Tag Archives: stuart little

Summer Reading, Part II: Feelings and Classics

Picking up where we left off, it’s time to talk about what I assigned my new fourth grader to read this summer. I started the summer with just one book I wanted her to read, figuring one book plus the typing program I wanted her to do and the Italian language lessons she wanted to do (via Mango, free through the library!) would be plenty. But she asked for books and book projects so I obliged.

Feelings

Why feelings? Because tweens have a LOT of them. I worked through this book with my oldest the year I homeschooled the kids, which was also fourth grade. Truth be told, we haven’t quite finished but we’re almost through it. We read some together, she read some on her own, and she did the exercises in a notebook. I’m not sure whether it’s helped her, but it’s helped me understand what she thinks about and how she sees herself and that is useful info as a parent. At the very least it’s opened up some conversation. The book:

Classics

As a starting point, we got out the literature curriculum I used with my oldest when I homeschooled fourth grade and looked through the book list. We ended up with:

I had all kinds of activities we could’ve done, but we mostly didn’t. What we did do: she did some of the homeschool curriculum reading comprehension questions for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so I could gauge what she retained/understood, we (mostly she) made cabbage soup for dinner one night (like the Buckets ate for every meal), and she watched the movies for each book. I think there was some drawing of spiders and maybe Templeton the rat in there too. I had the idea of making donuts because it seems like everyone in Charlotte’s Web is eating donuts for breakfast all the time but we just ran out of summer before I had the energy envelope to do anything like that. We did have some informal conversations about the differences between the movies (particularly for Charlie and Chocolate Factory) and the books; Charlotte’s Web actually is very very close to the book.

Though I’ve seen both movies (the Gene Wilder as Wonka version, of course) many times, I’m not sure I had actually read either book all the way through so I welcomed the opportunity to do so. Then I learned a little about E. B. White (did you know he’s the same White as The Elements of Style?) and read The Trumpet of the Swan to myself in honor of his birthday (July 11). I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as good as Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little.

That was it. Next time we’re gonna talk about CHICKENS. UNUSUAL chickens…