What Should We Do Today

Our home-education adventure is a very eclectic mix of classical, work-booky, Charlotte Mason-ish, Waldorfian, unschooling events. We tend to go with the flow and work in the rhythm from the kids for each day. If someone has a rabbit trail he/she wants to traverse, we all join in. If we're particularly hyperactive, that may be a good day for workbooks or outdoor field trip. With home-education, the school day and what we learn in it is up to us.

Today, BamBam was feeling a bit under-the-weather -- could, of course, be caused by the fact that yesterday it was in the 60s and today in the low 40s! He complained of a headache and was congested from the moment he got up.

So ... being the hs mom that I am, I quickly changed our schedule for the day and after taking Kotch and carpool to school, we came straight home and began a read-aloud. I figured we'd read for a bit and once BamBam fell asleep, we'd turn to other activities.

Boy was I wrong!

We start The Tale of Despereaux -- a book I'd put aside a few years ago as silly and not worth reading. But, on the advice of dear online friend Maureen, I figured it could be a good read-aloud in our slower Advent time. WOWWWWWW! was Maureen's analysis right.

We started this book this morning and just finished it ... yep, with stopping to pickup carpool and dh ... with a break for dinner and other incidentals (like clean-up), we read this whole 250+page book today.

And it really is a great story ... lots of blood and guts and grossness to keep the young boys interested ... a bit of a love story for the girls and a great moral that weaves its way through DiCamillo (author of Because of Winn-Dixie and other novels that are equally well-written). The characters are wonderfully drawn by DiCamillo's pen while the story is makes you want to keep reading for "what next ..."

The movie based on this book comes out on Friday. Looks like we'll be heading to the movies over our Christmas Break!

Chapter Read-alouds: We finished another one!

I'm proud of us -- this school year I've really been trying to do more chapter read-alouds with the kids. Dh also reads to the kids in the evening before bed (rather than turning on TV).

We have gotten through 24(!) chapter books since August! Not bad, huh? If you'll look at the list in the sidebar to the left, you'll see each book we've read. We just finished one that I think deserves special mention: Freddy the Detective by Walter R. Brooks. We had borrowed this one from the library but the kids enjoyed it so much that I've order the Freddy Anniversary Collection (which includes Freddy Goes to Florida and Freddy Goes to the North Pole in addition to Freddy the Detective).

Now if you've never read Freddy, you really need to change that as soon as possible. Freddy is a pig who lives on the Beans' farm with other very intelligent (and often, humorous) animals who help the Beans run their farm. The writing is wonderful and you can almost believe that animals would be able to solve crimes, hold court to judge innocence or guilt, and place them in the barn's jail. Wonderful stuff for kids!

By the way, Walter R. Brooks wrote many magazine articles about animals -- including short stories which led to the 50s TV show, Mister Ed!

Books: memories that truly last a lifetime

Over at 4real forum, we've been discussing book memories in the thread, when you were a kid. This is a thread about THE favorite picture book of each poster's youth.

Well, that got me thinking about books and the wonderful ones I've read over my 40+ years of reading. The first book I ever read was part of Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library -- my favorite in that collection too -- "Pierre". (I was in trouble ALOT when I was little ).

The first chapter book (with minimal pictures and boy wasn't I sad about that! ) was B is for Betsy. I can still see the orange cover on the book I bought when Mom and I (just us -- when you're the 6th of 7, that's memorable!) went downtown San Francisco on errands and I got to pick out a book to buy.

I've been buying books ever since -- and many have carved their titles in my memories! But I think none are so special as Pierre and B is for Betsy!