Five in a Row: A Pair of Red Clogs

Another post out of the archives, as I'm reorganizing!

This is another very sweet book about a young girl in Japan who gets a new pair of red clogs... then cracks them.  It deals with deceit, truthfulness, honor, stewardship, and family relationships as the little girl first tries to deceive her mother into getting her a new pair, and then realizes that isn't the right way.

Geography and culture: These activities were much the same as for Grandfather's Journey, so we repeated a lot of the information again.

We added a few more books to our study this week, since we had the extra time.  The library had great books about Japan for kids.

All About Japan for children was a very good introduction to Japan for young kids.  It included a lot of information about daily life in the city and in the countryside of Japan, narrated by children.  It briefly described the major holidays in Japan, and traditional games and foods.  We read a few pages of this book every day.  The traditional holidays gave us a lot to talk about.  We compared their beliefs with Christian beliefs. I.e. They worship their dead ancestors; we worship a living Creator God.  They have many creation stories, involving many gods and lesser deities, often in conflict; we believe in One God who created everything from nothing and still rules it today.  D pulled this book out first thing every morning, ready to dive in.

Manjiro is an amazing true story I had never heard before!  We read it two days in a row, even though it was long.  I think we'll read it again before we take it back to the library.  It is the true story of a shipwrecked Japanese boy who makes his way to America on a whaling ship, never knowing if he will make his way home to see his family again.  He learns the English language, works his way through school, gets a higher education in navigation, and earns enough to buy his own ship, with the goal of returning to his homeland.  It takes place in the early 1800's, when Japan was still closed to the outside world, and even Japanese citizens who left the border were not allowed to return, on penalty of death.  Read the story to see what happens!

Thanks to the maps in this books, we were able to trace all of Manjiro sea journeys.  We talked about how Americans still mostly lived on the east coast at that time, so when sailing, boats would travel all the way around Cape Horn to get to Asia. We learned the names of the different oceans.    We also talked about the building of the Panama Canal to make ocean travel quicker.

The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks is a Japanese folktale about compassion and love.  I enjoyed the the story (especially as an animal lover), but the mystical elements left D very confused, so I had to explain it to him.  He was still confused.  We don't read very many fairy tales or fables, but think we need to start incorporating them more so he can learn to separate the mystical from what is real, and learn that even "not true" stories can teach us important lessons.

We cooked a few more Japanese meals and made rice balls in seaweed wraps based on a recipe we found in the children's book on Japan.  This was a big hit, because making them was very sensory - i.e. sticky!  And they were delicious.

Math:  We did math with our book this week!  The story begins with a trip to a market for the little girl to buy a new pair of clogs.  The first few illustrations are of the market street and inside one of the shops.  We used the street scene as our backdrop.

We played shop with props that matched the goods for sale in the book: flowers, fish, apples, and "clogs."  I found the red flip flops at the Dollar Tree and D was so excited! I kept them a surprise until I had the store laid out.  He asked me to make a store sign with Japanese characters on it to put on the top of our market scene.  We got out our jar of spare coins.  He paid for the items and told me what change he should receive.  This is one of D's favorite activities, so we did it for a long time.  We left it set up for most of the day so that during his quiet time he could continue to play.

Social studies:  Our social study this week was mostly on character.  We talked about lying, deceiving, honoring parents, stewardship.  The little girl wanted to new pair of clogs enough to purposefully get her cracked pair very muddy, hoping her mother would then buy her new ones.

We talked about how her actions we deceitful, even though her words were not direct lies.  She was trying to trick her mother.  We found some verses in the Bible about deceit.

Instead of buying her new clogs, her mother tells her to wash them, reminding her that you "always try to clean a thing before you buy a new one."  We talked about how this attitude and course of action is called stewardship.  We ought to take good care of our things so they last and work for a long time.  We had many opportunities throughout the week to learn practical ways to steward our belongings.  For instance the boys began playing a game involving pushing their bikes down a hill so they crashed into each other.  I asked Daniel if that game was exercising good stewardship of his bike; was it helping his bike last and work for a long time?  He realized it was not good stewardship to crash his bike on purpose, and stopped.

We discussed honoring your parents.  It doesn't only mean obeying commands, but also stewarding things your parents give you, like caring for your clothing so it lasts and cleaning up your toys so the house stays tidy and they don't get broken or hurt anyone.  Honoring also means not deceiving or lying to your parents, but telling the truth and acting truthfully, without trying to trick them to get your way.  I asked D if he ever tries to trick me in order to get his way, and he admitted that he has and gave me some examples.  We talked about how God tells us to be truthful and prayed together.

