week #10 run-down

Week #10 of our Fall Semester was the "week that wasn't supposed to happen". We were supposed to be on a break, traveling out to visit friends in Ohio. But, well, life happens, and instead we had a "normal" homeschooling week. We shifted into new November rhythms to match up better with the chillier weather. Our ponies got furrier (as you can see in the photos) and our trees got barer (as you can also see). J had his chorus and soccer classes, and found out at Tae Kwon Do that he's going to be testing next week for a new belt. We had a playdate at some friends' house one afternoon. And we had another great Friday Excursion with our homeschooling pals to Northwest Park in Windsor, CT.

(Kids having a "dance party" during their before-breakfast free play.)

I put a lot of thought into story selection for this (and the coming) weeks. I decided to keep the more complicated Enki Nature Stories for special readings rather than trying to use them as our curriclum story for the week, and fell back on more basic Folk Tales. It worked well, and the kids enjoyed the Plains Indian tale about the Buffalo Race, in which Magpie outwitted all the other animals to win the race for Humans.

(Here the kids play a game with their Pokemon cards, which is a big up-and-coming interest for both of them.)

For the Nature Stories, we set the stage for a special story telling, a tradition that we'll continue through the winter. We started a fire in our fireplace on Friday evening, turned off all the lights, lit a special candle, and I read them the story of The Gift Of The Mighty Oak by candlelight. Zoo Boy curled up in The Map Man's lap and commented "that was a GREAT story!" when I was done reading. The next day J raved about how much he liked the Special Story Time, with the fire and the candle and the lights all out. It truly was special.

(The boys building a marble run with their block set.)

We shook up our Movement Circle a little bit this week, too. We've been having trouble engaging Zoo Boy with circle lately, so we tried to accommodate him a bit better, which I discussed in a blog entry earlier this week. We added some late-autumn type verses and songs, about squirrels gathering nuts and bears preparing for hibernation, and I borrowed tunes from other songs to add to a couple of the verses, as Zoo Boy prefers singing to reciting verses. Over all, it went really well.

We read the following books for Family Story Time this week: Mouse, Look Out!, by Judy Waite, illustrated by Norma Burgin (a cute late-autumn tale of a cat stalking a mouse through an abandoned house); In November, by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Jill Kastner (WONDERFUL book about that changes that come about in country life during November); and Every Autumn Comes The Bear, by Jim Arnosky (an Autumn favorite around here).