Ravel

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)

Not on my watch

Last Tuesday, I was lunching at a neighborhood cafe and felt a magnetic pull to eavesdrop on the two teenagers a few tables down who had obviously cut class.  The theme of their distressing conversation was “I hate school”.  Oh my.  Who or what stomped the life out of their learning adventure?  

grandma watch

Not on my watch.  Every single night it is my pleasure to make sure that the learning adventure for my son (AND myself) is set on FULL BLAST.  One goal is to read something so startling that we stop, reread, and marvel.  A few items that had us marveling this past week:

national parks better

  • From “The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth”, by Rachel Ignotofsky:
    • the one place on earth, that by 1959 international treaty, can only be used for peace and science (with all discoveries shared freely).  Nice.  (Antarctica)
    • while many ecosystems are under threat from unsustainable farming techniques, deforestation, and global warming, the Mongolian Steppe has quite another problem:  GOATS.  One of Mongolia’s successful exports is the fiber from cashmere goats,  so there are a LOT of goats grazing with a vengeance, munching roots as well as the grass,  destroying entire landscapes.
    • the Gouldian finch of the Australian savanna.  Crazy GORGEOUS (see photo below in the music listening section).
  • From the Lonely Planet Kids book, “America’s National Parks”:
    • which state, after California and Alaska, boasts the greatest number of national parks?  (Utah).  We never would have guessed that.
    • there are national parks that exist primarily underwater:  American Samoa National Park, Biscayne National Park, Channel Islands National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park, Kenai Fjords National Park, and Everglades National Park.

tide pool 3 tries

More interesting information on the horizon –  We have just started the terribly elegant little “Pacific Coast Tide Pools” by Marni Fylling.  So far we have become knowledgeable about low tides, high tides, the splash zone, the challenges of being permanently attached to a rock, and the toxic beauty of sea anemones.  Sponges are on deck.

trivia sign

Story problem:  Trivia Night at Le Fictitious Local Diner – Tuesday nights are slow at the diner, so the new manager, Miss Jeanette, is hosting “Tuesday Twilight Trivia” to bring in more customers.  Admission is the purchase of the “Tuesday Twilight Trivia Dinner Special” for $7.50.  If the first Tuesday there were 20 players and the second Tuesday there were 40 players, by what percentage did the the attendance rise?  
A)   20%      B)  40%       C)    50%     D)  100%

If the diner awards a cash prize of $25 to each evening’s winner, how much did the diner gross on night number two?
A)  $150     B)  $275     C)  $400     D)  $1,000
(answers at bottom of post)

finches

Music to celebrate that ridiculous-yet-gorgeous Gouldian finch –

  • Vivaldi’s “Flute Concerto in D major” (known as “The Goldfinch”), movement 3, published in 1728.  Yay, James Galway –

  • “Dawn” from Ravel’s ballet, “Daphnis and Chloe”, which premiered in 1912.  A superb, compact performance by the Berlin Phil, complete with chorus.  We put our full attention to listening for the subtle birdsong theme that runs in the background throughout the piece –

and finally:

tie dyed hippie    finch singular

  • “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers.  The psychedelic colorwork that is the Gouldian finch simply begged for a vintage song from the psychedelic 1960’s.  How can we not smile when we listen to this?  GREAT rhythm.  Peace out –

(for more ’60’s vibe:  the April 29, 2015 post, “Peace, Love, and Tambourines”)

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
(story problem answers:  D)  100%  and  B)  $275)