From time to time I get a request for the Madeline girls we used back during our Five in a Row days. The document I have used to be online but appears to have vanished. So I went ahead and created a Google Doc of my copy and you can find the link on the right side of the blog. Hope this helps!
It is seriously one of my favorite places in L.A.
We headed there today to explore and to also continue rowing Lentil. When we talked about Ohio last week we touched briefly on the Wright Brothers. Today we expanded on their story plus read another FIAR book, The Glorious Flight, and looked over a book on flying machines.
Unfortunately, my camera died after only a few photos. We explored new-to-us paths and even watched a spider hanging on on his web. I think he finally got sick of us staring at him so he consumed his web and crawled up to rest in between two leaves. At home, I looked up what I remembered of him and I am pretty sure he was an Orb-Weaver spider.
Lentil lives in a small town in Ohio, just like Doo’s Tia (a close family friend.) Tia was kind enough to send us a package of Ohio goodies and we rowed Lentil today while focusing on that state. We took our lesson to The Huntington and found a quiet spot by a lone statue to read our book.
Tia gave Doo an Ohio ABC book a couple of years ago and we read through it after Lentil. Doo was very excited to see that the cardinal was the state bird since she had her very own singing stuffed animal cardinal. We read about buckeyes, presidents, the Wright brothers and Columbus, OH. We had fun looking through Tia’s package which included leaves from Ohio, a magnet, yummy Ohio potato chips and a map of Cleveland.
Tia had also made a book about her life in Ohio for Doo when she had moved back after Doo’s third birthday so we brought that along as well.
After our lesson, we explored the Palm Garden for the first time (which is surprising since we’ve visited The Huntington many times) and checked out the Rose Garden as well since it was bare the last time we stopped by.
Anyone know what kind of bird this is?
And a random aside – I can’t figure out how to not include the Ohio/Lentil pics in the gallery without totally deleting them from this post. Very frustrating!
In Mrs. Katz and Tush, Mrs. Katz’s neighbor, Larnel, convinces her to adopt a kitten for company. We read about cats on the Nat Geo site plus looked over a few books we borrowed from the library.
We also have 2 American shorthairs in our home – a gray and brown tabby named Nelson (aka: Boo) and an orange tabby named Spenser. Nelson was named at Mike Nelson of MST 3K fame and Spenser was named after his polar opposite – Spenser from the Spenser For Hire novels.
Nelson
Spenser
Mrs. Katz immigrated from Warsaw, Poland to America when she was young. Today we read about Poland, looked at photos and watched a video over of the Nat Geo site. Doo easily found Poland on her bedroom world map and colored a picture of the country.
We also discussed the country’s recent tragedy where they lost their president, his wife and many others in a plane crash. As we watched a short video of his funeral, we recalled learning about funerals back when we rowed The Rag Coat.
We just continued our lesson on Judaism and as I type this the Doo is reading out loud the story of David and Goliath from One Minute Jewish Stories that I borrowed from the library.
We also read sections from Eyewitness Guides’ Judaism - I read a little bit about past hardships but skipped the pages on the Holocaust (that can be for another time when she is older unless she asks while looking through the books on her own) and concentrated on the religious practices and culture of Jewish people.
Then Doo read several one-minute stories to herself and looked through both books.
We enjoyed the 2 1/2 week Spring Break. I got this blog up and running plus started a new job. I am still working full time but just 4 days a week and I will have 2 weekdays off. That will be very helpful for local homeschool group activities (we’ll probably get more involved in those starting in the Fall, her Kindergarten year.)
I am going to be making some changes to our homeschool “curriculum” which I will share at some point. For now, we will continue with Five In A Row.
We started rowing Mrs. Katz and Tush today. This is a story about 2 neighbors, one an elderly Jewish widow and the other a young, African American boy. They form a friendship and Mrs. Katz introduces many aspects of Judaism/Jewish life to the boy. He joins her for Passover, etc… Tush is the kitten he gives her when he wants to help her feel better because her husband had passed away.
Doo and I reviewed the Yiddish words found in the story before I read it. After our reading, we read a little about Judaism and also watched a couple of videos.
We’ve been taking it easy here due to illness but yesterday we did walk some videos on YouTube showing high wire walking.
Mirette lives in Paris, France (as did Madeline) so we continued our discussion of France by learning a little bit about its capital. We looked at photos, read up on the Eiffel Tower (which she is now attempting to recreate with her Legos) and watched a video of photos. Doo announced she wanted to live in France. I said maybe we’d visit some day. 
Since both Madeline and Mirette on the High Wire take place in Paris, France I combined the 2 readings today to go along with our France lesson. After the reading we read a little bit about France and watched a few videos on Youtube showing images from the country. Doo also did a connect-the-dot activity from Enchanted Learning. Today was our last Madeline reading and we will continue with Mirette.
I am going to have a schedule change in mid-April so I have been planning on extending our homeschool lessons beyond just what we do with FIAR. Once I get everything worked out I’ll post more here.
