The Hobbit

Jeff started reading The Hobbit to P as a bedtime story. They started on Friday, and have read a little bit each day since. P seems very into the book, and wants to know what is going to happen today now that they've arrived in Rivendale (Chapter 3).

Egypt, Snow White, and vocabulary

Read E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, Chapter 3: "The Land Beside The Nile"; discussed mummies, pyramids, hieroglyphics, pharoahs, and obelisks.

P read Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the read-along book than comes with the tape). We worked on his slowing down and enunciating, and discussed how reading silently to ourselves can often occur faster than reading aloud (he was skipping words when reading, because they weren't germaine to the story. Showed great skill at faster reading for himself.).

Discussed some words from Snow White that he didn't know, including: linen, ebony, rage, banished, vain, wept, and chasm.

Glaciers, Ice Age, Tools

Read E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, Chapter 2: "The Greatest Inventors of All Time"

Discussed Ice Age using a glacial extent map and talked about glacier safety, using lines, picks, etc. Learned word "crevasse" and meaning. Briefly talked about copper and bronze age tools.

Brief Summary

• Read Chapter 1 of E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World: "Once Upon A Time".
• Read "It's Mine", a fable by Leo Lionni.
• Read and acted out "What Animals Do", by Richard Scarry.
• Read "It was a dark and storm night" preface to the Donkey Kong Country instruction booklet.
• P read to us, "Catch Me If You Can!" by Bernard Most (A Green Light Reader, Level 2: Grades 1-2)
• P read first 7 pages of Walt Disney's Peter Pan (this is not a summary Peter Pan book).
• Listened to Books On Tape: It's a Small World, 101 Dalmations, Peter Pan.

International Astronomy Day

Following the air show, we went to the planetarium in honor of International Astronomy Day. We got to see a solar telescope and watch a show entitled "Zula Patrol: Under the Weather" that talked about weather and how weather systems on Earth can be found on other planets in the solar system.

Neighborhood Gopher Tortoise

In the middle of the day we came across a gopher tortoise in the neighborhood. We watched how it pulls into its shell, how it walks, how fast it can go, and talked about what it eats. We also learned from the neighbors that this tortoise has been coming to the neighborhood for years! We tried to run home and get something to feed it, but it was gone before we came back.

Measuring Differences

P demonstrated knowledge of different volume measuring sizes today - cup versus gallon, teaspoon versus cup, etc., and which ones were larger than others.

American Heroes Air Show

This afternoon, P, K, and I went to SFCC for a helicopter air show.

We saw various different types of helicopters and P learned some of the controls of a helicopter and how it flies.

We then watched rescue dogs uses their sense of smell to follow trails.

Both children talked about the very small hover helicopter and the bloodhound dog when we came home, and were excited about being able to explore the inside of the helicopter.

Global Domination Risk

Today, P and I spent several pockets of the day playing Risk, for 2 players. We took turns placing our armies and later applying new armies and attacking. Adding is required a lot (P referred to it as a counting game!), and then we consulted a chart we created to determine what the total number of added countries we each controlled was when divided by 3 and rounded up (such that 1, 2, 3 = 1; 4, 5, 6 = 2; 7, 8, 9 = 3; etc.).

Strategy is the point of the game, and that was used to determine whether or not to attack an opponent. Comparisons of army totals (for example, 5 armies on Congo is greater than 3 armies on North Africa, and therefore more likely to succeed) and learning the Roman numerals (I, III, V, X) for the pieces representing the army numbers also was used. Figuring out how to win an entire continent to get the bonus number of armies as well as matching up cards to get more armies was another aspect of the game.

Although we did modify a few of the rules (like the increasing value of the cards), P was very amenable to the rule modification from the sample run with Jeff the day before. P quickly controlled Australia, and my attempts to maintain South America were repeatedly assaulted by P taking over North Africa and attacking from there. I had him read/sound-out/say all the country names, which is hard when Irkutsk is one of them! Near the end, I briefly held North America before he invaded from Asia, and he had Europe for a while before I took out Western Europe and swept through from there. We ended up stopping the game because it was very late, and he definitely was well within a position to completely win.

Dinosaur Dominoes

P and K playing Dinosaur Dominoes, matching the different dinosaur types as Parker tries to sound them out.

Rum Island

P and K and I spent the day at Rum Island, a natural spring along the Santa Fe river. On the way we saw a mother raccoon with her litter of four babies, and discussed springtime and how most animals have their children at this time. We also saw a group of turkey vultures eating at a busy intersection and discussed how they are carrion eaters.

At the spring, we discussed how the spring is fed by fresh water and what causes tannin in the river that makes it so dark. We explored the reeds and grasses along the edge and looked at the different types of fish and dragonflies. We saw several different kinds of boats and discussed how they move through the water. Later we walked through the woods and saw a rattlesnake, and discussed how to identify dangerous snakes and how to avoid them.

Along the way home he spotted the smoke cloud from the Tyler Grade fire and talked about how to identify smoke from a forest fire and various ways of containing such a fire.

Once we got home we practiced how to spell kayak and canoe, and discussed the meaning of a palindrome.