The Little Prince

Pearl has been reading the book, The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupey.

This is a beautiful story about a little boy prince who lives on a planet by himself with just a few volcanoes and a rose who is his friend. He travels the univers visiting planets and meeting their inhabitants. It is a philisophical reflection on people and their motivations, written from an uncorrupted perspective. Pearl chose this book to be her book to read to herself, but she also read it to us and we read it to her as a bedtime story.

This book prompted great lesson ideas. She firstly pointed out that the book doesn't have chapter headings, but rather symbols. She was refering to roman numerals. For her maths that day, she learned roman numerals. She was able to recognize patterns and write numbers up to 100. Since then she has been able to read the chapter numbers in the book.

After, I asked her pretend like she lived on one of the planets that the little prince visited. At first she was very excited about this activity. But when it came to doing the work, it took a lot of persuading. To get her going I suggested she drew a picture of her planet. This helped get the ideas flowing.

Pearl is a very talented writer and can write pages and pages when she feels like it. But for this activity,  she did no feel like it, and that is ok. What I did notice, was that she went through and edited her work the next day without me prompting her to. Next steps will be to teacher her about first, second, and third person writing and help her establish consistency in that area. 

Using air dry clay, the kids then sculpted their own little planets. They loved this activity. If I were to this over again, I would have started with drawing, then sculpting, and then writing. The art process would have given her more time to formulate her descriptions for her writing. I may intorduce her to using mind maps, or brainstorms to also help her with formulating her ideas.

A Day of Learning

After breakfast, Pearl started her learning with big number place value. Because she is interested in Geology and Paleontology,  she is learning how to read and write numbers in the millions. She is also learning to find how many millions, thousands, and so on, there are in these numbers. It gives her pleasure to read and pronounce such large numbers.
On her birthday, she video chatted with her good friends in Wellington.  One of her friends mentioned that she didn't really like video chatting, so Pearl's writing lesson for the day was to write a letter to her friends. She learned the five parts of a letter and we read the story Dear Mr. Blueberry.

Her brother Orion also dictated a letter to me for his good friend in Wellington. 

Then after a large block of reading and a bit of playing, we rugged up and went for a little walk and play at the tree swing. We often go for a bike ride or dog walk. But due to a bit of rain today, we stayed close to home.

Pearl has recently asked to learn Japanese. She is using the app, Duolingo to learn and has completed the first level, which teaches sounds and pronounciation of the language. She has been interested in Japanese culture for a while now because her dad is an Animator and has intoduced her to Studio Ghibli films, which she loves. 

Then she began reading a new book; The Little Prince.  This is a lovely story that has sparked her imagination and I am sure some good writing and inspired artworks will come from reading it.

A Poem by Pearl

Bird and Me

I am getting a Cockatiel (say: Coc-a-TEEL). That is a type of bird. They are very cute and very playful. They love cuddles too. They eat birdseed and a little treat (honey stick) every month or week. I will need to change it's food and water two times a day. I will also clean the bottom board a lot. Here are some things that I  will need:

• Cage 
• 2 perches 
• T-stand
• Toys
• Birdseed 
• Old newspapers
• Corn cob bedding 
• Veggies

Ovi's Cool Cretaceous

For the last couple of days, Pearl has been reading Dinosaurs: a Children's Encyclopedia.  We read this to her for her bedtime story for about a month when she was four. It has been so wonderful to hear her read it to us now that she is seven. Its a pretty information heavy book for her age. But she loves it. Naturally,  she gravitates toward the pages about dinosaurs with feathers and early birds, as she is completely obsessed with birds. A while ago she read a book about small bird like dinosaurs called Oviraptosaurs. Illustrations of these dinosaurs are adorable.

We have been doing a bit of geology work and one of her assignments was to write a comic using te reo words that pertain to the rock cycle. She could choose three words from a list of five. She loved this idea and is still working on the comic. She looked up several other words to support her story as well, such as ana (cave), rakau (tree), and hēke (egg). Her stoy is about a little dinosaur named Ovi who gets caught up in a volcanic eruption and runs away with another character who gives her a stone that makes her immortal  and transports her into the future. Here is the first page.

One of her favorite comics at the moment is the Adventures of Ook and Gluck. It is fiction, but at times it weaves some educational facts into it, particularly about Neanderthals.  For example, we were discussing how Archeologists have found thread in Neanderthal caves, which  suggests that they sewed. Pearl added that Neanderthals were intelligent and interbred with modern humans. So Pearl was influenced by this type of writing. Comic strip writing is not a recognized formal type of writing, but it can really get her to write and express what she knows. 

Contuing with her interests, Pearl read for most of the day. This evening she then painted a painting of dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period, most of which were from the Oviraptersour family.  It turned out beautifully. 

A Bit of Geology

Yesterday Pearl and Orion went on a rock hunt. They brought back a bag full of rocks each. Pearl the chose three to make onservations about.

She learned basic geological vocabulary around describing and catagorising rocks through using a template that I designed for her. We discussed what each word meant before starting the activity. Afterward she used the Rockcheck app to identify what type of rock it was, and learn about how it was formed.

She concluded that the rocks were metamorphic rocks comprised mostly of  iron rich clay, limestone and some quartz. She then watched a short animated film about the three types of rocks and how they were formed. 

She has always been interested in rocks and how the earth was formed and ever changing. She used her prior knowledge and recalled how pressure and erosion work together to form different types of rocks, and refernced the Rock Cycle again to discuss how metamorphic rocks were once sedimentary rocks.  She also discussed that the rocks were made of clay and while they were brought in from another place  for our driveway, they are made up of clay, like most of our property. This made her wonder if the rocks were from nearby. I reminded her of the rock quarry that we pass when driving to the next town to go shopping. All of this got her thinking and processing. This activity forcused on the Nature of Science Strand of the NZ Curriculum and worked on expanding her understanding and ability to communicate in this field. Next steps will be to learn more about the other types of rocks through exploration from other geographic areas nearby and do more hands on learning activities to solidify her understanding of the rock formation process.

Beach of fun!

By Pearl Loomis

I went to the beach and I had a blast!
I made a zoo in a rock pool and people tried to spot li'l critters in the pool. Can you?

Orion had fun too! He held a bigish crab...

Fishies, shrimp, starfish, snails, crabs! So many animals! I went to Waipu Cove. Here is another image of the beach. 🏊‍♀️

BEAUTIFUL BEACH!!!