A little bit of art...

Just a little bit of art that we did this morning before our farm tour (see below!)...inspired by Jim Arnosky.
Fairy chose the dripping water sketch she saw in his book called "Drawing from Nature", reproduced it, and added colour to it. I wanted to keep them company, so I quickly picked one of the birds from "Crinkleroot's 25 Birds Every Child Should Know". Dragon chose a fish from the "Parrotfish and Sunken Ships" book. We all used a regular pencil to draw and watercolour pencils to paint. Princess painted a wood bird house, but it is not finished yet...

Seashells Identification...just for Fun!

After reading Beachcombing by Jim Arnosky, Adrienne decided she wanted to try to identify the seashells we had. We have a few in a box that were given to us by one of our wonderful aunts...who brought them back from Florida. Adrienne had a wonderful time trying to match the seashells with the ones from the book!

Crinkleroot's First Outing!

We decided to go for a bike ride after lunch and brought Crinkleroot with us. As I mentioned in my previous post, I wasn't sure if we would find many trees, but I did have in mind to go along the farmer's field that is at the edge of our subdivision. We did find three different trees! We brought one leaf home from each tree and tried to identify them with the help of our books. We are pretty sure that we found a white oak, an American beech, and a quakin aspen. We put the leaves in our leaf press and will add them to our Author Fiesta binder.

Our Crinkleroot is ready!

We liked the idea from Author Fiesta so we made our own little Crinkleroot guy! We will take him on our neighborhood nature walk this afternoon! We will try to find some trees near us, it might be difficult...we live in a new subdivision and not many big trees are around!

Author Fiesta for September - Jim Arnosky

We are back to our Author Fiesta schedule for this month with Jim Arnosky. This is one author that I know we will enjoy! He has written many books on nature and animals. Our local library has many of his titles (I think I saw about 65 listed!) so we should keep busy for this month! I will share our favourites with you along the way.

If you'd like more information on Author Fiesta, please follow this link. For Jim Arnosky, you can visit his website here. On his site, he has great colouring pages that you can print.

Author Fiesta - Mem Fox

We have been reading Mem Fox's books and enjoying them. Princess and I read quite a few last week, while Dragon and Fairy were away. Princess can now recite "Where is the Green Sheep?", she really likes that one. I can't remember how many times I have read it to her!

Fairy, Dragon and I are interested in all the Australian animals. Their favourite titles so far are "Koala Lou", "Possum Magic" and "Hunwick's Egg". I thought we would do a bit more reading about these animals this week. I personally had never heard of a bandicoot, so we will all be learning!

Here are a few sites I have found so far. My kids like to colour, so the list includes colouring pages too.

Koala Creature Feature (National Geographic site, it has facts, photos, videos (you can see it climb a tree, and map)

Koala colouring page (also from National Geographic)

Bandicoot information page

Another Bandicoot page (from Enchanted Learning)

Bandicoot Video from YouTube

Ringtail Possum page

Kids down under page - this great page has links to other sites to learn more about Australia, its famous places, animals, recipes, etc...

We will also be working on our Author Fiesta Research Sheet from Author Fiesta. We will be sure to visit Mem Fox's website to learn more about the stories behind some of her stories and to find more about this author.

I have been reading her book "Reading Magic" and I think it should be a must-read for every parent.

Author Fiesta for June and July - Mem Fox

Cay Gibson at Author Fiesta announced the new author today: Mem Fox.
Fairy and I are excited because, just as Patricia Polacco, we had never heard of this author! That is what I thought, until I looked at the books available by her at our local library and noticed a little book called "Time for Bed" that I used to read to Fairy and Dragon when they were babies!

Fairy has always had a special interest in Australia, so she was quite happy when she found out that Mem Fox is from there. We are all looking forward to discovering a new author! Dragon will participate this time as well, and Princess will enjoy listening to the stories too (as always!).
You can visit Author Fiesta to find out more about this great literature activity, and I will be posting more about our activities, so be sure to come and visit us again!

Last Day with Patricia Polacco - Author Fiesta

Tomorrow we find out who the June Author is for the Author Fiesta put on by Cay Gibson. Fairy and I finished reading our books today, and she also completed the suggested writing activity. Fairy decided to write and illustrate a story about Princess' last birthday.
One of the titles we read today was "The Bee Tree", and I just have to share a quote from it that we particularly liked. This quote was also chosen by Cay for copywork, which Fairy did last week.

"There is such sweetness inside that book too! he said thoughtfully. "Such things...adventure, knowledge and wisdom. But these things do not come easily. You have to pursue them. Just like we ran after the bees to find their tree, so you must also chase these things through the pages of a book!"

Patricia Polacco

We have all enjoyed discovering Patricia Polacco's books. When I asked which one was her favourite, Fairy had a difficult time choosing...but finally she said "The Butterfly" .

Author Fiesta - Patricia Polacco Links

Fairy and I have been working on our Author Fiesta and enjoying it a lot too.
Fairy worked on the copy work suggested...and what a great quote it is (read it at the end of my post)! Fairy also filled out the author research form.
We were able to find all the information at two websites:
Wikipedia and Patricia Polacco.com. We found out that there is a Meteor Festival on July 12 at the author's home in Union City, Michigan. It looks like it is about two and half hours from here. Fairy would love to go! We'll see...
On the author's site, there are colouring pages, quizzes on the books, bookmarks to print and a ton of information. Great site!
The kids and I also watched two of the books read by actors on BookPALS. The first title was "My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother" read by Melissa Gilbert, and the other one was "Thank you, Mr. Falker" read by Jane Kaczmarek. Both are great stories. Follow this link: books online.

"All of us have that "voice". It is where all inspired thoughts come from...but when you have electronic screens in front, of you, speaking that voice for you...it DROWNS OUT THE VOICE! When I talk to children and aspiring writers, I always ask them to listen to the voice, turn off the T.V. and LISTEN...LISTEN...LISTEN." Patricia Polacco.

Author Fiesta

Cay Gibson is a homeschool mom and writer that has put together a monthly "Author Fiesta". You can find out more about it at this blog : Author Fiesta

The author for the month of May is Patricia Polacco. I have taken out a few books from the library that we will start reading this week. The titles we are reading can be found on the left side, under May Author Fiesta. We are looking forward to meeting a new author!