This past weekend Zoey volunteered to help out at her third birthday party through her dance company...this is the second one that she's walked away with a tip afterwards. I think this taste of financial greatness has been a good one for her. It's just enough for her to perk up at the idea of "working" at something other than her schoolwork or housework/chores. I can see her mind thinking ahead to possible part-time jobs that she could have in the near future, which is fun to see.
This week we are talking about muscles, joints, and tendons in science. One of our activities today was to have her do some tasks "thumbless" by taping her thumbs down. She did some writing, cutting, sweeping, tied shoes and made a cup of hot chocolate all without her thumbs. It was pretty tricky! She also made a model of a long bone and discovered that her skeleton is estimated at weighing just 16 pounds!!!
In geography we are still talking about North America and she had to choose to do another independent project. She chose to do one on fashion in the United States. We got some supplies for her project today and she's really excited to get started in on it. Some interesting books that she is reading currently are Material World: A Global Family Portrait and Hungry Planet: What the World Eats...both really shed light on the places that she is learning about. Her reader for geography currently is Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool. My...this book is a good read! We are taking turns reading the chapters aloud to one another and today we were both in tears!
We are also reading the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech and wow...wow...WOW! I can't say enough good things about this book. I can't believe that I haven't read this book already in my lifetime, perhaps I should be embarrassed about that? We are actually listening to the audio book before bed every night and I find myself thinking about things from the story the next day. Rolling them around, savoring them. This is a goosebumps kind of book. At least for me. :) One that I know will stick with her and I both, long after the story is over.
This is about where we are at in the book right now and this particular quote hit me and left me thinking and my heart aching a bit actually, if I'm being honest...
"As I walked home, I thought about the message. In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter? I said it over and over. I wondered about the mysterious messenger, and I thought about all the things in the course of a lifetime that would not matter. I did not think cheerleading tryouts would matter, but I was not so sure about yelling at your mother. I was certain, however, that if your mother left, it would be something that mattered in the whole long course of your lifetime."
Photo credit Journal Prompts
I'm so excited about the books that we are reading this year...it's just so amazing, this journey we both are on.
We've started in on Writing with Skill for some "official" writing...I kind of am still in test mode here with this curriculum, but so far, so good it seems. It's starting out with having her work on narrative summaries which is kind of boring but important. She's wordy like me so it's hard to pare things down to the bare minimum when summarizing! I'm still working on incorporating Brave Writer into the mix of things too which really isn't that difficult so far.
This week and next week I have some library programming that will pull some of my attention away from schooling but it shouldn't be too difficult to manage seeing that it's Halloween stuff for the most part and is programming that Zoey and her friends will be able to participate in as well.
If I'm being honest, things are going swimmingly so far...I find myself having these moments of pure joy when I think that we are homeschooling. I want to shout it out to someone, share our excitement, but really don't know if there is someone that would "get it" at this point. We'll just continue to go on being secretly thrilled with life for now.
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