Fablehaven

I bought the newest book in the Fablehaven series, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary. I would read it to the girls all day except our resident teenager thinks she has better things to do with her time. The nerve!

You know what surprised me? When we went to Borders at noon on the release date, there were only three copies. I guess they didn't expect many buyers? The next evening we couldn't find any copies. Hopefully that's good news for Brandon Mull.

BTW, we'll try not to post any spoilers. It will be hard...but...we'll....try!

Homeschool update

When folks ask me how homeschool is going I tend to give a general answer like fine. Personally, I doubt they want the nitty gritty details, but maybe they do want to know a little more than "fine."

If you are interested here it is...

13 yodd is preparing for standardized testing. Think mom shoving lots of worksheets off on her.

10 yodd is learning about fractions (finding lowest common denominator), the future tense in Latin, Australia, and mollusks, etc. Soon we'll be starting a unit on astronomy.

7 yodd is learning to read. That is her job. She does a couple of workbook pages pertaining to phonics or reading skills each day. She is also working in a 1st grade math workbook.

The Teacher Store

A few times a year I plan a trip to the closest educational supply store (45 minute drive). It's a little stressful with the traffic of a bigger city, but it is so fun to go in and drool over all those cutesy elementary school themed supplies and cool educational toys. I usually come away a little disappointed because I tend to talk myself out of buying things I know I don't need.

Yesterday was a good trip, because I found some things that I wanted and knew I would use. I bought some colorful sight word readers for 7yodd. She read them to her Dad at bedtime last night. We also bought a set of word family cards.

Of course, sometimes it is the little things that are the most exciting...new chalkboards! We use lap size chalkboards every day for homeschool and it was time for some new ones. Yeah!

It's official. I'm a Twit!

I've been hearing about Twitter for awhile and could not for the life of me figure out what people were talking about. Then one of my favorite homeschool authors announced that she had started twittering. I enjoy reading her blog, so I decided to check out this twitter phenomenon. After visiting Twitter I thought, "Oh, that's nice" and went about my business.

And then....I had a few times when friends wanted to chat with me on Gmail while I was busy with school. I figured how to use the busy signal on Gmail. It seemed fine until oldest dd told me the message other people see. For fun, I started putting a custom message with my busy symbol...cooking supper, crossword puzzle, homeschool hours, etc. It was fun and I realized that I was doing something similar to Twitter so why not give it a try.

DH said now we are hip. Nay, we're too old to be hip. We're officially twits.

Link - Twitter

Perspective

Expect a flew bleeps.

Everything is amazing, nobody is happy.

Europe?

How well do you know Europe? See if you can place the countries in the right place. Post your best time....if you dare. You can try it with outlines or without.

Europe Map Puzzle