1st week down

Homeschooling today was, I think, a success. Jackie did veto some of the assignments I proposed but she was thrilled about the Friday spelling tests (she misspelled 'definitely' but then so do the majority of you, and she only misspelled it because I didn't give it to her beforehand, just thought of it on the fly because I'm sick of so many people misspelling it on Facebook and text messages). She worked on math in her Brain Quest workbook, reading comprehension, an exercise in her Trailblazers book (standard for her school), & on my laptop she did Spelling Bee and Kids Pix (art). Meanwhile, Willo did reading & writing, and then I played a game of Scrabble with him. I had no idea Scrabble could be so math-based. I ended up sending him down to Bill's office, because to compute his rising score he had to use his manipulatives (shells) but since at that point we only had 30, once his score passed that I had to send Bill a link to a printable number line and send Willo down to Bill's office to get it (we don't have a printer at the house). Between figuring out how many tiles he needed to once again have 7, how many points each word accumulated, and then how much his score was adding up to, I think it turned out to be more of a math lesson than language arts. It was a blast.

After lunch we hung out a bit, each to his own. Eventually we decided to wander down the road. We'd heard there was a beach here but had never been there. Not expecting much, we walked the 50 meters or so down and then found the path. And what a treat!!!!! A completely deserted beach! It was absolutely beautiful. There are a few houses on the beach, or I should say astounding mansions. The kids played in the water, I did yoga, I played with them in the water, we took all kinds of photos, we collected more manipulatives I mean shells, I talked to the kids about not disturbing the environment (only collect the shells etc that are washed up on the beach, don't disturb anything in the water or on the rocks), and they established their "research laboratory" under a palm tree. I started to read a fascinating book I found yesterday at the Historical Society all about Vieques. There were indigenous peoples living here as long ago as 150 BC, and because of its location between the Lower & Upper Antilles, Vieques was the rest stop for many different Caribbean populations. Because of that, the indigenous people here were always very open-minded, culturally diverse and forward-thinking; in fact, they typically appreciated out-of-the-box thinking.

Tonight we went to dinner in Esperanza, at Lazy Jack's, the best pizza place around in our opinion. We watched the sun set (Esperanza has the best views of the sunset!!!), had a couple of Heineken Dark's (yes!!! finally some dark beer!), and Willo entertained us with his Coca-Cola-induced high (a rare treat).

OK, that's it for now. I have plenty of great tidbits for you about Vieques, about this little jewel and its surprisingly rich history, but don't want to bore you on a Friday night :)

Susanne