A Pair of Red Clogs

This week our story for school time was A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno. We enjoyed reading about Japan and Anastasia really connected with the emotion of the story. The poor girl's shoes were broken; she really seemed moved by that every time we read the story. Anastasia was also able to point to Japan on our little laminated map of the world by the end of the week, which I think is amazing! Anyway, Tristan seemed to enjoy the story too, but maybe not as much as some of the others.
 We talked about the culture of Japan and how Japan is a group of islands.
 We talked about weather and how weather is forecast. We kept a weather forecast log of predicted and actual weather for the week. Turns out it was a really rainy week. You can tell that the children's drawings of rain and clouds are pretty abstract.

We also did a fun activity making rain come through shaving cream clouds. They enjoyed that one. I got this idea from bath activities for kids.

We also made a fun kimono crafts, colored the Japanese flag, practiced coloring with colored pencils (the medium used for the illustrations used in A Pair of Red Clogs) and we practiced drawing people.  

By Friday, we were pretty much feeling restless from all the rain and being cooped up inside all week. What a great time to pull out the gingerbread house kit that's been in our pantry since Christmas. The kids enjoyed putting it together and of course, they had some of the extra candy too. Thankfully the sun came out full this beautiful Saturday and we were able to hit up the local playground. Hooray for the outdoors!