Finest Horse in Town
Last week our Five in a Row recommended book was The Finest Horse in Town by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. This imaginative story involves two sisters that run a general store and own the finest horse in town. The setting of the story is Maine, around the turn of the century (early 1900's). Jacqueline Briggs Martin's inspiration for the story came from two of her mother's aunts, who managed a general store in a small town in Maine; she built the story from there. The kids and I enjoyed this story, though it is a very different style than we are used to. There are three imaginary stories within this book, each involving the sisters and their prized horse. The real and imaginary parts of the book blend together, and we had a difficult time following what was happening. Thankfully, the Five in a Row model involves reading the same book every day, and by day 3 we understood and began to enjoy the imaginative tale. We even wrote a few additional stories of our own using the sisters and "Prince" as the main characters.
We diagramed the book using pictures to represent the three distinct stories and we talked about some of the important principles from the stories, like how the sisters gave gifts to people to say "thank-you".
The illustrations are water color and I introduced the American artist, Winslow Homer. He excelled in watercolor and lived in Maine. (I used the book 13 American Artists Children Should Know by Brad Finger.)
We attempted to make "layered" landscape artwork using strips of paper and magazine cut-outs. That didn't work out. Anastasia cut hers to pieces (good use of scissors for a two year old!) and Tristan's paper turned into an animal collage. At least the animals are layered. We attempted to draw flags waving in the wind. There are some fun and easy on-line tutorials. Tristan made a beautiful flag inspired by the American flag. His drawing abilities are impressive. Anastasia stunned me with a spiraling piece of art. Concentric circles surrounding three faces. She said it was Mommy, Tristan and Gwendolyn.
Our math concepts for the week were 100 and all the words that mean one hundred(percent, century, a cent, centipede). We read the book Centipede's 100 Shoes by Tony Ross. Not as applicable as I hoped. We also learned to count by two's figuring out how many pennies the children would earn if they worked one week, one month, a year? And we revisited telling time. Telling Time with Kittens and Puppies (Puppy Kitten Math) by Patricia J. Murphy helped build on what we already know and helped build on our (Tristan's) ability to tell time and read clocks. We thought of all the phrases we use that use the word time. It's amazing how often the word is used in our every day speech... all the time!
We read the book The Ice Horse by Candace Christiansen and some other books about horses. We have quite a few in our personal library! We discussed how to take care of horses, the tasks horses are able to accomplish and how horses have been replaced by modern machinery. For example: our freezer makes ice for us; we no longer need horses to bring blocks of ice down from the north.
We read the book Hurray for the Fourth of July! by Wendy Watson, but we weren't able to fit in much else on the fourth of July last week. So, Monday I took the day to help the kids understand America's birthday. The website KidsSoup has great resources and I chose some that worked for us. We pinned stars on Uncle Sam's hat and colored a flag picture, made firework glitter art and ate a red(strawberries), white(bananas), and blue(blueberries) snack. Our book for Monday: The 4th of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh. We found the 13 original colonies on the map and talked about the birth of our nation. I'm not sure how much of the history these guys are retaining at this point. They enjoyed the day and are looking forward to America's upcoming birthday.
We diagramed the book using pictures to represent the three distinct stories and we talked about some of the important principles from the stories, like how the sisters gave gifts to people to say "thank-you".
The illustrations are water color and I introduced the American artist, Winslow Homer. He excelled in watercolor and lived in Maine. (I used the book 13 American Artists Children Should Know by Brad Finger.)
We attempted to make "layered" landscape artwork using strips of paper and magazine cut-outs. That didn't work out. Anastasia cut hers to pieces (good use of scissors for a two year old!) and Tristan's paper turned into an animal collage. At least the animals are layered. We attempted to draw flags waving in the wind. There are some fun and easy on-line tutorials. Tristan made a beautiful flag inspired by the American flag. His drawing abilities are impressive. Anastasia stunned me with a spiraling piece of art. Concentric circles surrounding three faces. She said it was Mommy, Tristan and Gwendolyn.
Our math concepts for the week were 100 and all the words that mean one hundred(percent, century, a cent, centipede). We read the book Centipede's 100 Shoes by Tony Ross. Not as applicable as I hoped. We also learned to count by two's figuring out how many pennies the children would earn if they worked one week, one month, a year? And we revisited telling time. Telling Time with Kittens and Puppies (Puppy Kitten Math) by Patricia J. Murphy helped build on what we already know and helped build on our (Tristan's) ability to tell time and read clocks. We thought of all the phrases we use that use the word time. It's amazing how often the word is used in our every day speech... all the time!
We read the book The Ice Horse by Candace Christiansen and some other books about horses. We have quite a few in our personal library! We discussed how to take care of horses, the tasks horses are able to accomplish and how horses have been replaced by modern machinery. For example: our freezer makes ice for us; we no longer need horses to bring blocks of ice down from the north.
We read the book Hurray for the Fourth of July! by Wendy Watson, but we weren't able to fit in much else on the fourth of July last week. So, Monday I took the day to help the kids understand America's birthday. The website KidsSoup has great resources and I chose some that worked for us. We pinned stars on Uncle Sam's hat and colored a flag picture, made firework glitter art and ate a red(strawberries), white(bananas), and blue(blueberries) snack. Our book for Monday: The 4th of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh. We found the 13 original colonies on the map and talked about the birth of our nation. I'm not sure how much of the history these guys are retaining at this point. They enjoyed the day and are looking forward to America's upcoming birthday.
Comments