Musical Families

I got about halfway through this post yesterday before hearing the pitter-patter of Elias' little feet, having woken up from a nap. He brought me Stop That Ball! to read, and that, as they say, was that.

After I read Lentil ( a boy who can't sing or whistle, but learns to play the harmonica and saves the day with his gift for music) for myself, I instantly thought of Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom. If you've never seen it (shame on you!), it's a Disney short demonstrating the four families of musical instruments and how they have evolved over time. I found it on youtube and plopped down with the boys to watch. They loved it, and were cackling at the caveman banging on his own stomach and head like drums, and the stringed instruments which kept breaking on their players throughout history.

From there, I came up with our bulletin board. I flipped over the blue wrapping paper from the Ping board, and hand-drew and cut out letters. Then I went to print a musical instrument from each of the four families, only to find our printer is out of ink. So I drew them instead. I only spent a few minutes on each drawing, and I'm sure it shows, but, I reminded myself, it's a board for a 4-year old, and he didn't seem to notice.
 

I wrote down the names of several musical instruments on slips of paper, and we talked about each one. He knew what many were already, but for the ones he wasn't sure about, I pulled up pictures or videos on youtube. When we were done going over all the slips, we taped them to the board with their family. Many instruments got left out, but I think he has a good handle on how to classify them when they come up later.

Some of the youtube videos we watched:

He already knows what a violin is, but what a sweet, beautiful clip. One of the morals in Lentil is that just because you can't do one thing very well, that doesn't mean there isn't something you can be excellent at-- everyone is given different gifts. I remembered this segment from Sesame Street and cried watching it.

We're a Nintendo family, so this one got his attention right away. I don't think he'll soon forget the bassoon. ; )

He told me I could leave this video playing while we talked about the other instruments, and with a huge smile, that's just what I did. It's probably one of the most beautiful things to listen to. I love the lute.

Absolutely gorgeous. I need to listen to instrumental music more often. It puts me in another place.


And finally,

I switched gears completely and we talked about some instruments that are made from ordinary objects. Okay, maybe I just wanted an excuse to watch this little slice of Jim Henson awesomeness.  I also showed him a video of someone playing the spoons, and another to teach him what a washboard is typically used for. We're going to make our own instruments at some point this week. I already made a humming instrument from a paper towel tube, a piece of wax paper and a rubber band, but Jonah found more delight in blowing into it to launch the wax paper than playing music with it. Stinker.


Originally, this post also included our taste bud experiment, but this is long enough already, so I'll stick it in its own entry.

O-hi, Ohio, Round on the End, "Hi" in the Middle!

Our second FIAR title is Lentil, a story about a boy, set in a small Ohio town.

 I taught Jonah how to spell "Ohio" with a friendly little song from Space Ghost Coast to Coast. In the song, Brak (my secret boyfriend) sings that "Ohio" is round on the end (O and o) and "hi" in the middle. The rest of the song is pretty ridiculous. Something about chicken nuggets in his pants. : ) Only someone as silly as me would listen to and enjoy music like that.

Then we built a train out of Krinkle Blocks. Pretty cute, right?

Elias made himself a ramp and was having so much fun pushing his cars up and down it, and even modifying it to make it longer. Anthony and I were very impressed.

Using the story and pictures as a guide, we recreated the town of Alto, Ohio with blocks, and Colonel Carter arrived there in a locomotive.

Then we told Jonah to go ahead and destroy Alto with the locomotive. You can tell he didn't like this part whatsoever. : ) At least the school's still standing!

Later, Jonah decided he wanted to plant his sunflower. I tried to find a connection between Ohio and sunflowers, but didn't come up with much, except, you know, they grow there.

After adding water and fluffing the soil with a fork, Jonah put most of the soil in the pot.

Cute!

He counted out ten seeds to be planted. There are more in the package to plant another time.

Elias planted some seeds, too.

We covered the seeds gently with the rest of the soil.

Here's our plant! Hope it will grow nice and tall. : )

I found the first yellow leaf of the year from our cherry tree. Elias held it up for me to take a picture. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Jonah is excited that fall is near (not nearly as near as I'd like.. it's 94º outside today!). Here he was talking about getting candy. We don't celebrate Halloween, but we do hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, and I always reserve a little stockpile for us before the doorbell starts ringing. : ) 

I have more to post already, since I haven't been posting at all this week. It takes so long to upload and edit photos, but the kids are napping, so I might as well take advantage.

Leftovers

I had these lofty plans to take pictures of our Chinese meal as I was preparing it, with Jonah's help, and to make place cards, festify (I have a serious condition which causes me to make up ridiculous words. There is no cure.) the playroom with the paper lanterns I thrifted, find some appropriate Chinese music to enhance the ambiance, get everyone all dressed up..lalala. Almost none of it happened.

