1) We had 2 holidays to celebrate this past week. The first one was Easter, and we had a good time decorating eggs and putting ears on the kitty!
2) The second holiday was Jack's Birthday! This was a big deal...he turned 13 this year! This is a picture of him decorating his brownie cake with a Pikachu. He loves those Pokemon! We had some Pokemon party decor and a balloon bouquet too! Jack's Grandma J and his friend Alex joined the party via Skype. It was chaotic fun! We are so glad that technology allows us to remain so close to our family and friends!
3) I thought I'd play around with collages, instead of littering my blog with tons of photos. Here is our cat Deb. She loves a good pillow! She's not overly fond of just sitting on a plain lap, but if you put a pillow on it, she'll jump right up! She's also pretty easy going. Someone (Ginny) tossed the pillow on top of Deb the other day, and she didn't seem at all put out. In fact, she actually slept there, under the pillow, for another hour! She also allows us to crochet kitty bonnets for her and make her wear them! (That's really a small doily I'm working on.)
4) Gin finished book 1 of the School of Good and Evil and now is onto book 2, A World Without Princes. She was very happy to find out that book 2 was just released a couple weeks ago, so she can dig right in! Jack is reading book 6 of Wereworld. He has enjoyed this series. Our nightly read aloud is currently Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We started reading this series quite a bit back (while we were still living in Fayetteville) and we are still going strong! We are all Harry Potter fans here! I am currently reading two books, both sci-fi. I started reading Pastwatch on my husband's recommendation and then CJ Cherryh's new book, Peacemaker, came out and I couldn't help but start it too! You can probably tell, we are all sci-fi/fantasy fans here!
5) Homeschool Related Stuff: We've been reading short stories this year for Reading Class. We started off with something a bit scholarly, the Little Worlds collection. We finished this just a couple weeks ago, and I have to report that we did not especially enjoy the experience. It is put together for middle school students, and Jack is definitely middle school, while Ginny's just about there. I remember reading some of these stories when I was in school too. I liked a couple of them. But the problem for Jack and Ginny was that they really couldn't relate to a lot of the stories. Many of them take place in different eras and people just had different concerns in those times. It certainly does present a learning opportunity, but it does not contribute to building a love or appreciation of this literary form. Bottom line is, I really think they could have picked some better stories. Anyhow, we also picked this Holt Anthology to read. It is a companion book to our Science textbook, so it seemed a good choice. We have read several stories in it now, and really, they are far more engaging! Starting off with stories like "The Homesick Chicken" and "They're Made out of Meat!" is a great way to keep kids wanting to read more! I happen to enjoy this genre, so that might be influencing my opinion, but I think this is a great collection!
That's our week in a nutshell!
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