Lately...

Eden has been sick with a cold pretty much non stop since we moved to Kitchener. I could tell that she was feeling better when she started sucking her thumb again: her nose wasn't stuffed anymore! That lasted for a few days and she got a new cold. Maybe this cold thing will rid her of her thumb sucking habit! That would be great if she quits at such a young age... I must admit I'd feel sad though. I think she's so irresistible with her 'tum' in her mouth. She readily shares her free thumb too!

As usual, Eden is right with us while we home school. Elijah was always nearby too when he was little. He learned almost everything from just hearing Evie home schooling. He's an eager learner, it's music to my ears to have him ask me to let him read. This week he moved onto learning long vowels. Cap - cape, Jan - Jane. He was giddy with excitement over learning something new.

Evie now loves every subject we do, with the exception of reading. I sure hope that changes! She loves being read to, and we do lots of that. I'm thrilled that she's enjoying everything else though. For the first time ever, she doesn't complain or cry when it's time to home school! Why the change? We changed our style. Completely. We started out a few years ago with a "school in a box" type of curriculum. From day one, Evie complained and was hesitant to learn. I realized it wasn't working so I gathered my courage to switch to a different math curriculum. Math U See is now what we use for math and it's been a lifesaver! She loved it instantly. We then started picking up novels and doing our own unit studies. Success again. Recently I came upon a website called Simply Charlotte Mason. I'd heard so much about Charlotte Mason from my sister in law and friends knew immediately when I came across this site that this was what I was looking for. I've been implementing all the ideas from this site into our home school and it's worked wonders!

Anyhow, currently we are reading "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It's such a lovely book set in 19th century England. A recent chapter described Sara Crewe painting pictures of diamonds under the earth. I gave the kids an assignment to paint a similar scene to what Sara would've painted.






Another assignment was to pretend they were "Lavinia" a student from the boarding school that Sarah Crewe attended. Lavinia was not to fond of Sarah, seeing her as competition. Lavinia was to write home to her parents about her new classmate, Sarah.
We made our own quill and ink. My parents came and brought us black walnuts from the farm, along with some feathers that my mom had. Ronny's mom helped us on another day with making the ink.



Here's Evie's finished letter. She composed it completely on her own. I corrected her spelling and wrote it out for her. She traced my writing underneath her paper.