It's Spring--Sort Of!

Phoebe had another week of Art Camp last week, where the theme was Spring Has Sprung. It can't really decide whether it has sprung or not--Monday was nice and warm, and I was out front doing some clean-up work; today it is cold and dreary. But I guess that is part of Spring as well!

The Arts Center just added some tween camps--and just in time because Phoebe has officially outgrown the kid ones! So at the end of the summer she'll be learning woodworking one week and stained glass/jewelry making another. Before that she has four weeks of Harry Potter camp--yes, there is such a thing!--and she is also doing GirlSummer at Emma Willard, where she will get to learn tennis, chemistry, physics, theater, and lots of other things! Only downside is everyone wants their money upfront!

To fill in another Book-O block, Phoebe and I took a break from books to read some of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales. They are short enough that we were able to read one or two a night and talk about them afterwards--what the lesson was, how the girls were portrayed, what was positive/negative about the stories. We still have to finish the tales, but we decided to take a break and move on to another book--this time The Red Pyramid, which is the first book in a third series by Rick Riordan--The Kane Chronicles. This series, as the book's title suggests, focuses on Egyptian mythology, but it exists in the same universe as the other series, because they have been alluded to a couple of times so far.

After finishing I, Coriander, Phoebe read Double Feature, which is another in the twin series by her favorite twin authors! But then she went back to myth-based texts with Pegasus: The Flame of Olympus, which she bought at her school's book fair this year. Now she's reading Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest, by Matt Haig, who writes some good adult books too. I really enjoyed his vampire novel The Radleys, which I use in class, and he also wrote a dog/Henry IV mash-up called The Labrador Pact, which was also very good--and you don't need to know the Shakespeare to read it!

Phoebe decided she wanted to start a book club, so we are giving it a go. We wanted to do it with a local bookstore, but that didn't work out, so we will be trying it on our own. The first book will be Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and we have two yes responses so far. David got some HP goodies from Scholastic, so that will be exciting!

This past weekend we cleaned Cashew's cage, and I was able to get some better pictures of her while she was in her little satellite cubby. The slots on the second picture are about half an inch apart, so you can get a sense of how little she really is.

Cashew!

Cleaning Her Face