In April, we rowed Who Owns The Sun? by Stacy Chbosky.



This is the story of a little boy who asks his father various questions about who owns different things he sees in nature.
His father answers that these things - the sun, the flowers, the stars, etc. - are too wonderful to own.
However, the boy happens upon a conversation that causes him to ask his father the most difficult question of all - how can his father be owned by another man?

This story was one that brought tears to my eyes.
It was also difficult to have to explain slavery to my daughter and that such terrible things happen in the world.
But the story ends on a positive note in which the reader learns that the boy and his family lived to see freedom. He goes on to make his father proud by the things he and his siblings are able to accomplish as a result.


Language Arts:

We listed things that are too wonderful to own.

We rowed Another Celebrated Dancing Bear by Gladys Scheffrin-Falk in March.

This was one of the few books I purchased since it was unavailable from our library.

I generally don't buy books I'm unfamiliar with but really wanted to do all the FIAR Volume 1 books.

In the end, I was very pleased with this story and thankful that we have it for 'keeps'!

Social Studies:

Piper colored the Russian flag and we found Russia on the map.

We also perused through some books on Russia and learned to count to ten in Russian.

In February, we rowed The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills.

This is the story of a little girl named Minna who lives in the Appalachian region with her family. When her father, a coal miner, dies the family is left struggling to make ends meet. Through the kindness of the women in their community, a coat is made for Minna from pieced together odds and ends. She in thrilled as this means she can now attend school. However, her new garment is not kindly received by her schoolmates.

Social Studies:

This story provided us with various things to talk about.

First, we talked about the culture of the Appalachian Mountains and pointed out specific things in the illustrations. The girls were quite interested in the dulcimer they saw hanging on the wall of the family's cabin. We ended up finding some videos of people playing the dulcimer and the girls danced their hearts out!
Our favorite? Whiskey Before Breakfast! ;)

Next, we talked about death - how people feel when they lose someone they love, traditions that often occur when someone dies and ways in which we can remember them. That weekend, their grandmother was kind enough to show them things she has that help remind her of her Mom who passed away a few years ago.

Finally, we talked about teasing, how it makes you feel and ways to respond to it.

Art:

Piper and I colored our own rag coat.

Piper and Taitum both designed their own quilts by filling in printed quilt grids.

Science:

We learned about coal and coal mining.

To start, we read this book which was interesting and informative.

We made sedimentary rock out of crayon.
(For instructions, watch this video.)

In February we rowed Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening, a poem by Robert Frost.

Whose woods these are I think I know. 
His house is in the village though; 
He will not see me stopping here 
To watch his woods fill up with snow. 
My little horse must think it queer 
To stop without a farmhouse near 
Between the woods and frozen lake 
The darkest evening of the year. 
He gives his harness bells a shake 
To ask if there is some mistake. 
The only other sound's the sweep 
Of easy wind and downy flake. 
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. 
But I have promises to keep, 
And miles to go before I sleep, 
And miles to go before I sleep. 

The illustrations (by Susan Jeffers) depict a man stopping in the woods and leaving food for the forest animals that live there.

We made bird feeders and hung them out to nourish animals (primarily birds and squirrels!) in our area too!

A few weeks ago we rowed Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews.

Considering that we were in the midst of a cold snap, the book couldn't have been introduced at a better time!

Although when I explained to the girls that Ungava Bay has temperatures even colder than our own part of Canada they refused to believe me! Haha!

Very Last First Time is about a young Inuit girl named Eva who goes under the sea ice when the tide is out to collect mussels.

This time though she goes for the very first time all by herself on this dangerous mission.

Social Studies:

First of all we watched a video of this mussel seeking tradition in real life.
I had never heard of this before reading this book.
It's rather incredible!

Piper colored in Canada and we found Ungava Bay on our big wall map.

Art:

Both girls did a polar bear painting that was a lot of fun since it included different steps.

You can get full instructions at That Artist Woman (my FAVORITE children's art blog!!).

Science:

I'm a little squeamish around sea food so I asked my Mom to help me out since I felt it was necessary for the girls to get their hands on some mussels and really understand what they were.

She happily obliged and we had a fun afternoon with the girls' Nana and Boppa exploring and taste testing mussels!
(Thanks for the new experience, Nana and Boppa!)

In our Elemental Science curriculum we were learning about crystals and our experiment was to grow some Borax crystals.

We decided to make ours a snowflake shape which tied in well with our 'winter' focus.

This was a fun experiment and we were all pretty impressed with the results of our crystal growing!

This was such a fun row!

As you can see there was a lot of art and science for this one but like I said earlier - we were in the midst of some awfully cold temperatures!

Keeping busy with all these activities kept the cabin fever at bay for a time!