Japan Unit:Haiku...

Today we started learning about haiku.  First we read this book, which I remembered checking out to read for fun a long time ago.


It's funny, and a good intro to haiku.

Then we each wrote a haiku, while looking at our cat.  Here's mine.

Black cat.  Sniffles much.
Resting, still.  Long tail twitches.
Catch it!  No...  Nap more.

(Our old cat, adopted last fall, is having a rare fit of playfulness the last few days, and chasing her tail...)

Here's Miss M's.

Sleek cat wonders Much.
smells Bliss Mist, sneezes... achoooo!
Right on time.  Love it.

(Bliss Mist is a catnip spray by the way.)

Then we read this:


To have some more examples of haiku, and Miss R guessed the animals.

Then we read a book about Basho, the first famous haiku poet.  (Disclaimer:  I didn't do very extensive reading about the history of haiku, because, let's be frank, I don't have time.  So if he's not, I'm sorry.)


Then this, with haiku from another famous Japanese haiku poet, Issa:


They were both good, we enjoyed them.  Nice quiet peaceful books.  We will work on more haiku hopefully in the days to come.  I'd like to get outside and have her compose.  I made this one up on my way out the door to pick up Miss A from school.

Pale red. Round and green.
Peonies wait, ready to
Pop!  To fragrant bloom.

It's kind of fun!  It's a nice structure to force your thoughts into for a moment.
This book is what I skimmed for background:

The author is really IN to haiku.  It's a good book, maybe a little higher grade level than I want to get into right now, but good to remember if we revisit at a later date.

Today's Science Lesson...

We are studying Japan right now, in preparation for Children's Day on May 5th.  The science suggestion in Galloping the Globe only had one little thing on the Japanese macaque, so I thought I would do something different.  (We watched a great show on netflix by the way that talked a lot about Japanese macaques by the way, so I think we got that covered.  It was the show Wildest Islands, season two episode one, Japan: Land of Extremes.  Really good, and, this shouldn't come as surprise to me, but Japan is so breathtaking!  I get in an American we have all the best scenery mode, and forget there are other beautiful lands.  I hope we get to move there!)

 So since Japan is pretty much it as far as tectonic forces go, I thought we would go over plate tectonics.  I have to be careful; the girls are already spooked since I may have exposed them to some documentaries about, oh, say, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, before it was actually likely we would be moving there.  What can I say?  I've always liked learning about natural disasters.  So if I keep repeating my mantra of "no one is more prepared for disasters than the Japanese" hopefully we'll get through it.  And if we do get stationed in Japan in the future, I hope I won't have terrified children.

We started with this book:

Miss M read it to Miss R and I.  It's cute, a good way to start thinking about the subject.

Then we went through a few illustrations from the book Inside the Earth from World Almanac Library.  It's a basic earth science book from the library.  We talked about the layers of the earth, the plates and how they moved, and looked at a map of plates.  We reviewed India, she found it on the map, and looked at how the Himalayas are being pushed up.  Then we read this book:


I asked her first what tsunamis have to do with plate tectonics, and she didn't know.  So we read this, which is a really good story by the way, then I did a demonstration of how a tsunami starts.  I held a book horizontally above my lap to demonstrate the surface of the sea.  She held another one parallel to it to demonstrate the sea floor.  I bumped her book up to simulate an earthquake, and we talked about how the water would of course push up my book, or the surface of the ocean.

Poetry...

I have been checking out the curriculum made by Jenny Philips here.  One of the things she advocates is using and memorizing poetry.  Her curriculum for the grades I need isn't available yet, but I thought I would get a head start with one of her ideas; making a poetry book.

There is mine.  My first ever attempt at drawing a tiger!  It was fun.  And I am aware that I wrote a word wrong.  I just picked my three favorite stanzas to copy.  Here is Miss M's.  She is already such a good artist I think...

Indian Festival...

Here is Miss A's report:

I went to the Indian Festival in Old Dominion University.  And I saw pretty girls and boys dance.  I got to eat cherry cake with cream and chocolate.  We saw some boys and girls dancing about a selfie song.  Also they wouldn't let us in the exit part and they wouldn't let us out the entrance part.  The music was really loud.  And I felt happy and interested.  Also there were beautiful experienced ladies dancing.  Also the not-experienced kids did very well.

Here is Miss M's report:

I ate desserts at the Indian Festival.  I loved the dresses that the girls wore.  They did pretty dances and there was lots of music.  There were lots of designs on the saris and on their dresses.  They wore jewelry on their heads.  They had swishy skirts.  There were rainbow colored skirts.  They practiced lots for their performance.  Some of the men had to wear sparkles and the ladies looked beautiful in their skirts and on the skirts were diamonds.  Some kids were performing.

