FIAR: The Story of Ping

This was Mercie's first week using Five in a Row. We "rowed" the book "The Story About Ping", and it was a lot of fun! She had a great time, and is excited about next week already.

Mercie is 7, in the 2nd grade.

On Monday, we read the story. She was really nervous the whole time that Ping would not get back to his family! When we finished the book, she said, "I should have known that books always have happy endings." So sweet!

We talked about ducks and how their feathers have a special oil to keep them waterproof. We did a simple experiment to show this. She cut out two duck shapes from a paper bag, and "painted" vegetable oil on one of them. Next, she used a medicine dropper to drop water on both ducks. The one with oil didn't absorb the water; instead, it bubbled up on top. The duck without oil absorbed the water and got wet.

Then, I poured oil into a glass of water. Mercie was amazed how the oil fell to the bottom, and then quickly rose to the surface of the water. She stirred it up, trying to mix them. She thought it was funny that they wouldn't mix, and that the oil kept coming to the surface! She laughed when she made an "oil tornado" in the water!

After that, Mercie looked in our Animal Encyclopedia and read about ducks. She then filled in a page in her "Do It Yourself Animal Book". I am going to have her use this to keep a journal of all the animals we read about in FIAR.

 

On Tuesday, we talked about China, since that is where the Yangtze River is. She colored the flag and drew the river on the map. We cooked chicken fried rice, too.

 

 

I also had her define 3 vocabulary words from the book: barrel, scurry, and paddle. She noticed all by herself that those words had double consonants! {I didn't even recognize it!} She got a little practice looking in the dictionary, but I had to help.

 





On Wednesday, we talked about ducks some more. I found a poem in the Fold 'n Learns about a duck going "bottom side up" to eat. It was really cute, and I had Mercie find the illustration in the book that fit the poem and draw it. She did a great job.

She also made a mini-duck book with pictures and names for several different types of ducks. She remembered reading about some of them in her Animal Encyclopedia.

We found China on the map and talked about continents and countries {still confusing to her.}

On Thursday, we counted all of Ping's family members - all 68 of them! We worked a few math problems from the book. We played our continents and oceans game a few times. She is getting much faster! When she masters the continents and oceans, we start on countries.

On Friday, I had her draw a summary page and the life cycle of a duck.

In math, she worked on mental addition and subtraction. I printed her some daily grammar practice sheets from SchoolhouseTeachers.com to use this week. She worked in her Fun-Schooling Spelling Journal and her Bible Time  Kids Devotion Journal.

She enjoyed this week and loved doing Five in a Row. She is already talking about next week! We will be rowing "Grandfather's Journey".

How was your week?

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