Music, Art, and Books!

Happy Spring!

Phoebe has been quite busy the past few weeks. She is progressing nicely with her Book-O assignment. Here are the new additions--

• Biography: Barack Obama: United States President and Michelle Obama: Mom-in-Chief
• Legend: King Arthur
• Cookbooks: I have a lot, and she enjoys looking through them, so this was easy!
• Fantasy: The Lost Hero
• Myth: Athena, the Grey-Eyed Goddess
• Free Choice: Magic and Other Misdemeanors (Sisters Grimm #5) 
• Poetry: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Yes, she has been introduced to Middle English literature with that last one--not that we read it in the original, of course! But I have to say, she made good connections, and seemed to have a better grasp of the text than a lot of the college students I try to teach it to.

For one of her projects, she and I put together a Guess Who? PowerPoint for the Obama books. She presented it to the class yesterday. We had fun finding silly pictures to accent the clues.

Phoebe enjoyed The Lost Hero and is excited to read the next volume. Her favorite parts were when the six-armed ogres lost their arms in battle--all of them--and their only comments was "Arms go bye-bye." The monsters in these books tend to not be so bright. She also liked Festus the dragon and was sad when he "died." He's a robot, so he didn't really die, and his head got saved for future use. If you are interested in my adult-perspective review, you can find it here.

I Walk in Dread, which Phoebe was reading at the time of the last post, did give her some trouble. It was written like a real 17th century dictionary, complete with anachronistic English. But she did hang in there and did OK. Another category Phoebe has for her Book-O is Play, and I have been thinking of reading either The Crucible (Arthur Miller) or Medea (Euripides) with her. Medea was a character in The Lost Hero, and Phoebe was intrigued by her. Since finishing I Walk in Dread, she also has a better grasp of the Salem Witch Trials, and she is interested in learning more. We'll see. I think we are going to do some fairy tales next, to fill in that category.

On her own, she also just finished I, Coriander, which is a blend of historical fiction and fairy tale.

Last week, The Taylor School had their Student Art Show at the Arts Center in Troy. A couple of Phoebe's pieces were on display--here is a picture of her with her gargoyle rattle. I am not sure what she is looking at!
You can also see her name art right over her head.

The Taylor School Singers also performed, and here are some shots of that.

Since Phoebe's mid-week is a bit packed right now, we did our Spring celebrating on Sunday. She easily found all the plastic eggs I hid, and was rewarded with a Camp Half-Blood t-shirt. One of the Book-O projects is to go to school dressed as a character, and she wants to go as Annabeth, who was a main character in the Percy Jackson books and did make a guest appearance in The Lost Hero. We just need to get her a Yankees cap to go with it!

I think that is everything for now!