Spinning Heads

Do you realize how many ways there are of learning the exact same material? And how many different people and companies have come out with books and other things to help learn that material? It is seriously enough to make one's head spin! Just when I think I have things pretty figured out with what I want to use, what I want the girls to learn, and how I am going to apply all of the methods I've read about...I read again and discover that there are yet more things to look at! This last week I found out about some more people with LDS curricula. Hmm...ever so tempting. Just wish I could look at everything and see which ones will work best for our family before I save the money and buy some of these!

Part of the problem comes with my being too ambitious. They must learn everything, and learn it NOW!

Yesterday Aurora developed a rather sudden interest in karate and has been pestering me to learn it for school. Couldn't make me happier, I can tell you! I have been dying to teach her some TaeKwon-Do, and for her to have an interest in it will make it that much easier.

Today for school we made a book. This came about because yesterday Aurora decided to write one. She cut up pieces of paper (all sizes, all small) and would draw a picture on it, then come to me and ask me to write down what she wanted to say for that page. Turned out the story was about a ballet and all the different people coming onto the stage. Very well thought-out for a five year-old. I was impressed. So today I thought we'd make an official book to put it in. Then we had company for awhile, whilst I babysat for a neighbor and ended up making a book for each of them, writing new stories. This is when I became really impressed with Rora. She drew pictures and narrated to me the story of "The Nutcracker", which I diligently wrote down for her. The neighbor girl's story was much shorter (Red Riding Hood climbed a mountain and then went to a party with Clara from Rora's story). After the neighbors left, I made a book for Rora's first book and we mounted all her little pages on construction paper within it. While I was cutting out the construction paper, though, Rora was hard at work on another piece of paper, drawing the binding for a hardcover book, then insisted that I put that as the cover for her book, so we had to mount that inside the binding of our little paper book. It was so cute and she was so proud!

It's moments like that which make the head spinning worth it.