FIAR: Little Nino's Pizzeria

Last week we rowed the Five in a Row Volume 3 selection Little Nino's Pizzeria by Karen Barbour. It is a sweet story about a little boy who helps his father in his pizzeria, but then his father decides to be a bigger business man. This made little Tony sad and eventually his father decided he wanted to go back to making pizza and working with his son. We discussed many social studies issues such as serving, helping the hungry, and running a family business. This was a story that C sat with us to read each day. The vivid illustrations really kept his interest. W & C count pizza among their favorite foods, so they were excited to participate in making it and they got to see the yeast in action when we made the pizza dough. For toppings they chose turkey pepperoni and cheese, and we added some fresh oregano and basil.

pardon the fork and bite mark. it was good.

W visited a web site about the artist Henri Matisse, whose style is similar to the art in Little Nino. We also played a few pizza games, and found a neat site on pizza fractions here. Little Nino's Pizzeria was featured on Reading Rainbow (see below), so of course we watched this on the day we made pizza. We recently got DSL so we have been enjoying our higher-speed internet. :)

FIAR: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

Last week W chose to row How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. We had done this one last year and recently the geography co-op we're in read Marjorie Priceman's other book How to Make a Cherry Pie and see the USA, so he had a renewed interest in this theme. Not to mention there is pie in the title, and it is apple season here, so he knew he was guaranteed an opportunity to help make a pie! He helped measure ingredients, squeeze lemon juice on our apples as I cut them, stir, and put the pie bird in.

W's pie

We utilized our GeoPuzzles and maps for this one to locate all of the places mentioned in the book. I printed out a sequence- matching card game created by Karen Prior at FIARCircle.com. We laminated and cut out the cards so we can reuse it and keep it in W's FIAR notebook. It came out great and inspired me to use the laminator more often. I had to chuckle when reading Pioneer Woman's blog post about her new-found obsession with her laminator. It is a common sickness with homeschooling Moms around the world. ;)

See the pretty cards? We made a NH card with the blank one for "Home". He had fun putting all of the modes of transporation, food ingredients, and places in the right order. 

This week we are rowing W's "favorite Five in a Row book so far" according to him: Salamander Room by Anne Mazer. Wish us luck in finding a salamander or newt in the woods this week. He is on the hunt!

more of what we're using this year

Literature & Unit Studies

Five in a Row is our main lit curriculum which touches on a lot of the other subjects as well. We are rowing some books from Volume 1 again as well as using Volumes 2 & 3, and "rowing" unofficial fiar-like books that also work well for the same method. We recently started a local co-op built around this. We will meet monthly and read one of the same books and the kids will share their projects, lapbooks or experiences from these weeks at our meetings. 

We read chapter books as a read aloud, and W reads independently as well. W has read Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, and some other unit studies we are planning for this year include By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Samuel Eaton’s Day by Kate Waters/ a Pilgrim unit for this fall, a Flat Stanley unit (postcard/writing projects), Astronomy science tie in with the book The Night Sky/ with a project on Constellations, Homer Price by Robert McCloskey, and this will get us up through fall/winter hopefully. We may work in another A.A. Milne book but I will give W choices.

Grammar, Spelling & Writing

 

For Grammar I like Ruth Heller’s World of Language series including Kites Sail High (Verbs), Many Luscious Lollipops (Adjectives) and Merry-Go-Round (Nouns). We have a variety of workbooks and still haven’t found the perfect fit for writing. W needs to get into the habit of writing more letters; he will write notes or the occasional thank-you card, but I think that would help his penmanship and spelling. In Pennsylvania we picked up a Pentime workbook which is what Amish schools use to teach writing, but it is almost a painful activity for him right now. He also has Hooked On Spelling workbooks which he breezes through but I am not sure how much he really gets out of them. We have an Usborne Spelling Puzzles book (Meet the Ogs) which he likes as it has an entertaining approach.

