Weekly Recap 2/21-3/4

I'm doing a two for one recap because we were on a sort of vacation for part of last week and part of this.  We traveled to my parents home in Florida on Tuesday, February 22 and returned on Wednesday, March 2.

Our traveling school time included several books on CD.  We finished The Adventures of Pinnochio and were relieved to be done.  H11 and I felt there were a lot of similarities between The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly and Pinnochio.  We would like to know if the stories are similar because the author was intentional in adopting the style we saw evident in Pinnochio.  On the whole, we decided that we prefer our main characters to be a little more obedient and thoughtful of others and a little less stupid.

The second book we listened too was a hit for M6 but not so much for the rest of us.  H11 did enjoy some of the sarcastic humor but S9 said it wasn't the type of story that he prefers.

  I agree with S9.

Our final listening selection was a hit for all of us, even though M6 said it was boring at first and H11 said that she didn't enjoy stories that used animals as people.  That gave us a perfect opportunity to discuss the meaning of anthropomorphism.  At the end of the book she decided that anthropomorphism can be a good thing and that the book was engaging and well written, even if it was about mice and rats.  We all give two thumbs way up to Redwall by Brian Jacques.

In addition to listening to a lot of books, we got to see the space shuttle Discovery take off on it's last mission.  We also went to Blue Springs in an effort to see the manatees.  The manatees were enjoying the warm weather as much as we were so they'd ventured out into the St. John River.  We missed seeing them but were happy to enjoy the sunshine.  We also realized that the old farm house at the park was probably built about the same time as our new home.  Weird to think about but in a cool way.  Our final field trip was an afternoon at the beach. We also logged in several hours of p.e. with a nature walk, tag and swimming.

Since arriving home, we've resumed school as normal and have managed to catch up.  The favorite activity of the week was writing friendly letters.  Everyone happily wrote their own and even addressed their own envelopes.  It's nice to see growth and a maturing of skills through such a simple activity.