Well, all vacations must come to an end and we have been dutifully working on our regular school things for the last 2 weeks.

Last week Peanut began learning about "greater than" and "less than". We are using Abeka Math this year for her (after trying both Saxon and Singapore last year). Abeka seems like a great fit for her. Alas, she has not had the easiest time memorizing her math facts and I will admit it is a stress for me. She suffers with "math-itis" just like her mom does. When we get ready to work on math facts her poor eyes glaze over and she is absolutely terrified. While the facts give her problems, the actual process seems to come pretty easily to her.

Abeka describes the "greater than" and "less than" symbols as little bird beaks eating their food. Since Peanut is such an animal lover, she immediately took to the idea of using a bird to describe this math concept. As a matter a fact, I had to take a picture of the drawing that she made. If you look carefully you will see that the largest bird is "momma bird and momma bird is taking the number 52 (which is the food momma) and dropping it down to baby bird." The next picture which her arm is covering actually showed the 52 in the baby bird's beak. "Then the 52 goes into its throat, see it here momma? Then the food moves to its belly!" Thank heaven she didn't show me what happens after it moves to its belly!

We ended our week (and our study of Mexico) with a fiesta! We had been studying Mexico for 2 weeks and to end it the girls made tissue paper flowers and decorated the dining room. Mom tried her hand at making homemade tortillas (which turned out really good!) The leftover tortillas got re-heated in the pan and sprinkled with some cinnamon and sugar. Top it off with freshly harvested honey and mmmmmmm! We also broke out the crystal punch bowl that has never been used and filled it with Hawaiian Punch and fresh strawberries and grapes. Thanks Rene who insisted we use Maraschino Cherries as well! The girls had much fun preparing the fiesta for daddy!