Our vacation started with taking the big kids to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. We got to the movie theater about 10:30 pm. We sat with some friends. They had made glasses out of pipe cleaners. We drew lightning bolt scars on each other.

At midnight we led the people in the theater in singing happy birthday to Jamie (35) and our friend Sophia (19). And then, at 12:01 am, the movie began. It was totally awesome and we all enjoyed it a lot. We were headed back home at 2:39 am.

We got home, finished loading up the van, and the six of us were on our way about 3:15 am. We arrived at the resort at 12:30. Check-in isn’t until 4, so the kids played on the playground for a while. At 3 they told us our room was ready.

On Saturday my friend Jamie from No Place Like Home and her family came over. We had a great time with them (so much so we spent Thursday at their house).

Ani totally fell in love with Jamie’s littlest, Daisy.

Four of our littles! Jamie’s Peach and Luigi and my Adrian and Fritz.

My Cameron and Jamie’s Mario got along fabulously. I have no idea what they were talking about here, but surely it was important stuff!

Jamie and I are usually the ones behind the cameras, but sometimes we end up in front.

The view from our suite was gorgeous. We love mountains (when you are from near sea level the Appalachian foothills are definitely mountains!).

I didn’t have a visiting teaching route for a few months. A mistake was made while moving around people and my route printed out completely empty. I had a partner, but no one to visit. And so I was able to jokingly say I was doing my visiting teaching at 100% for those months.

Now I have a route again. Two sisters who couldn’t be at more different points in their lives from me and each other. Both I have actually known for years. One is the younger sister of a guy I grew up with. She is single, no kids. The other has two teenage daughters.

It’s interesting to think about deciding what to emphasize from the message when I visit each one. One message, but I need two different points from it (and those points are likely to be different from the points my own visiting teacher will emphasize when she visits me). It’s actually pretty cool how easily you can customize the message no matter the needs of the sisters you visit.

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My friend Kimberlee and I take turns hosting Sharing Time Sunday. This week it is her turn. If you’d like to join us, please write something about The Church on your blog and link to your post in the comments here!

grilled chicken salad, bread cut into leaf and pumpkin shapes
mandarin oranges
goldfish

peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into hearts, blue cheese dressing in the dip container
sunflower seeds
carrot sticks

hot chicken wrap kits (lettuce and cheese wrapped in the tortilla, spicy chicken in the cupcake cup, homemade blue cheese dressing in the dip container)
dried fruit
mini rice cakes

cheesy chicken and rice (grilled chicken slices on seasoned rice topped with cheese)
ghost marshmallows
applesauce

Our past lunches:

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12, Week 13, Week 14, Week 15, Week 16

(Another story about my great-grandmother.)

One of the few things that I can remember clearly about Wisconsin was the snows we had every winter. It began snowing early and didn’t ever seem to want to quit. Before long, the snow would stand as deep as a house. Grandmother and Grandfather Feuerstein lived on a farm where the outbuildings were scattered, and the wind would send the snow up in swirls and drop it back into huge snowbanks between those buildings. To get from building to building, tunnels would be dug beneath the snow. In places where the snow was less deep, steps would be formed to make it easier to go over things that might still be sticking up. That snow would get just as hard as rocks until the meltdown in the spring.

A – Aldi’s (Where else can you get good tasting super-cheap food?)
B – Books (I love to read. Enough said.)
C – Calvert School (We have seriously been blessed by going back to using Calvert this year.)
D – Daddy (My father has taught me so much and is just plain fun to be around.)
E – E-Mail (It is such a useful tool for keeping in touch with friends and family.)
F – Fabric (I love just touching fabric.)
G – Glue (Particularly in stick form, glue is just very useful.)
H – Hand-Me-Downs (We have saved so incredibly much money over the years because people have passed down clothes, books, and toys to our kids.)
I – Inchworms (It’s really fun to watch inchworms moving along.)
J – Jamie (I’m not including my kids on this list, mainly because two of them start with the same letter, but for obvious reasons I am including my husband.)
K – Kimberlee (She’s my best friend even though she lives 2,000 miles away.)
L – Legos (Mostly because I just love hearing Fritz talking about them. He says “Yegos.”)
M – Mommie (My mother is one of my very favorite people.)
N – Nose (I am glad that my nose allows me to smell things, particularly when it is smelling nice things.)
O – Old Navy (Their clothes fit Ani so nicely and are pretty much always on sale and I can often get coupons on top of those sales.)
P – Pasta (I love to eat pasta, especially in summer tomato pasta or spaghetti and meatballs.)
Q – Quilting (I enjoy making quilts, particularly paper pieced quilts.)
R – Rain (I particularly like light, warm, Spring rain.)
S – Salad (My very favorite food is salad, especially if it comes from a salad bar.)
T – There’s No Place Like Home (I just love the group of ladies on that message board.)
U – Ubiquitous (It’s just plain a cool word.)
V – Vacations (I love going on vacation with my family and having lots of fun relaxing together.)
W – Words (Without them I could neither speak nor write this list.)
X – X-Rays (They really are quite useful when you need one.)
Y – Yolk (It’s my favorite part of the egg, especially when it’s a fresh egg from a farm.)
Z – Zigzag (Yet another word that is just plain fun to say.)

She gets 11 grades. 8 of those were A’s and 3 were B’s. Her A’s: Art (96%), Composition (93%), History (93%), Reading (96%), Science (95%), Spanish (97%), Spelling (93%), and Technology (99%). Her B’s: Math (87%), Geography (89%), and Grammar (88%).

