Our "row" of Jenny's Surprise Summer by Eugenie began and ended! I started this post a week ago intending to journal as we went but time flew and here I am, another "row" concluded.
We kicked things off by reading Thy Friend, Obadiah by Brinton Turkle, which is a story about a Quaker boy who becomes the subject of a seagull's affection. Immediately after Nicholas wanted to read Jenny, and who am I to turn down a request for a book?
Jenny's Surprise Summer is a story about a young girl who visits her grandmother for a summer on the beach. She discovers two kittens in a cave and bonds with them during the lazy days of beach and water play (which really fill me with longing for that sort of childhood for Nicholas, but we live in a different world now than we did when Jenny was published in 1981). However, Jenny lives in an apartment in the city and her parents believe their apartment will only accommodate one kitten, which leaves Jenny with the dilemma: Which kitten to keep?
In preparation for this book, I reserved several books at the library.
Naturally I didn't write down the titles of any of those books before I returned them, but they included two Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That titles (beach, cats), a collection of stories about children adopting animals (The Little Bunny, The Little Puppy, The Little Lamb, etc), a world "dictionary" about cats around the world, a Clifford book about a storm and a couple other kitten/cat stories. I also reserved a children's Oceans encyclopedia but by the time it arrived at the library, we'd moved on from our row. I'm going to make a note of it for when we revisit the sea with Night of the Moonjellies in September.
In a nutshell, we looked at beach life and cats around the world, watched a PBS documentary about Hurricane Sandy, which swept through during his first Halloween, we did a salt water vs tap wter experiment (which freezes faster?) and I created my first sensory bin with white rice, seashells, plastic pearls and an assortment of little toys from our Octonauts collection. We enjoyed the study but it went quickly, much quicker than I anticipated and I didn't have an opportunity to set up a seashell painting craft.
I thought Nicholas would be interested in pursuing different avenues but I think he might have gotten the beach/ocean fascination out of his system during his 2s and 3s. Thus far, I'm finding that, in general, a week is about the extent of our interest in a FIAR book. I believe some linger for up to two weeks, following different interests, and I think we might eventually hit upon one of those books but this wasn't the one.
Next up...I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest. I noticed we're not reading as many of our favorite pre-FIAR, purely-for-enjoyment stories when we're in the middle of a FIAR study so I think we'll take a week off to enjoy the books and toys we have for play and entertainment.
I won't be completely un-busy, though. I've just received a copy of The Well-Trained Mind from the library and I'll be reading that on my own. I'm still trying to get a solid handle on what our homeschool year will look like and I feel like I'm coming a bit down to the wire for math, reading and handwriting.
Confession: Part of me is tempted to ditch it all and buy a copy of A Year of Playing Skillfully.
I'm afraid I'm going to be one of those homeschooling parents who is always looking.
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