A New Path to Follow: Grandfather's Journey {FIAR}

Sunday, August 31, 2014

This week we rowed one of my favorite books, Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say. Before I read this book with the boys, I didn't think I would really enjoy it. After we read it, I realized I should never judge a book by it's cover. I could really relate to this book and it brought up some great conversations with the boys. My favorite line in the book is :

"The funny thing is, the moment I am in one country, I am homesick for another."

That pretty much sums up our lives as expats.

Geography

We started out the week learning about Japan and finding where it is located. We have not spent an extended period of time in Japan, although we have had a layover there, so the boys knew where Japan was located. We read another page from our "Children Just Like me" Book to get a glimpse at life in Japan. We read a book on Japan and then did a really cute mini book about Japan. We also looked at Japanese art and made our own Japanese fan. The boys watched a clip about Kendo, which they thought was interesting. I also found this cute playdoh sushi set and the boys worked on making plates of sushi.

History

The book has a few pages referencing WWII and bombs. I read My Hiroshima By Junko Morimoto . You may want to preview this book before you read it to your children. It really does touch on what it would have been like to live through the bombings. There was one page I ended up skipping, but the boys took most of it really well. I also found a great clip about what damage the bomb created. This would also be best if previewed first. It was very informative and very eye opening. The boys had a lot of questions and it made us realize we do not always have to agree with what is happening with our home country. We also read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. The story is about a little girl who gets cancer from the radiation from the bomb. That was a hard book to get through, but a really great story.

Tolerance

In the story, Grandfather meets people of all different colors and shake hands with them. We read a great book on appreciating people's differences. One reason I love living in a different country, is that we are the minority. I think everyone should have to have that experience at some point in their life. Being a minority is an experience you can never fully understand until you have experienced it. We talked about how having friends of different colors, religions, and backgrounds makes our life so much richer. We have learned so much from having friends from all over the world. We also did a Peace project and I loved how they turned out.

Birds

We spent an afternoon going through a few of our Nancy Larson science lessons on birds. We learned about birds bodies, identifying how they move, & listening to bird calls. We will continue working on this unit for the next two weeks.

Landforms

On our last day reading Grandfather's Journey, we discussed all the different type of landscapes Grandfather explored before he finally settled down. We read a book about landforms and then did a fun poster project showing a few different types of landforms.

We had a great time reading this book and had so many great conversations after talking about different topics brought up after reading this book. We also read Tea with Milk about Allen Say's mother. His books are all wonderful.