ETC and Stuart Little

and School House Rock. Lots of it. That's what the kids were watching when I got up this morning (and what they continued to watch while I mowed the back yard, then the front yard, then transplanted seedlings ...). When they finally decided they were done watching it Sayer grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and drew a picture of a person with a heart divided into 4 numbered parts, with two lines connecting them to largish hash-marked ovals to either side of the heart. She'd drawn the heart and lungs based on the story of the circulatory system in SHR. Then she turned the paper over and drew the digestive system, to include poop in the toilet :)

A bit later in the day she asked if she could do some homework so that she could play on the computer. So I asked her to do 4 pages of ETC. She called over to me a bit later that she'd done two more pages than the 5 I'd asked for. I told her that I'd only asked for 4, so she'd done 3 extra, and if she did one more she'd get another nickel. But the next page was one that required lots of writing, so she answered me with 'no, thanks.' Then she was off playing games with Arthur on the computer. It's been a while since she played the 'computer trouble' game, and I mentioned how I liked the part where she was supposed to find underwater treasure by matching words to pictures. She agreed that she liked that part of the game and went right to it. It asked her if she wanted easy, medium or hard. I told her she'd have no problems with hard, and though she questioned me, she chose that level. And when it wanted her to match the word purse to a picture, then the word jellyfish, then something else that she matched with ease, she turned to me and laughed and said that hard was easy. I guess she's made lots of progress in reading since the last time she played this game (I think it's been 2-3 months ...)

And tonight we finished reading Stuart Little. I was surprised to find it was so open-ended, with no resolution to Stuart's quest to find Margalo, and no returning home. Sayer asked if I was sure the book was done, so I guess she was surprised, too. She enjoyed the book, and I'm looking online to see if there are some study guide questions that we can use for further discussion of the story. We probably won't spend lots of time on it, as there is always another book to read ...

And personally, I *hated* the scene in the book dealing with the invisible car. It was totally out of place in the story, and utterly ridiculous. Pah! Luckily, Sayer isn't as jaded as I am and it didn't phase her at all.