Saturday's Tattler

It was an incredible week from the inside...Strep really took hold, and there wasn't a day we didn't send someone home with Strep. On Tuesday, Miss Lisa went home and was terribly sick and is only now beginning to recoup. During most of the week, Miss Amy was battling something that even threatened the ER at one point. Miss Dayna had the exhaustion, "I'm fighting for my life" blues, and even Miss Judy was not herself on one day. I was hoping I'd be someone about twenty years younger, but had to settle on a space head from Mars for about four hours. I am very blessed with good health and great energy, and only get sick about four hours at a time. Miss Molly had a day when she couldn't come in because her entire sewer system backed up into her house. It was a neighborhood event, but settled on her home as the "guest house" lucky dog Molly! Typhoid or diphtheria anyone?

But if you consider it to be a "sick week" we did manage to get a lot accomplished. We had a luau on Tuesday, and the children enjoyed finger pork, a big fresh fruit salad and egg rolls made by yours truly.

We talked about the world's islands and what it might be like to live on an island. We talked about Egypt and about the pyramids, the Nile and mummies! We talked about India and reincarnation, rice mosaics, and the sacred cow. We tried on a sari and added it to dress up.

I was thrilled with our geography "final" on Friday morning before the trip to Yen Ching.

I asked every child to point out something they knew about the map, and all but about five children could point out a specific place. We got some incredible answers from our very young children. We pointed out the poles, the equator ( Edan), both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres (Jil), the Indian Ocean (Alexis) , the Pacific (Kayla) , and the "Dirty Little Pond" known as the Atlantic (Connor D). We were able to identify Australia (Connor H), Where the Tree People live in New Guinea ( Josiah), the African Continent (Kinsley), Europe (Levi), South America (Kaelin) North America, the USA (K'Mya), Canada (Madison), Brazil (Fallyn), Alaska (Josiah) Greenland (Jacob) Madagascar (DeAsia), China, Asia, Mexico, Egypt (Josiah) the Panama Canal (Jil) and more I can't remember. It was such a wonderful morning.

Then we went out to lunch to Yen Ching, and had a delicious ten course meal and then home for play outside to see if we couldn't keep the bug under control.

It's always a pleasure to have children learn, remember and be proud to tell us what they know. This has been a really good geography session. I hope the children remember what they know because a knowledge of the world is an important part of being in the world.

Onward to Science with a slight detour to dancing and courtship and the Middle Ages...lots of fun ahead...