The Rest of The Story (About Ping)

This is the third blog entry in a series about Five In A Row (FIAR) study we did on The Story About Ping.  You can read about the FIAR program and our first adventure with PING here.   I also blogged previously about a  science experiment we did as a part of this FIAR study.

Some of our Ping adventures did not really produce much I considered blog-worthy.  This means one of three things:

1. The activity did not lend itself well to pictures/there were no cool pictures to be had.
2. Nothing especially amusing took place
3. We did not enjoy the activity

The Ping Math day was dreadful.  My oldest had a worksheet on which she figured out (among other things) exactly how many ducks lived on the boat with Ping, but she was having trouble understanding the directions.  Meanwhile, on her own worksheet, Trincy was supposed to color the 42 cousins brown, but she decided to color them orange and color 58 of them, instead.  Her big sister, already annoyed by her own confusing worksheet, was chagrined and dismayed about the excessive amount of orange ducks and was very vocal about it.  Meanwhile, Z-Man and I were trying to count ducks, but a chagrined and vocal environment does not make for easy counting.  Somehow, we all muddled through, and were happy to return to our "normal math".

For Literature study, we had some discussion about what makes the story "good" and "compelling", including going through the book together to find the use of repetition, colorful language, and other literary techniques.  My oldest was challenged to incorporate these techniques in her own work, and I hope that she will eventually permit me to share the finished pieces here on the blog.

For Social Studies/Geography, we watched some free online videos.  My kids liked the video we found of people eating scorpions in a Chinese Market. Another notable video we watched that day was this one from National Geographic about the tree-planting efforts of the Chinese government.

While we may have done our Five In A Row readings of Ping, I am not ready to leave China behind!  This unit has inspired me to explore China further this homeschool year.  Additionally, I had chosen the "why don't ducks get wet" over an experiment with buoyancy.  I think that we might re-visit Ping one last time in order to do that experiment, mostly because I think it would be FUN!

Our next FIAR book will either be Madeline or Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.  FIAR is flexible enough that I can do either, and wait and decide when I am good and ready to.  I think it will depend on how I am feeling when we start up.  I am leaning toward Mike Mulligan, with it's possibilities for exploring America's history, and bringing us back closer to home before we launch off into the study of a different country.  After all, I am really not done exploring China, yet!