Counting in Japanese

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Elizabeth

This week is Japan week in geography and Anna learned how to count to 10 in Japanese by putting the numbers to the tune of “Three Blind Mice”. Here’s a video of her singing it before she went to sleep tonight.

Here are the words:

Ichi, ni, san. (One, two, three.)
Ichi, ni, san. (One, two, three.)
Shi, go, roku. (Four, five, six.)
Shi, go, roku. (Four, five, six.)
Shichi, hachi, ku, ju. (Seven, eight, nine, ten.)
Shichi, hachi, ku, ju. (Seven, eight, nine, ten.)
Ichi, ni, san. (One, two, three.)
Ichi, ni, san. (One, two, three.)

It’s a catchy little tune and has been stuck in my head all day… Homeschooling is great though. I’ve learned how to count to 5 in Chinese and to 10 in Japanese! I love learning right along with Anna.

South Korea Week

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Elizabeth

Last week we learned all about South Korea in our Expedition Earth curriculum. Here’s our finished bulletin board for the week:

As you can see, Anna once again loved copying different text, this time in Korean. We were only going to do her name, “hello” and “thank you” but she wanted more so I used Google Translate to translate “I am 5 years old.” into Korean. So far the handwriting in different languages seems to be her favorite thing. She did a pretty good job copying the Korean script and I’m starting to think she might have a little knack for handwriting. She has very neat handwriting for her age and gets compliments about it all the time. I am super proud of her for it especially since we had to work on changing her pencil grip this year. She was holding the pencil with all five fingers but we’ve managed to get it switched to a proper 3 finger grip…which surprisingly only took a few days.

Anyway, here are close-ups of the three Korean handwriting pages:

She also filled out the facts about the country and labeled the capital and the Yellow Sea.

She was thrilled to add another paper doll to the collection with this little Korean girl.

I had plans to make some Korean BBQ but it just didn’t happen so Anna didn’t get to sample any Korean food. I might still try the recipe I have at some point in the future.

You’ve already seen in a previous post that our art for the week was to make a Korean jeweled crown, like the kings wore many years ago. She has been wearing it around the house for the last 5 or 6 days and loves it. We might have to make more in the future because I’m not sure that this one, even though it is out of cardstock, will hold up for very long..

Next up…Japan!

September 18-24 – Weekly Postcard Round-up

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Elizabeth

This week we only sent two postcards out through Postcrossing, to Poland and Belarus. I have 5 out there that have been traveling for 15 days or less and then that same one to Finland that is still out there, now traveling for 49 days. I’m thinking that one must’ve gotten lost somewhere along the way. It’ll “expire” at 60 days and free up another spot so that I can send another postcard. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll get there before then though. We’ll see..

We received two Postcrossing postcards this week. This first one is from Finland and Anna loved it. I don’t think they have dolphins near Finland but this lady saw that Anna likes dolphins and sent this one. She told us that she lives out in the country and has lots of animals that her family tends to.

The second one is another one that Anna loved since she adores butterflies. This one came from Portugal from a woman who loves butterflies.

We received this fun one from Ireland from a postcard swap group I’m a member of on Facebook.

My mom sent us this one from Florida this past week. My dad had travel down there for business and they had to live at the beach for a month…they have a rough life.

We got this last one over the weekend from my grandmother. Our first from Maryland!

That does it for last week! We’ve already put one in the mail today. I’ll update with where we sent it on our next postcard round-up.

South Korean Crown

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Elizabeth

This week in geography we’re learning about South Korea. I’ll have a post up in a few days with pictures of all of the activities we did during the week but for now I wanted to share a few photos of the crown that Anna made. We learned that kings many, many years ago used to wear ornate crowns decorated with jewels. Anna, who loves crowns of any shape or form, loved this activity…especially since I bought some little stick-on jewels for her to put on it.

Art Club – Fall Landscapes

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Elizabeth

We decided to try out an Art Club meeting of a few of the families from our favorite homeschool group this past week. There were supposed to be several more families in attendance but only 4 families showed up, but that’s ok. The kids still had a blast doing their art and then running around like crazies afterward. Here are some pictures that I snapped that day.

Gotta love that tongue sticking out when she's concentrating.

All of the kid's art from the day (oh and mine and another mom's as well).

Are You Pinning?

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Elizabeth

Pinning? “What is pinning?”, you ask. One of the newer, more popular things going on right now in Internetland is called Pinterest. Pinterest is a place where you can create virtual “boards” and pin interesting things that you find on the web. It’s kind of a way to take your bookmarks, put an image with it and make it public for everyone to see. Anyone with a Pinterest account can see your bookmark and then re-pin it if it’s something they might be interested in. It’s an awesome tool that I use almost daily to keep track of all the coolness I find out there while I’m browsing the web. If you don’t have an account, leave me a comment and I’ll send you an invite. Click the button below for my Pinterest page. That button is always on the right sidebar if you ever want to find it again.