I got the place cards made, and made a puzzle out of Jonah's for him. I cut out the letters of his name, gave them to him along with a piece of construction paper, and had him arrange the letters in the correct order. At first, Mister Clever arranged J-O-N and gave me back the A and H, saying. "See, J-O says "jo" and "N" says "nuh". Jonah!". I told him he was sort of right, but that "N" really says "nnn", so he tried and tried again, until he got it. I cut out Elias' name and arranged it for him, and Jonah came in from the other room and pointed at the "E-L-I" I had glued down and exclaimed, "That says Eli!" Okay, it could've been a pretty well-educated guess, since he already knew what I was making, but I like to think he sounded it out in his head. : ) I did a "Mom" and a "Dad", and we were all supposed to decorate our names with crayons. Jonah and Elias colored theirs, and that's all that happened. Mine and Anthony's are still plain.

By the time that was done, it was time to start cooking. I rinsed and soaked long-grain rice, then steamed it and set it aside. Then I chopped and sauteed each of the vegetables, individually, to be included in our chicken chop suey, which took forever. I sauteed onion, mushrooms, zucchini, snap peas, broccoli, carrots, bok choy, and then the chicken, made the sauce, and then added in baby corn and water chestnuts. I fried half of the steamed rice with egg and scallions, threw some frozen potstickers in the skillet, and finally it was time to eat.

By then, the kids were as exhausted as my feet, and we didn't feel like sitting on the floor in the playroom anymore. We sat in front of the tv in the living room and enjoyed our meal. Jonah ate his rice and chicken, but picked at the vegetables. Elias dipped his vegetables in the pot sticker sauce and gobbled them down happily, and then we all went to bed.

No lanterns were lit or hung, no music, no fancy clothes, no fortune cookies (I forgot them in the cupboard! How could I forget the best part?! I was just that tired.) and no photos. Jonah didn't even get to help make dinner. Instead he helped keep Elias busy, which I appreciated but was probably not as fun for him. I need to start cooking quick things with him while Elias is napping. He really enjoys standing on a chair next to Mom and cracking eggs, dumping spices, mixing with the big wooden spoon.

So that's how we sent off Ping Week. A few forgotten leftovers have bled into this week: I lit the lanterns the other night and set them on my desk, and the boys were crazy-thrilled:

And yesterday we went to the park and I brought the bubbles in duck containers that were meant to be given out as prizes for Ping Trivia that never really happened, at least not in any formal way. It was nice and windy so the bubbles blew themselves with no help from us.

I am always going to have lofty plans, and they are only going to get carried out a small percentage of the time, because I am just not that great at this, and maybe I never will be. But I'm trying.

We're still eating leftover chop suey. I think I made enough to feed everyone living on the Yangtze River.

Painting, Poison Oak and Poison Thinking

Last Tuesday was the only day that we actually had a classroom learning day. Wednesday was our field trip, Thursday was a big flop-- Jonah practiced printing letters and numbers, and we did a Story Bowl (kind of like Mad Libs, but with story parts drawn out of a bowl at random and pieced together to form a story) which I made into a book for Jonah to illustrate. He's done a few pages, painstakingly, and we'll finish when we finish.

I also read Jonah the story of Jonah, from one of our Alice in Bibleland books (I keep finding new volumes of this series at every thrift store we visit, and I love them. They're so well written-- with a child's attention span in mind, and beautifully illustrated). I talked with him about how Ping and Jonah were in a similar predicament, and learned a similar lesson, and showed him pictures from each book side by side which are remarkably similar. I want to make a separate post just for that, because it was that neat of a discovery for me. : )

I can forgive myself a little for such a lackluster day, since Thursday morning we woke up splotchy with poison oak from our trip to the park-- Jonah decided to limbo underneath a chain bordering the parking lot, and must've touched a plant, which I then must've touched helping him up. I really didn't get it that bad.. not nearly as bad as I have in the past, but it was itchy and it was putting a damper on my mood and my motivation. Jonah has thankfully not been too itchy, though I'm assuming it's because this is the first time he's been exposed and next time won't be so kind to him.

Writing it all out, it seems like we really did accomplish a lot, but the overriding feeling I had during the week was that I was failing. I need to accept that not every day will be like that first day, where everything flowed smoothly and it actually felt like school. We just always seem to have so much going on, and it's hard and sometimes just not possible to balance it all, and to create and stick to a routine. Sigh. I need to ease up and be grateful for what we've done so far. The important thing is that we do something, and that whatever that something is, we enjoy it.

Friday I cut out a duck for sponge-painting.

Daddy came outside with us and we painted water with a bunch of blue and green acrylics.

Jonah decided to paint a "blue rainbow", which he later covered up.

After covering his paper, Elias made sure to get good and messy by painting himself.

