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.

Island of the Blue Dolphins

The kids and I just finished reading Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell, and we did a cool lapbook project along with it. I did not make this project up. (Ha! As if you were wondering.) We got it for free from Hands of a Child, a lapbooking website: http://www.handsofachild.com/freebie.html. I was surprised by how much the kids loved the story, because it is, after all, about a girl...but they were fascinated. I was fascinated too. The book is based on a true story of a girl who lived alone on an island for 18 years! She was finally "rescued," but by that time, no one knew her tribe's native language anymore (the tribe had all died, mainly of disease), so no one was ever able to get the details of what she did all that time. She could only communicate in signs. So it's historical fiction, and it's awesome. We want to watch the movie (circa 1964), but it looks like we'll have to buy it. Here's a link, if you're interested: http://silveragemovies.com/island-of-the-blue-dolphins-1964-p-255.html.
We did find a movie called End of the Spear on Netflix - also on Hulu - also at this website (http://endofthespear.com/%29, which is a great movie about Nate Saint, the missionary pilot who died trying to help the Wuaroni tribe in Ecuador. We read about him for school a few weeks ago and just happened upon the movie while searching the "faith and spirituality" category. There was a documentary about him too, but we haven't seen that yet. Be prepared to read a bunch of subtitles to your younguns, because all of the dialog between the Wuaroni natives is in the Wuaroni language. If you'd rather read the book, here's a link to that; it's written by Nate Saint's son, Steve Saint.
Our other big project right now is studying and memorizing the fruits of the spirit, which are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Even Esme has these memorized, although demonstrating them consistently is another matter. For some great songs about this verse (Galatians 5:22-23), check out my YouTube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE7E25DA3AC5CB32.
And that is homeschooling for this week.