Homeschooling By the Fire

It is 12 degrees outside, and both my darlings are sick. I mean, stomach bug and fever kind of sick. We have not left the house in six days.

This isn't exactly a recipe for happy children and great home learning, but somehow they have managed both - at least, when they are not running to the bathroom or swooning at 103 degrees.

Here is how we have been getting along:

From winter 08 09

First, behind that lovely plastic supergate is our woodstove. Today, we gave up on the couches as too far away from the stove's warmth, and took our amusements to the floor - much, much cozier.

Second, we are loving The Star Wars Cookbook: Wookie Cookies and Other Galactic Recipes; you can see it there on the left. If you want to make some tasty eats with a Star Wars theme - our favorite so far is the Princess Leia Danish Buns - then here is your book. Plus, you can warm the place up a bit by using the oven!

Third, and certainly most important to Luke, is the card game that finally, finally came in the mail - Mythmatical Battles. If you don't know about these cards yet, and you have a child obsessed with Greek (or Celtic, Norse, or Egyptian) mythology, you need to find out about them. You play a game with them that's a lot like the Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh card games, but with an added challenge: you must solve multiplication equations to know how many defense or attack points you have. It's really fun, even for adults like me who have not loved the magic-card-game craze.

From winter 08 09

You're seeing a special happening up there in that picture: Owen is writing his very first letters. Ever! He's been taken with the T, X, and V lately, and will turn nearly any straight thing he comes upon - race track, pencils, whatever - into these letters. But today was the first time he placed chalk to chalkboard and actually wrote.

Kind of cool, to be there for somebody's first-ever effort at written communication.

Really cool, actually.