Somewhat off topic...

Today is my FOURTEENTH wedding anniversary. Absolutely crazy.... where has 14 years gone? And off course, this is a 14 year marriage following a three month whirlwind courtship, during which I was proposed to 5 days after we met. I know some people thought we might be "in trouble" since we got married so quickly, but if I was, that was the longest human pregnancy ever since Elf didn't show up until about 6 years later.

So, in honor of all that, we are taking today off from homeschooling. And tomorrow, we'll do just the basics - you know, the three "R's" (???), and then Elf is off to a new 4H project... juggling! And there's Park Day. I requested the day off from work, so I don't have to hurry anywhere, and M and I can go out to dinner then. My mom has generously offered to take the kids overnight, so M and I plan to head out to the coast on Saturday, maybe with some yummy lobster rolls from the fish market down the street... mmmmm....

Next week will be a short week in honor of Thanksgiving. We have a few appropriate books to read, and we'll no doubt be making hand-shaped construction paper turkeys (I have a collection now from years past, a great way to see how much their little hands have grown!). We finally got this book from the library too, so I'll be reading that with Fairy sometime in the next few days.

I was talking with a friend (who used to teach and did a lot of early literacy work) at the park last week about Fairy's reading inabilities, and she suggested a great idea - everytime I manage to get Fairy to read a book, I can add it to a book basket. Then Fairy can read to herself from the basket and its growing collection anytime she wants, plus she can see how much progress she is making. So I found a nice basket that will hold a lot of books without being too heavy, and Fairy is very excited about this idea. She promptly placed the two Bob books she's gotten through into it. We're now working on the Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See book, and I have the other similar books by the same author. Fairy loves rhyming things, and repetitive things (like songs), so I am trying to pick simple books that are along those lines. So I mentioned this to our resource teacher yesterday at our meeting, and she loaned us a whole stack of very simple, mainly rhyming books!

Elf of course is reading like crazy. He is so much like me in that way - I find him awake late at night, just trying to finish "one more chapter". He's reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid right now in addition to Fantastic Mr. Fox (like me, always more than one book going), along with several reference books on various subjects, and of course his beloved Calvin & Hobbes. I think except for math, this kid could totally go with unschooling.

Have a good day!