Rowing “Lentil”…..

I’m definitely going to get behind on telling about our school work, but I did want to catalogue the “rowing” of “Lentil” by Robert McCloskey for those of you who are interested….

First of all, I owe a large debt of gratitude to this blogger for her fantastic page of Lentil ideas. I used a lot of them in our rowing, especially the science experiments on the five senses.

I went to the library and picked up books on taste, smell, and hearing. I also got a few basic books on patriotism and the fifty states. Lentil is from Alto, Ohio, so I gave them a little bit of information on Ohio, and we found it on our U.S. map. This gave us a chance to practice following basic directions on a map and using the compass on the map to find N, S, E, and W. We did a printable from homeschool share on this for the Wonder Book.

This is our tasting experiment. I put out little dishes of bitter unsweetened chocolate, salt water, sugar water, and lemon juice. Seth and Evan both tasted each one and identified the type of taste.

We talked about how our sense of smell affects taste. I had them hold their noses and try to differentiate between the peach and the banana yogurt. It was a little harder for them. We discussed how food doesn’t taste as good when you have a cold because of your stuffy nose.

To go along with these activities, I had Seth color this sheet, and then he told me everything he could remember learning about taste. I wrote it down on the same sheet and put it in his Wonder Book. I did the same with this sheet on hearing.

We did the experiments on hearing from the blog I linked, including singing in the bathroom to hear the sound waves bounce off hard surfaces instead of being absorbed. We bounced a ball on the kitchen floor and on a cushion to show how sound waves are absorbed by soft surfaces and bounce off hard surfaces.

Seth really enjoyed squeezing lemons and making lemonade with me. He made sure that his daddy had a glass that night at dinner. =)

We discussed jealousy and finding the joy in our uniqueness, since Old Sneep struggled with jealousy and Lentil couldn’t sing or whistle and had to use a harmonica to make music instead. We also talked about grace. The townspeople gave Old Sneep an ice cream cone and let him share in the celebration, even though he’d tried to ruin it.

We discussed how illustrations tell the story as much as the words do sometimes, and we looked for examples in the book.

We learned “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain When She Comes,” complete with hand motions. =) I even found a video of a guy playing it on the harmonica on YouTube. I also found a couple of videos of brass bands, and I identified the instruments for them while we watched.

And to end up the week, we whittled with soap. A bar of Ivory and a plastic knife can provide a lot of excitement (and fine motor skills practice…. =) They got soap shavings all over the deck, but it was worth it. And now the whittling that Old Sneep did in the book makes a lot more sense to them.