Who are you and Why do you seek me?

Sarah turned 9 (!!!) on Friday. On Saturday we had a wizard birthday party, turning the livingroom into a wizard's study, decorating spell bags and wizard's hats, setting up a potions lab, and leading the kids through a wizard adventure/scavenger hunt. The kids seemed to have a great time, and I had a *wonderful* time setting up the wizard study (and covering the walls in wizardy quotes like the one above). Sarah got wonderful piles of books, some great board games and art supplies, and lots of outdoor toys and equipment.

Last week we finished up this round of our focus on folk tales and mythology (we made it all the way through the _Lady of 10,000 Names_ book of goddess stories and _The Story of Religion_, but only about halfway through the _Gods, Goddesses, and Monsters_ book -- I suspect we'll be taking it out of the library again sometime soon -- they were all awesome). This week we're back to focusing on math for our theme -- doing the projects we never got around to during our last pass through with the _Math Alive_ books, reading _How Much?_ (a gorgeous picture book on different types of marketplaces around the world -- I loved the way the artwork draws you right into the scene, feeling as if you're surrounded by the scents and sounds of the market), bits of _Science in Ancient Egypt_, _Science in Ancient Mesopotamia_, and _The Secret Life of Math_ (my favorite so far -- it leads the reader through an examination of the question of why math has existed in such similar ways in civilizations so far apart in space and time -- we've done tally sticks, kept tallies on "animal skin" scrolls (actually brown paper bags), and I think next we're making Incan quipus (knotted strings used for keeping count)).

We're outside a lot right now -- learning badminton, playing soccer, taking walks in the neighborhood, doing a little gardening -- and generally leaving more time than usual open to the whims of the moment. It doesn't work well for us to leave our whole days like that -- we just drift too much, and we're both disappointed when the end of the day comes and we haven't gotten around to any of the things we'd meant to do -- but it feels nice and summery to leave our afternoons open for spontaneity.