Monday: On Monday we had a relaxed day, no official "school" but instead a mini-celebration of Theodore Geisel's birthday. The boys made green eggs for breakfast (unfortunately, we were out of ham!) and we read a brief biography, followed by a few of his classics. I spent the rest of my morning planning our unit on Ireland while the kids watched educational programming and bemoaned the sudden cold weather we'd been hit with.

Tuesday: On Tuesday we completed our AWAD work, followed by a lesson from "Excavating English" and some additional vocabulary/spelling words. We then labeled Ireland on our world map and read from "Ireland, The Culture" by Bobbie Kalman. This was followed by individual mapwork, a reading from "Ireland: Peeps at History" (which I can't really recommend, it's dry and rambles on and on) with narration and a discussion about what we'd learned. Next, we read from A Field Guide to Irish Fairies, learning about the Dullahan. Afterwards, Math and stories from "Donegal Fairy Stories" and "Favorite Celtic Fairy Tales." Lastly, the kids read a story from their CLE reader and completed a workbook lesson.

Wednesday: Wednesday was very similar to Tuesday in that we read from and discussed: "Ireland, The Culture," "Ireland: Peeps at History," A Field Guide to Irish Fairies and Donegal Fairy Stories. All of the fairy stories are leading up to this awesome splatter fairy painting project that I hope to do sometime next week. We also did some Math and a lesson from Rod & Staff English, followed by an afternoon of activities for Science/Geology.

Thursday: Thursday was a light day since we spent the afternoon at the park (it was nearly 80°F!), collecting walnut shells and other treasures for our fairy house and getting to know other local homeschoolers. Everyone completed another Math and CLE Reading lesson and, because our silkworms arrived, we spent some time researching them online (the instructions that arrived with the worms were pretty meager). Now I'm glad that we bought live worms as well as eggs because I'm a bit doubtful that the eggs will hatch, I hadn't realized that an incubator was the best way to hatch them! We also made some oh-so-good Monkey Munch (à la Jon and Kate Plus 8) and watched a video: Visions of Ireland (which I don't recommend watching before bedtime, the music had half of us asleep only minutes into the video!).

All was going well until the wonderful (not!) Kansas wind kicked up and we had to go indoors, lest our work be blown all over the neighborhood! This weekend we'll wrap up our school week by watching a documentary on The Celts and, because we learned about traditional Irish dance today, Riverdance.