The Mama review:

It was... ok.  The dancing was nice.  The vendors were quite disappointing.  The girls liked all the glitzy shiny costume jewelry, but that's kind of all there was.  Lots of the same gold and jewels and $50 saris.  I wanted someone selling ghee, and spices, and real Indian things.  What Miss A talked about, with the entrances and exits, was really frustrating.  There were these nazi people guarding them, and wouldn't let us go past, even though we just kind of went in by accident, so we had to go through the throngs inside instead of just turning around.  It made me mad and left a bad taste in my mouth.  There weren't that many people in those passages to justify making such a big deal about it.  The festival was billed as being free.  I knew the food and things for sell would of course not be, but I didn't expect every little thing to cost extra, like face painting etc.  I'm glad we went, and we won't go again.  

Homeschool 3.0

Well, here we go again!

The first time was when we moved from VA to FL as Miss A was just about to start kinder.  Her teacher in FL was hardcore!  No naps.  Full day.  Minimum 45 minutes of homework per day.  I was like "Where's the finger painting and graham crackers?" and after a month and a half pulled her out.  My homeschooling attempts then were pretty sketchy, and it was a relief to move to GU after six months and put her into the DOD school there.  Then, we moved back to VA to a, shall we say, "marginal socio-economic" school district.  Great neighborhoods, wonderful location, don't know why everybody doesn't live here and why the politicians are such crooked corrupt people; but... not the best schools.

So the second time was when we found the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood in the perfect location.  But weren't too sure about the school.  I've always felt like teaching the girls myself is something I should do, or rather, something that if I were with it and organized and on top of everything, I would be the perfect homeschool teacher.  (Sadly that just never happens...)  So we found that we could enroll the kids in a different districts K-12 program online.  That worked well-ish.  B thought it was a complete cluster, and the girls barely survived with their minds intact.  I think it was a good learning experience.  I liked the checklist aspect of it, and that the curriculum was challenging.  I liked the history, science, and art lessons.  I didn't like trying to direct two kids on one computer with a three year old competing for attention.  Miss M was sad about not having any friends.  (GU had more friends than we knew what to do with, all living on the same block as us.)  And she was frustrated about having to click through all the phonics lessons when she could already read very well.  Miss A started throwing crying tantrum fits when she thought things were too hard.  They almost never were too hard, but she would just freak out!  That was happening more and more often.  So even though I felt I was learning to manage things better, by Thanksgiving we put them back in public school.

Now, the third time around, I'm ready to really do this.  Maybe.  The school is ok.  Kind of.  They're pretty anti-parent.  It's hard to get them to let me volunteer.  And if I say I need to talk to a teacher it's like I'm asking to personally blow up the school.  And then, if I can get past the front office to actually help in the class room, even if I've sent in a note the day before saying I'm coming, the teachers look at me like I've got ebola or something.  They clearly have no idea what to do with me and it makes them uncomfortable that I'm there.  It is such a shock to me, because the school in GU pushed everyone to volunteer.  When you registered your kid, you had to fill out the background check paperwork, and if you didn't come in, the teachers sent home things for you to cut out or staple.  So that's annoying.  The other thing is the lack of teacher communication.  I would love to get an email once a week saying what they're working on.  Maybe once a month?  But nothing ever.  I've never even met the gifted and talented teacher.  And that's another thing.  Miss M was only getting 45 minutes a week at gifted and talented, and I never knew what they were doing.  And if there is testing going on, that got scrapped.  There's always testing going on...  I went into Miss A's class last week.  The SOLs (VA's big test) are in May, and her class was reviewing for the test.  But they weren't reviewing math...  No, it was "What kind of question is this?  That's right, a click and drag question."  They were stinking learning how to use the mouse for the stupid test!  Isn't that crazy?

So we felt that we need to try something else.  Miss M can probably already pass the end of year test (VA law requires we turn in a test by August 1st), so if we're going to try it, I wanted to try it with her first, since I feel I can't really mess her up too much.  And we felt like she is really getting bored.  She doesn't even have any friends in her class.  She invited eight of her classmates to her birthday party, and two came.  And I know those two's moms, so she still hangs out with them.   If all goes well, we will pull Miss A out for next year.  We will send Miss R to kinder, so someone else can teach her to read (see attempt #one above...).  After that we will hopefully do all three for the foreseeable future at least until we see where we are moving next.

India Unit...

