Weekly (hmmm) Report: October 6 through October 30 - Weeks 10, 11, 12, 13

Okay...so, it's been a while.  I knew this would happen.  I get involved with other things (like reading 1,000 page books [World Without End by Ken Follett]) and I neglect my blog (and Facebook, too).  However, just a few weeks have gone by rather than the one year hiatus I took a while back.

The kids have been busy - playing some, learning a lot, reading like mad, and immersing themselves in music.  Will has really blossomed - in his piano playing, reading, and singing.  (His voice teacher LOVES his vibrato!)  Casey is reading everything she can get her hands on, and Tricky is learning to read (she wants to be able to read to Chaucer).

Last weekend we went to visit family in Louisiana.  I had hoped to take the kids by Vicksburg, Mississippi - since we just studied the Civil War Battle of Vicksburg - however, the weather had other plans for us.  [Traipsing around a national park battlefield in the cold rain is not my idea of fun, so we skipped Vicksburg.]  We did get to go to the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge!  So. Much. FUN!!!  There were booksellers, authors, publishers - storytelling, children's writing workshops...  All in front of the Louisiana Capital - which we went into and went to the lookout at the top.  One of the exhibits was called What do you GEEK?  If you wrote "I geek _________" on a wall, they gave you a t-shirt, bookmarks, backpacks, etc.  I said that I geek homonyms.  I do...

All of my life, well since I was about 10, I've been wanting to keep a list of homonyms - so  I finally started.  (Yes, I'm realizing one of my life's dreams... I tend to dream BIG!)  My list is kept in a spiral notebook and is in alphabetical order, mostly to avoid homonym repeats.  The kids have been constantly giving suggestions; Tricky's are some of the best:  "Mommy, how about cookie and cookie?"  "No, Trick, that's the same word with the same meaning."  My recent additions (because this is something I tend to obsess over and have scraps of paper everywhere with list possibilities) are:  grease - Greece; tacks - tax; pedal - petal.  Yes, I give an allowance for colloquial pronunciations; I do have some (but not many) proper nouns; and I have various self-imposed restrictions, such as I can't research homonyms, they must come naturally.

Here are some pictures from the past few weeks.  Enjoy!

Chaucer participating in the voice lesson warm-up.

Decorating cookies (otherwise known as Making a HUGE Mess)

Hard tack.  Part of our Civil War study...so they could see what the soldiers subsisted on.  It was actually pretty good with the chicken soup I served with it.

A Physics experiment:  inertia