Michael's Main Lesson Block: Folk Tales

Michael just wrapped up a main lesson block on American folk tales. While folk tales are often covered in the Waldorf curriculum in fifth grade, I decided to use a non-Waldorf resource for teaching this block. I'd heard a lot about Moving Beyond the Page, and decided to try it out. Because we're also hitting American geography pretty hard, I decided to go with American Tall Tales and Legends.

Billed as "a homeschooling curriculum for creative, hands-on, and gifted learners," Moving Beyond the Page has been the talk of the message boards this past year. In my opinion, it doesn't live up to the hype. The books' organization is confusing, with information needing to be pieced together from two or three different places. There was a good bit of creative writing involved, but "hands on" seemed to be a bit of an overstatement, with a lot of cutting and pasting and worksheets involved. As far as the claim that it's great for gifted kids, it did not present much of a challenge for my fifth grader.

The best thing this curriculum had going for it was the recommended books: Cut from the Same Cloth and American Tall Tales.

Cut from the Same Cloth: American Women of Myth, Legend, and Tall Tale fills in an empty gap in folk tale canon-- stories of strong, courageous women. Bess Call, Annie Christmas, Old Sally Cato, Sister Fox, and Otoonah are just a few of the tales told. The stories represent America's rich multicultural heritage as well, featuring women from Native American, African American, Mexican American, and Canadian backgrounds.

American Tall Tales by Adrien Stoutenberg tells the tale of eight American folk heroes: Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Stormalong, Mike Fink, Davy Crockett, Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, and Joe Magarac. These were a quick, no-nonsense read... other than the nonsense of the tall tale of course! Last of all, we used some Stephen Kellogg's picture books to fill in the gaps.

Katie Grace's favorite way to practice her spelling words: while skipping rope!
And of course, Daniel wants to do it too.

I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed... First Fan Fiction!

So, it's not a big secret that we're huge Harry Potter fans around here. We are, after all, the family that had Hogwarts Summer School not one, but two, summers in a row. On any given night, at least two (and usually more!) of my kids are listening to the audio books recorded by Jim Dale. We all dressed up to buy the last book.


What might be a secret is that I am a huge fan of (OK, and even have written some!) Harry Potter fan fiction.

And since children tend to imitate what they see around them, it should not have shocked me when Michael decided to dabble in a little fan fiction of his own. What did shock me, however, was the content:
Harry Potters Sixth Year

Cho Chang Gets Jealous

First of all, if you are wondering why J.K Rowling didn’t put this in the book it is because she is dumb and didn’t think of it.

Harry and Ginny were sitting in the three broomsticks. Harry was sipping a Butterbeer, and Ginny was stuffing her face with pie. (She’s fatter than she seems.) They chatted for awhile when Cho Chang came in. Harry new this was not a good thing as she had her wand drawn. She strode toward Harry and Ginny and said, “ I went to Madam PuddyFoots but you were not there.”

Harry said, “You think I am going back in there, after all the confetti that went into the toilet. Why are you here anyway, I have other friends now, right Ginny.”

“ Oh Yah”. They fist bumped and drew there wands. Now I must tell you that really there were no unforgivable curses. The “ Unforgivables were just spells. So it turned out that the three were dueling to the death. Finally, Ginny said, “ All right Cho duel to the death, winner gets to be Harry’s girlfriend.”

Cho made a fist pump and said, “ Girl, You Are SO ON!” They fought and fought. Green lights flashed everywhere. Ginny was on the fat side of the bacon. At last Cho made her mistake. Ginny shot a killing curse at her and Cho shouted “Protego!”

Before the jet of light reached Cho Ginny shouted “ REDUCTO! The shield shattered and the killing curse hit her right in the chest.

So Ginny was Harry’s girlfriend for a long time. And all because Cho didn’t make the D.A meeting were Harry showed them the curse , Reducto!

And the fact that he got his sister to partner with him to make some fan art:


Cheery, isn't it?

Book Club: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
-Roald Dahl

Today was the second meeting of the Homeschool Book Club. I need to come up with a catchier title. I had meant to blog after the first meeting, but life got in the way.

We're meeting once a month at our fabulous library. The original plan was a Writer's Workshop that met on the second Monday and a Book Club that met on the fourth. I don't think the writing club is going to work out, but the Book Club is a hit!

We planned the following for this quarter:
September: Because of Winn Dixie
October: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
November: Sarah Plain and Tall
December: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

I do need to get better at planning because we either don't get to everything I hope to, or we run out of stuff to do.

Today we started out with a discussion. Some of the questions were:
Do you think each of the Golden Ticket winners deserved to win the tour of the factory? Why or why not?

Do you think the five children were changed by their experiences inside the chocolate factory? (Alas, the readers didn't feel anyone but Charlie had changed. There was hope that some of the parents would change, however, and thus effect a change in their children.)