Art:  We made decorative carp, like the Japanese hang in front of their homes to celebrate "Children's Day."  The carp symbolize strength and courage, things the Japanese pray for their children to acquire as they grow up.

Katy and the Big Snow

(this is an old post that never ended up published due to some technical difficulties - but here it is now!)

We have been continuing with the Five in a Row curriculum, reading and studying a new book each week (or in some cases, every other week).  

Our most recent study has been Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton.  I love all of the books by this author, and we were lucky enough to find a collection of her works at the library, so we also read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, The Little House (made me cry), and Maybelle the Cable Car this week. 

December seemed like a good time to study a book about snow.  Two weeks ago the temperatures were consistently below freezing.  Well, this week it hit 60!!  Most of the week was in the fifties.  So, we didn't really relate to Katy's story!  At least D remembers a little bit about last winter in Kentucky.  When we were selling our house we were constantly barraged by snow and ice, to the point where our van doors froze shut and we couldn't even walk out onto our sloped driveway because of the thick ice.  We ended up staying in the house when people came to look, since I couldn't carry the kids out to the van, and the few times I did try to drive I slid all over the place.  

So... I am very thankful that it does not typically snow here.  I don't care for snow (except maybe to look at it while sipping hot chocolate INSIDE), and I am happy to not have to worry about salt, ice, huge piles of grey snow blocking your view of oncoming traffic, dangerous driving, etc.  So we got to read about snow plows and snow while experiencing a wet, mild Pacific Northwest week.    

Katy is about a tractor owned by the Highway Department of the city of Geopolis who works on the roads in the summer and plows snow in the winter.  It tells the story of her plowing out the city and restoring all its important functions after a snow storm.  She plows out the road to the hospital so a doctor can get his patient there, plows out the police department and main roads so the police can protect the city, plows out a path to a fire so the fire department can make it there in time, and helps other departments of the city. 

Our main project with this book was to create our own city!  We used our road floor mat, city building blocks, train set, and all sorts of our trucks and cars to recreate a city like Geopolis.  We built a train station, police department, fire station, city hall, post office, and other important buildings that are featured in the book.  

For part of our social studies, we learned about different road signs.  D surprised me by already knowing most of them.  He colored and cut out the signs, then pasted them onto popsicle sticks.  I wrote out the name of each sign and he traced over it for handwriting practice.  Then he matched each sign with the correct name (without me reading them, so he had to sound the words out as best as he could). 

  

For part of our science study we read several books about snow and weather.  We were able to talk about all the aspects of wintery weather in the book: the storm started as rain, turned into snow, blew into drifts, broke a powerline, and burst a water pipe (that happened in our Kentucky house last year!).   We also got to talk about how where we live is insulated by the bay and the mountains, and so we experience different weather patterns than the rest of the state.  The science books also talked about the tundra, tree line, animals that live in the snow, and the polar regions,which we studied last week when we read Very Last First Time.  It was fun to revisit things we had already learned.       

We watched videos of different kinds of snow plows, from trucks, to tractors, to the plows on trains.  Then, because it was mentioned in one of the books, we found several videos on huge ice breaker ships.  We watched news stories on the research ship that was stuck in frozen water near Antarctica last year.  Those ships are pretty impressive, so we really enjoyed learning about them!  

We built another city, on our circular mat, to practice cardinal directions.  The mat conveniently has roads going North, South, East, West and two other directions depending which way you turn it.  This play set is really special because my grandmother sewed and handpainted the mat and my grandfather cut, sanded, painted, and glazed each block.  Some pieces have handpainted windows and doors, some pieces are colorful roofs.  

Each page in Katy has an illustrated compass rose, and each part of the story describes which direction Katy plows the roads.  For instance, she plows the roads to the hospital in West Geopolis.  We built some of the buildings from the book around the city, then D drove cars around the city as I told him to go East, South, Northeast, on so on.  

For our language study we update our transportation board with new modes of transportation as we read each new book.  This week we added a snow plow (I printed a picture of Katy) and a mail truck.  This little activity also fits under vocabulary, social studies, and cultural studies, depending on what sort of transportation we've added.  That's what is so fun about literature based learning - everything overlaps!  

We also searched for actions words (which we do with every book) to write down and then act out.  D has learned some great new vocabulary from this activity each week.  

For our art activity this week we learned about how snowflakes are symmetrical patterns of ice.  We used popsicle sticks and hot glue to build really cool snowflakes and then painted them and added glitter (thank you Pinterest!).  These will be part of our Christmas decorations as soon as I get around to decorating the house.  

The Five in a Row curriculum is heavily based on having meaningful conversations with your children.  I don't have pictures to show you, but through this book we were able to talk about Katy's perseverance, why hard work is important and meaningful, and the functions of all the different parts of a city.