(Check out my Pinterest FIAR board for the resources/blogs where I found most of my ideas.)
(We finished our study last week.)

Day 1
Today we started by reading the theme book (of course!). Thankfully I had gotten online and ordered the library books early enough that a lot of them came in right away. Although I wasn’t so early in my actual lesson planning (ahem, I finished late the night before.)
Next we read these books about fractions. The pie book was cute and simple to understand.

Then we played with the felt fractions I had made a while back. We pretended that they were different kinds of pies and I had her answer how much of each pie I pretended to eat, etc.

Afterwards I pulled out this game that I found a few months ago on clearance at Walmart. She had never seen it so it was a fun surprise for her.

We played a round of the game (she won!) then she wanted to play restaurant and take our orders. So Daddy and I made up orders and she had to fill them (1/16th piece of cheese, 1/2 supreme and 2/8 cheese, etc). She had a lot fun with this.

Day 2
Today we read Lentil again. Then we read a few more fraction books:


Then we read a couple music books: (both were really neat stories)

Then I surprised H with a real harmonica! It’s Daddy’s, but she gets to borrow it for a while. And boy, are we in for a lot of noise, I mean music! She was so excited!

We watched a few short YouTube videos on how to play harmonica and then a video of someone playing the song that Lentil plays.
Next she colored a harmonica page.

Later on we went to the San Francisco symphony’s kid website. It’s awesome! We watched a video on the basics of music theory. H drew these notes and how many beats they’re each worth while we watched. The note with the face is from the video. Lol.

Then we explored (and reviewed) the musical instrument families on the website. They show you each family and you can you click on the different instruments to hear a sample of music. H also used their composer game to make a short score of music.
H also did a sheet of math word problems based on the Lentil story.

And at dinner time she helped daddy cut our pizza and named the different fractions as he cut. Talk about real life learning! I love homeschool.
Day 3
Today we started with a tasting experiment. We used a worksheet from homeschool share to record the different tastes she tried. We had 4 different bowls full of salt water, sugar water, melted unsweetened (bitter!) chocolate and lemon juice. She tasted each one using a q-tip. The chocolate one threw her for a loop! It was definitely not the sweet chocolate she was expecting!

We used a mirror to look at her tongue so I could point out the taste buds. She also tried lemon heads since lemons are an important twist in the story. She wasn’t the biggest fan of them.
Next we read a few books about taste and an interesting story about cooking:


I highly recommend the “how taste works” book. Simple enough for H to understand but still quite detailed.
Then, like Lentil we decided to turn our lemons into lemonade. Only this time, real lemonade! We had fun squeezing and tasting the yummy fresh lemonade. I used an easy recipe I found online. And all the measuring was good math and fraction practice.

And after all the squeezing, I got H to lick a lemon. She didn’t quite make a full pucker, but she did make a funny face!
Then we read a neat book about music (I recommend this one, too): 
Then H sorted these instrument cards into their families. The cards I found on the free homeschool deals website. 

After all the other school was done H got to do a taste experiment her way. She gathered different bits of food and then made me close my eyes while she fed me each one. I had to guess each item. Yes. It requires a lot of trust (in a 5 yr old) and bravery (because of the obvious). Some items weren’t bad, others weren’t so pleasant (cold leftover roasted broccoli). Mainly because I didn’t know what to expect. She gets such a kick out of this experiment (we’ve done it more times than I can count). And this time she even got tricky and shoved multiple items into my mouth. Some of them that weren’t so complimentary. Think vanilla wafer, ranch crackers, cheese and almonds. Yep. That’s about when I ended my participation.
Day 4
H started out by doing a Lentil word problem worksheet.

Then we read a book about Ohio.

H traced the outline of Ohio and colored the state flag. 
We learned that Ohio is the only state that has a flag that isn’t a rectangle. H found it very interesting and repeated this fact to a number of people. She also thought it was funny that Ohioans are also called Buckeyes.
Next we talked about being disagreeable and grumpy. We talked about why old Sneep was so grumpy which led us to talk about jealousy. Then we read a few books about being grumpy. They were all really good. I especially liked the Grumpy Mr. Grady book. It was about homeschooling and had a great message.


We also talked about patriotism and why we should be proud of our country. Then we read a few books about America and our flag:

Day 5
This morning we were looking to see if the Olympics were on yet and since they weren’t, we ended up watching Daniel Tiger. And ironically it had some instruments in it. They played a timpani drum, violin, guitar and trumpet.
Then we watched the Haunted Museum episode of Magic school bus. They learn about sound waves and instruments.
Next we reviewed the definition of patriotism and read a couple good books about it. (I recommend both, especially the Impossible Patriotism Project.) 
Then we read a book about music 
H finished up by coloring a flag. We talked about what the Stars and Stripes symbolize.

