Velveteen Rabbit, Cleaning and Reading

The day started off with having breakfast before I did the bunny chores.   We had banana pancakes with syrup.    This gave the lad a chance to do reflex math while I toiled outside.  :)    I came into the sounds of The Velveteen Rabbit playing.  :)   When we went to the library yesterday we borrowed a copy of this book, so he's been reminded of how much he enjoys this book/show.  :)

Our plans for the day include working on our spider unit study, cleaning the living and dining rooms, and tidying up toys on the main floor of the house.

We'll probably fit in our normal reading as well.

Today we learned about ground hogs (also known as woodchucks)  in the Ultimate Guide to wildlife in North America. 

Learning what they are called woodchucks led to the question of what does it mean to chuck wood mommy?   So I answered that and then he laughed at how they can climb trees to escape from their enemies.   The lad is well acquainted with woodchucks since we camped last summer at a place with a whole lot of woodchucks and he had fun chasing them from burrow to burrow.

Then off to read from "the Lamb". Today we did chapter Eight.

Then we read from our world history book.   We are learning about pirates. We read three pages today, more than usual, but it was just very very interesting.

We learned about one guy who got his head cut off since he took two trips to find El Dorado and was unsuccessful and another guy who sailed around the world and about privateers.


We did one page out of the Dress the pirates.  The page we did fit in with the privateers.

We did two pages in this book.  We had only planned to do one but then looking ahead the lad found a page with a cat and a couple of naughty looking rats so OF COURSE we had to do that page as well!  :)

We have started to go through this book called "the big book of questions and answers about Jesus."

We did lesson three today.   it was on how Jesus was both God and man completely and it's difficult to understand but means that Jesus was everything we are but so very much more PLUS he never ever did anything bad.
I need to post a pic of our blow up globe.  I LOVE IT.  It's so immensely portable.  :)  I love  that I can spin it in my hands and there is no weight but air.   It was also affordable.  :)    But I digress.   We used our globe when we talked about pirates today.  One pirate sailed around the world collecting treasures.   We were able to trace his steps and the lad's best guess was that it would have taken him at least 100 hours if not maybe more to do all that travelling.     He thought it interesting that pirates, if they worked for a king or queen were called privateers.

We have started an new art project.

We've taken a book called Imagine a Place

I got this book out for the pictures, I thought they would spawn conversation, but as I looked through it I got to thinking ...wow.. what an interesting book.  I should be able to use this to work with the lad on imagining different things and just seeing how we can imagine different things perhaps even differently from the artist.

It was a great activity for us.    There are fourteen "imagine a place's" in this book so we'll be able to use it over the next three weeks as a regular activity to do. 

here's what we came up with.

these are the words offered us:

Imagine a place...

where you bend and sway

leap and land,

right where a story begins.

 Mine was a long grass with insects leaping and landing.  The grass is being blown by the wind so is bending and swaying, the sky is turning dark and still the grass bends and sways and is filled with colours...just waiting for children to come running through it pell mell on the way home before the rains come.

   The lad's dictation   " there's an island in the middle of the ocean, the waves are always crashing across the island. there are some lizards that can walk on water.   and for them to walk on the water means they have flaps on their feet that make bubbles and they require to be light, to make bubbles and also speed.   and nothing else."

 This is the picture that we looked at after we finished our own drawings.  We found this picture quite interesting...how the rocks and children leaping from stone to stone turned into a castle/town that people could peer down into.   

and then we watched the Velveteen Rabbit again.  I like it, it's a well done story. :)


I neglected to add that we played two games today.
Jenga (good for motor control, logic and just fun)
Catopoly - math skills, following rules, being a good sport and such like.