Week 21, day 5

Friday: Geography We got started late because I was disorganized and also waited until B was napping before going for my walk/run. According to what I can figure out at mapmywalk.com, I walked about 1.4 miles and ran 0.8 miles. This felt great! My knee hardly even hurt afterward. Take that, pessimistic physical therapist! I feel so thankful that God has given me pretty much complete healing from both the accident 6 years ago and my re-injury 2 years ago.

We did all our review stuff before lunch, and the geography component afterward. This week, we looked at Italy. We marked it on the Markable Map, and looked at the atlas page. Then we read "Buried Treasure" from Stories from Around the World - a fun story about a lazy young man who is told that a field contains 50 pieces of gold. He pulls up the weeds in the field, digs it up (watering it to keep down the dust), puts manure on it to keep the local schoolchildren off it, and the fellow who told him about the 50 gold pieces then sows lettuce on it. At the end of the story, a merchant comes by and buys the resultant lettuce for 50 gold pieces. We discussed the virtues of hard work and how it's more likely to result in treasure than waiting for it to fall in your lap. We then looked at the pictures in a book about Italy. I told P that it was time to make a book about Italy, and she asked if she had to. When I told her she could do it today or tomorrow, she impressed me with her wisdom by saying, "I don't want to do it now, but I know that once I start I'll enjoy doing it." And she did! She wrote "Italy" on the front, drew a flag, coloured the map, and drew the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Venice, pizza, an aqueduct, and catacombs. For dinner, we made pizza.