She asks you in a Captain-ish sort of way:

Have you gotten out your Winnie the Pooh books yet?
Well, what are you waiting for?

Family Intrigue

Stumbling across something the kids have been doing on their own is one of my very favorite things about family life.  I found this on the couch.

I was fascinated by this book as a child and delighted to find it for a dollar at the library book sale.




These are great books about secret codes:
Lu & Clancy's Secret Codes by Mason & Cupples
Mysterious Messages: A History of Codes and Ciphers by Blackwood
The Usborne Book of Secret Codes by O'Brien & Riddell
Let's Investigate Codes and Sequences by Smoothey & Baum

In Which We Finally Find our Summer Rhythm

I structure our homeschooling life so that we can find a new rhythm in the summer months.  A slower rhythm.  More time to putter. Time to let days unfold.  To read leisurely -- together and separately, for as long as we'd all like.  To play all day.  Let inspiration strike us.  To loll or to dig in.  To really get to choose.

And I've been waiting all summer -- waiting waiting -- for this to kick in.  Doing what I could to nudge it at times -- sometimes with patience, sometimes not.  (Because summers do end.)

I thought starting our summer read-alouds would move it along. But even that didn't do it.

We picked up The House at Pooh Corner (narrated by Peter Dennis) at the library.  We have listened to it no less than twenty times through -- which sounds like it could be torturous.  But, it isn't.  It is lovely and sweet and funny and wise and gentle.  And predictable now.  Pooh and Piglet and Owl and Rabbit and the whole gang are old friends to us.  Listening along has been... meditative.  It's changed the rhythm of our summer.  It's brought us back.  Back to center.  Back to something predictable and gently-moving.

We've gathered our Pooh books from all corners of the house -- these are a few.  More turned up, with flaps to lift, even, and honeypots to scratch.  Each one is perfect.  We've cooked from the cookbook.  I'm dreaming of making stuffies from the craft book.

No one is ever too old for A.A. Milne.