Who Knew History Was So Fascinating?

We're ending the official school year tomorrow. We've been having so much fun in History though, at times I almost don't want to stop. When that happens however, I just open up a bottle of sunscreen, close my eyes and inhale the aroma of summer. Works every time.

We've been reading about Henry VIII and his six wives. Sissy learned a very short rhyme that tells what happened to each of Henry's queens.....

divorced, beheaded, died,

divorced, beheaded, survived

I'm still not sure in what situation she'll find that knowledge helpful later in life, but it is kind of cute.

And I have to say, it thrills me to have the opportunity to not only teach my daughters about people like Henry the VIII, but to learn along with them. I mean, for most of my life, all I knew about Henry the VIII were the lyrics to a Herman's Hermits song. I'm not proud of it, I'm just sayin....

We read from our History book about Queen Elizabeth I and then Sissy read Good Queen Bess, a biography by Diane Stanley. We've read other biographies by this author and I love them. They have that rare combination of large, beautiful illustrations, AND an abundance of information on the subject.

After that, the girls acted out the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. A friend had just given us some dress-up clothes that include a little-girl sized wedding gown with a long train and lots of lace. They also used some costume jewelry and one of their play tiaras, and the whole effect was quite regal.

We're ending the year on a Shakespearean note.

I checked out a couple of children's versions of Shakespeare plays, and tried one of the tricks I use when I want to get the girls' to read a certain book. I sat down to read "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and made sure I was seen. When I was finished, I left the book lying on the couch and made a casual comment about the good story with fairies in it, and then walked off.... and Sissy took the bait!! And she really liked it!

Our History book contained a very short, very simplified version of Macbeth, and although I'm usually not into witches and the like, when I read the related activity suggestion, I knew we had to do it.

We made "eye-of-newt soup". The girls read the "Double, double, toil and trouble..." poem chanted by the weird sisters in Macbeth, and stirred in the corresponding ingredients, replacing unsavory things like "severed fingers" and "tongue of dog" with Tootsie rolls and red licorice. Chocolate chips served as "eye of newt". They had the best time.

And now, because all good things must come to an end, and more importantly, because Momma needs to rest and recharge, our school year is over.

Yay for summer!

The Value Of A Good Book is Far Above Rubies.....

.....no wait, that's a virtuous woman. Isn't there a proverb about good books? There should be. :)

I love it when I find a book that's written at exactly the level we need, and it turns out to be beautifully illustrated. Or maybe it's the other way around.

When I'm browsing at the library, an attractive cover and pictures get my attention much faster than the text. That's what happened when I checked out this book about St. Patrick.

The pictures were what made me bring it home. The text however, was wonderfully appropriate for me to read aloud to Sissy and Peanut. Actually, Sissy could have read it by herself with no problem, but I wanted to read it with them.

I read it myself yesterday to get an idea of the content. Not being Catholic, I wasn't sure what kind of theology it would contain. Again, it was exactly right. The story of Saint Patrick is very simply told, using one of St. Patrick's letters to the world as the author's reference. The legends are left out, although they are included in an author's note at the end.

The illustrations are so lovely they're almost distracting. And it was kind of a letdown when I found out by googling, that they're computer-generated. Still, we had a very nice time pointing out the many colorful patterns used on each page.

So many times, I get historical books at the library because they're on a book list I have. I don't have time to wade through all the books there, and I trust my list to recommend the best ones.

Every now and then though, a book that just catches my eye turns out to be a pleasant surprise. This was one of those books.

Whew!

Well we did it...but not without much wailing and gnashing of teeth. After I calmed down, it went much more smoothly. It wasn't so much the making of the costume, as the trying to think of an idea for the costume that took so much time. The hula hoop idea was a bust....so we ended up with posterboard rings, decorated by Peanut with markers and colored seashells. The planet itself was also posterboard and Peanut had this avant-garde checkerboard thing going, then I think she got tired of coloring. The poster was put together at the last minute , after she wrote down some facts she had learned about Saturn.

When she presented her poster/report to the class, the teacher asked her if Saturn was a terrestrial planet or a gaseous planet, to which she replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about".
That's my girl!
Sissy also had to do a poster and report-- on Earth's natural resources. Also a bear. A slightly smaller bear, but still.....

She's Supposed to Be a What?!?!

My blogging time will be spotty if not nonexistent for the next few days, as I'll be spending all my free time helping Peanut come up with a costume for dress-up day in Astronomy class. Dress-up day is Tuesday and she's going as the planet Saturn.