Mid-painting, Jonah was glomped by the Glomp of Glomp Swamp.

Then Elias' paintbrush transformed into a phone. Did he get paint in his hair? He sure did.

The sky needed another coat.

I forgot to get pictures of the actual sponge-painting, but this is Jonah's finished work. His favorite part (and mine) is the glint of the sun he painted on the water. : )

This morning we did a math and grouping lesson, counting Ping, his mother and father, 2 sisters, 3 brothers, 11 aunts, 7 uncles and 42 cousins.

Elias showing me an egg I drew a face on when I was talking to Jonah about angles used in illustration (Anthony is behind him shining a mirror onto the wall to show Jonah how shiny surfaces reflect). I talked a little about Picasso (whom I am clearly not). Elias fell in love with the egg and didn't want to put it back in the fridge. He also greatly enjoys it when I draw little faces on his fingers and toes. : )

Tomorrow is our last day of Ping, and we're celebrating with a special Chinese dinner. Yum! I can't wait.

A Wednesday Field Trip

When I learned we would be reading The Story About Ping, I knew one of the things I wanted to do during that week was to take the boys to look at and feed some ducks.
Because of my husband's work schedule, any field trips we take need to be on Monday or Friday, but my friend Claire came to visit on Wednesday and Jonah invited her to come and feed the ducks with us, so she was kind enough to take us in her car.
We drove toward the local wildlife preserve, but it was closed, and a park near a river a few miles further that I thought may have some ducks turned up empty, so we let the kids play at the park for a little while and then drove back to town, where, funnily enough, on the way to get some shoes for Elias the Incredible Growing Boy before leaving town, I'd seen some ducks swimming in the canal by McDonald's.
In addition to being our transportation, Claire was also kind enough to lend her photography skills. I was grateful, especially since though I remembered to bring my camera, I forgot the memory card at home. Her camera is much nicer and we have some really lovely photos to remember the day.

We took along some bread and walked down the gravel path to feed the ducks.

There were many white ducks, which I told Jonah used to be yellow like Ping.

We attracted their attention before we even opened our bread. I'm guessing they get a lot of visitors.

Jonah throwing some bread.

He enjoyed watching and talking to the ducks.

Elias enjoyed the ducks, too.

I think they were happy to see us.

I'm glad there are ducks so close by. We must have passed them a hundred times and never really noticed.

First Day

I know I said I'd start with an introduction post, but I am so completely drained and not in the mood. Instead, here is our first day of school, in pictures.

We started our day at 8:30, with a little help from Starbucks for Mom, and breakfast for the kids. We listened to some tunes while we ate, said the pledge, and then dug right in.

Before reading The Story About Ping, I asked Jonah to tell me some facts he already knows about ducks. He thought of some good ones.

After the story, we talked about the moral behind it, and we talked about how big the Yangtze river is, and what it must be like to live in China, and on a boat. 

Then he colored a duck. He's getting really good at holding crayons the right way.

I kept Elias busy for a few minutes, playing "toss foam cubes into the basket".

Then the cat bit his elbow and he was no longer in the mood for games.

Probably his best coloring job to date. A well-deserved sticker.

The boys took a bath and had a snack, to refocus and refuel.

: )

Elias was cracking himself up while he munched his grapes.

After we got home from speech therapy, Elias took a nap, so Jonah and I had fun experimenting with different ways to move the balloons in the water with a straw. He could've kept doing this all day.

Then Jonah got in some phonics and reading practice with Starfall.com. He was so persistent when it came to sounding out words today, which is not at all like him, so I was very surprised and impressed. 

After that, Elias was still napping, so Jonah and I made a cardboard top. : )

He helped clean up our mess. His eyelashes are not fair.

While we waited for our top to dry, I had him waddle like a duck. A silent duck, who doesn't wake his brother.

Thirsty duck!

After Dad was done with work, the top was dry. I cut a slit in the center and poked a crayon through. It spins pretty well!

Elias got it to spin a few times, too.

Dad is silly.

I think the top came out super cute. It was Jonah's idea to use watercolor instead of crayons, and it was also his idea to decorate it with glitter. : )

For our first day, I think we did great. It was somewhat unconventional and not very structured, but that's kind of how we operate as a family anyhow. : )  

I do wish we'd gotten them dressed up to take handsome "first day" pictures, but maybe we'll do that tomorrow. Who cares that it won't technically be the first day? 

I also wish we'd gotten some pictures of me reading our story, but since that's the basis of our daily curriculum, I think we'll have plenty of pictures of that in the months to come. 

My final regret for the day is that we didn't do a devotion or Bible study, which is something I want to be part of each day; something I want us to do without exception. I'm going to read Jonah the story of  Jonah sometime this week, because of the comparative moral to Ping, and we'll start including Bible time daily then.

Time to set up to do it all again tomorrow.