Agricultural Fair Weekend

We found ourselves at the local agricultural fair yesterday; we've gone all three years that we've been here so far.  In fact, I can remember the first time we went, only a few days, maybe a week, after the move - we were still in that first 'everything is new, everything is nerve-wracking and everyone is deeply uncomfortable' stage of moving.  No one could sleep properly because the night noises were different, no one could find anything because the boxes weren't unpacked, and each person who came to the door was a stranger.  I really dislike that stage of moving.  I especially dislike how I can't navigate the world effectively because each task needs to be re-learned to a certain extent - where do I buy milk?  Someone is sick and we don't have a doctor, what next?  Do I have to bring a quarter to the grocery store to get a cart out?

Anyway, that first time, three years ago, the fair was another uncertainty; was it a country fair as in rides, cotton candy, games for children and ponies?  This is sort of what I think of when you say the word 'fair'.  It turned out to be not quite that, but an agricultural fair, which I wasn't as familiar with.  Lots of chickens and rabbits and such, big tables of handwork (quilts, flower arranging, jars of jam, etc.) and vendors selling things that they had made along the lines of knitted dishcloths and mittens.  This sort of fair is much more popular in the rural area I live in and it's what I anticipate now in 'going to the fair'.  We have been to several of them by this point and they have a common gentle entertainment flowing through them.  The children play on a play structure or swings, or perhaps ride a small train in circles; the food available tends to be hotdogs, coffee, cotton candy, and at our fair there is a milk booth that sells nothing but ice cold milk.  You can watch a tractor pull, or working horses, and you can have a glass of milk and go look at what everyone spent the last year crocheting and see whose child won the photography contest and which chicken looks the weirdest.

It is entertainment from a different era, really.  Every year I tell myself that we will enter some of the categories, not because I think my knitting can compete with anyone else's there, or that my jalapeno jelly is the best, but to support this sort of thing, this gentle kind of event that seems to be disappearing.

Our Grade One Curriculum

It's September, and a brand new school year full of things to worry about.  I'm surprisingly calm, actually, about this year's curiculum choices, and so is the boy.

We bought Rod and Staff Grade 1 mathematics, which is supposed to be a solid grounding in early arithmetic (telling time, measurements, money, addition and subtraction, plus the usual early geometry).  Already I can see that we are beyond the scope of this program - my son knows these things.  But I am making us go through the program from the beginning anyway because I'm mean like that.

For Language Arts we're finishing up Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and also starting in on First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, Volume 1.  I was concerned about the transition from the strange phonetic spelling to stardard printing in 100 Easy Lessons, but when we got to the lesson where they show you the *new* way of reading the transition went smoothly.

We are starting at the beginning of Story of the World Volume 1 for history and geography (we started reading it for pleasure last year but stopped), with the difference being that I also bought the activity book to go along with the text.  It guides you through story narrations, questions to assign (we will probably skip these with my pre-writer) maps and other activity sheets, further reading on the topic and finally a hands-on activity.

For 'science', which I'm not really doing in any formal way in grade one, we found a series called The Quark Chronicles that I was fascinated with and decided to buy the first volume.  The story follows four children who are kidnapped by space pirates and have to find their way back to earth using, in each book, a difference branch of science.  In the Botany volume, which I understand is the first book and is the one we're starting with, they begin to experience nutritional deficiencies and have to plant a garden and discover the secrets of botany.  In all honesty it's probably aimed at grades 3-5, but we're happy to putter through it anyway.  I have thoughts of doing experiments as well, from our many, many science experiment books, but who knows if that will really happen.

The whole 'curriculum', if you will, is scattered with a healthy dose of books.  The boy has received multiple interesting reads over the past few months; Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman and Terence Dickinson's two excellent books: Exploring The Night Sky and Exploring The Sky by Day (these, along with a beginner's telescope, were his birthday gift) stand out to me at the moment but there are others.  And of course we're still reading chapter books aloud.

Actually, the chapter books have begun to cause a bit of a fuss - we're running through books at a startling pace.  Last year we read Stuart Little by E.B. White, Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes, Gooseberry Park by Cynthia Rylant, and My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.  Also some of the Thornton Burgess books - I believe we read Bob White, possibly another.  Anyway, over the course of the year we managed those (approximately) five books.  THIS year, however, we've already read three of the Melendy Quartet novel by Elizabeth Enright, Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne, and last night finished Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.  I was at the library book sale a few weeks ago and picked up a cheap copy of The Wind In The Willows and we'll start that today, but then I suppose we should try to read The House At Pooh Corner and maybe another Burgess?  Or buy the next Ransome, which is Swallowdale...I don't know.  And I don't know why I didn't plan this a bit better.

So that's grade one over here.