Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Cricket in Times Square and LibriVox

We finished Island of the Blue Dolphins and have been studying The Cricket in Times Square for the last week or so. We're doing a lapbook, like we did for Island, and we're also using this wonderful site to find activities and English lessons that relate to the book: http://www.mce.k12tn.net/reading24/cricket_in_times_square.htm. One thing I've learned is that Simon doesn't have the stamina for writing that Isaac does, so I try to have Simon do some of his work on his own, then I take over as his "secretary"; he tells me what to write, and I write it. It's amazing how his attitude instantly changes once I start helping him.
So, at one point, Mario takes Chester (the cricket) to the soda shop and gets him a strawberry soda. It's lemon/lime soda, vanilla ice cream, and strawberry syrup. We recreated these at home, which was a much-needed reward after a busy Monday. We also learned early in the story that Tucker the mouse loves liverwurst, so the kids and I had crackers with Braunschwieger with our strawberry sodas. Believe it or not, Simon and Esme had their Braunschwieger eaten before I even had a chance to beg them to try it. Isaac ate it too, and of course, so did I. I tried to take a picture of all of this, only to discover that our newer, better camera is broken. "Grace dropped it" was the story I was told. So, I need to start using the old one, but I was too annoyed to go and find it yesterday.
In unrelated news, I was digging around for a kids' church lesson for Wednesday and I came across this site: http://librivox.org/. It's a collection of free audio books (you can even volunteer to do some recording, if you want to). I didn't look very hard, but in the A's and B's I found Aesop's Fables and the Bible, and I looked a little farther and I found Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott, so I think this is worth investigating. I'm listening to "The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg" right now, and it's pretty cool.

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