Sleeping the way they do in Guatemala

Dann legte sie sich zum Schlafen hin. Sie schlief immer mit den Fuessen auf dem Kopfkissen und mit dem Kopf tief unter der Decke. "So schlafen sie in Guatemala," versicherte sie.

Yes, we're reading Pippi Langstrumpf as our bedtime story right now, and as soon as I read these lines, I just knew that this was the next thing I was going to see:


And, I was correct in suspecting that we'd have conversations about where Guatemala is located...

From kings to birds

Reason 127 for why we're thoroughly enjoying homeschooling...

S. and I are continuing to work our way through the alphabet. To work on "K", we read Grimm's Koenig Drosselbart (King Thrushbeard).

In the story, the king's chin looked like a thrush's beak, hence his name. In preparation for drawing his "K" picture, S. wondered what a thrush looked like, so that he could render his king properly.

That led us to look up Drossel,... which in turn,... led us to learning about stones called "Drosselschmiede", which the birds use to break open snail shells.

At the outset, I had no idea that one could learn so many things from studying the letter "K"! :-)

Hopping from heading to heading

I suspect that last year S was classified into the percent of Kindergarteners in his class who could read.

The truth is that he does recognize a number of short words, but he's really not out of the nest yet in terms of reading. He is, on the other hand, very, very quick to memorize things. So, the other week, he learned the "Our Father" in no time at all.

Oma and Opa gifted S with a book that explains the prayer one line at a time. We've been working our way through it at bedtime. Tonight, as S looked over my shoulder, his eye caught the page heading, "Geheligt werde Dein Name." Recognizing the line, he quickly flipped ahead... to find that the next heading held the prayer's next line, and the next heading contained the following line... jumping from heading to heading until he reached the end of the book... and the prayer. What a find to make!

As a result of his familiarity with the text, and knowing what the words should be, he was able to make out the headings, some of which included some pretty complicated words. So much for being a not-so-proficient "reader". :-)