When I was trying to figure out a curriculum to use if we started homeschooling again, I knew I wanted to try doing unit studies.  I have read  that this is the easiest way to school multiple ages, and if this all works out and we pull Miss A from school too, that will be an issue.  I thought I would make up my own units, but then some one on the area homeschool facebook group mentioned this book.


Basing our units on geography appealed to me, since we had already done an extracurricular geography club while we lived in Guam.  We decided to study India first, since there is a big Indian festival coming up.

We colored a map page of India from this book:

which only costs three dollars and is really great, as most stuff from Dover is...

We did some sticker pages on Indian costumes from some Usborne sticker doll books, Miss M really likes pretty sparkly clothes, so I knew this would be a good way to get her hooked.

I had her make a fact sheet on elephants, tigers, and the country itself.

She made these by going through the stacks of books on these subjects that we got at the library.

Miss M also did a lot of reading of these books to her little sister, and I picked some words from these books to make vocab/spelling cards.

We quizzed on the locations of the continents, oceans, India, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal.
We watched The Jungle Book, a show on Netflix called Born to Explore, season 1 episode 7 about India, and the last part of Nature: Moment of Impact, Jungle, about a tiger jumping up on an elephant.  Also on Netflix is Tiger: Spy in the Jungle, which all the girls really liked.  It shows great footage of baby tigers.

We also went to the zoo and saw the EVER so cute baby tigers.

 
 
The zoo had an intern teaching about the tigers and answering questions, so the girls got to hold a tiger tooth and a lion tooth and learn about things influencing tiger habitat loss, like palm oil production.

B helped the girls make some paneer cheese, very fun and tasty.

And we used these books:


to make an Indian feast.

In preparation, I cleaned out my spice cupboard, and gave the girls all my outdated spices.  You know, the ones that have made the last five or so moves with us...  They mixed their own curries, which we learned means each family's signature spice mixture that they make for their own dishes.

The smell of lemon grass was pretty thick in the air that day...

Then last night we had our feast.

We had dhal, raita, naan, rice, and chicken tikka.  It was super tasty!  Tomorrow we go to the festival and get some legit Indian food.

World Unit, Books...

First of all, the book Galloping the Globe, which I chose to be the starting point for our unit studies on the countries of the world.

I found lots of the suggested books at our libraries, including ones on all five oceans.  I had the girls each pick two oceans and write fact sheets about them.

For history we studied explorers.  I chose Columbus and Magellan.  We used this book:

I found this book, which Miss M really liked.

And this one, which had a lot on Magellan in particular.

In the general literature section, Galloping recommends

Meh, it wasn't my favorite, but ok.

And this

I liked it better, and the illustrations are gorgeous.  The part of me that really really hates non-native invasive species was really disturbed about spreading lupine seeds everywhere though.  I kept telling myself that maybe they're native where ever this book is set?

I had a hard time figuring out how this fit in with the exploring the world theme?  It's a charming book and all.  I guess maybe just to review directions?

And this was a great one,

If I wasn't so overloaded on books to begin with, I would want to own this one.  Wonderful illustrations, good story, some humor, and lots of cute animals for the little one to find.  And, there is a Reading Rainbow on netflix that reads this.

I also found this at the library, that was cheerful and colorful.

For science in this section, we looked into insects and butterflies.  My favorites the library had about these were

Both were great for Miss M to read to Miss R.

India Unit, Books...

First of all, the book Galloping the Globe, which I chose to be the starting point for our unit studies on the countries of the world.

It recommends this, which we had read before and really liked.



That was all I got for the literature section that Galloping recommended.  I of course cleared the library sections for the country of India, elephants, and tigers (which are the animals studied for science).  The most useful of these were:





This one was perfect.  Miss M read it to Miss R, and as usual for the Kratt's, is full of good interesting facts packaged in a kid-friendly way.



This one I read, but didn't read to the girls.  It's very interesting, but pretty long for my school right now.  If we revisit India when they're a bit older this will be great.





Both of the above are good and shortish, perfect for Miss M to read to Miss R, which I find myself having her do a lot, because they both like it, and it keeps Miss R out of trouble for a few minutes, and makes her feel included.

While browsing the library, I found some others that I have found to be very good, especially this first.


It reads very well.  Miss M was easily able to read it to Miss R, and there is lots of room for expression, which she is very good at!

This next doesn't take place in India, but in the spice islands.  But I thought the look and story were close enough...
 

You have to love a good moral tale, and the afterword on the folklore motifs was interesting to both Miss A and Miss M.


Tender story about a baby elephant.