We've slowed a bit on our FIAR titles since 2011 started. I don't know exactly why that is, but I'd like to pick up the pace again. Our latest book, A Pair of Red Clogs, was so enjoyable. I wouldn't say it was GMan's favorite, but he definitely learned quite a few things, and he has been talking a lot about Japan since we started the book! (I'd also like to recommend, Suki's Kimono, a book we found at the library, that really goes along nicely with A Pair of Red Clogs.)

A brief synopsis of the A Pair of Red Clogs:

A child's delight in a new pair of shoes is the same all over the world, whether the shoes are patent-leather sandals, straw alpargatas, deerskin moccasins, or wooden clogs.

For Mako, a little Japanese girl, the new shoes were clogs painted with red lacquer that shone beautifully. This is the story of what happened after she cracked the new clogs playing the weather-telling game and so longed for a bright, shiny new pair to replace them that she almost did a dishonest thing.

*Taken from Goodreads.com

Here are several pictures of the lapbook GMan completed, all of the mini books came from Homeschool Share, my favorite homeschooling site of all time!

The title page.... we discussed (per the FIAR manual) the use of colored pencil drawings and how the illustrator used vivid colors when the story was happy, and more muted colors when the story was sad. GMan enjoyed this part. He loves looking at and analyzing illustrations, and I believe this due in part to the guidance FIAR gives in this area.

The entire lapbook:

My favorite mini book - it contains four verses from Proverbs about honesty.

Many of the illustrations in the book are just embellished stick/action figures.... it was so neat to see this pointed out in the teacher's manual, and then to show it to my little guy in the book. I loved the mini book about action figures.