From the Elephant Child to Encarta

So, we are a little behind the schedule I set for ourselves. That means we're still doing a block on animal stories.

Today, we read "Wie das Elefantenkind seinen Ruessel bekam", by Rudyard Kipling. (That's "The Elephant's Child.") The elephant child made its way to the Limpopostrom. The boys found that quite amusing, and curiosity finally got the better of us. S and I hit Google, to learn that the Limpopostrom is the Limpopo River in English.

And this is why homeschooling is so freeing: From knowing that Limpopostrom (isn't that fun to say?!) is the Limpopo River, our next question was where this river is located. Back to Google, and off to Encarta we headed! We learned that the Limpopo River flows through southern Africa. When S zoomed out on the map, we were left with only the country outlines. That, of course, was an opportunity for us to give ourselves a pop quiz: did we remember all of the countries touched by the river? We did!

And this is where homeschooling is even more wondrous: I stepped away from the computer, only to return to S's cruising around on the map, only now he was looking at the map of our own region! On his own, he knew to "travel" up to the North American continent. He'd then used strategies to narrow his location down to our state, and then to our city, and then he "visited" some other locations of import to him.

We then set to finishing the story. On this beautiful fall day, we simply had to use our hammock. And, so we did. :-)

On the way to karate (and yoga for me!), S and I brainstormed various possibility for making a "moving picture" of this story. He had some interesting ideas... stay tuned!