We finally, *finally* finished our math theme (not that you can ever be *finished* with math, thank goodness, there's always more cool stuff to learn, or neat games to play or problems to solve). Sort of finished, anyway. We've finished the first books we picked out on the history and anthropology of math, and we're moving on to new topics for now. I think we'll probably be picking math back up next month or the month after, because there are so many other intriguing books on our to-be-read list, and we didn't get around to most of the projects we were hoping to try.

For now, though, we're continuing with early US history, reading about the declaration of independence, the causes of the Revolutionary War, and bios of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Then we're going backwards a bit to read the first _A History of US_ book, which starts with prehistorical North America and gets as far as 1600. I'm keeping an eye out for the next book in the series, and I think we'll be using these books to make our way through US history over the course of the next 2 years, if she continues to like them as much as she likes the first one.

Our new themes are Building, Books and Libraries, and our local ecosystem -- all inspired by books I picked up at the Rutherford College Women's Club book sale, a couple months ago, and by a book my parents gave Sarah when we saw them last month. We're mostly going to be doing trips to our local environmental/nature centers for the ecosystem theme, and I'm hoping to make it up to Beczak at some point, they've got some awesome-looking Hudson River courses.

We've borrowed the third grade Oak Meadow curriculum from A, to see if it's something we're interested in using next year. We used the first grade curriculum a couple years ago, and it was a nice source of material. My only concern with using a curriculum is that we might get in the habit of thinking we're supposed to keep following it, instead of just using it as a helpful tool (the way we're using the Living Math curriculum as a suggested reading list). Will it discourage us from continuing to choose our own themes? On the other hand, if it's still full of great, creative approaches to math and earth science and history the way first grade was, maybe we can pause at the beginning of each month to examine the next chapter and see if it's something we want to do?

Sarah's practice work right now involves copying a couple lines out of Robert Frost's Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening, and writing out her times tables (my practice work involves reading one of my current books (Guerrilla Learning, Joy of Mathematics, American Gods, The Canon) and writing a few lines on what I've read. I dream of the two of us, a couple years down the road, spending our mornings side by side at the dining room table, doing our "homework" together.). She and Joe are planning to start doing math together at night, too, in addition to their usual card games. She's also been writing songs and poems, inspired by the poetry game from Joe's dad and C.

Life skills she's working on right now: making change, cooking, sewing, roller skating, riding her scooter, bike-riding, soccer, badminton, and conversational/social skills. We're continuing to try to do meditation practice daily, and working on visualization as a relaxation technique.