Interesting Japanese Grasshopper

I was trying to identify a giant insect that we had land on our balcony last summer. In the process I found a cool site with little posts about insects and other animals in Japan. Natural Japan is based in Kyushu (southern Japan). But even so, it has some good info. If you can narrow your search down to an order (like arachnids - spiders, lepidoptera - butterflies & moths, or orthoptera - grasshoppers & related insects) you can click on that term in the sidebar and see all the entries for that order.

By the way, the lovely on the balcony was an oriental long headed locust. Below is another one that we found last fall on the soccer fields. I think it's interesting that they seem to change colors as the rice in the fields changes from green to golden brown. If you're headed out to harvest rice this fall, or just hanging around the soccer fields, keep an eye out for these hoppers.

Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

If you are working on music appreciation this year, you might find the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra game useful. It is a computer game that follows the pieces in the Britten symphony to teach students about the different instruments in an orchestra. The game is a production from Carnegie Hall Listening Adventures.
Listening Adventures also has a feature for Dvorak's New World Symphony. Rather than a game, it is more of an illustrated performance. Images of both the featured instruments and the notes of the melody help you to "see" what you are listening to.

Online Art Resources

I've been putting together my plans for artist study this year and found a great resource from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. It has essays on various themes from artistic movements to artists to specific subjects to specific objects. For example:

Japanese Art (over 30 essays)
Greek and Roman Art (over 90 essays)
Horse Armor in Europe, with links to related essays and exhibitions, including Let's Look at Armor, which compares European, Japanese and Ottoman Turkish armor.

There was some discussion on the KPHS email list about Janson's History of Art. There is an extensive companion website for Janson's that includes study guides and activities like fill in the blank, true false questions, essay questions and maps. If you hover above the chapter numbers at the top you can see what the chapter topics are. I haven't checked yet, but I would expect the base library to have at least one copy of Janson's History of Art in the collection.

One more nice art resource is the National Gallery of Art's website. It has both an art education section with lesson plans and activities by artist and topic; and an NGAKids section that includes fun online activities using various artists and movements for inspiration. They have children's guides and longer Family Guides. These can be helpful when visiting exhibits at local Japanese art museums, which might not have printed or audio guides available in English.

Books, Books and More Books

I am bad, really bad when it comes to books. I LOVE books and always have. I read constantly and usually more than one book at a time--which some people have a hard time grasping. I am currently visiting the US and going crazy with all the books here: discount stores, used book stores, library sales. It's almost too much! I find I can't part with my books either for I enjoy reading them over, and sometimes over. As such, I am also trying to work at instilling this love to my children. Yes, they too love books, but I want them to also love literature. I do think there is a difference. Right now, they too love books, but they haven't quite come to appreciate good literature, even children's literature. As I sit here at the computer on these last days of my vacation, I have been doing a ton of searches on the internet and have found all sorts of fun stuff involving good books.

First, I am so excited to discover that September is Roald Dahl Month. He has always been one of my favorite authors. I have fond memories of my second grade teacher reading us James and the Giant Peach. This was actually one of the first works of good fiction that I was able to get my son to read. He already knew the story from the movie and liked it, but the transformation that took place when he was able to compare the book to the movie. It was like . . .magic! And yes, he did agree that the book was so much better. I am really looking forward to following the activities and having the boys read some new Dahl books in the coming months.

As home schoolers, I see that trying finding literature guides is a common endeavour. I have recently come across a few more sites that might be of interest and include some free literature guides to popular titles. First, there's Glencoe Literature. They have a huge list of guides and seem to be adding new ones. There appears to be a wide range of offerings and for most upper elementary levels and above, everything from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to A Wrinkle in Time, classics and award winners alike.

A site that I just found today and has a smaller listing, but does include books for younger readers is Kidsreads.com. This site doesn't have guides as such, but discussion questions for book clubs. Another book club site that has quite an extensive listing of books is Litlovers. This site is fantastic! It has all sorts of book info, but from what I have seen the titles are for an older audience, although many classics are included too. I liked this one for in addition to the questions, it also includes book info, a synopsis, and reviews.

Finally, there's Books 4 Boys. If looking for guides is a big question, finding books that boys want to read is even bigger. This site has recommendations by age, author, theme and for all age levels, from picture books to young adult. There are no true guides, but several books do have discussion questions to accompany them. Some of the newer books even have excerpts available.

If you have a favorite book or author, please share. I am always looking for new books to read and share. Happy reading!

Hiking Around Yokosuka

Here are some hiking trails in the area.

Daibutsu hiking trail. This is a longish trail in Kamakura that can be hiked in several different segments. We started in Hase (near the Great Buddha), hiked the ridgeline, then came down into town and hit a couple of the Kamakura shrines. You can also hike all the way up into Kita Kamakura. Pretty gentle hike once you get to the top of the ridgeline, but would be very slippery when wet. More walks and hikes in Kamakura

This is my source for other hikes around Yokosuka. The site is in Japanese, but I use Google translator. The trail maps are all in Japanese and don't translate, but I've had pretty good luck by matching up the kanji for the train stations to figure out where the trail goes. These range from easy city strolls to trail hiking.

Last week we did the hike from Keikyu Taura to Yokosuka. This one is about 5 miles, but has a lot of change in elevation. It goes up to a plum forest park in Taura that has a really great kids' playground if you are taking younger kids as tag alongs. We hiked this one by taking the train to Taura and hiking back to the base. Lots of vending machines along this route, so you don't have to carry a ton of water. There are also drinking fountains and bathrooms at both parks where you can refill water.

I also like the Dollars to Yen blog for hiking and park/playground ideas. The blog author lived in Ikego for a couple years and recently moved down to Okinawa. She has posts with good pictures of several of the local trails.

Books in the base library that are useful include 40 Day Trips Around Tokyo and 40 More Day Trips Around Tokyo as well as Trails of Two Cities. Another fun book is Kamakura: Fact and Fiction. This has wonderful history tidbits about what you will see all around Kamakura. All of these are in the Japanese interest section beyond the internet computers.

Boy Scout Troop 15 in Tokyo has a series of historic trails laid out through the Tokyo metro area. If you hike three of the trails, you can then buy one of the historic trail patches. (Trails are about halfway down the page.) This page also has a good reference for plants and poisonous animals in Japan.

Not necessarily a School Room Challenge

The Kanto Plain Home Schoolers presents the Not Necessarily a School Room Challenge

Few of us have enough space for a dedicated school room. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have tons of school “stuff”. So how do you have your school stuff stored, arranged and organized so that you can find it, use it and still eat dinner at a table?

Share your school space ideas and pictures. If you have a blog, you can post ideas and pictures there and post a link in the comments section.

If you’re like me, you might work better with a deadline, so send in your submissions by 27 August.

I'm looking forward to seeing our own little version of an HGTV special.