"Kara Koro, Kara Koro"

Last week we rowed (that's a FIAR term for reading the book every day for a week) "A Pair of Red Clogs" by Masako Matsuno.



The book is about a young Japanese girl who tries to trick her mother into buying her a new pair of clogs, but in the end she feels ashamed of her behavior and cleans up her old clogs until they are almost like new.  We had some good talks about honesty and also about taking care of our possessions.  Throughout the week the kids built and painted their own pair of Japanese clogs (geta).  In the book, Mako says that her clogs talk "Kara Koro, Kara Koro" when she walks.  I expected these clogs to be quite loud, but when they run around outside on the sidewalk, they sound rather nice.

In the book, Mako and her friends play a weather telling game where they kick off their shoes and predict the weather by the shoes' position when they land.  So for science this week we learned about weather and meteorology.  We watched news forecasts and tested the weatherman's predictions throughout the week (he was right!).  We also made a weathervane and learned how it works, as well as other ways to tell which direction the wind is blowing.  Our weathervane actually worked quite well, but it was destroyed by child-sized monsters before I thought to get a picture of it.

Saturday we played store so the kids could practice their money skills.  The game quickly morphed into "cops and robbers" with masked bandits running into the kitchen, yelling "this is a stick-up" and grabbing all the merchandise and money.  Luckily, Sheriff John was on duty and he quickly nabbed the bandits, who had to spend time in chair jail until they apologized, at which point the store owner gave them some Rabbit-in-the-Moon cookies.

Last night we ate our American breakfast-for-dinner Japanese style around a low table, sitting on pillows and using chopsticks.  The arrangement was a HUGE hit with the kids.

Along with our regular daily Spanish, Math, LA, Handwriting, Phonics, History, Art, and PE, it was a great week.  We're excited to continue on with our study of Japan this week with "Grandfather's Journey" by Allen Say.