History Fair

We had the homeschool history fair on Monday. I thought the kids did great and we had a lot of good information on our display board. The Trojan Horse was a big hit, especially at the end when we dragged kids around it in. We borrowed a big wagon from our friend Jane and built the Trojan horse on top. The kids pretended to be Greek soldiers, who jumped out to sack Troy!

Our Charlotte is back at The Gnu School! Very happy to have her back!

Schoolgirl

Here's our girl after her first day of school at Hartley. She was pretty wiped out!

Charlotte has been wanting to go to school for some time now. She likes to be busy, and she likes to know exactly what's going to be happening next. Also I think it'll be good for her to be around potential friends every day.

And so far it's going well! Her teacher said she's a good student. She likes getting little tokens for doing math, which she can use to purchase gummy bears, or special solo trips to the library. She really likes computers during "specials." She likes running a huge lap around the playground. She likes scootering to school and back and seeing all the neighborhood dogs -- she will always give them her own "woof, woof!"

We who are still homeschooling miss her so much! But we will support her efforts to learn, and we are here to help her with art projects, piano and playtime! And we are always available for curling up to read a good book.

One Drop Can Make a Wave

So much has been happening...

On St. Patrick's Day we helped put on a benefit performance for the Omaha Nation Water Walk. This was held on the Unitarian Church, and our friend Renee did spoken word performance of her poetry accompanied with music by Diane Robinson Kerr and Fran Collier. It was a beautiful performance, and it raised some money for the Water Walk.

Renee's plan is to do the water walk to pray and raise awareness for the problems with the water treatment on the Omaha reservation in Northeast Nebraska. There have been ongoing problems with e-coli contamination. The communities on the reservation have had numerous boil water alerts, and people are getting by with bottled water and paper plates.

The water system is in bad shape and it would cost big money to replace or fix.

Will and Charlotte helped with the sound check the afternoon before the performance. The last song included the audience on percussion, and this was great fun for everybody. The final song was "One Drop Can Make a Wave." This is a fitting description for what we want to do to make sure folks on the reservation have clean water.

Irish Myths and Fairy Tales

Today we read three stories (so far) from Irish Fairy Tales & Legends. They included "How Cuchullain Got His Name," "The Magic Shoes," and "The King's Secret." This book has beautiful illustrations, cool Celtic designs, and a key in the back for pronunciations of the Gaelic names (quite important).

Charlotte wants to go to Hobby Lobby to get stuff to make crafts for tomorrow.

I found some pretty green cloth downstairs and thought I'd make a little dress for her using one of her dresses as a pattern. Of course, she wants me to make a dress for Rose too!

Yesterday

Yesterday, William was sick with a scratchy throat, so Charlotte and I did a lot together. She read a whole level 3 book out loud ("Arthur and the Back to School Surprise"), and learned about Helen Keller, air pollution, global warming and mummies. Charlotte made a little scrapbook from construction paper and cut out pictures from a sales flyer and wrote captions. Pretty cute! I read to her, quite a few chapters of her fairy book. We also, as noted in the post below, made cookies! Charlotte invented a new kind of cookie. We haven't named it yet.

Charlotte asked me to tape Good Eats from the Food Network, so it's good that she's capitalizing on this new interest.

Charlotte really wants to make a new bag for dance. I told her I would knit one, but she found some fabric she really likes. I'm hoping to make it today.

We're having trouble getting used to the time change!

A Gnu Cookie

Charlotte wanted to invent a new cookie. We started out with the base of for chocolate chip cookies. Then we added chopped mixed nuts, sunflower seeds, peanut butter, oatmeal, raisins, chopped almond bark, and a little strawberry cream cheese. They kind of ran together in the oven, so we should make them smaller next time.

Mahoney State Park Activity Center

Charlotte wanted me to post a picture of Mahoney State Park. This is the indoor play structure, where a kid can play for over an hour and you won't even see them but you can be almost certain that they're OK.