What Happens When The Teacher Gets Sick?

Today I was less then capable of being an effective teacher. The teacher has managed to get sick and lose her voice the first week back in school. With the heavy Charlotte Mason emphasis on reading and living books, it is especially difficult to carry out my duties. But it was fun for the kids since they got to swarm around Dad as he read the material for Friday, and Grace was able to show off her narration skills she's developed so well.

I tried my best to rearrange our school day schedule and get the kids to enjoy a little of the good weather in the morning before the storms rolled in by noon. It was short lived, but I was pretty impressed with their scavenger skills. Laid up on the couch, I told them to go outside and bring me back 5 interesting things. Apparently that was too broad, as they were back in 30 seconds, saying they couldn't find anything interesting. So, putting on my CM hat and keeping our current rodent nature study in mind, I asked them to find the remainder of a nutshell that had been eaten by a squirrel. They bolted out the door all excited, and I actually scolded myself for giving them such a hard task (fully thinking they wouldn't find anything). To my astonishment, Grace and Jack were back in 5 minutes with their find: two acorn caps still held together by a small twig - both caps showing clear evidence of being broken on one side by the teeth of a squirrel who extracted the acorn. Unbelievable...they actually found it.

The second request was for a stick that had something interesting. They came back in another five minutes and said they had found a tree that was brown on one side and had green on the other side, but that they couldn't bring that in.

The third (and last) request was cruel. I told them to find a coccoon. I was tired and was trying to have them get a little more air time then 5 minutes here and there. That didn't happen.

So the children huddled up in the green room with me and we watched a Netflix movie called Winged Migration - a full hour of footage with little narration about the migration of various bird species. When the rain hit in the afternoon we cracked open the books.