Leaving China and Starting Japan

How is it Friday again already?  We did Tuesday work today, so I'm very confused.  

We will, of course, continue with more China related activities during Chinese New Year, but our main time of learning about China from our curriculum has drawn to a close.  This is a little sad for me, because I love China, and I want my girls to love it, too.  But we have to move on and learn about other places.  

One of the reasons I like the Apologia elementary science series is that the notebooks contain lots of projects, experiments, summaries, and things to do, rather than just reading and answering questions.  

Hannah said, "I've made these lanterns at every school I've ever gone to."  All 3 of them, including our house.  

Chinese tangram puzzles.  I printed up a few pages of picture ideas for them to make.  

Good critical thinking skill, especially the ones where all the pieces of the suggested picture are the same color.  

Year of the Ox library bags.  One went downstairs without me getting a picture.  

New markers arrived, and I'm not delighted.  Several of them are too light to use, and a couple look like the tips have never been inked at all.  I did leave a review on Amazon to caution other buyers.  

Of course, that doesn't stop Grumman from cozying up with them and being right in the middle of things.  And Katie is happy to have blue again.  

First we drew, then we colored, then we brushed with water, then we added characters.

Remember how we busted out the watercolor crayons last week?  That went so well, I decided we'd try watercolor pencils, too.  I have the Staedtler ones, and the girls have a set of Faber-Castell brand.  

This was a project from a Home Art Studio DVD.  I love these videos.  My standard disclaimer for them is don't go by the grade levels.  The projects appeal to a w-i-d-e variety of ages.  This project is from the 4th grade DVD; my girls are 5th and 8th.  We've also done a few projects from the 2nd grade DVD this year.  

The characters on mine mean "attempt" or "try."  Katie's says "mountain."  Hannah's says "red mountain."  

This is what happens when big brother walks through the school room in the middle of a lecture on Japanese haiku poetry.  Collaborative poem; artwork mine.  

Very happy to have blue backgrounds again for our bunny pictures.  No, not an early jump on Easter.  The rabbit is one of the Chinese zodiac animals.  

Miss Katie finished another spelling book.  We're weird.  She did weeks 11-18 in Jack's old Level F book.  Then I got her Level G, and we've done 18+ weeks in 14 calendar weeks.  The goal is to finish both Level G books this school year, even though we started them in school week 13.  She's been a great sport about it.  Our approach is two-fold.  We do spelling on Saturdays, whether we're "doing school" or not.  And on the last day of each lesson, we test, then turn the page and do the first day of the next lesson.  So she's never doing the same lesson twice in one day, but we're still clipping along at a nice, speedy, rate.  Not sure if we'll get the remaining 17 lessons done in the next 11 weeks of school, but we're going to try.  

Last year's Valentine dresses from Zulily still fit!  These were drawings the girls did to go with their ocean haikus from the previous day.  My plan was to have them write their haikus over the drawing.  I guess I should have had them use colored pencils for this one.  

The sun, streaming through the sewing room window in the morning, illuminated Grumman's floof.  

Learning about Japan means trying out some origami!  

I feel like we have another origami book around here somewhere, but I haven't run across it yet.  

See that silver car?  That's Josiah, driving off to work by himself for the first time.  Paul told the kids they had to pay for their own auto insurance, so most of them have chosen not to drive while living at home.  Now that Josiah is working, he's purchased insurance.  I'm proud of my boy, and excited to see him adulting.  

My text to Eli.  We were working on another watercolor project that I'll share with you next week.  We've been using old detergent cups as our paint water containers.  

Grumman adds a lot to my days.  I can't imagine going through Shelter In Place without a companion animal.