Debussy

Side Dishes

Regarding our Stories & Studies program –  If books are the “main course”, we need side dishes to complete the nightly academic banquet.  This is the fun part for me – making up the story problems, word scrambles, iPad keyboard practice words, and most fun of all, creating the reading comprehension sheets.

Reading Comprehension –
Our reading comprehension efforts amount to this:  in complete silence, my son reads a few paragraphs dealing with the antics of two best friends, Clem and Clyde, and answers questions so I can assess if he understood what he read.  So far, it is a big smiles occasion when I present a new “Clem and Clyde”  and my son has worked through 25 reading comp sheets.  Did I hear someone inquire about the page titles?  OK:

Clem and Clyde get Jobs!
Clem and Clyde get New Shoes
Clem and Clyde and the Dandy Potato!*
Clem and Clyde Win an Award!
Clem and Clyde and the Pizza Poet
Clem and Clyde and the Purring Promenade
Clem and Clyde Learn to Juggle!
Clem and Clyde get New Backpacks
Clem and Clyde Paint their Bedrooms
Clem and Clyde Drive Tractors!*
Clem and Clyde and Honest Abe
Clem and Clyde and the Dream Destination
Clem and Clyde:  Trampoline Testers!
Clem and Clyde at Home on Candy Cane Lane
Clem and Clyde make New Years Resolutions
Clem and Clyde buy a Snowman
Clem and Clyde try Sugar Snap Peas
Clem and Clyde take Square Dancing Lessons!
Clem and Clyde get Haircuts
Clem and Clyde get Saturday Jobs
Clem and Clyde Paint Murals
Clem and Clyde and the Band-Aid Stand
Clem and Clyde Host a Spaghetti Dinner
Clem and Clyde Help Out at the Library
Clem and Clyde Make the Worst Lemonade

*samples:

iPad Keyboard Competence –
My son still needs to get comfortable with letter positions on a keyboard.   Repetition is obviously the key, but here is what would happen if I said “press the “a”, press the “a”, press the “a”, now press the “b”, press the “b”, press the “b””:  NOTHING.  So, I prepare groups of rhyming words (one group per night) (enough is enough) (this seems to be SLOWLY working:  without assistance, my son can now locate and press letters “A” through “I”).   Rhyming clusters like these:

wink – blink – sink – pink – rink – think (repeatedly pressing the “i-n-k” letters)
bark – park – hark – lark – shark – mark (repeatedly pressing the “a-r-k” letters)

Word Scrambles – 
My son LOVES (and is lightning fast at) unscrambling words.  If nothing else, this is good for  handwriting practice.  Not that anyone needs an example, but:

THARRSOCE (orchestra)
SLYMOPIC (Olympics)

Story Problems
I like story problems and I like writing them.  When I was a youngster, story problems were the only way that I could understand the point of math. Our story problems bring to life the Local Diner or Farmer Brown’s Ranch and Roadside Stand.

~The local diner has decided to bottle and sell their popular spicy buttermilk salad dressing.  Local high school art students are competing to design the bottle’s label.   The prize is three-pronged: 1) a case of 24 bottles of the spicy buttermilk salad dressing, 2) photo of winning designer in local newspaper, 3) the photo enlarged to poster size and displayed near the diner cash register (we are talking HOME TOWN FAME).  

– If each bottle will sell in the diner for $5.00, how much is the prize worth? 
a)  $24     b)  $120     c)  $500     d)  $524

– If the “sell by” date of each bottle is 6 months after bottling, and a family typically goes through 2 bottles of salad dressing a month, how many bottles from the case of 24 should the prize winner give away to neighbors?
a)  9     b)  12     c)  18     d)  20 (answers at bottom of post)

~Farmer Brown has recently purchased 5 new umbrellas for the outdoor picnic area adjacent to his roadside produce stand.  Good grief, each umbrella cost $500!  Farmer Brown is selling his popular “cinnamon stick apple pies” for $20 each to raise money to pay for the umbrellas.  If the profit from each pie sold is $15, will Farmer Brown have to sell more or less than 150 apple pies? (answer at bottom of post)

Parlez-vous de musique classique?  For the duration of the Paris Olympics, we have listened to the work of French composers (Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Faure, Satie, Offenbach, Delibes, Bizet, Debussy) every single night.   Getting us into the Parisian spirit – 

(BTW, this is how my son selects music every night)

Offenbach – The Can-Can from Jacque Offenbach’s comic opera of 1874, “Orpheus in the Underworld”.  This is the lively version my son and I have listened to many, many, many times –

Bizet – The Carillon (tower bells) from “L’Arlesienne, Suite No. 1”, composed in 1872.  Bizet composed 27 pieces  of incidental music for Alphonse Daudet’s drama (“L’Arlesienne”).  In this performance, we like how the conductor moves this piece right along.  The usual tempo is a bit slower.

