This week ... so far

Monday the Flat McDonalds arrived at Chanda's house, off on their second postal adventure. Chanda says she wants to make them paper beach clothes/swim suits and take them to the beach :) Wish I could mail myself there! Though I'd probably need something more substantial than paper clothes when I got there :)

Monday night I could not get the kids to bed at a decent hour. Bed time seems to be slipping later and later. I'm trying to get a handle on that. Wish me luck. But since they didn't end up in bed until just before 10, and weren't asleep until nearly 11, they slept in. Way in. So late that I called to say they wouldn't make it to their 9:35 swim class. And then I decided we wouldn't go to Duncan's gym class either. Which made Tuesday a stay-at-home day.

In between using the time to organize the mess growing beside my bed and cleaning the kitchen, we worked on phonics and history, and math on the computer. I re-read the lesson about Shamshi-Adad and Gilgamesh and then we did the question/answer and narration exercises in the SotW activity guide. The last suggested activity in the chapter was for Sayer to write her own fairy tale (since that's how they described the Epic of Gilgamesh - as the world's oldest *recorded* fairy tale). So that's what I suggested to Sayer, and off she went.

She said that she'd draw a story, and I agreed that was fine. So she drew a picture and then called me over to see it. I told her what I saw, and she corrected me if I mistook things or if I guessed the story wrong. Then she drew the next picture and called me over again.

The first picture was of a man in a boat holding a paddle. He was approaching an island with a heavily laden coconut tree. The second picture showed the man on the island, meeting a woman and falling in love (as indicated by the small heart next to his head). I missed a detail on that page, so Sayer drew arrows pointing to the woman to indicate movement. Turns out she is a hula dancer :)

So the man rowed to the island and met and fell in love with not just any woman, but with a hula dancer. The third drawing showed the hula dancer introducing the man to her two friends and the secret treasure chest that the three of them guarded. It also showed another, even more heavily laden coconut tree, from which the hula dancers got their food.

The fourth picture showed that the man had apparently acquired a sail from the hula dancers and was back on his boat, sailing away - with his hula dancer love. The other two dancers had stayed on their island, with the treasure. The last drawing showed the man with a bow tie and the hula dancer in a long dress (rather than her short grass skirt), with another man with a book and his mouth open saying something. It was apparently the 'happily ever after' of the story with a happy wedding. Next to it Sayer wrote the words 'The End.'

There you have it. Original fairy tale, by Sayer. :)

Wednesday we finished reading D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. Sayer reports that her favorite god is Persephone. I thought we'd move right in to the D'Aulaire's Norse myth book, but I've still got a few other Mesopotamian/Egyptian/Greek things from the library to read, so we'll try for those first. Chances are this means that the Norse myths will continue to get bumped until we start reading about the Vikings, but we'll see if I can't make it happen any sooner.

While I was making dinner on Wednesday Sayer sat at the table and poked around a pile of books there. She said, 'I know what this book is!' after seeing just the bottom of the cover illustration. I started playing with her. 'No, you don't!' 'Yes, I do! It's my phonics book!' So she pulled it out and showed me, and of course, it was. I said 'Well, okay, but you'd better not open it up!' So she smiled at me and opened it. And I said, 'Well, okay, but you'd better not DO any of the pages!' So she smiled at me and picked up a pencil. She did a page while I continued protesting and she continued giggling. Then she asked if she could be done, and I agreed that she could. Besides, I was getting dinner onto plates, so it was time to eat. But it was fun to play with her that way.

Thursday we had swim class in the morning, and Duncan impressed me. He's allowed his instructors to help him under water (ie dunking him) for a while, but generally he'd surface with some complaint. Not yesterday. Not only did he get dunked, but later, when they threw rings into the pool for the kids to retrieve from the bottom, he took a breath when he was supposed to and the teacher held him by the waist and pushed him all the way down and he grabbed the ring and came back up. I was happy to see that he'd done it, and happier that he surfaced happy rather than fussing. :)

Sayer did well, as well, though she did make me veeeery nervous. Her instructor had moved the class from the shallow area by the stairs to the 4 ft deep area where he has the students hang on the wall while waiting their turn. There is one other girl in Sayer's class (who is the same age but probably 8 inches taller), so she'd hang on the wall while Sayer is assisted in swimming to the other side of the pool and back, then Sayer waits while the other girl makes the same circuit. Except that Sayer doesn't just wait. She's having so much fun swimming and going under water to look around that she was pushing herself off from the wall and heading for a nearby corner wall.

Now, the area where they're working has this little nook, so the corner she's crossing is maybe 2 yards long. But there is no teacher within 5-6 seconds of her when she's doing this, and if she misses her grab for the wall ...

So I was watching anxiously, and I told her that she had been making me very nervous when class was over. Her response was typical for her self-confident self. 'But I'm good at it.'

After class we stopped at a book store where Sayer immediately found a book on mummies and sat down with it while I looked around :)

At home the kids watched Between the Lions for a while. Duncan passed out on the chair and Sayer came to ask me to come see what she'd done for him. I went out to see he'd slumped over at a crazy weird angle and that she'd covered him with a blanket. She's always trying to make him comfortable when he falls asleep. :) Or when he's hurt or upset (so long as he isn't upset with her). She'll bring him pillows and blankets and run for stuffed animals to try to make him comfortable and happy. :)

Last night Sayer and I watched a documentary on Hatshepsut, the woman who ruled Egypt as Pharaoh between Tuthmosis II and Tuthmosis III. Sayer was very interested in the portion of the show where they tried to figure out which mummy was Hatshepsut's, but was a bit lost in the part that covered the who tried to erase Hatshepsut's name from history, and why. She was quite proud of herself to have guessed which mummy turned out to be the right one.

Today is another at-home day. I guess we'll see what we manage to get done, but ETC and the Kumon coin book are on the list, along with reading another version of Gilgamesh's story.