THE PLANET SATURN!!!!!

I don't know what we're going to do. We've got a hula hoop. I was thinking maybe attaching some fishing line to it for straps to go over her shoulders..... I don't know what else to do for rings.... not to mention how to make her look orb-shaped!!!

I don't remember exactly but I'm thinking this was one of the top five reasons we decided to HOMEschool. Frantic, last minute costume design is NOT my forte.

Wish me luck.

Impromptu Science Lesson

I found this dead bird on our back porch this morning. I guess it flew into our sliding glass door.

After calling the girls and assuring them that it was dead and not just asleep, I went into teacher mode.

We knew it was a woodpecker but I pulled out my North American Wildlife guide to find out which species of woodpecker. We found the page on woodpeckers and the picture this bird most closely resembled. Then I had the girls read the description of the bird in the book and check our bird for the right markings.

They were excited that they were able to identify it as a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. I thought it was cool too, because though we've seen downy woodpeckers and northern flickers, I don't remember ever seeing one of these, although they're supposed to be pretty common.

We measured it at just over 8 inches, and the girls touched it's beak and claws .... they just had to feel how sharp they were. We also talked about how God created these birds with beaks especially made for drilling holes in wood. We did all this with rubber gloves on... I'm kind of leery of touching dead wild animals.

Sissy wrote a a little report on the bird, and I printed the photos of it on plain white paper, which we punched holes in and put in her notebook with the report.

Now if I'd been REALLY into this, I would have dissected it and showed the girls the internal parts, but I did that years ago with Brother when we found a sparrow, and remembering the waves of nausea I experienced, I decided we had seen all of this bird we would see.

He was disposed of respectfully on the brush pile heap, where he will be cremated tomorrow when my husband burns leaves and brush.

I love it when life and school overlap.

Here We Go Again

It seems I'm always writing about language differences in children and adults. It's not intentional. It's just a reflection of what happens around here.

Sissy and Peanut recently learned the ORIGINAL meaning of the word 'booty'.

They learned this during History, when I was reading their lesson. I love The Story of the World, because it's written on kid level, and I don't need to read it and reformulate it myself ahead of time so I can teach it in understandable terms for them. I can pretty much read it 'as-is', with a pause for clarification here and there, supplementing with good library books when I can.

In this instance however, I think the author was not thinking in kid-terms , when she wrote of the soldiers of the Islamic army being more worried about protecting their booty, than winning the battle.

After I read this passage, it took me a full five minutes to regain the floor from my class of two.

But now Sissy can tell you that 'booty' is another word for 'valuable stuff that's been taken '.
Peanut tries hard, but the giggles get the best of her every time.

What We've Been Reading

I created a new library thing list showing recent books we've read that we checked out from our city or county library.

I'm trying to keep a list of what the girls have read for the Pizza Hut Book-It program, as well as just having it for school records. I thought this might be a fun way to do it rather than just a list on paper.

Space and budget limit the size of my home library, so the majority of new books the girls have read in the last couple of years have come from the public library.

Some current favorites :

Favorite Medieval Tales and Medieval Feast -

these were read-alouds that follow our Middle Ages study

Look What I Can Do With a Leaf -

a different way of using fall leaves in artwork - this was fun change, seems all we ever do are crayon rubbings and painted leaf prints

The girls also love the Magic Treehouse books and always ask for them

when we go to the library.

Look, no Junie B.! That's because last library trip I just said 'no' because there were so many others we wanted. We're making another trip this week so I'm sure we'll make up for it. My goal is to steer them toward really good books without seeming to make a big deal out of it. Not there yet.

Busy day ahead, which is why I keep writing in sentence fragments.

Probably won't be back on until tomorrow.

Dry-Erase Markers Work on Glass?? Who Knew!

Our "Story of the World" Activity Book lists a suggestion to let your kids use Dry-Erase markers to illustrate something they've learned on a window or door.

The book claimed the marker would wipe off with a paper towel, just like a dry-erase board.

Today I tested a spot on our sliding glass doors and it really worked, so I gave the girls markers and turned them loose. They had fun, in a wow-I-can't-believe-we're-writing-on-the-door kind of way.

Is this one of those things everyone else knows about long before me? I'm taken with the novelty and potential of it. I can see the girls doing Math problems, playing Tic-Tac-Toe, and doing holiday artwork, all on the doors and windows. Well, maybe not all at once.

It works on mirrors too. I had Peanut hold a hand mirror in front of her face while I drew funny features on her reflection. Pretty cool.

