The Breadwinner

Our FIAR group read The Breadwinner in April.One of the moms of our group has a friend who spent several years living in Afghanistan. Her friend came to speak to us about life in Afghanistan-and brought along some props!

Can you tell who is wearing the burqua?

In the book, one of Parvana's jobs is to carry buckets of water up several flights of stairs for her family. The kids filled buckets outside, then carried them up the steps to dump into a washtub. It was a nice day and they managed to have a lot of fun doing it, unlike poor Parvana who saw it only as a dreaded, tedious, back-breaking chore.

I tried my hand at making naan bread for our snack. I made the dough, but the kids each rolled out their own for baking. Almost everyone liked it.

I somehow neglected to post about our book from March. We read Running Out of Time, which was a very interesting read. I didn't take any pictures that day, which must be why I never blogged about it.

For this book, we discussed dominant and recessive genes, human experimentation, and the ethics involved. The kids played a game similar to Taboo, where they tried to describe various modern items without using modern words like "plastic". We shared apple pie as our snack because in the book the family had apple pie for breakfast!

This book was different than most we've read, but we all really enjoyed it. I found it thought provoking while still being a quick, easy read.