How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

We officially began our school year this week and are using the Five In A Row curriculum.  If you aren't familiar with it,  FIAR concentrates on a specific classic children's book which is read each day of the school week - thus Five in a Row.  Allowing for therapy and co-op in our schedule we are actually only doing our unit study 3-4 days a week so most of our "rows" will be a couple of weeks long.  In addition to this unit study I work with each child daily in English, Reading, Writing and Math.  The girls also have speech, occupational, and physical therapy.

The first book for our unit study was "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World."

The first thing we did was to make "suitcases" and passports.

 In the book a girl wants to make an apple pie and sets out to get FRESH ingredients.  She gathers wheat from Italy, eggs from France ( a chicken actually)  milk from England (a cow) cinnamon from Sri Lanka, etc.  It was a fun story that the kids enjoyed a lot!  We put story disks on our large world map for each of the countries that were visited.

 And since the kids knew nothing about wheat we tasted some wheat berries and then ground some into flour.

Apparently my camera got wheat "dust" on it!

 We used the flour to make an apple crisp. 

While it was cooking we watched a YouTube video about harvesting wheat by a couple of different methods:  with a tractor and threshing by hand.  Our apple crisp finished baking and was so yummy that I totally forgot to take a picture until Abigail was down to her last bite!

YUM!

The second day began with apple pancakes, then we made diagrams of the life cycle of an apple.

We found that Reading Rainbow has an episode featuring our book, so that was a must to watch.  A chef in this episode made a lasagne using rice instead of noodles.  So with my kids (and their love affair with rice) OF COURSE we had to give it a try.  Off we went to the market to buy our fresh ingredients.

I LOVE the Caroline's Cart!

We also made sausage stuffed apples for dinner.

On our third day after reading How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World we also read Ten Apples Up On Top just for fun - and a little more exposure to beginning math concepts.

We began a "FoldNLearn" which is like a lapbook. You can get these free printables by subscribing to the Five in a Row Blog.

We made a paper flag of and watched a video tour of Italy, which is where our book character went to get wheat.  My kids LOVE pizza, so when it was mentioned of course we HAD to have some!  Caramel apples for snack time.

And while not a part of the Five in a Row curriculum, I'm thrilled to report that Isaac read THREE beginning readers to me today!  Yessssssssssssssssss!  He loves to read in Chinese, but this is huge for him to read English!

YouTube is a great place to find things to add interest to your FIAR studies.  I found this playlist that tours the various countries mentioned in the story, as well as covering some other concepts like the life cycle of the apple.  Playlist here

On our fourth and last day of this week (we were off for Labor Day Monday) we video toured France, listened to their national anthem a couple of times, made a French flag and did our FoldNLearn page.  Isaac is especially interested in why the country chose the colors that it did and always asks about its meaning.

This "row" was continued into the next week where we learned about England

Sri Lanka whose flag is very difficult to make!

And Jamaica.

We listened to reggae music while we did our FoldNLearn.

Inside Jen's FoldNLearn

And on to our third week where we had just a couple of days to spend on our unit studies.  The highlight of the week was a visit to an apple orchard to pick apples.  The farm we went to had small trees with the apples low enough that even my kids with mobility issues were able to pick.

 And back at the house the following day we ended our unit with "visiting" Vermont and making an apple pie.

What a fun few weeks of learning!!

School Year Kick Off

We traditionally don't begin our homeschool year until the Tuesday after Labor Day.  But the three youngest kids got a head start today when we were invited to a country study at a nearby art center.  Each month a different country is featured, along with a music and art activity to go along with it.  Today we studied England.  They began the day with recording information in their "passports."  The facts came from a slide slow and presentation from the staff.

This was followed with making scones!

While the scones were baking we learned the song The Grand Old Duke of York  (click the link to hear it on YouTube) along with a line dance that went with it.  Sorry, no pictures.  I was too busy keeping Jennifer on her feet!

By the time we had sung and gotten everyone through the line dance our scones were done cooking, and so we had tea.

Pat never delays when food is around.  His scone was GONE by the time I got my camera ready!

Our time was up before we got to the art project for this session, so they've promised an extra long art session next month.  Wow, the kids had a great time!

Isaac goes FAST!

A couple of weeks ago a big truck pulled up in front of our house.

Isaac wondering why we called him to see the delivery truck...

Challenged Athlete's Foundation gave us a grant to get a sports chair for basketball.  While we've greatly appreciated the loaner chair provided through the basketball league, it didn't really fit him well and provided its own set of challenges.  How wonderful to have a chair made just for him!

 The delivery driver was super excited too, and even stuck around and watched us get it put together. 

During the summer - the off season for the Cincinnati Dragons - one is never sure how many will show up to work with the coaches.  It so happened that the first time Isaac got to take his new chair to practice that he was the only kid to show up that day!  The coaches were able to make the adjustments needed to his chair and then give him some tutoring on how to get the most from it. 

Here he is at practice a few days ago being taught to GO FAST!

We are so thankful for these opportunities for our boy!

