Monday, October 17, 2011

The Broken Tusk

In an effort to make this round through Story of the World a little more challenging to Sophie I have been using some of the recommendations from Classical House of Learning's Logic Stage guide. Without me telling her to read these books Sophie has simply gravitated to them when I brought them home from the library. (Except for Gilgamesh the Hero. She enjoyed the picture books I brought home when I read them aloud to the boys but she didn't take any interest in this longer retelling of the story. I didn't push it on her. Maybe if it sits here on the shelf long enough she will get to it eventually.)

Theodosia was one I did read aloud to all the kids and we continue to enjoy the rest of the series. Sophie picked up a copy of Tales of Ancient Egypt and read the whole book for some light night reading.  She now tells me all the stories of the Egyptian gods and acts surprised when I don't know the story that she is referring to. She loves to find the holes in my education!  I can't keep up with her reading so she is quickly schooling me on many subjects.

The Broken Tusk was a book I picked up at the library last week and she found it in my bag during the drive home.  She now knows so much about this Hindu god. At her age I don't even think I knew what Hinduism was or where it was practiced.  She finds these stories or myths, as she usually refers to them, very funny.

So today I asked her if she would like to put together a little book report lapbook.  She got so excited.  I got her a folder and some cardstock and let her do whatever she wanted. I even gave her a picture of Ganesha that I had printed out for our India report.  She wants a few more before the project will be done.  I was really surprised she took to such an assignment.  It isn't a lapbook and it isn't a book report but it will be a perfect way for her to narrate to me the text and have ownership of the presentation.

It works for me. And thankfully it works for her as well.

I have Tales from Africa coming from the library for next week. We will see if she naturally snaps that one up next.

1 comment:

Cellista said...

Are you doing any of the questions and writing from the Classical House of Learning? Or do you just have Sophie read? I'm trying to follow that too, but I feel like we're trying to do so much and I just can't seem to keep up. I am trying to read all the books with A so we can discuss them together, but even that is proving to be difficult right now.