Balance and Contrast Week Four

So, I do realize that it's a new week this week, but we haven't officially started our homeschooling week yet (we'll do that tomorrow). With that small disclaimer, I present a brief summary of week four of Balance and Contrast.

Our main project was constructing a birdhouse windchime.

Chobie was clever enough to point out that it doesn't really chime per se, so I should clarify that it really is more of a birdhouse jingler. 

The first day we painted the house.

Next we strung beads and bells together. During my planning, I thought that this would be great handwork skill practice for Chobie. He wasn't very interested and played warriors and enemies with the nails and beads at the other end of the table.

To secure the beads to the house, I tied one end of the string to a nail, then nailed them to the four corners of the bird house.

Finished.

We also had a visit to our friends farm where we helped her gather eggs.


Chobie peering into the chicken coop. Yes, that's him in the dinosaur suit.

Chobie chose one to bring home for breakfast the next morning.

Bee loves chickens. He was following these ones around trying to pick them up.

I kept this week's read aloud simple. We read Rooster/Gallo by Jorge Luján and Manuel Monroy.


I loved this book. It's bilingual verse about the interplay between the rooster and the heavens that brings about the changes between day and night. The language in this book is so beautiful, which is refreshing for a children's book.


We did do a lot more reading during the week, but most of it was for cozy book time, which doesn't have any kind of planned stories. It was a rainy, relatively chilly week, so a lot of our learning took the form of cozy book time. We read from The World of Pooh together. 

I did my fair share of grown up reading last week too. I couldn't put down Little Night by Luanne Rice, then I started reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr. It's a fascinating read so far. I've just finished his summary of the history of media. I know, it sounds boring, like something you would have to suffer through in the first weeks of a lower level college course, but I actually learned so much about a topic I never knew I wanted to know about. (I have more thoughts on this book that I'm hoping to share later on.)

 

This post was shared on the DIY Sunday Showcase.