lot to learn about that!

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January 18, 2011

The Clown of God

This week we’re starting The Clown of God by Tomie DePaola. We’ll be learning about Italy and the Renaissance period. We’ll also discuss a little about what it means to be an orphan, as well as talents (such as juggling, like Giovanni in the book) and how we can glorify God with the talents we’re are given. We’re also going to learn a bit about the author of this book, Tomie DePaola.

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