Mrs. Katz and the Passover

Last week, we learned all about Passover with a sweet Five in a Row book, Mrs. Katz and Tush. In the book, an elderly Jewish lady is befriended by a neighbor family and eventually adopted as their "Bubee." She tells the boy the story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt as they share the Passover Seder together.

We covered many of the FIAR lessons, including:

• "Love your neighbor as yourself." - we memorized Luke 10:27 and used it as copywork and cursive practice.
• We read the story of the Exodus and made really cute (I know that just seems wrong, but they really are cute) little books of the 10 plagues that I found at Homeschoolshare.com
• A yeast experiment - mix yeast and sugar in a bottle of warm water and put a balloon over the top. That worked so well that we had to secure our balloon with electrical tape.
• We talked about patterns, tried drawing our own and looked at these National Geographic patterns in nature.
• We learned all about Passover with The Matzah That Papa Brought Home.
• We learned about Warsaw, Poland during WWII and why Mrs. Katz left in The Cats in Krasinski Square.
• We learned quite a few yiddish words, ate bagels and attempted to polka. :)

I like to have a picture of the books to show you. However, Amazon apparently no longer supports just the picture of the books without the purchase information. I am not trying to sell anything here. Of course, I'm not against anyone using these links, because I will get a commission, but that isn't my reason for putting them there.

What we've been up to

Tapping our 2 (yes, two) maple trees. The buds are just starting to open so the season is over, but we had enough sap to make almost 2 quarts of maple syrup and we shared some sap with another homeschool family who had fun making their own syrup too!

Little Man has been a heart-making machine. He strings the pony beads onto pipe cleaners and I twist them together for him.

Classifying animals. I believe the cars, being metal quadrupeds, are in their own category.

Reading about the Revolution! We're all learning so much! Did you ever hear of Sybil Ludington? I know I never did. She was a 16 year old Paul Revere and, apparently, has just had a movie made about her daring ride. We're enjoying TruthQuest History so much that we will probably just continue it all summer.

Learning to read!! Yes, Little Man is putting his letter sounds together and reading 3-letter words! He's enjoyed playing games on Starfall and this week, we'll be getting out the beloved Bob Books.

Learning about Passover - but that will have to wait for another post.

Z-Man doing his math in his pj's. Life is good.