Have you ever been tempted to eat something you shouldn't? (This was particularly amusing as a baby in attendance had just attempted to eat her shoe.)

How did greed come into play with each character?

I also read some passages from Roald Dahl's autobiography, Boy, which really showed how important sweets and chocolates were to him as a child. At his boarding school, the scholars actually tested chocolates for the Cadbury factory! "Sweets were our lifeblood," wrote Dahl. The readers all seemed to understand the sentiment.

Afterwards, we created our own candy bars and decorated candy bar wrappers which we then slipped over chocolate bars brought from home. We made a few for the library staff as well, because the surest way to be sure we're unvited back to the library is to feed the library ladies chocolate.

I also found a few worksheets online that I copied for parents to take home.

What I wish we had time for:
I had paper and would have loved for the children to make replicas of Whangdoodles, Oompa Loompas, Snozzwangers. and Hornswogglers. It would have been fun to make a mobile out of them and ask if it could be displayed.

Another fun idea would have been to write a newspaper article about an event from the book: a review of a new candy bar, an interview with a Golden Ticket winner (both before and after!), an advertisement for a new kind of candy.

It also would have been fun to do a real cooking project, melting down some chocolate and adding different toppings.

Other books you might enjoy:
Alas, this is something else I had no time for. Here is a list of other books along the same vein:

The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling
Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
Boy by Roald Dahl
The Story of Chocolate by Caryn Polin
Revolting Recipes and Even More Revolting Recipes by Raold Dahl

Get your adverbs here!

Michael has been reviewing adverbs this week. Besides some fun main lesson book entries, here are some other things we've looked at:

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly


Ly from The Electric Company (Boy, this brought back memories!)

Book Day!

Since it's just myself and the little boys, we had a book day!

First, Nicholas chose five books from our bookshelves. His choices were:
More, More, More, Said the Baby, by Vera Williams
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr
The Talking Eggs by Robert D. San Souci
Adelita by Tomie dePaola
Pelle's New Suit by Elsa Beskow

We took each story one at a time, and spaced them out throughout the day.

After reading More, More, More, Said the Baby--one of my all-time favorites, by the way, both for the text and the effortless way it portrays multicultural families--we had fun playing with the baby. We played lots of piggy toes tickles, including one of my favorites:

This little cow eats grass.
Wiggle little toe and make munching sounds.
This little cow eats hay.
Wiggle the next smallest toe, more munching.
This little cow drinks water.
Wiggle next toe and make slurpy noises.
And this little cow runs away.
Grab the next toe and then tickle your fingers up to Baby's head.
But this big cow does nothing
But just lie around all day.
Grab the biggest toe and make snoring noises.
So... we'll chase her and we'll chase her and we'll chase her away!
Tickle that baby!

Daniel, of course, had lots of practice making the "more" sign and Nicholas and I played with the Mmmmmmmm sound and found other words that started with mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Also, much toe tasting occurred.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear was fun. We made a "favorite color" collage. First, Nicholas painted the inside of a shoe box lid his favorite color-red. Then he added some red foam hearts, snippets of red ribbon, and red tissue paper.

Later, when we walked to pick yo the car from the shop, Nick had a great time echoing the chant from the game. "Nicholas, Nicholas, what do you see? I see a grey squirrel looking at me!"

The Talking Eggs is a favorite family fairy tale. It's a Louisana take on a tale about a sister who is good and kind and is rewarded, and another who is mean and hateful and suffers the consequences.

After we read it, we cut out some egg shapes. Nicholas is big into ovals lately (who gets this kid? Not me!) He decorated the eggs, some plain and some "jeweled" with stickers. Then he dictated a wish for me to write on each egg.

Adelita is another one of those books that I'm amazed he'll sit through. I mean, generally he has the attention span of a gnat, but he'll listen to a story forever.

Adelita is a Mexican Cinderella story. Nicholas loves this book, and we tasted some Mexican food for lunch today.

Finally, we had Pelle's New Suit. This is one of Nick's favorites, and we haven't done the activity yet. Hopefully we'll felt a sun for the nature table before the week is out.

Scranimals

This week we're participating in a Kids' Writing Workshop over on MDC based on Jack Prelutsky's book Scranimals.

This first one is Katie Grace's (age 6). It's a Piggolo, a combination of pig and piccolo.

The piggolo squeals
And rolls in the muck.
He gets all dirty
And his holes get stuck.

He goes to his bed
And lies down in the hay.
His mother picks him up
And washes him--YAY!

He squeals a shrill
And whistling tune.
He squeals so loudly
That it bounces off the moon.

And here is Michael's (9). It's the Avocadness Monster, a combination of the Loch Ness Monster and an avocado.

Some think you're scary
And enormously hairy,
But I think you're sweet
'Cause if you're real, your to eat.
The Avocadness Monster
Might be real or not, sir,
But one thing is sure--
If you're a fruit, we want more!