Day 6
Today we read a few books about America, patriotism and our flag (the cake one was great!):


We talked again about veterans and patriotism and then headed to the Veteran’s Memorial Museum. I had told H last week about it and she has been begging to go ever since. I had never been there and was thoroughly impressed by all that they had. I especially liked that it was free! The woman that works there was very kind. She gave us a brief tour and gave the girls some souvenirs.




















We had some good discussion about why we should thank veterans for fighting in wars for us, what freedoms we have, and the names of the different wars. I also told H about September 11th since they had a display with two pieces of metal from ground zero.
After we came home we read a couple of books about music.

Day 7
Today we started out by talking about what Lentil was good at and what he couldn’t do (even though he wanted to!). Then we discussed what H is good at:

Then I asked H what are some of the things her friends can do but she can’t. She had a hard time thinking of anything. The only thing she thought of was how she can’t pick her nose with her tongue like her cousin can! I told her that’s quite alright. lol
Then H filled out her field trip log from our trip yesterday. She wrote the shorter words and phrases (I helped with spelling) and I wrote the longer parts of the page for her. She also drew a neat picture of the museum and the tank on the back of the page.


Then we read another book about taste:

Later we read the Magic School Bus book that went with the episode she watch a few days ago.

Then we looked at a couple of books about music. Both of them were a little too complicated for our uses (and H’s age), but we still skimmed them. The What is Art: Music book was pretty good for the most part, and we mainly just looked at the pictures in the Usborne one.

Then H did her own sound experiment by playing her harmonica in the bathtub like Lentil. Then she played under the blankets on the bed. We talked about which setting sounds the best. H decided she liked under the blankets the best. We discussed how the sounds were different because of the hard vs soft surroundings.

Day 8
I had H start our school day by sorting the instruments into their families again for review.

Then we worked on geography again. H found Ohio (after a number of guesses), then dumped the puzzle and put it all together. I tried to name some of the states as she put them back together. She used to know over half of them, but not anymore.
Then H colored our state (Florida) and Ohio on the worksheet and we talked about what direction we would have to travel to get to Ohio (North!).

Then we did a geography minibook. H drew a picture for each page from our house to our planet. I think we must have missed a page because it went from state to planet. But I think she got the idea.

Next we started talking about architecture. I asked H what house was the neatest in Lentil. H quickly said “Colonel Carter’s!” We looked at story of Lentil and talked about all the neat and unusual parts of Colonel Carter’s house. Then we read a few books about the different aspects of architecture:


I would highly recommend all 3 books. They were all very interesting. We read most of the Old House New House book, but some of it was too complicated for H. It was interesting to see how the house changed over time and what renovations they did.
Then H pulled out her blocks. She built a castle, a town and I helped her with a tower (like the skyscraper book).

Day 9
We started today by continuing our architecture lesson from yesterday. We worked together to draw Colonel Carter’s house while looking at the page from Lentil. I tried to get H to draw it herself, but she complained it was too hard and started getting upset. So we worked together.


Next, we tried whittling with soap like Old Sneep does (he uses wood though, of course). We used some Ivory soap I had left from another experiment. I wouldn’t recommend using Ivory though, it crumbles way too easily. A softer soap would do better. But the girls still had fun cutting it up and making a mess.


Next, H figured out the setting for Lentil and chose her vocab word: monument. She did a good job illustrating her new word.

Then we talked about the elements of a good story. I drew a basic mountain type illustration and I tried to explain them at a 5 yr old level.

Then I had H do a reading response worksheet for Lentil (I found it for free from teachers pay teachers).

Next, went online and did a really neat story elements interactive website (found it on Pinterest). It was a bit long at times, but H stayed with it pretty well, especially because the story used was Cinderella. There were a lot of neat interactive activities throughout it. After we finished it, H took the provided test.

Next, we did a roll-a-story (I found it on teachers pay teachers).


Then we used the story elements H rolled to write a story. I typed while H narrated. I helped her rephrase a few sentences and encouraged her to add a few more details. Next, after printing it out, H illustrated her story.
Day 10
Today we tied up all the loose ends of our Lentil study. We read another book about taste and some about patriotism, our flag and America.


We looked through another book about Ohio and learned some interesting facts about the Amish community.

Later we played around with big brother’s charcoal pencil. I tried it out first to get the hang of the sketching technique. We looked at some of the pages of Lentil and noted how the artist shaded and sketched with charcoal.

Then I had H experiment with it. She had a hard time getting the hang of it. She kept wanting to use it like a normal pencil and her drawing and coloring with it made awful noises! I kept trying to get her sketch and shade and it caused some battles and tears (not at all what I expected!). She finally was able to at least try it better. Below are her drawings. The first one is only charcoal and in the second she drew with charcoal and then colored in with regular colored pencils.

We had a lot of fun rowing Lentil and are looking forward to our next study: Madeline!