Luca desperately wanted to do ninja week. Well since Ninjas are part of a "secret" society, it's hard to find books on them. So we settled on Samurai Week. This is currently in process as I had wanted to start it next week, after Thanksgiving, but the boys were SO excited about the idea that we started this week. So we've been reading books about samurai warriors and Japan. We had pot stickers for dinner one night & fortune cookies for dessert. Work w/me here - the boys aren't that into sushi. The Japanese eat very different then what we as Americans are used to. In fact there breakfast looks a lot like our lunch. A traditional Japanese breakfast consists of steamed rice, miso soup, and various side dishes. Common side dishes are broiled/grilled fish, tamagoyaki (rolled omelet), onsen tamago, tsukemono pickles, seasoned nori (dried seaweed), natto, and so on. So I'm having a hard time w/that one. I don't think I'm going to get good enough to make tamagoyaki anytime soon! But I got a couple Japanese cook books, so as we work our way into next week, we'll do a couple more uniquely Japanese meals vs. simply Asian meals.
We've started making felt samurai armor and are going to finish that up in the next day or two, depending on how it fits in w/cooking today. And we also borrowed Mulan 1 & 2 from my friend Heather, so that's our movie option today. To really get into the spirit of samurai week, I took all Niles' word problems from his books & rewrote them to reflect something about the warriors or Japanese culture. He found that more interesting, so I'll continue that this week as we finish up our review of multiplication and division. I also found a great unit study on Japan through CurrClick that he's doing, so this is a pretty well rounded week! One of my favorite parts of homeschooling is to have Niles read Luca a library book about our subject. He read him a book on Japan and You Wouldn't Want to be a Samurai [A Deadly Career You'd Rather Not Pursue] by Fiona Macdonald. Very funny but informative! Here are some pictures of what we have done so far w/the felt.
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