Our newest toy for homeschooling is our Olympus digital voice recorder seen here:
http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-VN-5000-Digital-Recorder-141985/dp/B001DDUV20/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=office-products&qid=1234469581&sr=8-1I love that the boys can use it for their freewriting. It does require more work from me as I am the transcriber, but I'm getting to be a faster typer :)
Last week we tried for the first time for their Friday Freewrites. I saw much more detail from Logan.
The topic for the free write was to change a fairy tale--add a not so happy ending or a certain aspect of the story. Here are the results:
This is a story called Cinderella.
Once upon a time there a girl named Cinderella. She was just normal. She was not rich. She was not poor. She was just normal, but for one thing she lived with her ugly step sisters and her evil step mother. So they made her do all the dirty work. One time she got a letter from a ball and her evil stepsister and evil step mother did not want her to go so they locked her away in the tower. But her little mouse friends came and rescued her. She went down and found her fairy god mother.
She turned a pumpkin into a carriage and she got a beautiful dress from her and she went to the ball. When the prince saw her he liked her so they danced.
When it was midnight she would have to go home otherwise the spell would wear off.
So when it was almost midnight, she lost track of time.
And she had to go. She took the wrong staircase so she lost her shoe.
She didn’t take the time to read the sign so it was the stairway to the ever ending drop cliff and she fell. The end.
Jonah
This is the story of Rumpelstiltskin in my words-- Logan Unbehauns words
Once upon a time there was a girl and a father in a far away land .They lived in a not very great neighborhood they were pretty poor—you know the rest. The father went to the King and said my daughter can spin straw into gold. Of course the girl couldn’t, but he said so anyway and the king said if the girl could do that he would let his son marry the girl who was very beautiful, but poor. So, they gave her some straw and basically put her in a dungeon room with a spinning wheel and she tried as hard as she could but they don’t tell you in all these books, but she could only manage linen.
Linen its okay in value but it’s not nearly as good as gold.
But then there’s a little dude who flew threw the window on a ladle--it was actually more like a big spoon, but it doesn’t really matter. And he said he asked what was wrong the girl told her and he said he could do it but if he did do it she would have to give him her first son. The girl agreed and he spun the straw into gold. The girl married the big handsome prince. Then she had their first son, the little dude came back on his ladle or spoon—or whatever and asked for the baby. Now she begged him not to do it and he took pity on her and said if you can guess my name in three days, you can keep the baby. Now he had done this one or two times before and he ALWAYS HAD TO TAKE THE BABY because nobody could guess his name. He even changed his name to George because it was easier, but nobody could get it so in the end, he had to take the baby. And he always because of that got to take some of the gold but not enough to actually live on with the baby. And by the time the baby was old enough to care for itself, he would have another one and another one, and another one and he just couldn’t figure a way out of it. Because the babies, most of them were destined to be great. So he finally figured out a way. He decided to put up a boarding school for young heroes and charge the parents of these guys a lot of money so he would still have enough money to live on.
And that is the version of Rumpelstiltskin in Logan Unbehaun’s words—the end.
We spent the week learning about New Zealand. This is the project that Logan chose to complete the week. The dessert is named for the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova.
Luke's picture of a Koala playing a didjeridoo.
Lamingtons
Jonah's picture of a Koala playing a didjeridoo.
Logan's picture of a Platypus
The boys with their Didjeridoos
Both boys received their green belts from Mr. Mike and then were able to break a "practice" board for fun and then Mr. Mike threw them over his shoulder and onto a mat to signify the achievement.
Here's the whole crew.
