Cowboy Charlie

Thing Two and I have been working through Volume 4 of Five in a Row this school year.  Vol. 4 is a bit different than 1 - 3, in that the lessons are a bit more detailed and more lessons to choose from.  Because of this, you plan a book for two weeks.

This year, I have been trying something different, in that I am not planning to far in advance for each title.  I do have a general idea of when I'd like to hit the titles, but other than that, I let Thing Two pick a title on the first Monday and we roll with it. 

His selection of the next book was "Cowboy Charlie" by Jeanette Winter.  The following is from the inside of the dust cover, about the book:

Charlie was a boy with a dream. But not just any dream. Charlie's dream was to go west, to be a cowboy. Charlie's mind couldn't be changed. He held on to his dream as tight as can be. Tha's how it is with dreams - the real ones just don't go away.

Sure enough, pretty soon charlie was on a train heading to Montana - the land of open sky. And the moment that Charlie first saw the frontier, his heart opened as big as the sky above. At last, Charlie was home.

Jeanette Winter's sparkling illustrations and down-to-earth, carefully research story tell the tale of a boy who had a courage to follow his heart - a boy who became the great American painter of the Wild West, Charlie Russell.

Yesterday, he proudly said, "I am going to read the book, because I want to see all the pictures!"  I was impressed with his word attack on unfamiliar words (and not that many at that).  He did well with trying to figure those few out.  I do enjoy listening to him read!

Well, colds have been hitting our house and I wasn't sure what all I would get done.  Fortunately, most of their work is independent and they got to what they could.  Thing Two begged for FIAR today.  So we snuggled up, under blankets, and I got a turn to read the book.  Afterward we listened to a couple different versions of "Home on the Range" and "Buffalo Dusk" by Carl Sandburg.  Having a good internet connection makes quick work of research and some good laughs while listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks sing "Home on the Range"!
 

Cowboy Charlie Math

We are wrapping up the final week of Cowboy Charlie and working on Math today. One of the early pages, in the book, shows Charlie day dreaming about the West while he should be doing math. In Jane Lambert's lesson "Math: It's in the Presentation" the question given to the kids is to come up with cowboy math that Charlie would have liked. Here's our take on the lesson.

1. How many buffalo do you need to pull one driver and 100 hurt horses? One buffalo can pull two horse, so you will need about 50 buffalo.
2. If Charlie and Pike road the train to Red Rock for 10 days, road the stage coach for 10 days till it went no farther, and finally road their horse to the plains for 10 days, how long did they travel? They traveled for 30 days or one month.
3. How many dogs will it take to eat one big bone in one day? (Maybe not the best question, but my 6 year old wanted a question from his favorite stuffed dog to Jip)
4. How many crackers does Charlie have to eat, so that he can use the box to draw on? In a box of Ritz, there are 3 sleeves of crackers. Each sleeve has 36 crackers. Charlie would need to eat 108 crackers to be able use the box.
   

Here's a concept

A homeschooling blog (diary of our homeschooling experience sort of) and I'm actually going to post about school stuff. It's been awhile since I've done something so CRAZY!!

We've been reading "Cowboy Charlie", by Jeanette Winter, last week and this week. It's a great book for our boys. Cowboys, drawings, stars, stories, Indians. Under Language Arts, Jane Lambert (author of Five in a Row) goes over Poetry and Song to "go along with parts of Cowboy Charlie". I thought my boys would enjoy this and was able to find a book called "I Hear America Singing, Folk Songs for American Families", Collected and Arranged by Kathleen Krull, at our local library. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book (and accompanying CD with just a portion of the songs) also had "Follow the Drinking Gourd". If you are using FIAR as your curriculum, you know there is also a book entitled this that follows slaves to their freedom. This is another great book to be read. Anyway, after listening to a few of the more cowboy type songs, I just played Follow the Drinking Gourd. The boys made the connection right away.

Yipee!!! They are remembering stuff from their lessons.

P.S. How fitting that my 100th post on "Our Homeschooling Experience" is actually about homeschooling. Didn't even realize that when I first wrote this blog entry.