homeschool

It’s that time again – Book Club time!  The girls read A New Home for Lily by Suzanne Woods Fisher and Maryann Kinsinger, and the general consensus was fantastic.  The girls discussed this book more than they had any other and all agreed that they’re looking forward to the next book in the series.

Lily also enjoys playing with paper dolls, so while our pies were baking, the girls chose and colored doll dresses.  We used a coloring book of paper dolls that I purchased for my classroom years ago, with dolls portraying strong women throughout history.  Queen Victoria was an overwhelming favorite.  I think the two enormous and ornate dresses had something to do with it.

The pies finished baking just before book club was over, and the girls were eager to sample them.  I chilled them by placing them in the sink in an inch of cold water and ice for a few minutes.   I’ve never seen anyone so happy to eat a pumpkin pie in April as these girls were.  I think Meme’s recipe is a hit.  A New Home for Lily definitely was.

What are your kids reading these days?

*Shared at I Can Teach My Child.

Our Pumpkin Cake – and Life with Lily – was a hit!  We’re all looking forward to A New Home for Lily.

You can find more information about Life with Lily at my review here: “Life with Lily” by Suzanne Woods Fisher

Yesterday we went on a a safari.

A safari in the backyard, that is.  A group of friends ages 7 through 9 came over, ready to have fun with the book Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures:  The Great African Discovery.

We love the Flat Stanley books.  They’re great for guiding a study of another country in a fun way, and this book was particularly conducive to fun safari adventures.

After summarizing the story, the girls found our home state and Kenya on the globe.  We talked about how long it might take to travel there and what that kind of journey might be like.

Then it was time to meet Stanley.  Oblong Stanley, that is.  Like in the book, Stanley was preparing to jump out of a helicopter without a parachute – and it was their job to create a way to prevent any cracking.  The girls had lots of fun with this.  When the construction was complete, they took their project outside and dropped it off the side of the new deck.  Although the basket landed pretty hard, Stanley survived.

Next they prepared for the safari themselves.  Armed with party favor cameras and their very best safari outfits, they headed to the backyard to “photograph” plastic animals I had hidden earlier.  This reminded me of a giant Easter egg hunt, and the kids were just as excited about finding plastic elephants and rubber snakes as they were about candy bars and quarters.

After finding and playing with the animals, we collected them and returned inside.  We had a wide variety of animals, and we hid most of them – even the ones not native to Africa, and so this became the group’s next task:  to identify which animals are native to Africa, and which ones are not.  After much discussion, they correctly sorted each animal and were even able to identify where the not-from-African animals originated.

By this time everyone was hungry, so we stopped for a packed picnic lunch.  After that, the girls “excavated”  an assortment of candies from the dirt cakes that my Big Helper had made the night before.  While not everyone was a pudding fan, we all had fun finding the hidden candy!

Books can be a lot of fun – the imagining, the pretending, yes; but also actually carrying out the activities happening in the book provide great learning experiences.

If you were to see an activity plan like this for a book and then go use it, what kind of book would you prefer?

** Shared at I Can Teach My Child.

The girls read a book full of fast-paced adventure this month:  The Door to Time, a Ulysses Moore mystery.  This is the first in a twelve-book series that involves magic, time travel, secret codes, lots of intrigue, and quite a bit of  independence.  The main characters are three pre-teens who work together well and acknowledge their strengths and differences, but are also rather deceitful and keep things from their parents.  If you talk that through, you have a wonderful adventure story with lots of learning the world over.

Because secret codes are rampant in this story – and one involves a code written in an ancient Phoenician language on a clay tablet – we decided to write our own favorite quotes on clay tablets.  We mixed up a batch of clay, shaped it, and etched our sayings into it.  Later we painted and antiqued them to complete the ‘aging’ process.

While the clay was drying, the girls stumbled upon a secret code lying on the table.  It took some work, but they were able to decode it by working together and then to track down the treasure.  

Of course, said treasure needed to be divided, so they did that immediately – and then ate it!

What are your kids reading this month?

To find out more about our book club selections, click here.

This month the girls tackled their hardest book to date:  Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliet.  Chasing Vermeer is a philosophical mystery involving an international community, a centuries-old painting, and a criminal mastermind.

 

Inherent to the story, at least to us, were Calder’s pentominoes.  These puzzle shapes can be put together to make rectangles, and the more you use, the greater the challenge.  My Big Helper was fascinated with these, so I was excited to find a printable set on Scholastic.com that we could print out.  I thought we’d spend just a short time on this, but the girls happily cut for a very long time.

After cutting out their pieces, they colored them and then glued each one onto cardstock and cut it out again.  (Had my printer been working, we would’ve printed directly onto cardstock, but this worked, too – and the girls chose colorful pieces of heavy scrapbook paper for their backing.)

After all of that work, we moved on to tea time.  I made these ‘tea cakes’ from my favorite goofy cake recipe and slathered chocolate ganache over the top.  Yum!

Next we looked at the painting on which the book is loosely based, Vermeer’s A Lady, Writing.  We talked about Vermeer, his life, and how artists lived during his time – and then headed outside to create a large version of this famous painting.

The girls didn’t have long to mix colors and paint, as moms were coming steadily to pick them up, but they seemed to enjoy the Lady.

What are your kids reading right now?

This month the girls’ read A Crazy Christmas Angel Mystery by Beverly Lewis.  It’s a fun story in which a new neighbor moves in, and he has mysterious angels that fly around his head at night.  The Cul-de-Sac kids can’t wait to figure out what sort of angels these are, and they go caroling to investigate.

We decided to go caroling, too.  The girls spent some time with us decorating a birthday cake for Jesus,  talking about the book, and then practicing the songs they wanted to sing.  After that, their families returned and we headed out to sing to the neighbors.  (We didn’t do any spying, though – just singing.)

Upon returning, we feasted on birthday cake, pretzels, and homemade hot chocolate.  The girls’ enjoyed showing off their decorating skills during the party portion of the event.

This book sparked some good discussion about the Christmas story and the ways we share it with others.  The main character in this story didn’t seem to be familiar with the Nativity story, and his friends shared well with him.  That prompted a discussion of the ways that people have shared this story throughout history and fun ways that we can do so now.  We also talked about the legend of the candy cane and the ease of sharing the story by sharing these candies.

The Crazy Christmas Angel Mystery was a great choice for a December read.  Easy to read, fun, and with great themes, I’m glad we chose this one!

What are you reading with your kids right now?

Shared at I Can Teach My Child.