Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Advent... Day 9

Not much to report today. The boys did a great job of jumping right back into school :0) I'm leaving out science (except to finally finish painting our model of the ocean floor) since we only really have three school days. They're excited about our history lessons, because we're talking about Richard the Lionhearted and Prince John... familiar to them from Robin Hood :0) But the other side of that is the introduction of the Magna Carta, and the limits it placed on the monarchy... a big subject for young minds. Wyatt was not only introduced to a strange new concept ('pi') in math today, but did some extra work we ran out of time for last week, willingly, without complaining, while his brothers played. Tate blazed through his math and writing work. And Gunnar is blossoming, more and more, in his reading... even longer words sometimes, like "strength", "scribe", and "caffeine".

So, on to story time... Tate hit the jackpot tonight - our "new" (to us) book, by Jan Brett, called "The Wild Christmas Reindeer". (I think my mom found it at a garage sale.) The story is... kind of fluff, but we enjoy the artwork. Honestly, the book wasn't that impressive, but Jan Brett has a fun website with TONS of free activities, printables, etc.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Jan Brett books...I don't have that one, though. The artwork is amazing.

I still love the blog design, and the advent idea. I just may do this next year. But I'll need to buy a few more books, I think!

Herding Grasshoppers said...

I'm always finding books. The Scholastic book orders are the best deal around. Of course, a good half of it is TRASH, but if you watch, you can find great titles very inexpensively.

I check garages sales. A retiring teacher's garage sale is always a treasure trove! Homeschool swap meets are another gold mine.

And, of course, there's Amazon and Alibris. (Sometimes the books are almost free, and it's just the shipping to pay.)

leah said...

I love Jan Brett. Some of the stories are good, some are just so-so, but the artwork is amazing! We have The Mitten and Matthew likes it. I've gotten some decent books from our local library sale, but you have to get there early or all the good books are GONE!

The dB family said...

I love Jan Brett's artistry. The website is pretty cool too! Love the printables.