Week 22, day 5

Friday: Geography. Today, we studied Greece. After our review items, we located Greece on the Markable Map. E kept interrupting me in the middle of a sentence (multiple times, during multiple attempts at the same sentence) to describe his adventures with Friend Lion, so I snapped at him the 3rd or 4th time he did this. He quit. He doesn't dissolve into a heartbroken puddle of goo when snapped at the way P does, at least not all the time. For the rest of the day, a simple "E, you're interrupting" sufficed. We read "How the Turtle Got Its Shell" from Stories from Around the World, and discussed how the ancient Greeks believed in many gods who acted a lot like humans, but how the one true God is all-powerful and does not sin the way the Greek gods did. In the story, the turtle's shell is a punishment - it prefers staying home to going to Zeus' wedding, so it is cursed with carrying its home everywhere it goes. In reality, the turtle's shell is a useful part of its body that protects it from danger, and God gave it a shell to take care of it. I liked having the opportunity to contrast our perspective on how God works with that of the ancient Greeks. We also read "Arion and the Dolphin" from The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book. One of the books about Greece that I checked out from the library was appropriate for reading aloud at least to P, so we did that, and looked at the pictures in another library book about Greece. After lunch, P made a book about Greece. She wrote the title, coloured a flag and a map I drew (and drew her own version of the Greek map, including Crete and the mainland with Peloponnese off to the side), and drew pictures of the Parthenon, Mt. Olympus, a ferry, lots of islands, and olives. For dinner, I made spanakopita (I love spanakopita, but had never made them before - quite labour intensive, but if I do it again I'll do more of the work ahead of time, and working with fillo pastry won't be quite as scary the second time), and a Greek salad with just cucumbers, tomatoes, feta, and olives. E liked the salad and the fillo pastry but not the spinach filling, and P complained bitterly at having to taste half an olive, but Ari and I enjoyed it a good deal! There are lots of leftover spanakopita, and now all the hard work is done - yippee.