We decided to row the book Lentil this week. Lentil, written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey and is a story set in the fictional town of Alto, Ohio in 1940. The main character of the book is Lentil, a young boy who would like to make music and sing but he can't. He can't even pucker his lips to whistle. :)
Here are a few notes from our week with some pictures as well. I will post pictures of the completed lapbook in another post.
Monday:
* We read the story and talked about what and author and illustrator was and how Robert McCloskey both wrote and illustrated this story.
* Andrew really liked the pictures but thought the story was long. :)
* I introduced our memory verse for the week - Psalm 139:14 "I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well." Lentil was embarrassed that he couldn't sing and so we talked about how sometimes we too can feel bad or embarrassed about ourselves but that Scripture tells us that we are wonderfully made and that all of God's creation is marvelous.
* We placed the story disk on Ohio and talked about what directions we would need to take to travel from our state (Minnesota) to Ohio. Andrew already know his directions very well having traveled to many different states with his dad in the semi.
* I asked Andrew what he liked about the story and he said the pictures and the harmonica. I knew he would mention the harmonica because he had just receveived one for his birthday this last month. We did a musical pattern sheet to add to our lapbook and talked about how to play the harmonica. Here is a neat site with online lessons.
Tuesday
* I had Andrew color and cut out his Ohio shape book for our lapbook while I talked about some fun facts from the state of Ohio. He'll work on writing these facts in over the rest of the book study.
* We talked about life in a small town and compared Alto to our small town.
* The story of Lentil was written in 1940 and so we spent some time contrasting how things were then and how they are now. We looked through the pages and noted things that were different than they are now, such as... all the women and girls wore dresses or skirts, the cars were older, all the children went to a 1 room school house, the men dressed nicely and wore hats, there was a man smoking a pipe (this was something that Andrew has never seen before).
* We reviewed our memory verse and did a printing page of the verse for our lapbook. We continued our discussion on how wonderfully we were created and talked about the different talents and gifts that God has given us. Andrew colored and cut out a matchbook for our lapbook listing some of the talents and gifts that God has given to him. We also read Romans 12:6-8
* We discussed some vocabulary words from the story: embarrassing, monument, citizen and colonel.
* For science today we read some information about the tongue and talked about why things taste sweet, sour, bitter or salty.
{Some of the items we worked on for our lapbook}
Wednesday:
We had the day off of school because we were traveling to visit a friend but I did give Andrew a Ohio state coloring sheet to work on in the van. We will add this to our lapbook.
Thursday:
* Today as we read through the story we discussed what art medium was used in the pictures. Andrew thought it was pen at first but then decided that maybe it was pencil instead. I tried to explain to him what charcoal was but it was hard for him to understand. I wish I would have asked my dad to borrow some to me when we met him on Monday.
* We worked in our Ohio shape book, writing down some interesting facts. Such as Ohio was the 17th state added on March 1, 1803, 7 U.S. Presidents were born in Ohio, the hotdog was invented in 1900 by a man living in Ohio. :)
* We reviewed the information we read about tastebuds and did a tasting experiment on what things are sweet, sour, salty and bitter. We worked on assembling a small book on this taste test for our lapbook.
* We sucked lemons like Old Sneep did and then talked about how adding some sweetness (joy) to the lemon juice (bitterness) can change everything.
{Andrew couldn't stop laughing, he couldn't believe I was going to make him suck on a lemon like Old Sneep.}
{Ready. Set. Go!}
{Not too bad}
{Brother Christopher had to try too}
* After we finished sucking lemons we made homemade lemonade
* Reviewed Psalm 139:14
Friday
* Revied psalm 139:14 - Andrew has it memorized now
* We colored a U.S. Flag, talked about what the stars and stripes represent and said the Pledge of Allegiance together. We already knew this.
* We did some "Lentil" math problems (found in the FIAR resource section at Homeschool Share) and also talked about the concept of whole, half and quarters. We used money and food to explain this concept.
* Andrew and I are both getting the hang of playing the harmonica. It's fun to practice each day.
* The rest of the day we worked on finishing up lapbook activities and started to assemble our lapbook.
Thanks so much for reading about our week with Lentil, we had a lot of fun. Once our lapbook is assembled we'll share pictures. Next up is Very Last First Time and from the looks of the lesson plans and activities this story looks like great fun as well.
