Finishing out our week

I do have to say the second half of this went better then the first half. The kids had a great time at Discussion Group. They were all in agreement that the 3d movie was better then the Mickey Mouse version. They also all agreed that ......spoiler here........the chase scene with the 3rd spirit served no purpose whatsoever. None of them saw a point other then to throw an action scene into the movie. They discussed why they thought Scrooge gave up love for money. We all (parents included) wondered why if he had such a great employer in Feziwig, one that modeled how to run a business and be nice, that Scrooge turned into such a Miser. Speculation is that it was his business partner who gave free access to his darker side. Baggage from childhood that never leaves us.

Yesterday and today our lessons seemed to flow smoothly. Minimum of complaints and work done in a timely fashion. M is still loving long division. B is working on converting mixed number fractions into fractions. History, B started working on his Biography of St. Francis of Assisi. As he was reading one of the books we took out of the library he said "Papa Howard was a lot like St. Francis." "How so? asked I. In my head thinking -I wonder if my father is laughing in his grave at being compared to a Saint. B answered with "St. Francis loved and lived life the way Papa Howard did." How sweet is that? I just melted. M finished her unit on Islam. She and I had a nice discussion on how Islam is similar to Judaism. Her very astute observation "If we are so similar, why do so many hate us?" Good question. One to which I really do not have a satisfactory answer. Language Arts, B-relative pronouns, M-singular and plural possessive nouns. Latin-they continue to work on the nominative case.

This week we started doing an awesome science experiment. B asked the tooth fairy to leave the teeth that he had pulled so we could use them in a science experiment. The tooth fairy obliged. We have one tooth sitting in a small jar of cola so we can see what soda does to our teeth.

The other big hit this week is the game The Scrambled States of America. They love this game. For the first few days they played it all the time. There was me saying "Stop playing that game and go to bed." Then in the morning it was "Stop playing that game and go do your math." The novelty has started wearing off but I am still amazed by how much they are enjoying that game. Learning geography has never been so much fun.