Homegrown Learners

We're spending time this summer with our beloved Five in a Row titles. They lend themselves to relaxing summer reading, and it's a compact unit study that can be completed in just a week (or two, if you have to squeeze it in between swim lessons and playing with friends!) You can NEVER go wrong with a FIAR book. Since I have an almost ten year old and a six year old, I decided to choose a title from FIAR Volume 1, and also a title from Beyond FIAR. The beautiful thing is that both children are doing both books!

Grandfather's Journey is a beautiful story about the author's grandfather and his journey from Japan to America and back again (many years later). Through beautiful illustrations and seemingly limited text, Allen Say writes about feelings we've all had at one time or another.

These small thumbnail illustrations don't really do the actual book justice, but to see a preview, check out the book through Google books.... it's a treasure.

The book is a Caldecott Medal winner for excellent artwork. We have just scratched the surface in the past two days with activities to go along with the book. The lapbooking elements from Homeschool Share are printed and we've cut them out - now to start assembling our book! Once we finish, I will be writing a full post to put on my Five in a Row page!

Thomas A. Edison, Young Inventor, is the title we are working on with Miss B. My parents live very close to Thomas Edison's winter home in Ft. Myers, FL, so the memories of visiting his home last year are fresh in her mind! We also traveled to some areas in NY (specifically the Erie Canal and some of the Great Lakes) last summer that are talked about in the book as well.

As I read each chapter aloud, we follow the study guide carefully and read about any possible science, art, history (etc..) connections. Today we learned all about the steam locomotive in the mid 1800s. We're also learning about how inquisitive young Tom Edison was and perhaps this curiosity led him to become one of America's greatest inventors.

This book also has a lapbook available through Homeschool Share, which Miss B is working on and I'll share with you in another post!

What are you reading aloud this week? I'm joining Amy, at Hope is The Word, for Read Aloud Thursday ~ you can get some wonderful reading ideas by reading through her blog and then looking at the Read-Aloud Thursday posts!