Jeffany: The Browns' Blog

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Upward Basketball: LittleBear Scores A Goal for the Falcons

We were so excited and proud of our little man (#4 with the green shoes) today!!!!

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Five In A Row: The Clown of God

These past two weeks we read another new-to-us book called Clown of God, which tells the life of a juggler in the times of the Renaissance. We also learned about monks and St. Francis of Assisi (who is mentioned multiple times in the book), the Renaissance time period, Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo. We then reviewed what we had learned during Papa Piccolo week about Italy.

We also took Monday the 19th out to study MLK and learn why that was an important day. Then we went back to our Clown of God study. It was a fun two weeks!

We did our usual worksheets (LadyBear and I elected to color)...

We tried a little juggling...

Made some rainbows with our dot markers...

And tried our hand at drawing Giovanni juggling...

We also talked about how we can give God glory in the things that we do...

Overall, we had an enjoyable two weeks and I think this will be a favorite book of both kids for many months to come.

Resources and printables I used for Clown of God can be found at:

Five In A Row Teacher's Manual

My Five In A Row Pinterest Board

Peter Irish Juggling video on Youtube

Go Along Books we used for Clown of God (* indicate ones we especially liked):

*Papa Gatto by Ruth Sanderson

*Look What Came From Italy by Miles Harvey

*Michelangelo by Mike Venezia

*DaVinci by Mike Venezia

*Brother Sun, Sister Moon: Saint Francis of Assisi's Canticle of the Creatures by Katherine Patterson

*Brother Francis and the Friendly Beasts by Margaret Hodges

Brother Sun, Sister Moon: The Life and Stories of St. Francis by Margaret Mayo

*The Renaissance by Jane Shuter

*The Renaissance (Eyewitness Art) by Alison Cole

*Let's Learn Italian Picture Dictionary by the Editors of Passport Books

Making sure our story disk ended up in the right spot with a little help from LadyBear...

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Five In A Row: Very Last First Time Continued...

LadyBear posing with the igloo she and I made together...

We got to build our igloos today! For our very last activity to go along with the Very Last First Time unit, we took turns trying to build some igloos.

I found these jumbo marshmallows at the grocery store and a box of sugar cubes and set the kids to work. I asked them to each build an igloo with both materials and then tell me which one they thought was easier. I ended up helping LadyBear a lot, but LittleBear did pretty well on his own!

We all agreed the marshmallows were much easier to build with, and a few of us may have sampled one :)

Friday, January 9, 2015

Five In A Row: The Very Last First Time

This week, we enjoyed another new-to-us book called the Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews, which is about an Inuit girl named Eva who walks on the bottom of the sea for the first time in search of mussels for her family. LittleBear, LadyBear and I all enjoyed it and I think this is going to be one we'll have to add permanently to our library :)

This week we learned all about the Inuit people group, the Arctic, a bit about Canada, igloos, polar wildlife and more! I think the kids really enjoyed it and I know I did.

Some highlights this week include:

Making Inuit paper dolls!

Creating scenes with an Arctic Toob set that found at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon!

One of the big highlights of the week was our own search for mussels! Granted, here in Central Texas we aren't exactly able to walk on the bottom of the sea, but the Lord was so kind as to make it super cold outside (19 degrees, I think), so our trek to HEB in search of mussels did seem more authentic today than it normally would have.

We actually found them and bought half a pound to bring home. The kids really enjoyed holding them, looking them over, getting to touch and smell them, etc.

Fun with mussels!

Mussels on ice!

Of course, Orbit wanted to know what we were all so interested in and LittleBear happily taught him what he had learned...

After exploring and talking about the mussels (they were still alive), I steamed them in a garlic herb butter and we had them for lunch alongside some super yummy crab cakes. The mussels weren't everyone's favorite, but the crab cakes went over really well. In fact, LittleBear ate two!

I really wanted to try and build an igloo this week with either sugar cubes or marshmallows, but we didn't get to it. Hopefully, I'll squeeze that in tomorrow and update this post with pictures :)