***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;***,,;

Another Fun Field Trip

In October we saw a Sky Show at a local nature center planeterium . Sissy's entire Science year is Astronomy this year, so it was a well-timed trip .... and I didn't even plan it.

My sweet friend Linda, who has 5 children, therefore WAY more on her plate than me, somehow manages to organize field trips for our homeschool support group. Not only that, SHE remembers to remind ME about these trips. She's so awesome.

So thanks in part to her, we had a great time at a children's science museum today. I'm so glad she plans these trips on Fridays. We have a loose rule about Fridays being Fun Days.

Not that every day can't be fun, but on Fridays I try to make it a POINT to have fun in school, especially if we've been hitting the books diligently the rest of the week. I still cover the subjects with the girls, but on Fridays we might play a Math game, or play store with their cash register instead of using the book; we're more likely to do a craft on Friday, etc. These field trips have fit in very nicely with our "fun Friday" schedule.

Sisters and Jealousy

This morning was so great, I guess I should have been ready for a swing in the other direction. Gotta have that balance, otherwise it'd be too much like heaven, right?

I read somwhere that sibling rivalry/conflict peaks between ages 6 and 8.... exactly the ages of Sissy and Peanut. If that's true, then things can only get better around here.

Sometime over the last year or so, they have both become members of the nit-picking, hair-splitting, Fairness Police. I will not exhaustively list here, the many, MANY things they squabble over and the reasons they yell , "No fair!"

I will just give one example, to illustrate the level of madness it has come to.

Tonight on the way to soccer practice, both girls were holding their soccer balls.

Peanut :"Hey, my ball says it was made in China".
Sissy: "Mine was made in Pakistan".

Long silent pause.

Peanut (in her most dramatic, why-does-everything-good-always-happen-to-someone-else voice): " Hmmppff! I wish MY ball was made in Pakistan! "


Mommy: AAAAAAArrrgghhhhh!!!!

The Butterfly Project - Day 21 The Final Installment

They're free! At least four of them are. We took them outside and released them this afternoon. They had to be coaxed out of the cage but as soon as the open air hit their wings, they were off. I videotaped it and got one of them flying silhouetted against the sky for about half a second. After trying to take still shots and now video of adult butterflies, I'm thinking I should not have complained about the difficulty of taking caterpillar photos.

I tried uploading the video and I don't know what went wrong. I'm pretty computer literate until I hit a glitch and then I'm helpless.

It was a relief to see them flying free. Sadly, our little 'special' guy with no antennae didn't fly away. I had sort of expected that he wouldn't, still it was pitiful to watch him. We got him out but he couldn't lift himself off the grass at all. We finally put him on a leaf and put it up high enough that he wouldn't be stepped on but I expect if I go back and check tomorrow, I will find a dead butterfly. It would have been more humane to just put him out of his misery but I just couldn't do it.

So...... a cute little animal faces inevitable death. I could make it swift and (maybe) painless for him, but instead I choose to let him face the elements and prolonged suffering, because I'm not comfortable with killing him. Yikes, what does that say about me?

We've really had a good time with this little project. The girls had dreaded the day we would release the butterflies, every day asking with rising panic voices ," Do we have to let them go today?!?" But today they were OK with it. They got a kick out of watching them take off.

I got our Butterfly Garden Kit at a local school supply store but there's a website http://www.insectlore.com/ that sells them and other cool stuff.

The Butterfly Project -- Day 19

All five are butterflies now! Sadly, one of them has no antennae and it's obvious that something is wrong with him even before you notice he's missing something. He tries to fly but just flops around landing upside down much of the time and having a hard time uprighting himself. I should probably know this by now, but I wonder... are the antennae what gives them a sense of orientation?

We got really brave and took them out of the cage . Well, first we took the cage in the bathroom and shut the door, just in case any of them got away. We put sugar-water on some flowers and a couple of them drank it. It was very cool to see the long probiscus (tongue) come out and drink the sugar-water.

I was telling my husband about the sick one and he asked how I knew it was a male. Without realizing it, I had been referring to it as 'he' and 'him'. They're all 'him's to me.

We'll probably let them go tomorrow or Saturday so they can live out the rest of their lives naturally. After all, with an average life span of two weeks, they're already middle-aged!

The Butterfly Project - Day 18

We've had two butterflies since yesterday! I've been holding off posting till I got a good picture , but it's actually harder to take a good picture of a butterfly than of a caterpillar, so I'm posting a photo I found on the internet. I promise this is what they look like.

