Weekly book shelf, 5/23/14

In history this week we are mainly reviewing—stuck getting familiar with medieval China. Lon Po Po a book that we've had on our shelf and enjoyed for many years. It is a retelling of the Red Riding Hood tale in which three young girls (rather brutally) do away with the wolf. Stunning visuals add to the richness of the story in this book.

In science, after a few weeks hiatus already, we are still off script, only now we are more thoroughly exploring the human body. Calvin is preparing a project to enter at the 4H Youth Show that will demonstrate his knowledge of the body systems, something he learned quite a bit about over the year. Jakab's Our Body series (about the Circulatory, Nervous, Respiratory, Muscular, and Skeletal systems) has been immensely helpful on this study.

Lastly, and long awaited, Calvin has finally discovered the Harry Potter books. It happened when he put on a pair of toy glasses and my mother commented that he looked like Harry Potter. The books have been on his shelf awaiting his interest for years, but all of a sudden he decided there was no time to waste in plowing through them. And I really do mean no time to waste—he read the first four books in the series (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) this week and is already starting on book 5.

And we started a new read aloud this week. The His Dark Materials series is a long time favorite of mine and I've been looking forward to the time when Calvin wanted to read it with me (I'm not willing to let him read it alone—I want to discover it again with him). So we started it this week, and I was right—he's entirely in love with the idea of daemons.