Now that you know all about Pinterest, do you have a homeschool or teaching blog AND use Pinterest? If so, join up with Michelle’s Pinterest Linky Party like I’m doing. You can find a huge list of teacher bloggers who have links to their Pinterest accounts on their blog. It’s a great way to find other people to follow on Pinterest!

September 11-17: Weekly Postcard Round-up

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Elizabeth

It’s that time again! Time for our weekly postcard round-up. This week we got to send cards to Russia, Canada and Turkey. It’ll be interesting to see how long this one to Russia takes since the last one took a whopping 60 days. We didn’t receive any Postcrossing postcards, but we did receive two from family members that I’ll share.

This first one is another one from my Swiss cousin. She sent one showing some views of the city she lives in, which is about 30 minutes outside of Zurich.

The other card we received is another tennis related card from my sister who lives in New York City. My mom flew out to visit her a couple of weeks ago and they got to go see the U.S. Open. So lucky!

Hopefully next week will be a bit more eventful. We have one card that has been traveling for 42 days on its way to Finland. We sent one other card to Finland awhile back and it only took 8 days to get there so I’m not sure what’s going on with this one. Hopefully it didn’t get lost in the mail!

China Week

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Elizabeth

This past week we “traveled” to China in our Expedition Earth curriculum. Anna has been saying for a long time that she wants to go to China someday because she wants to see the panda bears. I told her last week jokingly that we were going to visit China the next week and she got really excited thinking that we were actually going to hop on a plane and go to China. Needless to say, she was pretty disappointed when I told her that no, we weren’t actually going to China. Luckily, she still enjoyed our week learning about China.

At the end of the week our bulletin board was filled up with our China activities (click on all of the following photos for larger pictures):

Anna’s most favorite thing from the week was writing her numbers and her name in Chinese. She thought that was so cool and did great copying without much guidance. She also learned to count to 5 in Chinese (we counted to 10, but she remembers to 5).

She also made this cute little paper doll that I printed from this site (which also has great coloring sheets from around the world, like the one of the Great Wall of China that you can see on our bulletin board).

Lastly, she made a Chinese fan. Unfortunately I didn’t pick out a long enough piece of paper so it doesn’t go all the way around like it should, but she doesn’t care.

We went out to eat Chinese food with some friends to wrap up our week. Anna chowed down on sweet and sour chicken, egg roll, egg flower soup and fried rice.

All in all a very successful first week of “traveling” to another country. Next week, on to South Korea!

Anna’s Map

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Elizabeth

Anna drew this map for me today. She told me that she knows that it’s not a “real” map but she just wanted to make it look like this.

In case you can’t read her labeling… The green state is Washington. The blue state is “Orgon.” The pink state is Idaho. Orange state below Idaho is New York. Red state is “Uta.” Yellow is Iowa. Orange at the top is “Texis.” I obviously didn’t help her spell these, but was so happy to see she spelled Washington correctly!

I asked her if she was sure that the blue state was “Orgon” and not Italy…and she said she was sure. Looks like Italy though, doesn’t it??

September 4-10: Weekly Postcard Round-up

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Elizabeth

We had a great postcard week this week! Remember that postcard that had been traveling to Russia for almost 2 months? It was finally registered in the system as received on day 60, the day it was set to expire! So happy that it finally got there!

This week we sent postcards to Germany (our 4th to Germany!), Netherlands (our 2nd to there), France and Ireland!

We received 5 postcards this week! These first three showed up on the same day. This first one is from Finland. Anna loved all of the animals on it. The front of the card translates to “Summer Greetings” (thanks Google Translator).

Our next card came from Russia. The girl who sent it told us that this is the Arc of Triumph in Moscow and that it was built in honor of the victory in the war in 1812.

Our next card, which I thought was adorable, came from the Ukraine. This card came from a 14 year old boy who told us that he has a sister who is 5, just like Anna. He lives in Kiev and said that it is a beautiful city.

I also scanned the back of this card because how cool is that triangle stamp? I’m not really a stamp collecting person, but I thought that stamp was pretty cool.

Our next postcard came from my mom who has been in New York City with my sister at the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament. Our family loves playing tennis so I especially enjoyed receiving this one.

We received our fifth one yesterday from my cousin who lives in Switzerland. She and her boyfriend have been traveling through Ireland and Scotland and sent us this card. I love map cards!

That’s it for this week! We have two out there that have been traveling for about a month each to Italy and Finland that will hopefully arrive soon. Stay tuned for next week!

Our School at Home

(as Anna says..)

Monthly Archives: September 2011