Day 87: Back to Ambleside

For us, Ambleside seems to work better on an at-home day when we aren't expecting to go somewhere or do something that interferes with attention. Just a note for my future self!
: ).

So today was one of those days when we had no real plans for anything outside the home.

While Paddy was eating breakfast I read the Golden Bible to him (recommended by Laura Berquist as a good retelling for children because it uses Biblical language, and it is quite profusely illustrated and though I don't totally love the illustrations, I haven't found a better version). We skipped the Creation story -- just talked about it from the pictures. I read about the Garden of Eden and the snake, and Paddy wanted very much to continue, so we read about Cain and Abel too. Then we looked through the rest of the book for a little while.

Then I read him two chapters of Paddle to the Sea. Aidan was getting antsy by then (putting his hand over the page) so I am not sure if Paddy got very much of it.

Then Kieron came to eat breakfast after checking his mail. I read part of Chapter 47 from This Country of Ours, about the Mississippi Bubble, and we talked about "bubbles" in history and about the problems with manufacturing paper money too freely.

Then we read some more of Johny Tremain. Aidan and Paddy listened in.

Paddy and Aidan somehow discovered the chalk board easel that they have mostly ignored for the past several years. They started working on it with sidewalk chalk.

Meanwhile I assigned Kieron the preface of George Washington's World and the preface of Bullfinch's Fables. He read those while I helped the little ones who wanted to (1) draw numbers (2) draw maps.

Now Paddy is IMing me on Facebook. It's taken me half an hour to write this along with answering to "HI" and "YES" and "how do you do". Kevin says he's about to unfriend him since he's always getting messages from Paddy while he's trying to work : ).

Aidan is playing with the Age of Imperialism board game... he likes the wheels on the cannons, which are detachable.

I was intending to ramble a bit more but this has taken me a long time so now I'd better go.