A Mommy Montage: October 2012

Katy No Pocket {BFIAR}

Two weeks ago we rowed Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne.

Since then life went a little crazy.

But this was a fun row and worth sharing.

The story is about a kangaroo mother who doesn't have a pocket for her joey and sets out on a mission to find a solution.

We learned that kangaroos are found in Australia.

We found it on the map and watched some youtube videos of kangaroos jumping around.

We were all giggling at their antics! They're so cute!

Then we watched some videos of aboriginal dot art being created.

Of course, we had to try our hand at it too!

We learned that kangaroos can jump up to 30 feet!

We measured it outside on the sidewalk...

Then made our own attempts!

When it was my turn, Taitum had just fallen and scraped her hand so I did my jump with my little joey attached!

It wasn't easy!

We recorded our jumps and weren't surprised to find that we didn't even come close to the kangaroos jumping ability!

The girls made kangaroo pouches to put their babies in!

We learned that the story of Katy No-Pocket is very much a fictional one -

a baby kangaroo is about the size of a bumblebee when it is born and it climbs up the mother's fur into her pouch.

Without the mother's pouch, the baby would not survive.

In the story, Katy finds a man with an apron full of pockets.

He kindly dumps all of his tools out of it and gives it to Katy.

We talked about kindness and being generous to others.

We also took a trip to the tool store to browse at all the different kinds of tools!

Piper was very interested in everything and wanted to know what each thing was used for.

I think I did alright figuring out what most of the tools were but I was definitely out of my element!

What is the story about?

Piper: She (Katy) doesn't have a pocket. She needs one to put her baby in. She asks the monkey, the crocodile and the owl. She goes to the town. She finds lots of pockets on the apron. All the animals come and go in her pockets.

What was your favorite part of the story?

Piper: When she fits all the animals in!

Taitum: When the owl goes back to sleep.

I loved Tait's answer. So random but she was very certain of her answer!

posted under BFIAR, homeschool | 5 Comments

The Story About Ping {FIAR}

Last week, we rowed The Story About Ping by Majorie Flack and Kurt Wiese.

This is the story of a little duck who hides to avoid being punished for his tardiness. This leads to an adventure on the Yangtze River as he sets out to find his family and the boat he calls home.

While away for Thanksgiving, we visited a duck pond and got to see some ducks in action!

The girls enjoyed our walk around the pond, discovering ducks and cattails and enjoying the beautiful fall weather!

As I've mentioned before, I left my camera behind so I wasn't able to capture our activities in action.

So instead, I later took a picture of the finished products:

Clockwise, starting with the largest photo:

-Art: Learning to draw water

-Geography: Story disk placed on the Yangtze River in China

-Science: Float/sink experiment predictions and results

-Geography: Coloring the map of China

-Math: Counting Ping's family

-Just for fun: Coloring page

For Language, we learned vocabulary words such as scurried, master, houseboat and march.

In Geography/Social Studies, we compared and contrasted Chinese culture with our own, researched why junks have eyes painted on the front of them and learned about fishing birds.

Finally, we ended our week by taking a family trip to a local Chinese grocery store.

We browsed the various interesting foods sold there and picked out a few treats to have with our Chinese dinner that evening!

We bought Chinese rice bread, canned lychees and mango cookies.

That evening we had homemade wonton soup, stir fry and egg rolls.

Obviously, it wasn't a true Chinese meal but it was still a lot of fun especially since we got to enjoy it with the girls' Nana and Boppa!

(Boppa snapped a pic with his phone of the girls eating their Chinese meal!)

This book was a delight to row!

The girls fell in love with the little duck, Ping, and couldn't wait to join in the Master's call of "La-la-la-la-lei!".

It was so neat to see their interest in a different culture and hear them come up with their own questions about the things we came across as we read.

(Piper was the one who inquired about why there were eyes on the boats and who wanted to know more about the fishing birds.)

A few days after we were done with this book, I found Taitum curled up on a cushion on the floor in the living room with the book open.

She 'read' the whole story to herself from memory!

