Thursday- b'ball, books, building blocks

Here's punkin boy.   I love this little guy so much- Daddy says he's my toy.  I've said before how he has a long attention span and can really get engrossed in something and occupy himself for a long time.  The other day as I homeschooled the older children I told him he could skip his nap only if he found something quiet to do.  He sat on the floor for over an hour with little wooden blocks and just happily made things and talked quietly to himself.



"Look,  Mommy, I made a dump truck stuck in green muck"- this simplicity makes him happy!



Speaking of building blocks- that is our favorite thing to do. We have all types of building things- the kids build every single day.  But I will say Magna-tiles are right at the top of our list of best blocks (along with Kapla blocks and tinker toys). Zaza got the kids another 100-piece set of Magna-tiles for Christmas so now they can build even bigger castles and towers. Julia did this by herself yesterday morning- it's actually a bit complicated-



The other thing I have too much of along with blocks are books. I buy books like other people buy paper towels. In my defense they are all read many times- and I justify it as our "tuition" expense for Ayers Academy. Tucker's obsession with the moon led me to buy this book, which got here today and he lost his mind!

I had just gotten tired of reading the astronomy encyclopedias every night as his bed time stories.   I also got some other new books today that we love.  I loved especially The Ink Garden of Brother Theopane that describes how monks made illuminated manuscripts.  It mentioned the Book of Kells in Ireland that I really hope we can take the kids to see sometime. 

 Also- the book on the father of Italian Renaissance painting, Giotto was fun.  

Marc emailed me a pic of Marky playing basketball last Saturday.  Go big boy!

And here he is watching The Hobbit where he got to eat a monster-sized bag of popcorn!