Tamales

Well, Ma Ingalls has inspired me. That family eats more corn than I can imagine, what with cornbread every single night for dinner and then sometimes at other times of the day as well. I didn't make corn bread, but I did make tamales. I love tamales and these turned out wonderful- just the recipe in the {new} Joy. And I confess to not making a trip to the special grocery store for corn husks- I used parchment paper instead and it works just lovely! I ate four- well, except for the two bites I gave to Charlie and the kids had one bite each and of course Jack wanted one but he isn't supposed to have corn. He is allergic.

We are doing some work on letters currently as Eva is itching to know them. We are using Handwriting Without Tears for writing and we have been coloring letters and looking at letters in Obvious Letters and Alphabet Theme-a-saurus and today we watched William Wegman's Alphabet Soup. I got some great suggestions for learning to read for both visual-spatial learners and for tactile-kinesthetic learners form this site.

We are still reading a lot about the Revolutionary War and have also been discussing the Civil War a bit. Samuel is interested in the similarities between the different conflicts that we discuss- someone telling someone else to do something they don't want to do- pretty much sums it up.

So its letters, Revolutionary War, conflict, Little House books, still lots on dinosaurs. Today we went to the symphony to hear the Portland Youth Philharmonic and I found a potential piccolo teacher for Samuel who we are going to meet soon. Oh and we are reading some fun Calvin and Hobbes comics (thanks Kate) that the kids are enjoying, although I am not sure they are getting them all the time. I am finding them quite funny and that helps for sure. Wait, there's more- ice cream making and trips to art class and we went to a board game day with some other homeschoolers the other day which was fun as well.

Today Eva said, "Some people take reading and writing sooo personally. I mean, they think they HAVE TO read and write. I am learning to read and write because I want to." Big smile. That about sums it up, don't you think?