Both the butterflies have orange and black wings that are beautiful when open. The thing is, they aren't open very much, as butterflies rest with the wings folded closed. The undersides of the wings, which we've seen a LOT, are much more muted in color, almost drab really. It makes sense though, when you think about how God created animals with camouflage for protection. At rest on a plant with the bright colors out of sight, these butterflies would be hard to see.

The most interesting thing has been how soft and limp the wings are at first. Apparently it takes several hours for the wings to stiffen as blood is pumped to them, and at first they looked like wet paper, very flimsy.

I hope the other three are just late bloomers. Peanut has this idea that it's a family and that the Momma and Daddy butterflies are now waiting on their children to come out. I gave up trying to tell her -- you just can't reason with 6 year old logic. There are five people in our family after all.

The Butterfly Project Day 10

All the butterflies are now in the chrysalis stage! Sunday morning we found the first chrysalis, and by late afternoon yesterday, all five had changed. I had thought it must be the kind of transformation that is so slow you can' really see it happening, because three of them were found in the morning after having checked on the caterpillars the night before.
The last two were hanging upside down, much like the ones in the previous picture I posted. I checked them before leaving the house at 3:30pm yesterday and couldn't tell they had changed at all. When we got home at 6:00pm they were complete chrysalises.

We transferred them very carefully into the butterfly garden , pinning the paper disk they were attached to, to the netting . To my disgust, when I lifted the paper disc from the top of the cup, along with the chrysalises came the silky webbing they had been spinning all week AND the frass (known around here as caterpillar poop) that was tangled up in the webbing. We were afraid to try to remove the yucky stuff, as this is supposed to be the most delicate stage for the butterfly. I thought we weren't going to have to look at that stuff any more.

Oh well, they say homeschooling isn't for the faint of heart

Here's another rather gross but interesting fact we learned. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves into a liquid "soup of living cells" before reforming into a butterfly. It's like it starts all over from scratch.

Other learning-related stuff:

We observed the chrysalises shaking when we moved them - this is a natural defense against predators.

We also identified the spiracles (breathing holes) on the chrysalis.

I found a Painted Lady Butterfly Life Cycle coloring page on http://www.enchantedlearning.com/ and printed it off for the girls. Of course, Peanut wanted to know if she HAD to use the colors suggested on the page . I told her she had to follow the instructions because, since we were learning about this particular species, it should look like a real Painted Lady butterfly, but that when she was finished I would print her another
to color however she wanted.

While they were coloring we talked about the different stages - larva, pupa, chrysalis, adult butterfly.

The rest of our experience has involved a lot of 'oohing' and 'aahing', with assorted exclamatory whispers like "Cool!" and "Wow!" (For some reason we think we have to whisper when we're observing them up close).

And now we wait. According to the instructions, we should have butterflies by Sunday or Monday.

The Butterfly Project - Day 7

It was exactly a week ago that our caterpillars arrived in the mail. I really wish I had taken a picture of them that first day. I didn't know they were going to grow so much. They may have been 1 cm long at most. In the earlier photo I posted, the biggest one was 3.5 cm. The girls call him The Big Guy.
Today, the only one I can measure is 4.5 cm. I have no idea if it's The Big Guy as they have all grown considerably and the others are curled up some. By the way, can I just say it is impossible to accurately measure a moving caterpillar?

It's also pretty hard to get a good photo . If you click on the photo, you should be able to see more detail. It was exciting to find two of the caterpillars hanging upside down from the top of the cup this morning. This means they'll be in the chrysalis stage soon. The food in the bottom of the cup was smooth and pretty, kind of like caramel icing. After seven days of these hungry guys plowing through it, it's just a mess. And those little balls on the side of the cup? Yep, that would be the food AFTER it's been eaten.

Happy Days Are Here Again

The Math curriculum we use stresses that it's important to master a concept before moving on to the next one. Maybe all Math programs do. Since new Math concepts often build on previously learned concepts, it makes sense, and it's a guideline I have always kept. Until now.


Like many homeschoolers, I don't necessarily believe you HAVE to start a new grade level at the beginning of a school year. At the end of Sissy's 2nd grade year last spring, she had just started multiple digit subtraction with borrowing. She struggled with it at first, then just when I think she got it, school was over for the year. I knew I would have to review it for a few days at the beginning of 3rd grade, but I had no idea it was going to be the bear it has been.


