Year 1: Week 15

The big adventure this week was driving up to Central California to visit family and go to the Big Fresno Fair. Here are some of the highlights of our field trip...

Gemma posed as the Sun-Maid Raisin girl in the Agriculture Pavilion.

Here are Gemma and Grandpa viewing the prize-winning citrus...

...and getting attacked by a giant grasshopper in the Bug-ology exhibit.

The fair's theme was "The Land of Ahhhs," so the pumpkin carver carved all of the characters from The Wizard of Oz, plus a house on top of a pair of legs, complete with tornado.

In Ag-Ventureland, Gemma practiced milking a cow...

...and driving a tractor.

In the Gems and Minerals Pavilion, there was a Touch Station...

...and one of my favorite fair features - the rock feast.

Gemma got to practice her television weathercaster skills in front of a green screen...

She played in a box full of corn...

...and watched a marionette performance of The Wizard of Oz.

The week leading up to our field trip was packed with...

History: We read about King Leonidas (Lay-o-NEE-thas) in The Brave 300, and King Ahasuerus (in On the Shores of the Great Sea).

Literature: We read 2 fairy tales, both of which we'd read before but Gemma hadn't narrated - Snow White and Rose Red, and Toads and Diamonds. Our fable was The Man and the Goose, in which the man had a goose that laid golden eggs, but the man was so greedy that he cut the goose open, killing the goose, and putting an end to the golden eggs. We also read 3 pages of Lamb's The Tempest, and poetry from Nature in Verse.

Natural History: We read "Seedboxes We Eat As Vegetables," which introduced the idea that some flowers have dustbags and some flowers have seedboxes. (Some flowers are male and some are female.) In the past, we dissected lilies (complete flowers), which, if you're reading Plant Life in Field and Garden, would be a great activity to complement the chapters about dustbags and seedboxes in this book. In the Burgess Seashore Book, we read about oyster drills.

Geography: We read Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography - "The Sunshine" (poem) - and The World By the Fireside (The Green Corn Festival).

We listened to Tchaikovsky (more Swan Lake & Pathetique, and the Tchaikovsky Classics for Kids episode about ballet). Gemma spent the week reviewing songs in her Level D piano book. She also reviewed her hymn and 2 foreign language songs. We reviewed this terms Bible recitation passages, and read the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den. Gemma worked on her cursive, and strengthened skills in Duolingo.