It is so nice to see them falling in love with these wonderful books that we are discovering together!

posted under FIAR, homeschool | 0 Comments

Cranberry Thanksgiving {FIAR}

I'm a little behind keeping you up to date with our 'rows' but my long lost camera has returned!

Now I can fill you in on all the fun we've been having!

The week before Thanksgiving, we rowed Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin.

It was a cute story but I must admit - I wasn't overly fond of it.

However, the kids seemed to really enjoy it and that alone makes any 'row' a joy!

The story is about a grandmother who has a secret recipe she wants to someday pass on to her granddaughter, Maggie. She is extremely suspicious of Mr. Whiskers, Maggie's Thanksgiving dinner guest, because of how he looks and smells. She much prefers her own guest, Mr. Horace, who appears much more proper and put together. In the end, Grandmother's assumptions prove false when Mr. Horace steals the recipe and Mr. Whiskers saves the day!

First, we learned about New England and which states it includes.

Piper colored in the states on a map I provided her as I pointed each one out on a map of the US.

Then we added a story disk to our world map.

Piper was excited to see how close New England is to where we live and asked if we could go visit someday!

I think we might just have to do that!

We talked about setting and what the setting of the story was.

I had Piper draw a picture and tell me what the setting was for her picture.

We listened to the song "We Gather Together" since Maggie, Grandmother and their guests sing it together.

We watched a video about where cranberries come from.

Piper estimated how many cranberries were in a bag and then counted them.

She also tested to see whether they sink or float.

And of course, we had to make Grandmother's Cranberry Bread using the recipe found in the book!

It was really yummy and Piper was thrilled to get to make it mostly on her own!

This girl loves to bake!

We discussed judging people by appearances.

Taitum was rather enamoured with the silhouette illustration so we took some time to talk about that.

(Time didn't allow for us to make our own silhouettes but hopefully we can find time to do that in the future since Tait was so interested!)

This was a short week for us since we left for Thanksgiving holiday with family on Thursday but I think we got a lot accomplished!

We went on to row The Story About Ping when we got home the following week but I'll tell you about that in my next post!

posted under FIAR, homeschool, Thanksgiving | 1 Comments

This Autumn Day

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

They winds, thy wide gray skies!

Thy mists that roll and rise!

Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag

And all but cry with color!

-from Edna St.Vincent Millay's "God's World"

posted under Fall, family | 0 Comments

Thanksgiving 2012

We started our Thanksgiving holiday early this past week and headed off Thursday to visit family.

It was a much needed getaway, full of family time and memorable adventures!

Having completed 6 successful weeks of school, I thought it was all well deserved, too!

Unfortunately, I left my camera behind so I'll have to share my photos another time.

Thankfully, my sweet sister-in-law captured many moments for me to share with you!
Here's a glimpse at our Thanksgiving fun!

1. Rockin' good time at the playground.

photo by Mya

2. Climbing 'mountains'.

photo by Mya

3. Exploring. Throwing rocks. Touching a waterfall.

Loving the great outdoors!

photo by Mya

4. Everyone wants to hold Mommy's hand.

photo by Mya

5. The jumping pillow.

(The girls most favorite activity!...Maybe mine, too?...))

photo by Mya

6. Tractor ride smiles.

photo by Mya

7. Pumpkin patch posers.

photo by Mya

8. Getting lost in a corn maze.

photo by Mya

9. And found again!

photo by Mya

10. Cutest little tag along.

photo by Mya

11. My kinda rocker.

photo by Mya

So thankful.

For family.

For moments and memories.

For love and laughter.

For wide-eyed, flossy headed girls.

For all of God's perfect, priceless gifts.

posted under Fall, family, Thanksgiving | 0 Comments

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World {FIAR}

Last week we rowed How To Make An Apple Pie And See The World by Marjorie Priceman.

I purposely planned it for apple picking season and this story did not disappoint in getting us into the apple picking spirit!

Art:

The story is about a girl who wants to make an apple pie but finds the market closed. Therefore she travels around the world collecting the various ingredients she needs.

