The World Cultural Fair

Hello! This is Looloo reporting here, and she is reporting about the world cultural fair! Yay! Organised by Reach, the homeschool group that we go too, the world Cultural fair was performed for the sixth time on November 13th on Thursday. Mina worked on Bosnia\Herzergovnia because Mama went there in September but you can learn all about that below. I studied Provence, which is located in southern France, because we went there when we visited Switzerland. Peter researched on France also because we went there in September, and Zarzoo-man pretty much hung around, most of the time not causing trouble. We all had lots of props because one of us if not all of us has gone their sometime or another. We learned a lot not only from our own research but, from the other participants' work. Well I learned a lot at any rate. Below are some photos of us with our final results. Mina and her lovely and orderly board about

Boznia\Herzegovnia.

Me and my colorful board of Provence.

Peet and his creatively cute board on France.

(notice lego Eiffel tower).

Mina’s Shoebox Party

To celebrate her 12th birthday, M. decided to host a Shoebox packing party for Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan's Purse. Her friends arrived in the afternoon and fueled up on popcorn and Koolaid. They each brought several of one item to put in the boxes. M. organized all the supplies and then they began. They wrapped the boxes with Christmas wrap, they wrote letters to greet the little girls who would receive them and then they filled them with goodies. These boxes were for little girls ages 2-4, so each one got a cuddly toy, hair treats, toothbrushes and toothpaste and other things little girls might like: stickers, slinkys, hairbrushes, etc. When the boxes were done we had homemade pizza and a birthday cake in the shape of a shoebox!

Waldschule! ...or surviving November

Mercer Slough in NovemberOne small Waldschuler

Our latest thing is something we call Waldschule, which is a nice German name for hanging out in the forest. I got inspired by stories of Swiss kindergartens where the kids spend hours in the woods in all kinds of weather, playing with sticks and poking at fungi. If they can have Wald-Kindergarten, I figure we can do Waldschule! So this week we tried it, and it worked really well. The oxygen and light makes us all more cheerful and relaxed; we're not spending the morning trying to keep Mr. Zazu out of our stuff with him getting more and more frustrated; Mr. Zazu is very happy because he LOVES being outside, and then when we go home, he has a lovely afternoon nap and we do some schoolwork. It cuts into Mama's naptime a little, but the benefits are worth it, and it means that my 2:00 coffee is really absolutely necessary.

Mr. Zazzy has already learned the word "Waldschule" and one day when I suggested going home now, because it really was raining quite a bit and we were getting quite damp, he looked alarmed and said, "Wald-shoo! Wald-shoo!" very emphatically and threw more sticks at the trees.

Interesting students with interesting fungus