Truman's Aunt Farm
Last week we read the book Truman's Aunt Farm by Jama Kim Rattagan. This is a book introduces the idea of homonyms. Truman asks for ants for his birthday and ends up with a house full of Aunts. The story is silly and unbelievable, the illustrations unrealistic and exaggerated; we enjoyed it. We also enjoyed learning about Ants/Aunts. Our morning Bible time centered around what Proverbs has to say about Ants. We stamped Q-tip ants on a large A, and read about ants and the colonies they make. We discussed how we are related to our aunts and the children wrote letters to their aunts (living in America) just like Truman. We looked through the illustrations of the book and made a list of all the things the aunts are doing on the pages. This reminded me of the Highlights magazine, "What's silly" page.
For math and counting we discussed the cost of sending a letter, how many pennies does a stamp cost now, and how much money do 10 stamps cost? and how many stamps make a book?, a roll? This got a little over the kids heads, so we just went back to counting pennies.
We talked about the phases of the moon and reviewed how the moon revolves around the earth and the earth around the sun. We read a book about the Big dipper and Ann Rockwell's Our Stars. Trying to introduce the idea of constellations, and we read the biography of Henri Matisse called Henri's Stars. This book has nothing to do with stars or constellations, but G. Brian Karas' bright, colorful, idealized illustrations of the story are somewhat reminiscent of Matisse. After we finished the story, I told Tristan that some of the paintings and cut-outs by Matisse are on display at the National Museum of Art in Washington D.C. and that we could go look at them sometime. His eyes got big, and he said, "Wait, this was a true story?" Those are the moments that I really love, and that confirm to me that real books are the way I should teach. At every age level there are real books telling true stories. Learning about people and places is interesting and memorable. We made glitter moon and stars, a star gazer out of a paper towel roll and also a silly craft glue-ing magazine cut-outs of mismatched people. By mixing the heads, arms, torsos and accessories of magazine people we were able to achieve unrealistic illustrations of people, similar to the illustrations of the book. Anastasia really enjoyed this project (she likes to glue) and her people ended up sitting on their heads and things like that. Sometimes you need to take things less seriously.
This story is humorous and fun; our week of school was as well. Tristan practiced his own story telling and told a complicated story about a boy who solved a problem with love and kindness, much like Truman.
It's fun to look at life from a child's perspective sometimes and I tried to see things as they see them. It is hard. I even take for granted the level of understanding verbally that comes with age. Anastasia gets confused by homonyms all the time, and I don't know why she's confused until I realize that the word I am using has multiple meanings, or sounds like another word. I say things like, I can't bear this! and she asks me a few minutes later why was I talking about a bear? It's fun.
For math and counting we discussed the cost of sending a letter, how many pennies does a stamp cost now, and how much money do 10 stamps cost? and how many stamps make a book?, a roll? This got a little over the kids heads, so we just went back to counting pennies.
We talked about the phases of the moon and reviewed how the moon revolves around the earth and the earth around the sun. We read a book about the Big dipper and Ann Rockwell's Our Stars. Trying to introduce the idea of constellations, and we read the biography of Henri Matisse called Henri's Stars. This book has nothing to do with stars or constellations, but G. Brian Karas' bright, colorful, idealized illustrations of the story are somewhat reminiscent of Matisse. After we finished the story, I told Tristan that some of the paintings and cut-outs by Matisse are on display at the National Museum of Art in Washington D.C. and that we could go look at them sometime. His eyes got big, and he said, "Wait, this was a true story?" Those are the moments that I really love, and that confirm to me that real books are the way I should teach. At every age level there are real books telling true stories. Learning about people and places is interesting and memorable. We made glitter moon and stars, a star gazer out of a paper towel roll and also a silly craft glue-ing magazine cut-outs of mismatched people. By mixing the heads, arms, torsos and accessories of magazine people we were able to achieve unrealistic illustrations of people, similar to the illustrations of the book. Anastasia really enjoyed this project (she likes to glue) and her people ended up sitting on their heads and things like that. Sometimes you need to take things less seriously.
This story is humorous and fun; our week of school was as well. Tristan practiced his own story telling and told a complicated story about a boy who solved a problem with love and kindness, much like Truman.
It's fun to look at life from a child's perspective sometimes and I tried to see things as they see them. It is hard. I even take for granted the level of understanding verbally that comes with age. Anastasia gets confused by homonyms all the time, and I don't know why she's confused until I realize that the word I am using has multiple meanings, or sounds like another word. I say things like, I can't bear this! and she asks me a few minutes later why was I talking about a bear? It's fun.
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