Since I don't know how else to reply to blog comments: Thanks so much, Mich and Lisa - your support and encouragement are such a blessing. I admire both of you greatly!

Today, we did our math and handwriting (keeping it very short!) and then I introduced the idea of creating our own I-Spy page. Now, usually when I introduce the concept of a writing assignment, I get the evil eye from my oldest. I get the least amount of effort and the most amount of pain. But today was different. Today, the kids created pages to make up for all past pages. For at least an hour, the kids were occupied in their own worlds. If I even attempted to see how they were doing, it was met with "don't look!" I got the most wonderful, hot shower during this little project, LOL. Dd7 made 3 full pages complete with mermaids and castles and all sorts of hidden pictures to find. She wrote several items to find on each page. The title of her book is called I Spy Magic (spelled Majic). Dd4 cut up a piece of blue construction paper into 3 long horizontal pieces and drew mermaids and hid numbers on the page. There are also a bunch of letters on the page to tell you what to find (if you can read it!)

For read-alouds: I just recently finished reading all 7 Narnia books to the kids. Dd7 loves the old BBC Narnia movies and will watch them over and over again. The movies are rather cheesy in quality, but I guess that's part of what makes the movies so fun to watch. We just finished reading The Apple and the Arrow - a very nicely illustrated book about William Tell. We listened to the William Tell Overture and tried to figure out what parts in the music were telling which parts of the book. A week ago, we had seen that YouTube movie making its way around the Internet with the mom singing typical mommy phrases to the tune of the William Tell Overture, so unfortunately, we all had those words stuck in our head when we heard the real thing, LOL.