Another Celebrated Dancing Bear is about a bear from the circus who teaches his friend how to dance.  His friend then joins him in his circus act.  The story takes place in Russia during “the days of the czar.”

We reviewed some vocabulary from the Five In A Row manual before our first reading, such as “samovar” and “czar.”  Two words I feel should have been added to their vocabulary list was “preserves” and “phonograph” – definitely two words not in Doo’s regular rotation!

Owl Moon is told in the first person.  We compared/contrasted it with her current chapter book, Little House on the Prairie, which is told in the third person.  Then Doo created her own first person story which is as follows:

Once I went to the barn.  And I saw a drip of water coming on to the ground.  It was rain! And I went inside.  I put on my boots to go outside.  And I saw my friend Emma and she was splashing in puddles.  I had her scarf but I wasn’t going to give it to her yet.

The End

“Emma” is one of her many, many imaginary friends.

I have been lazy with blogging this week.  We continued to row Katy and the Big Snow.  We discussed running a big city, personification (which was a review and she did very well remembering what it meant), responsibilities (the activity was cleaning her room! Tricky Mama…)

and street signs.

Doo’s reading skills continue to grow at a pretty rapid pace.  She amazed Mama by reading the entire Katy and the Big Snow to her for the last two ROWings with very little help.

We found the various words that rhymed in the Robert Frost poem today and then read several books that also had a lot of rhyming.

We started our final book for 2009.  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is a Robert Frost poem.  The book we have is illustrated by Susan Jeffers and her drawings are just beautiful.  It is a nice, simple reading where we really pay attention to the art.  Very fitting for this time of year.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Doo and I talked a bit about who Robert Frost was and read a few more of his poems.

Today we discussed how A New Coat For Anna gave us lots of information on how to make a coat.  There were several steps involved and we were able to experience them along with Anna during the story.

Our lesson for the day was for Doo to create her own informative story.  I gave her a few topic suggestions but she came up with “How to make a drawing” on her own.  With a little help from Mommy, below is her informative story:

How To Make A Drawing

First you need paper.

Then you need crayons.

You color very hard with the crayons.

And then you have a pretty picture.

Wee Gillis’ real name is very long and includes several family names.  After reading the book, we talked about the various family names (at least all the ones I could think of).  We discussed marriage and how often married people have the same name (but not in her Mama/Daddy!).  It was a pretty quick lesson but she was chattering away about family names later on when we did laundry so she definitely found it interesting.

Before reading The Story About Ping we discussed what fiction meant.  Doo had no idea at first but simply explaining that it was a story made up by an author’s imagination was enough for her.  She was able to name several fiction stories that she owns (several Disney plus stories like Pippi Longstocking).

After Ping, I first created a story to give Doo an example.  Then she dictated her own story to me as I typed it down.

Moose and the Wolf Get Bit

Once upon a time, there was a big forest that had a big, wide moose. And there was a class next to the moose’s place. And soon a big, wide, mean wolf came, too.

So the moose couldn’t escape. He was in trouble! And he bit the wolf, back and forth. Hitting him in the eye. Kicking his knee.

The wolf fell to death.

And so this moose ran across the woods. He soon came to a little, tiny cottage. He bonked his head on the door by accident because he doesn’t have any arms like humans do.

The cottage was next to a river. And soon he felt he was on the wide, wide part of the river. The river kept going on and he did not know what to do. And then what the moose did was clutch on to the door and it opened right before he put down his paw.

He suddenly heard a “Wooooohoooooooo! Woooooohoooooo!”. The “woooohoooo” kept going on. It was coming from a BIG monster! The moose ran across the woods. Twice he jumped over two leaves.

He dug under the ground.

The End.

The monster, the moose and the wolf.

One of our vocabulary words the other day was etiquette.  Today we focused on that word and after reading the book we discussed manners, especially good table manners.  We then set up a tea party in Doo’s room and enjoyed our various teas (including “chocolate raspberry with sprinkles” – ooo la la!) while remembering our pleases, thank yous and you’re welcomes.

Tea Party.

As a side note, on my search for a good manners chart I stumbled upon this century-old one from Australia.  I thought it was pretty neat.

I finished up my work early this week so I was able to play hooky from my job today. I surprised the Doo with a trip to Disneyland (we are annual pass holders and it’s just an hour away).

The day was filled with character meet and greets (dressed up for Halloween!) and a handful of rides. After lunch I broke out Babar and we did a little homeschool lesson. Today we discussed a variety of vocabulary words from the story such as splendid, regulations, etiquette, ambition, extract and illusion. As I read the story I would sometimes emphasize the words we had just reviewed and she would sometimes notice one on her own. We topped off the lesson with some musical instrument coloring pages that we did not get to during our last art lesson.

We had fun finding elephants in Disneyland as well – Dumbo, one on It’s a Small World, and several on the Winnie the Pooh ride (well, ahem, “heffalumps”).  On our walk back to the car (I always skip the tram), Doo decided we should list words beginning with “M”.  That kept us entertained for the extremely hot walk (it was around 100 degrees, blerg).