Debussy – Clair de Lune, inspired by Paul Verlaine’s poem (1869),  Clair de Lune is the 3rd movement of Debussy’s “Suite Bergamasque” composition for piano of 1890.  This video footage complete with Lang Lang’s achingly slow, thought-filled performance, is filled with current scenes of Paris.  Perfect! 

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
(story problem answers:  b)  $120, b)  12 bottles to neighbors, and “more” (Farmer Brown needs to sell 167 apple pies)

Sea Hunt

Sea Hunt – Do you know about the Sargasso Sea?  Located in the Atlantic Ocean, to the east of Bermuda, it is about 2/3 as wide as the continental USA (so it is HUGE), yet there is a glaring shortage of non-fiction books focused upon this important ecosystem.  Surely my son and I are not the only people who want to know more about the turtles and eels of the Sargasso Sea.  We learned a bit by reading through Ruth Heller’s, “A Sea Within a Sea”, a lovely book with information set to rhyme, but we want more.  Attention people who are looking for something to write about: big opportunity here.

Great Beginnings – We are hopeful about two books we began last night: “Ocean” by Ricardo Henriques and Andre Letria (in just the first four pages we enjoyed a richness of information woven into sparse, eye-catching graphics) AND, we started an abridged version of Homer’s “The Odyssey”, by Gillian Cross and Neil Packer (oh my, the illustrations! and of course, oh my, the story!)

What else are we reading?
“Boats Fast & Slow” by Iris Volant and Jarom Vogel (almost a bit too elementary for us. Nonetheless, there are things to learn from this well organized book).
“The War I Finally Won”, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (a sequel to the excellent “The War that Saved My Life”).
“While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away” by Mary Nash (only our 6th time through) (a plot line that makes us smile through every single re-read) (this book needs to be read during the summer).

Willy Nilly Time Zones – My son and I love opening up a Ken Jennings book – his writing is clever, funny, and informative.  This week, we are in the middle of his “Junior Genius Guide to Maps and Geography” and have spent time twirling our globe while we read about the International Date Line, the Prime Meridian, and time zones.
WE DID NOT KNOW THIS: countries can determine whether they want to follow international time zone designations.  China, which spans 5 time zones, and Greenland, which spans 4 time zones both make do on a single time zone.  We spent a few minutes thinking about what this would mean if you lived at the far east or far west of either country.  Interesting.
When we are feeling rebellious we say THROW AWAY the state approved text books and replace them with anything written by Ken Jennings.

A Farmer Brown Story Problem – Over Labor Day weekend, there is to be a kayak race in the local river and Farmer Brown is anxious for his ranch team to win the competition (good publicity for his farm stand).  He is purchasing 6 kayaks at $250 each for his employees to practice with, and super competitive Farmer Brown has promised to captain the team! (the ranch team will be so glad when the race is over)
After the race, Farmer Brown is going to offer kayak rentals to be used on his ranch pond. If he charges $15 to rent a kayak for an afternoon of paddling fun, and assuming that 6 people want to kayak every single day, how many afternoons will pass before he makes a profit (which will probably go into kayak maintenance)?
A) 17     B) 27     C) 37     D) 47 (answer at bottom of post)
For discussion: Is this a fast way to make money?

Water Water All Around – a classical music theme to compliment all the reading about oceans, seas, and boats:

  • “The Aquarium”, from Camille Saint-Saens’ “The Carnival of the Animals”, composed in 1886.  Saint-Saens congers up an atmosphere of creepy deep sea mystery in this short short two minute piece –

  • “Jeux de Vagues” (“Play of the Waves”), from Debussy’s “La Mer”, composed in 1904.  We haven’t braved listening to this intellectual masterpiece until this very week; a bit too sophisticated for us, I thought.  But this week, my son and I sat back and let Debussy bring us the sounds of waves being pushed around by the wind, currents, and other waves.  Terribly elegant –

  • “Over the Waves”, composed by Juventino Rosas in 1888.  This waltz rhythm is definitely happier listening than the Aquarium or Jeux de Vagues.  However (semi-interesting side-note), we keep getting this confused with Emile Waldteufel’s “The Skaters Waltz” of 1882 (could Rosas have been “more than” inspired by Waldteufel’s piece?) –

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
(story problem answer:  A)  17 afternoons)(and our discussion topic:  we decided that this actually was a semi-fast way of making money, faster than we thought)