Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

For the past two days, I've been reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis aloud to the kids. I remember that this was the first of the Narnian Tales that I read as a kid. I started reading it while visiting at a woman's house (I don't remember the details). The story captured my imagination immediately ("surprised by joy"!) I had to get ahold of the whole series when returning home...The kids protest everytime I take a break from reading it. They thought it was hysterical when Reepicheep spanked Eustace with the flat of his sword for swinging him around by his tail (Reep is a 2 ft. tall, chivalrous talking mouse.)

This week, I let the kids watch the movie The Man From Snowy River, a little each day. (I fast-forwarded through the mushy kissing ; ) They had just finished listening to The Black Stallion on tape and so watched a horse movie. Yesterday, I washed dishes and watched them while they watched the movie. When Evan saw the horses plunging through the snow, he looked at me and grinned and looked up at a new print of a painting titled "Horses in the Snow" by David Stoecklein that is hanging in our family room. Exactly. (I'll take pictures of our family room once we have the walls painted so that you can see our new additions.)

This morning, I had them play "War" with dominoes. The boys each drew a domino, multiplied the two numbers on their own domino and the kid with the highest number kept both dominoes. The one with the most dominoes at the end won the game. I just realized that if you multiply the numbers up to 10 by 9, the two numbers in the answer will add up to 9! Ex: 9x2=18 (1+8=9) or 9x7=63 (6+3=9) Maybe everybody knows that but me. Blush.

Yesterday, Sophie decided to write a letter to Ana, her cousin. She told me what she wanted to say. I wrote it down. She copied it. Later, I called Loey, Ana's mom, who said that when she and Ana had gone to the mailbox earlier, Ana had wailed, "My friends never write to me anymore!" They opened the box and there was the letter that Sophie had written to her earlier this week! Ana said that Sophie is her best friend EVER.

...This morning, Sophie insisted on writing another letter to Ana even though the one that she wrote yesterday is out in the mailbox. : )