Mr. Toad Goes Free

Late Sunday evening Natalie and I came back from our weekend homeschool conference at Taproot Farm in Ohio (the conference was hosted by Barbara Dewey). We had a really enjoyable Family Science and Art Weekend. There were two other little girls there Natalie's age and she got to run around outside, pick violets, play in the sandbox, and swing on the tire swing. Our three workshops were Drawing and Painting Nature, Bread Science, and Household Physics. Natalie was very conscious of fairness and made sure we did one with each of the teachers. :-) We also got to see baby chicks hatch and had a campfire Saturday evening where one of the groups of children launched their hot air balloons. All in all it was a wonderful time.

Monday I discovered that Guiseppe our toad had been hiding in his toad house nearly 24x7 and so I made the decision to set him free. My last toad, Danny, was perfectly happy to romp around in full view of people but apparently this one was becoming depressed. So I sat the children down after breakfast and told them this story about Farmer Brown's boy catching Old Mr. Toad and taking him to his house and putting him in a cage. And Farmer Brown's boy had thought it would be so much fun to have the toad and watch him and play with him but Old Mr. Toad was very unhappy and spent all his time hiding in his house and never came out because he was sad. And so Farmer Brown's boy thought and thought, what should he do? And I stopped there. And Natalie said, he should put the toad back outside, and all three children leapt up from the sofa and ran to the bathroom to get the toad. We were all happy to set him free.

That concluded Frog and Toad, with Natalie getting the last few chapters of The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad for her bedtime that evening.

Tuesday our book for the Asia unit was Red Dragonfly on My Shoulder, which is a book of haiku, gracefully translated and illustrated with whimsical collages by Molly Bang. Natalie really liked it. Today our book/lesson will be Basho and the River Stones, a new FAVORITE book of mine which we found quite by chance at the library. Wonderful text & stunning illustrations. (I was able to buy a copy of it with some of my Amazon Associates earnings, so everyone who clicks through on the links on my website to shop -- thank you! I really appreciate it.) I won't give away what happens with a review, but let me just say that if you get this book you won't be disappointed! It also deals with Japanese culture. Our countries this week are Japan and India so it is time to start up yoga again (which originated in India). This will be a very light week, I think it will be haiku, Japanese stories, and learning some yoga and that's it. Next week is the first full week in May and we'll begin our next theme which is Plants.

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