The Clown of God

The Clown Of God (6/13 - 6/16 and 6/20 - 6/24/2011)

We spent two leisurely weeks rowing this beautiful book. Again, I mixed the lessons/subjects over the days. This week I picked up a bunch of “go-along” books at the library to extend our learning. One of the things I picked up was a kids Italian language CD, with common kids’ songs and words. This was in pretty much daily rotation, all by C1’s choice. She can operate the CD player by herself, and chose to play it often enough that I can say “knees and toes” (from "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes") in Italian weeks later!



On Monday we did a bunch of Social Studies, covering geography, a few words in Italian, a bit of religion - learning about monks, orphans, and the elderly. We also talked about several new vocabulary words. I found a bunch of online resources through homeschooling blogs, to add a coloring map of Italy and Europe, a dot-to-dot of Italy, and copy work. So we did more geography on Tuesday. I also printed a simple stained-glass window design on watercolor paper, and colored it with watercolor pencils. I let C1 “paint” it with water. We also covered our first consonant blends in Progressive Phonics.

Later in the week we did more with art, talking about symbolic detail, medium, and style. When her watercolor paints arrived, she did a lot of experimenting with those. We read some go-along stories, talked about repetition in stories, and story endings. We talked a lot about what keeps the ending of this particular story from being TOO sad. Especially since it took several readings for Mama to get through THIS story without tears!

The Washington Homeschool Organization’s convention was on June 17, so there was no rowing on Friday while I attended that.

The second week, we learned several things about the Renaissance, did some more vocabulary, reading comprehension, a bit more social studies, and C1 asked to watercolor many times. We watched some YouTube videos of juggling, and Mama tried a few times, but C1 was not interested in trying herself. We counted balls and vegetables, and did some grouping - figuring how many different groups of zucchini Giovanni could juggle if there were 21 squashes and he juggled 7 at a time, etc. (using manipulatives, of course).

I loved this story, and our pace was leisurely, but at the end of the second short week, C1 was ready to be done with it, and move on. She was very excited to get to “A Pair of Red Clogs.”  It makes me wonder if stretching our row out is not such a good idea for her.