some of the reasons...

we homeschool are...

so we can take part in amazing events...
witness enchanting cultural dances...
and slide down a Picasso....
:-)

The Nut Tapper

I mentioned last week that we were doing a Christmas/Nutcracker theme for this month...and that one of the things we had planned on seeing was The Nut Tapper (the field trip version). Well... we went last Thursday and had a fabulous time.

It wasn't like we had expected (somehow we had expected people tap dancing to the original ballet score) but we thoroughly enjoyed it. The show was bright and exciting with fabulous dancing, beautiful singing and infectious energy!

They followed the basic story of the Nutcracker.
With a battle between the Nut Tapper and the mouse king...
But they incorporated many different styles of dance... including Mexican Folk Dance...
and Flamenco...
The kids had a really great time.

a theme study for December

Okay... I wasn't going to do it. We were on a good roll with everything we were doing with school. The plan was to just keep on rolling with the norm through December. Well... that was before the tree went up and all of the Christmas stuff came out! We are going to keep going with our normal stuff (scaling back a bit on SOTW though) but we're going to be doing a special theme for the month. Since today is December first and this obsession just came to me on Saturday, it had to be something easy, something that I had resources for already so we could hit the ground running today.

After some brainstorming, I had an idea! See... this summer I got this "brilliant" idea (that was sarcastic) to create a ballet themed year long study for Clara since she LOVES ballet. It's easy finding curriculum ideas for Alex that goes along with what he loves since he loves building and engineering. Clara was tougher so I thought I would try a ballet theme. Well... I began acquiring materials but quickly realized once school started, that I didn't have enough stuff to do what I wanted.... so it was just sitting on a shelf labeled "Clara"... sigh.

BUT.... now, here I was looking for a theme for December... what better use of that stuff on the shelf than a Nutcracker study???

So, here are some of the resources we already had...

DK Read & Listen: Illustrated Book of Ballet Stories

This is a beautiful little book that includes all of the stories on CD. It includes several famous ballets, including the Nutcracker.

Favorite Ballets Coloring Book

Clara loves to color pages in this book as we do our read alouds... but thankfully, she had not gotten to the Nutcracker pages yet.

Nutcracker: The Music Game

We haven't played this yet... but I thought it could be fun.

And, so we don't overdo the ballet thing for Alex, we will add in some composer study...

Tchaikovsky Discovers America

This is another resource I had already purchased.... and now get to put to use!

Now on to other resources...

Again... to not overdo the ballet stuff for Alex, I thought we would expand this a bit and do a little "Christmas Around the World" by reading some about Christmas in Russia. I have these two books to pick up at the library...

Baboushka and the Three Kings


Christmas in Russia

Another motivation for this study is that over Thanksgiving we saw a preview of what looks like a beautiful production of the Nutcracker that is going to be on PBS HD.... Great Performances: Dance In America: San Francisco Ballet's Nutcracker. I couldn't find more info on it... but while looking through the Great Performances site, I found this which looks like fun....

Build and Color Your Own Nutcracker Stage Production

Add to all of this that we're going to see the Nut Tapper this week and the dance school that Clara goes to is putting on their own mini production of the Nutcracker... I think we'll be all Nutcrackered out by the end of December! :-)

I *heart* chicago

... and I especially love homeschooling in the city.

I mean, honestly, they make it so easy here to give your kids this incredible education! Today we went with a friend and her daughters to the Harold Washington Library to see Dancing in the Library: Discover Bharata Natyam. The Chicago Public Libraries have all kinds of incredible free programs.

I really thought this was one was fantastic. It was meant as a lunch hour teaser for Nayta Dance Theatre's longer main production this weekend. This made it the perfect length for kids. Before each dance, a synopsis story was told along with an explanation of some of the movements. The dances and costumes were mesmerizing. The kids were completely enthralled!

Here's one of the photos I took...

After the performance, there was a question and answer period. I learned so much today!

Like I said before, I love homeschooling here in the city :-)

Christmas Around the World

My theme for this week is Christmas Around the World since I knew we were going to the Museum of Science and Industry yesterday to see the Christmas Trees from Around the World and the Star Wars exhibit.

The day before we went I downloaded the podcasts found here. They include brief 45 second to minute and a half descriptions of the Christmas customs of each country. They don't specifically describe the trees at the museum so if you're doing a Christmas Around the World homeschool unit study, it could be a fun supplement. I loaded them onto my iPod for the kids to listen to at the museum. However, the podcasts are in alphabetical order by country which is not at all how the trees were arranged at the museum. Alex tried it out for a couple of trees and then gave up. We just read the signs on each tree aloud.

Here are some photos of some of the trees....



(loved this little origami guy!)



And here was our family's favorite tree...the tree form Poland.

Today we continued our Christmas Around the World study. But first we worked on our Hands of a Child lapbook on Snow that we had started. Today we learned about the different types of frost and how artificial snow is made. The kids also started assembling their lapbook.

After that we listened to the podcasts about the trees we saw yesterday while the kids drew their favorite ornaments that they saw. Next we listened to the tape of the book The Legend of the Poinsettia. It was a great little book about Christmas in Mexico. And then we moved on to Japan and the kids worked on origami ornaments from ActivityTV.

Well... that's all we did worth writing about!