On the first day of school, I reviewed the concept with her, did a couple of example problems, then asked her to solve a problem. She seemed to have completely forgotten it over the summer. Well OK . I kind of expected that. I guided her through her lesson step by step.


The following day, she again stared blankly at the page. Again, I prompted her through each step of each problem.


And again, the next day.


By Friday, she was showing progress.

Monday we were back to square one. Just two days without review, and it had left her. This went on for three weeks. I even had her do a couple of problems on weekends thinking that might help it stay fresh in her mind.

She was frustrated, and so was I. I could sympathize with her. I remember the beast that is multiple digit subtraction with borrowing. Addition facts came easily, subtraction.....not so much.
Subtraction with borrowing often stumped me. Take one away from this one to make this one bigger by ten. And I was paralyzed by zeros. How do you take one away from zero? So I could understand Sissy's misery, but her attitude was making things worse.

She loves to learn new things, but when she doesn't quickly pick up whatever it is, she often starts whining "I don't get it!". A wall goes up, and I know there will be no learning taking place in that particular subject on that particular day.

This was happening nearly every day in Math. Then three weeks ago, I decided to throw caution to the wind and start on her 3rd grade book. I knew it started out with the easier multiplication tables. I knew that she already knew 0's, 1's, 2',s and 10's. The day we started the new book, there was an immediate change in Sissy's attitude. Suddenly she was the bright and happy child who enjoyed learning again. She actually asks to do extra Math pages now.
Yesterday she said the words, " Mommy, I love school!" The difference is amazing. It's even carried over into other subjects. Of course, I know I didn't really fix the root of the problem. Her balky attitude will rear it's ugly head at the next difficult lesson. But for now, I can enjoy our smoother mornings. And maybe I've bought myself some time to figure out how to handle the attitude when it comes up again.

Fun with Spanish

Allison at Olive Plants inspired me with her Rosetta Stone post.

I've always had an interest in teaching the girls a foreign language at a young age because the young child's mind is said to absorb information like a thirsty sponge.

However, it is also said that no matter how fluently you learn to read a language, if you don't regularly use that language in conversation, chances are not good you will ever fluently SPEAK it. For that reason and others, the girl's foreign language instruction has been rather spotty.
I was glad to get Sissy in a group Spanish class this year.

Still, we've had a good time 'playing around' at learning Spanish over the last couple of years.
Here's how it started.



Peanut received a free book in the mail every month for awhile and one month, to my delight the book she got was bilingual. It was called "Ana Cultiva Manzanas" and was about an apple farmer named Annie. It told how Apple Farmer Annie grew apple trees and how she picked ripe apples and all the things she did with her apples. She made applesauce and apple pie and apple juice and she loaded her truck up with apples and took them to the farmer's market where she sold apples. And because the word "apples" is used about twenty times on each page, and the word "manzanas" is used about twenty times on each of the Spanish pages, it was easy to figure out that "manzanas" is Spanish for "apples".



I know, my brilliance is blinding. Anyway that little book sparked an idea to check out Hispanic books in the children's section of the library. I think we've done it a total of three times in the last two years. Remember, I said it was spotty. We've checked out very simple children's books in Spanish, books that we either own in English, or have read so many times that we don't need to own it because we have it memorized . Knowing the English version ver batim, along with the repetitive nature of children's book's makes it not too difficult to translate individual words.



For example, in the book , "Eres tu mi Mama?" (Are You My Mother?) we read:

El gatito no era su madre. We also see a picture of a kitten.

On another page we read:

La gallina no era su madre. Here we see a picture of a hen.

And suddenly you're Einstein. " Oh my GOSH! " you say excitedly. " El gatito means THE KITTEN!! And la gallina means THE HEN!! Isn't that exciting , girls?!?

"Girls?"

You look around and realize you're alone in the room reading a book written for a five year-old.

And your teenage son is standing in the doorway staring at you with an expression of mixed amusement and concern.

We have another Spanish book checked out right now -- "Huevos Verdes Con Jamon".

OK quick, what's the English title? By the way, it really bugs me that I can't type an accent mark or an upside down question mark when I need to.

Time's up! The English title is...................."Green Eggs and Ham".

"Ese Juan Ramon, ese Juan Ramon! No me gusto ese Juan Ramon!"

(falls over laughing) I just love that line.

