After reading about early humans and their tools in Early Humans (Dorling Kindersley), Sam wanted to make some weapons. Later, armed with a spear, she hunted all her plushies and roasted them in the middle of the living room.

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The other day Sam started writing a list of places she wants to travel to. I’m not sure what prompted this activity. The first few entries have her creative, phonetic spelling (like “Ejipt”) but then somewhere along the way she figured out that she could copy country names from the map on her wall. This afternoon she …

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Poor Eugénie and Pascal. They’ve moved around nearly as much as we have–from the Bay Area to Brighton to Charlottesville–as has my little kid French class, which debuted today. We had 12 kids, ages 1-8. Mon Dieu!

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Grand-mère treated Sam and me to a viewing of the Picasso exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. It is a fabulous exhibit, made all the more special to me because I saw many of the pieces displayed 20 years ago at the Musée Picasso in Paris. The art work is just as fresh and exciting as it was in 1991. But me, I …

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Sam has been reading the price tags at our local grocery store and saying things like, “Look, Mom, this costs only 99p!” It was time to introduce her to American currency. Today we did math with nickels and pennies and Sam created an impromptu shop. Note that the plushie otter is a steal at only 8 cents! But also note …

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I have a writing workbook in which Sam can practice letter formation. A week ago or so I was trying to motivate her to practice printing lowercase letters, and I saw two of her “Dorbies” lying nearby. I decided to enlist the dolls in my motivation efforts. Whenever Sam would execute a letter in good form, the Dorbies …

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