The story and illustrations are very comical so we took some time to look and see what aspects struck us as being the most humorous.

Then we tried our own hand at a humorous drawing!

Piper drew her and Taitum with pie on their head.

She also gave herself crazy looking ponytails because she found that pretty hilarious!

Geography:

The girl in the story visits Italy, France, Sri Lanka, England, Jamaica and Vermont, USA.

The girls placed story disks on each of these countries on our world map and we discussed different things about each country.

The illustrations themselves gave us some things to talk about that were specific to each country.

We also discussed different languages and accents.

In the picture above, the girls are pointing at the country they liked the most.

Piper - France

Taitum - Sri Lanka

(You have no idea how fitting their choices are! haha!)

Science:

The little girl gathers some salt water from the ocean while she is crossing the Atlantic on a banana boat headed for Jamaica.

She later has to evaporate the water in order to obtain the salt for her recipe.

The girls experimented with this by dissolving salt in water themselves and leaving it in the sunlight (and eventually on the warm stove to speed up the process!) so the water would evaporate.

With in a few days they had some good results!

The girl also brings home a cow from England which she milks and churns the milk to make butter for her pie.

So, of course, we had to make butter too!

I placed our mixer at their level so they could watch the process.

We used whipping cream since I wasn't so sure milk would work.

With children the age mine are you need to be able to see results pretty quick!

I was actually surprised how well this little experiment went!

It wasn't long before our cream turned into butter!

Then Piper rinsed out the buttermilk and added some salt and we had butter to take along to Nan and Boppa's for supper that night!

Math and Memory Making:

The manual suggested making apple pie to introduce basic measuring skills.

I thought this was a fantastic idea!

The problem was, I've never made a pie before!

Thankfully, I know someone who is a veteran when it comes to the pie making buisness - my Nan!

So not only did my girls get introduced to measuring and pie making skills, they were also able to make a beautiful memory with their great-Grandmother!

This whole project was so precious!

My Nan was so patient with them and let them help with everything!

She explained why she did things a certain way and what the dough should feel like, etc.

I learned a lot, too!

We all had a wonderful time!

For us, this is one of the beautiful things about homeschooling - learning from our elders and making memories with those we love.

The girls were especially pleased when I let them have pie for breakfast the next morning!

Language:

I had all intentions of doing a vocabulary word list for this book but in the end it never got done!

The only word we defined was 'spoil' because Piper asked what it meant!

Other adventures:

In the story, the girl uses various modes of transportation to get to all the different countries.

This inspired me to make good use of some transportation cookie cutters I had!

I whipped up some apple pie playdough and got the girls to pick out all the vehicles the girl traveled in.

They then did what they do best - played and created all kinds of things with the playdough!

Tait asked me to make her a playdough apple pie and was delighted with the results!

She toted it off to her play kitchen, 'baked' it, brewed some tea and offered me a little of each!

Of course, we couldn't read this book without going apple picking for ourselves!

Unfortunately, our week started out with sick kids followed by rain but finally we found a perfect day to go and perfect company to join us!

photo by Mya

We absolutely enjoyed our first row from Five in a Row Volume 1!

Next we are off to row Cranberry Thanksgiving!

posted under Fall, FIAR, homeschool | 0 Comments

I love motherhood.

We're a smiling family.

I'm a covenant keeper.

I love my husband.

I am above self pity.

I am a nation builder.

Motherhood=Adventure

Worth more than rubies.

“I am more convinced than ever that even in the midst of the mundane, burdensome, and oftentimes frustrating tasks of life allotted to me as a mother, God wants me to find his joy. He wants every single day of my life to be a celebration of his blessings, whether large or small. He wants me to celebrate life ~ the life He has given me.”

~ Sally Clarkson

A Mommy Montage

Katy No Pocket {BFIAR}

The Story About Ping {FIAR}

Cranberry Thanksgiving {FIAR}

This Autumn Day

Thanksgiving 2012

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World {FIAR}

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