Spiritual Education

Our family lists three things we were thankful for each day at supper time; this is a nice way to reflect on the day and share our experiences with each other. W started church school again on Sunday so he was happy to see his church friends again and he learned about Moses “when he was grown up” this week. At least he is starting to remember bits and pieces to tell me what they’re working on. I will be the Sunday School teacher for the younger group in October, so I will have to look at the curriculum soon and start planning some activities. The Story of the World which we are using for history also covers some Biblical stories.

Art

Along with nature journaling, several times a week W and C paint in a variety of mediums (watercolors, acrylics, fingerpaints), use markers, colored pencils, crayons, and sometimes make things with modeling clay/playdough. W loved his visit to the MFA in the spring so I would like to expose him to more museums gradually, hopefully we’ll get to one this year.

Language

This year I want to make it more of a regular part of our week, so we have Muzzy French, and the book First Thousand Words in French along with some other supplement books. We also have a couple of Spanish resources. It may be better to focus on French but I do want to touch on some basic words in Spanish as well.

Exercise

W has boundless energy and loves to play outside and especially swinging on the swing set. He is working on his coordination but I think his new glasses have helped him and will continue to do so as his sight gets corrected. We have yoga dvds for the wintertime months which we will focus on when we can’t get outside as much, and I am exploring the options for a karate class as I think it would help W with focusing better and also be really fun for him.

Home Economics/ Life Skills

W enjoys cooking with me and helps with cracking eggs, stirring, and measuring things. Basically anything that doesn’t involve direct oven use or sharp knives. We have some kid cookbooks with simple recipes. He was actively involved in the gardening process and helped pick the carrots and lettuce that he planted seeds for. We haven’t implemented any chore based allowance system but that is something to think about now that he is learning about money. W did some simple sewing last year with our book club group, so if he expressed more interest the winter might be a good time to work on these kinds of crafts.

Next time we'll focus on C and pre-pre-k. :) I promise that post won't be this long!

Salt and sugar

During dinner, W asked about the differences between salt and sugar, so we thought up a few experiments and executed these after our main course. 

We began with the sensual experiences of each: how does each look and feel?  How does each smell and taste?  Thinking back, we should have also tried putting our ears up to the little heaps, but I guess we were not expecting any auditory properties.

Having established that sugar tastes sugary and salt tastes salty, we explored how they behave with water.  What happens when a tablespoon of each is mixed into a glass of water?  What happens when a little of each is placed onto an ice cube?

Then we searched ingredient lists to see if various food items had one, both, or neither of salt or sugar as an ingredient.  After a few items, and perhaps a pattern established, we turned it into a game to try to predict the inclusion of salt or sugar.    

Apple Pie!

Last weekend we went apple and pumpkin picking at a local orchard. This week for Five in a Row we are reading How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. So of course the first thing we did Monday was make an apple pie following the recipe in the book using our freshly picked apples. The pie was delicious and W enjoys helping (his favorite thing was the egg wash on top of the crust). The pie did not last long enough to get a photo. We may make another for the weekend, and will still have many apples leftover for a big batch of applesauce. Next week we will be hosting a pumpkin painting party for a local homeschooling group so we will decorate the pumpkins the boys picked out.

In the book, many countries are visited while the girl gathers ingredients for apple pie (semolina wheat from Italy, a chicken to lay an egg from France, Cinnamon from Sri Lanka, and apples from Vermont to name a few). It reminded me a lot of Pancakes, Pancakes! by Eric Carle, which our family is very familiar with. Since we already read Madeline for FIAR, W recognized the Eiffel Tower from the artwork in the book. We had fun playing around with Google Earth "flying" from one country to another as well.

Today the sun has finally come back. We had several rainy days in a row, so it is nice to be able to play outside more finally! W helped me gather some of the many acorns that are covering our front yard to use for decorating. I also finished painting the bookcase we got at the Mill Store to put in our loft as a library/ homeschool center. I added adhesive chalkboard to the inside of the cabinet doors for the bottom part, so I will take photos once it is up.