If you need us we'll be in Mesopotamia

Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, human migration to the continents. The stone age, the Fertile Crescent, the first farmers, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and Egypt. Calvin can't seem to get enough of any of it. Nearly every book he picks up, every picture he draws, and every chance he gets "can we have tea and read some more about history?"

It's a beautiful thing.

So what are we doing? We're loosely following Intellego's World History volume I unit study, and The Story of the World, and have found Archaeology for Kids to be a good go-with. We've watched and re-watched all of the Legacy videos. A favorite new story book around here is Mik's Mammoth, with its rhyming language and beautiful watercolor illustrations (love), and the Middle East and Asia Geo Puzzles have come in rather handy. I knew I'd love those things.

MRI

This morning found us trying something entirely new on the experience front—we were up early, sans breakfast, and traipsing over to Mott Children's Hospital so Calvin could have an MRI. Kids Calvin's age are usually given an MRI under general anesthesia, and it was that and not the procedure itself that had us skipping breakfast and spending umpteen hours at the hospital. The brand new Mott hospital is bright and clean and entertaining—a perpetual marble machine, a toy MRI machine on the anesthesia ward—but with the same great doctors, nurses, and staff they've always had. In fact, our fantastic pediatric anesthesiologist was rather taken with Calvin. She believed that he was mature enough to handle the MRI without the general anesthesia and was willing to give it a go. It worked.

No general anesthesia meant that we walked out of the hospital about ten minutes after the MRI was finished and went straight out for celebration pancakes. And it meant he wasn't groggy and had lots of energy, so we came home and played with dogs, and snow, and Legos, and umbrellas. And it meant that Jon and I were really, really, relieved. Time to breath easy again. And that all adds up to a great, great day.

It's a new dryer invention...he's drying Blanket

Iris (all spots, grace, and energy)

Ollie (cow ears)

Dressing the snowman!

And I call this "quiet moment with journal and dog"

And now for a message from Calvin

I have not left town again, and do I intend to get back to regular broadcasting, but seeking out the swing of things and preparing for this weekend's big book sale has taken more time than I imagined this week, and one might say that I am giving the camera a break. It needed it.

We have been busy. Calvin is practicing his lines for the Percy Jackson play our homeschooling group is doing, and he's also sailing right through his variety of "school" subjects. He's reached some chapters on money in the Math-U-See book, and there's been some erratic capitalization in his writing lately so we've starting looking more closely at sentence structure, most notably at nouns. Piano, the Mayas, reading, and lots and lots of library time, that's been the tune of this week, so I don't have much to say, leaving me with neither pictures nor paragraphs for posting.

Calvin, however, has written one journal entry for every day this week I think, building up to a "chapter book" about his trip. So, in Calvin's words:

To the center of the earth

Calvin came home with a handful of books from the sale on Saturday that he had selected himself, including A Journey to the Center of the Earth in Troll Illustrated Classic form. After a morning of errands, some more nerve wracking than others, we spent the afternoon resting and reading and taking in tea. Calvin devoured the book, then journaled about it. We also got back into math successfully, and re-watched Becoming Human. We're getting back to somewhere.

The scary part

We were out a lot today, and came home tired and hungry. Nothing a good snack of tea and gingerbread couldn't conquer.

Calvin had his first theater class at our homeschool gathering today. It is a several week long class and is the first he is taking via the group. Actually, other than swimming, I think it's his first class period. He has been talking about it non-stop all week, so I was as almost as glad as he was when the day finally arrived. He seemed to have a great time, although there was some disappointment that they are going to be doing a Percy Jackson play when he had been hoping for a Jack and Annie play. Still, he is thrilled, and I think we might try the first Percy Jackson book to see what it's all about.

Speaking of books, Calvin is still on his Magic Tree House kick. He was hell-bent on having all the books in the series, and we'd been slowly buying them (for .25 each) from our library as they came into the sale room, but one of his favorite Christmas gifts was the last five he was missing. He can spend hours reading and play-acting the series all on his own. He loves the magic theme in them—the references to magic spells and Morgan le Fey and Merlin, and will happily march around chanting incantations. He is now asking me to find a copy of the Puffin Classics King Arthur for him to read, since  he saw it listed in the back of his copy of The Wizard of Oz (which we recently replaced with this one that he likes much better, but that's neither here nor there). It is incredibly hard not to cave and give in to every single book desire he has.

As for what we're reading out loud lately, we just finished The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, also by L. Frank Baum, which he loved. You can read all about that below, including the "sort of scary part" (which he wasn't even going to mention until I suggested that he might want to warn other kids).