What did we even DO this week?

Calvin finished reading Charlotte's Web, started and finished reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and then started two more books, Mitt the Michigan Mouse, and The Waterhorse. This has me wondering whether I need to encourage him to delve into one book at a time, but he seems to be comfortable this way, so I'm going to sit back and observe for a while yet. In the meantime, I finished two books to review for Booklist, one that I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys esoteric counter-culture fiction (Herself, When She's Missing comes out in late May), and one that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

We started reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane as a bedtime book.

The week was mostly cold and questionable, so we played chess, we played Mammoth Hunt, we played with Legos, with tangrams, with Pattern Play. I hear that this is the first time on record that the month of March was warmer than the month of April in the Northeast, but we did make it to the park twice.

My favorite moment of the week was Calvin and Jon discussing phone lines and the Hubble Space Telescope.

We researched a lot of ancient Egypt. We read about it, we drew about it, we acted it out. We played with iPad apps (Encyclopedia Britannica for Kids), we watched videos (Building Pharaoh's Ship, and Egypt's Golden Empire), we almost finished our mummy project. That's turning out to be a four week project!

Lots of time playing Totally Tut kicked us into the world of multiplication. Calvin started the Gamma book of Math-U-See a couple of weeks ago, so he's already got a head start. On Friday at HAA (our homeschoolers gathering), another mom suggested a some iPad math games, two of which we are happily trying out: Math Bingo, and Hungry Fish.

We were home-bodies on Monday and Tuesday, went to swimming and the store on Wednesday, sorted books at the library on Thursday, had HAA with play practice and art on Friday, and were home-bodies again on Saturday.

And that's a wrap.

One of my favorite things about homeschooling? It's so age intergenerational.

Tell me about it

Some change happens so gradually that it's almost unnoticeable. At some point in time, when I wasn't noticing, Calvin became quite the conversationalist. What a great joy that is.

Tuesday

Over breakfast Jon called my cell phone so that we could find it, and that started a conversation about the difference between cell phones and land lines, which required a thumbing through David Macaulay's The New Way Things Work.

After breakfast there was piano, and reading. After revisiting Charlotte's Web the kid is now re-reading The Wizard of Oz. We found a 1980s copy of the original at a library used book sale this past weekend, complete with Denslow's original illustrations and color plates, and he just dove right in.

A little later we were in Egypt learning about mummies, transportation, and gods and godesses.

Over lunch, a game of Totally Tut. Calvin has graduated into Math-U-See's Gamma book and is starting to master multiplication, so we're adding those functions into the game as he goes.

Then a discussion of matter, molecules, and atoms, solids, liquids, and gases, and a few experiments just to demonstrate some principles. I think it's time to break out the microscope again.

Then a trip to the vet with the dogs, just for simple boosters, and then a traipse around the yard to check on our trees. After the weird weather we've had, early warmth, late deep freezes, some of our trees were looking a little worrisome, but with the steadily rising temperatures now they seem to be improving.

And lastly grilled cheese for dinner, because Jon had a late piano lesson and I had a meeting after dinner, so the overlap was brief. In my absence the guys walked the dogs and played more games before bed. They finished Raggedy Andy and started a new book, but found it less than interesting, so I think it's time to break out Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales.

And that makes a full and successful day in my book.

Charlotte's Web, again.

Charlotte's Web was the first chapter book I read aloud with Calvin, back in October of 2010, and his mostly pictorial response was among the first of his journal entries. I found him reading it himself about a week ago and I loved talking to him about it a second time around.

Charcoal still life of flowers

There is just one more week of art class left through our homeschooling group, and I am sad to see it go. I have not really met the teacher, but every week Calvin has emerged from his hour of art instruction with another wonderful creation in a new medium. And he loves it. They tried watercolors, and water color pencils, then oil pastels, and this week she introduced charcoal pencils, and every week I've been impressed with what Calvin's art says about what he's seeing. Today he sat in front of a vase of flowers and sketched not just flowers in a vase, but a picture that focuses on light and shadow as much as on the basic flowers. In fact, he barely drew the flowers, he was so focused on working with charcoal around them. He was pleased with his work, and all the way home in the car he told me about the light reflecting on the vase, the shadows around it, and the method of darkening the surrounding room to highlight the subject. He doesn't have the vocabulary for it, but he has the beginning of an understanding or appreciation, and he's thrilled with the knowledge and with himself, and that's what I love.

We're linked up to Saturday's Artist at Ordinary Life Magic.