We finished The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw this week.  In fact, we finished it ahead of Sonlight's schedule!  Not so hard to do when it's a fabulous book!  The kids and I really liked this story of Ranofer and his hard life in ancient Egypt.  In the end, however, he's the hero and gets to fulfill his dreams as a goldsmith's apprentice (hopefully that's not giving away too much of the book!).  It was easy to root for Ranofer; he's a humble and gentle spirit.  The icing on the cake is the many details of Ancient Egyptian life that the author weaves into her story.  I highly recommend this book.

It frees up our reading time to get back to The Cat of Bubastes by G. A. Henty, which we have added into our curriculum because I've always wanted to read this to the kids (amibitious, I know)!  Another awesome book, beautifully written, with likable characters and more amazing details of the time period.

All of the above is the good news.  The bad news is that Sonlight has us reading through The Story of the World at a very rapid pace, making it very difficult to do any of the projects that is contained in the Activity Guide (we read a chapter a day).  My kids love history projects; I do too because it's something they can do while I am reading aloud. 

What do I mean by "history projects"?  I definitely mean something beyond the typical coloring page, which is in abundance in the Activity Guide.  It's easy to get bored by coloring page after coloring page.  A few here and there are tolerated, but my kids desire more most of the time.  For example, DS'00 made Joseph's colorful coat out of a brown grocery bag;  they also simulated ancient cave paintings by crumpling brown grocery bags and then drawing on them.  Those were manageable projects.  A lot of the others simply are too involved to get them done in a day, and I really don't like too many hanging projects.....they end up not getting done.

So a lot of the time the kids get to choose some activity to keep them occupied while I read.  For DD'98 it's art-type stuff, like painting or drawing.  For DS'00 it's Legos.  Sometimes I get stressed that their time while I read absolutely needs to be filled with more educational activities.  But I think it's also important that they get to pursue their own interests and likes.

I think we have found a good balance.