For her birthday, Miss Kitty received a visit from her grandparents, and they brought a cute little loom. Which she loves. She got her Grandpa to help set it up, and to teach her what to do. After that, when I presumed too much (didn't take much!) then she would remind me: "Grandpa already taught me this." She turned out her first woven item... and we promptly lost the tool that she's supposed to use to make the weaving happen. Bummer. But she has created her first object, a six-inch long "scarf" for Pinkus, which she is extremely proud of! And the tool did turn back up, and was promptly put into service working on a second project, which she also finished this week.
I finished reading The Gospel at 30,000 Feet, and I'm getting back into the swing of pre-reading. Which is good because I'm behind... again. Oops. I wish that I'd thought to start this last year. Pre-reading Hero's hardest books (and narrating them, because my brain needs training too, and that also gives me a record to jog my memory with Dragon comes through in a few years) has consistently been challenging. But I feel like even an imperfect attempt is helping me to grow, and making me a better teacher --even when I'm trailing behind him, rather than going before. We're playing leapfrog through this book. I think that I'm going to try to get all the way through one book at a time, rather than trying to keep up with all his books close to his schedule. I suspect that I will have more success this way, even though I will give up some of the benefits of slow reading. Doing a written narration on each chapter is challenging: the kids have grown into doing narrations of gradually longer passages with a single reading... but I have not. I'm getting better at it though!
We are enjoying the an audiodrama version of Wulf the Saxon (there's going to be a review, after the middle of the month, so stop back), and it's really fun to see what the kids are doing with this. It's got a number of favorite elements: we have a long-standing love of Norse mythology, and the Norse are the antagonists in this story. It's actually pretty probable that we'll find Viking ancestors, if we can push our pedigree back that far. So the Norse are big favorites around here. But the kids have enjoyed several of Henty's stories about the Saxons, too, and we have some family connections in that part of the world as well -- some coming pretty close to the setting of Wulf the Saxon. So these stories are generating a lot of interest. In fact, Monday evening as Hero was relistening to either The Dragon and the Raven or Wulf the Saxon (I didn't pay tons of attention to which, but those are the current favorites), he started printing out Saxon warriors from the internet and coloring them. I could absolutely envision this guy here being Wulf's man Osgud, who wields a huge ax in the story.
Hero is continuing to work through the Thinking Like an Engineer course we got last year, and this week he had a hands-on project: use a sheet of paper to lift a book or books at least one inch. It was obvious, watching him do this one, that he had learned a lot last time, and he quickly hatched a plan. The first time, it held up two books, but the little stands that he built gave way when he added a third book. This technically completed the project -- he'd successfully held books an inch off the table -- but he wasn't satisfied, and started again. This time, he used a few more rolled strips, and made them more dense. And he held quite a few more books! In the end, he piled up 20 books -- it was so many that at one point he had to take some down and rebalance the stack so that they would be stable stacked up that high.
Also this week, Miss Kitty's bridge broke on her violin. The poor thing has always been something of a wanderer. Our violin teacher used to comment all the time on how the bridge wouldn't hold still. I've never caught the kids playing with it, but it seemed like it was always in the wrong spot. This time, the bridge was all the way out. I loosened the strings, but I guess it wasn't enough, because when I tried to stand the bridge up, it broke.We ended up getting the name of a local luthier, and paid her a visit. It was fascinating to see her shop, and the various instruments that she had in various stages of completion. It kind of makes me want to call her back and see if she would do a tour for our homeschool group, and tell us a little bit about what she does and what kind of training is required. And then, back at home, Miss Kitty and I were both pleasantly surprised at how, not only did the little violin play again, but it sounded noticeably nicer than it had before. I'd considered for a little while trying to DIY the job, but after chatting with the luthier ended up going in to have it done, and I'm so glad that we ended up being able to get it done professionally. It was cool to meet a genuine craftsman, and to see her workspace.
Wulf the Saxon remained a constant with us all week long; we listened to both the audiodrama version and the Librivox version. And I happened upon this, so we had a little bit of exposure to a new instrument as well.
That's the highlights reel for this week. We had some more ordinary stuff, too: Miss Kitty made some more progress on her phonics. There was a certain amount of grumbling about needing to write, which is pretty normal around here. We did math... we had a few tantrums over math. Ended up deciding that part of the problem was that the child in question didn't feel good. We admired the full moon, but I had my days mixed up and the eclipse was over before I even checked to see if we'd be able to see it. And, with a fresh cold going through the house (it caught me first) we had more informal stuff like Librivox literature than more formal lessons, though, for being half sick all week and ending up spending an afternoon visiting a luthier unexpectedly, I'm really quite happy with how much work from my plans actually got accomplished. 
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