The Whole-Brain Child Workbook

This book IS actually a workbook, complete with room to write one's responses after thinking them through. It refers numerous times to the book “The Whole Brained Child” which makes perfect sense, but which I was unaware of when I requested to review the workbook. Still, there is much to be gained in using the workbook as a standalone. Also, when referring to significant quotes from the main book, it does replicate them within the workbook to bring us up to speed.

The workbook begins with a description of left brain (facts) and right brain (emotions) and the goal of helping your child to use BOTH sides of their brain – their whole brain – to process their thoughts and responses. The first step towards this goal is for us, the parent to evaluate how WE respond to the child. Then we are shown how to connect with our right brain and redirect with our left brain.

Numerous “big feeling” situations are suggested and we're invited to look at various options to help our child through them. We're also invited to look at how effective our typical response is. Whole brain strategies are suggested along with discussions and some hands-on projects to help your child understand the concept of the “upstairs” (rational) and “downstairs” (reactive) brain functions.

We're called to be aware of explicit memories (conscious recollection of a past event) and implicit memories (expectations based on past happenings) in order to help our child overcome problematic auto responses. Ways are suggested to help a child talk through these memories and there are even several ideas for games one can create to work through these feelings.

We're called to look at the significant people in our child's life and the effect they have on them. Are there any actions we should take based upon these reflections?
 
One of the final thoughts is to look at our family “fun factor.” Often just taking ourselves less seriously helps where the child is concerned!

This is a book where you will want to pick and choose activities. Some of the deep breathing and imagery were a bit much for my particular tastes, but there are lots of ideas to be found here and I think you'll find many of them helpful. From my viewpoint of parenting children from “hard places” I plan to implement several of their ideas.

The Gallaudet Children's Dictionary of American Sign Language

As the mother to children whose speech is affected by CP, I'm always interested in new books on signing since my children use both sign and verbal utterances to communicate. The book begins with a basic why and how to of ASL and quickly moves into fingerspelling. It explains nicely the use of facial expressions. We then move into the dictionary part, and oh what a treat this is! As I work with my girls it is often a challenge to quickly find the word I want to teach them, and here they are in alphabetical order! 

The illustrations of each word is clear, colorful, and eyecatching while the illustration of the sign is done in an almost shadow effect in black and white. I love it! 

There are over 350 pages and most common words that *I* was looking for are included. The book's description says there is a DVD that goes along with this book though it wasn't included in my digital version for the book review. I likely will purchase a paper copy of this one to keep in my reference library!

AND... while we are on the subject.  An online friend sent me the link to something FABULOUS and FREE!  If you are looking for sign language help, many, many words and sentences for common needs are found in this video by an ASL interpreter.

http://newdaycreations.com/foster/signlanguage/index.html 

Baseball!!!!!

Today our youngest four kids tried their hand at BASEBALL!!!  The  Joe Nuxhall Miracle League gives children with special needs the opportunity to feel "normal" for a change.  It seems that our children's lives have been full of the things that they CANNOT do, so today was just so awesome!
 
 See Jen's smile?  It was there the entire time.  As you may remember she was pretty much invisible in her orphanage, not allowed to participate in most of the activities because of her mobility issues.  She was sooooooo excited to play.  And let's just say she charmed the crowd.  They were cheering her and her BIG SMILE on to the home plate where she stopped and bowed to them.  LOL! At one point the announcer called her "Miss Personality" and referred to her as his favorite. 

Can you imagine?  Just two years ago she was special to no one, and today a group of parents WHO GET IT were there cheering her on.  It was such a special time for her!

Each child was paired with a "Buddy" who gave them as much (or as little) help as they needed.  No surprise that Isaac needed very little help.  Also no surprise that he could hit that ball HARD!  And he has a new nickname - WHEELS.  As he zoomed into home plate the announcer jokingly said, "Wheels!  You are going to get a speeding ticket!"

Pat and Abigail in the outfield.

In the dugout.

In the dugout.

You know, we all have our challenges.  I could give you a list of things that this fifty-some year old body is struggling with these days.  But most of my needs aren't visible.  People don't stare and ask questions when I walk by.  But my kids with visible needs -- they have spent their lives being stared at and feeling different when all they want is to just live their lives and fit in like everyone else.  Today they had that chance.  It was totally worth getting up at 7AM on a Saturday to make it happen.  Looking forward to spending the next several Saturday mornings with this league.

With their "Buddies."

Attachment Book!

I am so excited to have found this book!  This is a book that your adopted children from hard places can relate to!  It is the story about a little porcupine whose mother cannot take care of her any more (we never find out what exactly happened to the mother) and is adopted by a bear family.

Porcupette is very afraid that the bear family might go away and not come back also, and in her fear she gets all prickly with her new adoptive family.  Time after time Mother Bear is patient with her, goes after her when she runs away, and still loves her even as she is having to pull quills out of her own mouth and paws.

There is a good message in there for we moms to help us understand why our little ones get so "prickly" and there is a good message in there for the children that as they let their guard down and learn to trust they can find the happiness they are craving.  It is a wonderful picture of  attachment in an adoptive family.  Can I give this one SIX stars out of five?  I loved it so much!