Snowplow painting and other school highlights

Yesterday we met other homeschoolers at the city public works for the annual snowplow painting. One of the homeschool Dads works for the city, and for the last few years area homeschoolers have been invited every fall to paint the city snowplows -- not the whole thing- just the blades, er scoops, ....you know, the business end of a snowplow. This was the first year we got to be part of it and the girls had a wonderful time. They were basically turned loose with paint of all colors and brushes of different sizes to create their own murals that will be seen up and down city streets this winter.
The girls woke up expecting a regular school day, and I surprised them when I told them what we were going to be doing. It was in the car on the way to town that I heard what I've been wanting to hear for a long time --

"I'm glad we don't go to school!!"

I've really been trying harder this year to make school more fun. In the past, I haven't taken them on a lot of field trips or spent as much time on hands-on learning activities as I know they would like.
It's not because I haven't wanted to...... it's just that things like trips and crafts and such usually require some planning, and I'm not a very good planner.
On second thought, I'm actually a great planner. I'm just not a good follow-through-with-the-plan-ner.


But I've done better so far this year. In fact, I'm starting to think I might need to pace myself.


This year so far our field trips have included:

a local gem mine, the fire department, a new natural history museum, and snowplow painting


In keeping with the more hands-on stuff resolution, we've :

dressed like the ancient Romans, painted Celtic designs , did the whole monk/calligraphy thing I posted about earlier, made Justinian and Theodora paper dolls and clothes, and made Empress Theodora crowns.

For some people, this may be next-to-nothing, but I'm telling you, for me it's a LOT. I just hope I can keep it up.

Don't you just wish you could peek into their minds?

The girls are taking two afternoon classes each at a university model school which meets on Tues. and Thurs. They both take Science , Peanut takes Art, and Sissy takes Spanish. Last Thurs. when I picked them up, Sissy told me she was having a Spanish quiz today and needed to study this weekend.

Now I should mention that Sissy is the more serious of the two when it comes to studying or being prepared for something. This is a trait she must have picked up from her father. Unfortunately for her, she DID get her short-term memory gene from me. What that means is when there's a deadline or a "thing-to-prepare-for" coming up, she's initially very gung-ho, to the point of not possibly being a child of mine. Then she quickly forgets all about it until, oh, the day of the event. THAT'S when she goes into panic mode .

So back to the Spanish quiz today. We had a busy weekend as always and I remembered the quiz, but knew we'd have plenty of time during school today to review . When we had finished her regular work for the a.m. , I casually mentioned we needed to review her Spanish vocabulary.
I don't think I can type the sound she made but you know the one. I call it screaming backwards -- you inhale sharply while making some sort of sound that means "OH NO!!!!!" I told her to calm down, we went over the material the teacher had given her to learn -- basic stuff like "how are you"? "I am well", etc. and I went off to do something else. When I came back through the room, she was intently reading one of her own books -- My First Thousand Words in Spanish."What are you doing"?, I asked. "You're going to confuse yourself".
She looked at me as if I had just asked her name and answered with the frustration of someone who's being asked to state what should be clearly obvious to the asker. "I'm studying for my Spanish quiz!!"
???? "What do you think you're going to be asked on your quiz?" I asked her.
"I don't KNOW!" she tormentedly shot back .
So I told her that I felt sure her teacher would only quiz her on material she had been taught, and she felt much better.
There are just certain things you assume your kids know. But sometimes their own little misguided ideas take root in their minds . It never occurred to me that she would think she was responsible for knowing 1000 vocabulary words when the teacher had only covered 20.
It makes me wonder -- what else does she have her own mistaken ideas about?

So yesterday we played monks

When we began this school year, one of my goals was to do more hands-on activities related to what the girls are studying. This week we read about the making of books in the early Middle ages, and about the lives of monks who copied books in rooms called scriptoriums and often elaborately decorated the margins and the first letter on each page .

The girls read two beautifully illustrated books related to this process. Across a Dark and Wild Sea and Margeurite Makes a Book. Then they tried writing with a quill pen, using grape juice as ink. The activity book that goes with our History book provided an outline of a huge ornate letter for the girls to decorate with markers. We had seen some photos in library books of actual pages over a thousand years old that were decorated in this manner. The intricacy of the designs is really amazing considering the time period.

For lunch we had what might have been a typical meal at a monastery - lentil soup, cheddar cheese, apples, and water. There was going to be brown crusty bread but I forgot to make it :( so we had crackers instead.

MMMmmmm good! Much better than our usual Campbell's Dora soup. The girls had fun helping me make the soup but I was the only one who actually liked it.
My family thought it was weird that I posed food and took pictures of it. I tried to tell them it made for more interesting recordkeeping but I don't think they bought it.