New Blogs

The kids have both started their own blogs. I have them linked on the side so you can check them out. Samuel has several links on his about knights. He is planning on expanding the links to other areas of interest. Right now, though, he is focusing on knights. He picked out a new knight book yesterday that he is really enjoying by Usborne. It has several internet links to all things to do with knights and these are the links he has chosen to put on his blog.

Eva's blog is about how much she loves animals. She plans to take lots of photographs of animals and all of the other things she loves and post them on her blog.

We have spent the last couple of days (and plan to spend a couple more days next week) figuring out if the kids like the classes we are trying out at Village Home. So far we have not really found a match for either of the kids. Eva said no to Spanish for Preschoolers. Samuel was disappointed with both his playful inventions class and the drama class he tried out today. He has decided to try them both out one more time next week to see if he enjoys them any more. Eva is also going to see what their little villagers class is like. It is a kind of preschool-y type of class for four-ish year olds (and threes and maybe a five or two), all homeschoolers I am told. And then because we dropped one class and are thinking of dropping some others, we signed up for an art class, because as Samuel says, those are always fun. If Samuel doesn't like the drama class next week I may sign him up for another drama class at a children's theater in Portland. But for right now we are just figuring out these classes. And that has turned out to be plenty for now. Even if we end up dropping all of the classes it has been a learning adventure for all of us and helped us to clarify what it is we are all looking for, myself included. And yes, next time I may go to the meet-the-teacher night to see if we can glean any extra information about the class and/ or teacher before hand.

We are reading many many books about cats and dogs and horses this week. Eva wanted lots of cat and dog books and also books on spiders (imagine that!) and a book on crystals and rocks and a great book on eggs (that was my pick and it was enjoyed by all). Samuel wants to know more about horses and even how to take care of horses. We are also reading this interesting and enjoyable series by Mary Pope Osborne (she wrote the magic tree house series) about the Odyssey. She has adapted the stories into six short books for kids. They are really fun and Samuel is loving them. They are a bit over the top for Eva, though, and a little more gruesome than I imagined they would be. She is very faithful to the original! I just saw she also has a favorite Greek myths book and favorite stories from the middle ages and I think those will be our next stop.