Busy minds

When I mentioned a while back to my friend Greta that I wanted a supplemental grammar book, she recommended the book First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise. After looking through the book, I decided that it was exactly what I was looking for, and so we got a copy over Christmas break and started it this week. I'm very excited about it! (I won't go into details about the book itself since most of you won't really care anyway -- but for those of you in a homeschooling situation, it's worth a look!) Below is a picture of the kids with their pictures illustrating the poem "The Caterpillar" (C. Rosetti). Their pictures started out as a simple caterpillar on a "leaf or stalk" but then their imaginations took over and the pictures got rather creative. That tends to be the way of it with my kids. Now mind you, sometimes I give them very particular instructions that they have to follow closely; that is, after all, a skill that they need to learn. But for the most part at this stage, as long as they include the main gist of the assignment, I leave them alone and let their imaginations soar. It's so much fun to watch what they come up with! On that note, below is a picture of David's spelling paper this week. The last instruction of the paper was to draw a clown ("clown" is one of his spelling words). As you can see from the picture, it started with a clown...and then morphed into a clown with a power saw, a cannon, and four special tools that "drill into the ground and then spin around to shovel the dirt out and then spin around again to drill some more" -- the stuff in that brain of his is quite fascinating!!!