Satori Smiles

I really like these Usborne books, and our The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History is getting alot of love in our household. Satori isn’t exactly learning her world history yet, but she loves to look at the pictures and listen to mama read. She has been understanding the concept of how the world started, when oceans formed, when animals started, plants formed, when they came on land, when dinosaurs lived, and finally, humans. Her favorite page is this one, she loves to trace her fingers along the spiral here while describing how history has unfolded:

This was about the time of Charles Darwin’s 200 birthday anniversay last month. I enjoyed reading many other mama bloggers descriptions of how they celebrated his birthday and found some great books and resources. We have added to our library What Mr. Darwin Saw (released just a few days ago on March 1, 2009) and Charles Darwin (also recently released). Next year we will celebrate Darwin Day in style.

From Charlie’s Playhouse, we got this huge timeline. The back side has an  Activity Guide for ages 4-10, glossary and FAQs for kids and adults.

It just kept unfolding and unfolding – to a full 18 feet long! Made of durable, wipe-clean paper, it is perfect to run along, and after I read the “book” to Satori, she had a lot of fun running along it. On a whim, I shouted out parts of history and she would jump to them, and she was very good at that. I was impressed at her ability to retain what we had read just a few minutes ago. (Remember, I was kinda shouting, so you may want to turn your volume down a bit, lol!)

Another version they offer aside from the giant floor-mat timeline is a smaller poster suitable for hanging on the wall. Or, you can get the Ancient Creature Cards to make the most of your timeline.

Another great investment to our home school, what a way to keep all the history periods memorable.

We started A Pair of Red Clogs today. Mama even got creative and made a pair of red clogs out of foam paper!

In the book, Japanese girls used to play a weather prediction game with their clogs. We tried it with our new red clog and predicted tomorrow to be rainy. It fell upside-down.

Oh no Satori, wait until they dry!!!

We entered Japan in our passport and placed the Red Clogs story disk on our board:

After reading the story, Satori knew right away that little Mako did a bad thing by dirtying up her shoes and her plans to lie to her mother.

I had never heard of Madeline before this month, but quickly found out she’s a well-known gal! Even my husband knows of her. So today we started Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans, with our Social Studies day.

Kicked off of course by reading the book, then learning about France, Paris, Eiffel Tower and other famous Paris Landmarks, as drawn in the book. Located France in Europe on the globes, maps and Google Earth. Colored the 3 stripes of France’s flag – blue, white, and red.

Got a stamp in our passport.

And to say goodbye to Ping, our very first FIAR book we rowed, we finished up our Math day. Ping had alot of relatives!