Dragons!

Last week we read two books about Dragons. We had fun, and learned a lot! The first story we read: M.P. Robertson's The Egg, about a boy who finds a dragon egg in his mother's hen house. He raises the egg, and prepares the little dragon for life.


 The second book we read: There's No Such Thing as a Dragon, by Jack Kent. This story is about being noticed. The dragon gets bigger so mother will notice it's there. Then when she admits he's real, he shrinks to a manageable size. Although dragons do not exist (that we know of...) this week provided opportunities to learn about real animals and caves.
Our Vocabulary words came from The Egg: Hatching, Rumble, Damsel, Distress. We also continued working in our Language arts curriculum learning about nouns.
In Math we stuck to the curriculum. Tristan is really doing well with the Saxon math. We both enjoy the structured lesson time as well as the repetition provided by the math meeting. The girls really enjoy the Kathy Troxel addition and subtraction songs (math songs). Math Dance Party! Tristan doesn't care for them, but I can see that they are helping him remember his facts. 
In Geography and Social Studies, we learned the capital of Michigan as well as continued our study of Pennsylvania by reading the Pennsylvania Dutch Alphabet. Luckily Grandma was over that day, and we were able to talk to her about Tristan's own Pennsylvania Dutch heritage.
In Science we learned about Eggs, Chickens, Komodo Dragons, and Caves. Super fun! We also classified the dragon. We classified it as a Reptile. ? The children enjoyed making a blanket cave and playing inside. Tristan could even point out the twilight zone in his cave, he continues to blow me away!
In Art appreciation we read Leonardo's Monster, by Jane Sutcliffe about Leonardo DaVinci and I showed the children a few of his more famous works. The kids were also able to make paper toilet tube dragons. Fun!


Other stories we enjoyed this week:
The Egg, Gallimard Jeunesse and Pascale de Bourgoing (this book appealed to all of my children)
Chickens Camilla de la Bedoyere
Komodo Dragon, Natalie Lunis
Komodo! Peter Sis (such a creative way to present information about the Komodo Dragon)
Caves, Larry Dane Brimmer
Caves, Ellen Labrecque
Pennsylvania Dutch Alphabet, Williamson
Runaway Dragon Kate Coombs (Too much magic in this chapter book. Tristan is enjoying the story, so we'll finish, but I'm skipping paragraphs.)

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