"Rowing" The Story About Ping

We spent our first two weeks of homeschooling with the Five in a Row curriculum on the book "The Story About Ping."  Usually, we will try to do a different book each week, but we found so much to investigate, and were just settling into a school routine, so we spread it out over two weeks.

Here is what we did:

We did our geography study by getting out our large world map and locating China and talking about Asia.  I also printed a world map so D could locate it and color it in.  We printed the Chinese flag and colored it.

Our cultural study took up a big part of our time.  We talked about the people who lived and fished on the Yangtze River.  We watched a brief video on the fishing cormorants that we saw in the book.  We talked about traditional clothing, and D colored in a traditional robe after looking at different designs online.  Then he helped me cook fried rice with our quail eggs and homegrown veggies and we ate it with tea on cushions around our coffee table, while listening to traditional Chinise music.

For our nature study we studied ducks of course.  This was made pretty easy by the fact that we have ducks in our backyard.  We made a little book about ducks.  D helped me pick the topics he wanted to include and looked online with me to find the pictures he wanted to color.  We wrote about how ducks "dabble" in the water for food, how they preen, and described their natural habit.  D was really proud to show daddy his book that night.

We also talked about some of the other animals that live in and near the Yangtze River.  We found a great video online that showed many of the different animals and described why they live in the Yangtze River.  Then we found a longer documentary on scientists searching for an endangered river dolphin.  In the end, they did not find any, and the species is now considered extinct.  It was really sad, and D was troubled by the end.  But it was a good opportunity to talk about extinction, pollution, and our role as stewards over God's creation.

As part of our study of literature and for basic reading retention and recall skills, I traced a dozen of the images from the book and cut them out on half sheets of paper.  D then had to arrange them in the proper order adn tell me the story.  Then he colored them in and stapled them into a minature Ping book, so he could practice telling the story with the illustrations.  I also made little labels for parts of the story, including "beginning," "end," "conflict," "action," "climax," and "resolution."  We put them on the appropriate story pages.

For our math these two weeks we did adding, subtracting, and multiplying with duck families.  I cut out about a billion little ducks and D colored them and drew eyes and beaks on them (which was really not part of my plan, but he insisted). I made a blue "pond" with a blue piece of paper and surrounding it with green to be the land.  Then we practiced grouping the ducks into different familiy sizes in the pond and multiplying to find out how many ducks we had.  For example he would make five groups, each consisting of a daddy duck, a mommy duck, and a babv duck.  Five groups, each with three ducks, equals fifteen ducks total.  We changed up the duck groups each time.  He really enjoyed this and we did it quite a few days in a row.     

Our ducks....just four right now but we hope they will also multiply!

Our science study was on oil and water.  We learned about how ducks have an oil gland and when they preen they spread their oil through their feathers.  This keeps their skin from getting wet and keeps them dry and warm.  We printed and cut out several feathers on paper.  One feather we coated with olive oil using a paint brush.  They other we left without.  We dipped each one in a cup of water to see what happened.  The one with oil stayed firm and the water rolled off.  The paper one turned mushy and ripped.  D was so fascinted with the oil and water that for about another hour I let him pour oil and water back and forth into different containers and mix in dish soap to watch the oil break up.  The perks of homeschooling!  Pursue that interest!  Answer all the questions!  What happens if...?  

I think we did a few other things with Ping as well, but those were the big hits.  We had so much fun!  

In addition to our Five in a Row study we also memorize a Bible verse each week (starting this Wednesday it will be with our Awana program at church!), practice phonics and reading with Abeka books each day, and practice handwriting each day.  We also do additional math work a few times a week when the FIAR doesn't really supply good math ocntent (depends on the book).