Fritz and I talked about the names of baby animals and the names of the big animals they grow into. I read It Was Tommy, Do You See What I See?, and Hot Cross Buns to him. He circled pictures according to the clue I gave him.

He played with Play-Doh. He was supposed to model an egg, but he decided to make a tree that grows eggs. (end of lesson 125)

We talked about seeds and what grows from seeds and how seeds are dispersed. He played with scooping cups and rice to show how different containers hold more than others.

I started a story and he finished. His ending was pretty elaborate. I read Child at a Window to him. He looked out the window and then was supposed to draw what he saw. I’m pretty sure, however, that a huge ship is not in our driveway so I can’t say that he drew what he actually saw.

He played with a balloon, tossing it high in the air and catching it when it came back down. (end of lesson 126)

After we finished doing school he got interested in playing in the rice again and spent at least an hour doing that. (end of what we did Monday)

We talked about the roots of plants. Fritz told a story about his amazing superhero guinea pig who rid the world of all the bad guys. I told him some riddles and he circled the picture the riddle described.

He put together the lacing buttons into shapes and designs he liked. (end of lesson 127)

We talked about what plants need to grow. He went on a measuring hunt to see how long things were using his cubes.

We reviewed some nursery rhymes. He finished sentences about himself such as When I was little, I… and A tree is good for… I drew a horizontal line representing the ground on a piece of paper and Fritz drew a tree with parts above and below the ground.

I gave him Fit-a-Space discs plus the three pieces that fit in it and one extra. He quickly was able to figure out which did not belong. (end of lesson 128 and what we did Tuesday)

We talked about the sun. I gave him a riddle about the wind and then read The Wind to him. We reviewed One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. He drew lines from numbers to make the order of the parts of that poem.

He started making a weather scrapbook. He drew a picture of the sun and a picture of rain.

I hummed some tunes and he tried to guess what song I was humming. (end of lesson 129) We talked about clouds. He identified the numbers 1-5 and drew the given number of pictures on each line.

I read White Sheep and A Kite aloud to him. We listened to Down in the Valley. (end of lesson 130 and what we did Wednesday) We talked about rain. I read Rain, The Rain, and Rain, Rain, Go Away to him. Then we talked about Rainbows and I read The Rainbow aloud. I showed him how to draw a rainbow and he drew one for his weather scrapbook.

I showed him a page with pictures and he went from left to right looking at each picture and telling me a story to go along with the sequence of pictures.

He drew another picture for his weather scrapbook. (end of lesson 131) We talked about snow. We reviewed counting groups of connecting cubes with towers of 0 to 5. Then I had him count a tower of 6 connecting cubes and he made his own tower of 6 cubes.

I read Falling Snow, Snow, and The Snowman to him. We were supposed to play the left-right game again, but he wasn’t interested so instead he sang along with and did the motions for Once There Was a Snowman (several times). (end of lesson 132 and what we did Thursday)

So that was some of the fun stuff Fritz did last week. To see what other home preschoolers have done recently, go here!

Last week we did activities based on the book Harry the Dirty Dog by Margaret Bloy Graham.

He sat up, rolled over, played dead, and “spoke” like a dog.

He dug in the rice “dirt” like a dog trying to hide something.

He played a game of tag with his big brother.

He added spots to a dog drawing to make Harry, a white dog with black spots.

He sang and danced like Harry.

He hid the brush under a beanbag chair and then curled up to “sleep” on it.

He slid down his slide just like Harry slid down the coal chute.

And he took a super soapy bubble bath.

So that was some of the fun stuff Adrian did last week. To see what other Tot Schoolers did, go here!

As part of the Calvert 7 Discoveries in Reading, Ani will be reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. I love everything I have ever read by Lois Lowry. I loved the Anastasia Krupnik series so much that I decided at age 9 that I would name a daughter Anastasia after Anastasia Romanov just like Anastasia Krupnik was (and, as it turned out, I did indeed name my daughter Anastasia – Ani is her nickname). I have, however, only read Lois Lowry’s books for younger people: the Anastasia Krupnik series and the Gooney Bird Greene series.

The Giver is about a society with no color, no feelings, no choices. Everything is carefully regulated. Every year of life for the first 12 years brings specific added responsibilities (such as a jacket with buttons at 6, a bike at 9). At 12, children begin training for a job that is carefully selected by the Elders. Adults can apply for a spouse to be assigned to them. After 3 years of successful marriage, they can apply to become parents. A child is assigned to them to be received some time between newborn and 1 year old. Later, they can apply for a second child, one of the opposite sex. The purpose of a family unit is to raise the children. Once the children become adults, the family unit breaks up. There is no pain and suffering in their society, but there is also no happiness, love, or joy. And no colors. Everything and everyone are completely the same and gray.

At 12, Jonas is assigned to be the new Receiver. A high honor, but a very harrowing job. The old receiver becomes the Giver and transfers the memories of the world beyond the community, good and bad, to Jonas. Jonas begins to see in color and to really feel which frustrates him greatly. He learns exactly what release of a non-thriving baby, repeat criminal, or old person means. Along with the Giver, Jonas comes up with a plan to help himself and the community to be released from the oppression of sameness.

I liked the book. It was odd. It reads quickly (180 pages) and can be looked at on many levels. Depending on how deeply you want to think about the story, it can be very shallow and simple, or very, very deep. I recommend The Giver.

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Books Read: 60/52
Pages Read: 18,439
Next Book: Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Check out reviews of books other people have read here.