Night of the Moonjellies

This week we rowed Night of the Moonjellies, by Mark Shasha.  This has been my favorite Five in a Row book so far, both because of the story and the way we learned.  The first two books we rowed, I based our studies more on lapbooks and this one more on the FIAR manual.  I realized that I really love the lapbooks because of the creativity involved and the nice way everything comes together in a little package.  The kids don't really care about that stuff.  Since this is their education - I need to teach in the way they learn best.

Night of the Moonjellies is the story about a little boy who lives in New England with his Grandma.  He finds a moon jelly on the beach one morning as he is walking to the diner which is his family's business.  After working at the diner for the day, Mark's Grandma takes him out on a boat to release the jellyfish back into the ocean.

What we learned:

Science

This was a fun opportunity to learn about jellyfish!  Or, "jellies", as we decided to call them since scientist agree that they aren't really fish at all.  We read several basic books about jellies from the library.  The kids narrarated back to me what they learned and I recorded it in their science notebooks.  EM's favorite fact about jellies is that some can kill a person in minutes.  We also watched videos of jellies on youtube.  EM learned the life cycle of a jelly and made a neat wheel chart I found on homeschool share.  JR was very cute when he demonstrated how a jelly moves through the water and not much beats a five year old with a stuffy nose saying, "tentacles".

Language Arts


Per the manual, we discussed the contrast between the busy, noisy description of the diner with the calm, serene description of the boat on the ocean.  We also used the term contrast to lead our discussion about the artwork.

Art


Mark Shasha's artwork in this book is stunning.  The gorgeous drawings spanning the pages of the story were my favorite part about this week.  The kids and I discussed contrast in the illustrations of light and dark as well as warm and cool.  We talked about how Shasha achieved the feeling of warmth or coolness through the colors he used.  I asked them each to draw a picture using warm or cool colors.

EM's drawing of a princess castle using cool colors.  I like how she added the flag blowing which  makes the scene feel cool as well as the yellow window making the castle seem warm inside.  

JR used warm colors to draw a campfire and a tent.  I love that this is his "warm" place.  

We also did a fun project with watered down paint to paint jellyfish.  JR loved this one, especially the splattering of bubbles!

EM has difficulty letting go of her perfectionism to create a messy project.  

JR really got the idea though!

They also made some jellyfish!

Social Studies

The kids and I had fun creating our own diner this week.  We talked about responsibilities of having a job and a business.  They compromised on a name for their diner, "Chef Pasketti and EJL's Diner", and talked about what should be on the menu and also discussed value and how much the menu items should cost.  Then they got to work!

Our friendly Host welcoming the surprise customers.

The waitress taking orders.