Today's Learning

This morning, Andrew and I began rowing Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. He like the book and thought it was fun to find the mouse in the last few pictures of the room. When Nicholas joined us, we put paint (the three primary colors) on paper plates for each of them and we colored balloon pictures to match the 4 colors in the story. They enjoyed mixing blue and yellow to make green.

Next we read Follow the Drinking Gourd for Nicholas' FIAR book. It was so neat to see N realize that the drinking gourd is the Big Dipper. Both boys were spellbound and enjoyed the book so much. When we finished, we looked at a map of the United States and talked about the route that was probably taken in the story. Next, the boys packed a lunch of cheese and crackers in a bandana, tied it to a stick and set out to follow the drinking gourd. They played as though they were following the route. They slept in trees (climbed a tree in the back yard and "slept"), drank from the river (hose) and slept in barn cellars (in the workshop). They had so much fun, that they did it again when we were finished. Then they asked for their playmobile sets to play underground railroad. I just love when a subject catches their attention so much.

We looked up slavery and the slave trade in the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History and looked at some of the links ( www.Usborne-quicklinks.com p 325 ). We also found the song Follow the Drinking Gourd online and we listened to it a few times. We've found ourselves singing it through out the day. They also used glitter glue to make a Big Dipper constellation on black construction paper. It amazes me how much they enjoy this sort of thing.

We are doing this experiment right now and as I was explaining that the calcium carbonate and acetic acid combine to make carbon dioxide, they boys were reminded of baking soda and vinegar volcanoes, so they are currently outside making volcanoes for their Lord of The Rings characters to play in.