It is always a great night when we start a new academic unit.  Anticipation!  Two nights ago we finished a study of rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks (not nearly as interesting as one might have hoped.  Not interesting at all.  Seriously, the book we read should be up for some sort of “lack of enthralling facts” award.)  So, last night we began a unit on pirates (real pirate info, not romanticized, party-theme pirates).  MUCH more riveting.  And if that weren’t enough, we began a unit on snakes.  GROSS.

We are in the middle of two novels.  One takes place in India in the early 1920’s (“All My Noble Dreams and Then What Happens”).  The other takes place in contemporary times (“Zen and the Art of Faking It”).  I would give both a solid B+ so far.

Our Farmer Brown story problem involved harvesting mangos for the dried mango market.  I have this mini-addiction thing going with dried mangos, and they were on my mind when I was writing up the story problem.

Music selections for last night: our theme was “Things in the Sky”, so we listened to:

• Amy Beach’s “Fireflies” (did you know Ms. Beach was America’s first major female symphony composer?  “Fireflies” is a sparkling piano piece that we listen to often, A+++++)
• Claude Debussy’s “Clair du Lune”.  Like I need to say anything about this.
• Gustav Holst’s “Mercury”, the shortest piece in “The Planets”.  Crazy fun as winged Mercury flits all over the place.

 Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH