Clowning Around at Book Club

Tonight we had a meeting of a summer book club at a local church. The kids and I had already gone to the library and chosen some books to go along with the circus theme for tonight. It turns out the favorites for my children were as follows:

Anna - "The Ringmaster's Secret", a Nancy Drew mystery
Grant - "Morris and Borris at the Circus" by B. Wiseman

Having book club at 7 p.m. on a summer night can be a little tough, especially if you have had swimming lessons and played hard all day. I wasn't sure my five year old was going to make it. Here he is on the way to the church:

Thankfully, he can catnap for ten minutes and be just fine when he wakes up, so he was energized and ready to go when we got there!

My friend and her daughter who led the bookclub are very creative and decorated the room with streamers to give the big top effect. They started off by having everyone share a little about their book, and then they served juice, popcorn, and cotton candy. They invited the boys and girls to walk on the tightrope (2x4s) and talk about other circus acts. Then, they brought out the clown costumes! What a way to make a room full of children light up!

Who can resist a red, curly wig and a squeaky nose?

Look at this cutie!

And, how about a pair of clown shoes?

Personally, the jester was the cutest to me (although iPhoto is playing tricks with my red eye reduction tonight!)

Then, the parents were asked to leave the room for a while, while the children concocted their own circus show. My reserved daughter was the ringmaster and did a great job of announcing the acts.

We had a fun time, and are looking forward to the next bookclub meeting!

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Learning to Row

I'm so excited to start using Five in a Row this Fall with my five year old. This list of books for Volume 1 is very impressive:

The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese
Lentil by Robert McCloskey
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno
The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills
Who Owns the Sun? by Stacy Chbosky
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
The Glorious Flight by Alice and Martin Provensen
How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say
Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin
Another Celebrated Dancing Bear by Gladys Scheffrin-Falk
Papa Piccolo by Carol Talley
Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews
The Clown of God by Tomie DePaola
Storm in the Night by Mary Stoltz
Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
(with illustrations by Susan Jeffers)

With Five in a Row you read your child the book for the week (in its entirety) each day, hence "five in a row". The teacher's manual offers lessons for language arts, science, history, geography, and math. I've read through the first few titles and their lessons and it just looks like so much fun. The creators of Five in a Row have a suggested lesson plan in the back of each manual, or you can just choose to do the books on your own time frame. I think we will stick with the suggested time frame since this is one of the largest parts of our curriculum this year.

One of my favorite features are the story discs you can copy and laminate from the back of the book and use these discs (one for each book) to affix to your world map. Or, you can purchase them already in color and laminated from Five in a Row. Many of the homeschool sites offer free lapbook templates for FIAR stories. So, maybe I will be able to pull additional activities from the web. At first, however, I will stick pretty close to the teacher's manual just to keep it simple.

One of the very first books is "The Story About Ping" by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese.

It takes place in China along the Yangtze river. Rowing this book will be especially meaningful for our family because we are close friends with a family who will be returning to China in August to adopt their second child. We have followed their first adoption journey to China and I can't wait to meet baby #2, and also for my children to learn through our FIAR story and my friend's blogging while she is in China!

It is my hope to post while we row and share our journey with these beautiful books!

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Contemplating Freedom

If you're looking for an interesting documentary about the birth of our nation, you should check out the History Channel today. We are taping "America, The Story of Us" all day today and I hope to use this in our study of the Revolutionary War and then with the Pioneers moving westward as well. It really is amazing that we won the war against the British, and just the little bit I have seen of the show today does an excellent job demonstrating this.

This morning's devotion was about a freedom that is available to all people of the world, no matter what country you live in. This freedom comes from Christ Jesus and should be celebrated even more loudly than fireworks on the Fourth of July. So, while we are celebrating the birth of our nation today, let's not forget Christ's birth and the ultimate freedom we have through his love and death on the cross.

May your celebrations be loud, joyful, and safe -- both in celebrating the birth of our nation, and the freedom we have through Christ Jesus!

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