FIAR: The Clown of God

This month we got back to doing Five In A Row, which we hadn't done in a long time. We chose to do The Clown of God, which is about a juggler who, at the end of his life, gives his greatest performance for God. (As an aside, the difference between Rebecca and I is illustrated very well with this book. SPOILER ALERT! He dies at the end. Rebecca struggles not to cry whenever she reads it to the kids. I, however, struggle not to laugh because the illustration is so melodramatic. I think I've seen too many Monty Python sketches.)

For those who have never done FIAR, you read the book each day for 5 days and do a different activity related to some aspect of the book. For example, for Geography, they had to find Italy on a map, and color an Italian flag and learned some Italian words. 

Giovanni was an orphan and later in life, he meets some monks, so we learned about what those two things mean. Giovanni was encouraged that he gives glory to God through his juggling, so we made a short list of things we do to give glory to God.

We learned about juggling and attempted (rather poorly) to juggle ourselves.

 The kids also looked at stained glass, since the ending takes place in a church.

They made "stained glass" cookies
  Then they painted their own "stained glass" to hang in their windows. We combined this project with part of their art curriculum where they had to blend primary colors to make the colors they wanted in their pictures.  They started with red, blue and yellow and then created the greens and purples to complete their projects. 

 The boys worked together and created "Blue Star"

 We got some 8"x10" acrylic sheets, traced a simple pattern we searched out on Google in puffy fabric paint and used acrylic paint to fill in the spaces. 

 Olivia called her "The Rose of Light" because the red center looks like a rose when the light shines through it.

This is a wonderful book and the kids would beg to have it read every day.