Adventures in Narnia

Today I read chapters four and five to the children - The bell and the hammer, and The Deplorable Word. We’ve fallen by the wayside on our story re-telling already, haven’t got round to that, but never mind. The kids are all enjoying it, they *asked* for it to be read pretty much first thing this morning. I’m still finding the reading out loud hard work though.

Have been looking for recipes this evening, and found this cookbook - which looks fantastic, but can anyone tell me quite why it should be so expensive?!!

But we managed another couple of chapters this evening: Digory and his Uncle, and the Woods between the Worlds. The kids did some hama beads while I read, which seemed to work quite well. Anna is still being particularly teenagerish about the whole thing, because she *knows* the story , but Abbie is really enjoying it so far. Josiah caught up well, too, although how much he’s taking in remains to be seen. Hama beads have been left all over the dining room table so I suspect we’ll try for another similar session tomorrow

Today I read the first chapter of The Magician’s Nephew to the girls. While I was reading they drew pictures of Polly, Digory, and the secret attic. We retold the story simply for Joe to read later - the girls dictated and I was their scribe. This is something I’m hoping to do each time we read a chapter, that way they will end up *really* knowing the story, and with a lasting record of their own version of it.

We’ve set up yet another blog We’re planning a more-structured-than-usual (for us, anyway) project as part of our family’s home education this academic year, or as long as it takes; we are going to study the Narnia Books by C S Lewis. As it’s going to be an ongoing project I thought it might be good to keep a separate blog.

Steve and I last read the books five years ago, so we’re planning to re-read them alongside the children. Anna already knows the stories of the first two books from audiobook adaptations she’s listened to, but she’s never read the books themselves. Abbie and Joe both know the story of ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’ from the animated feature film (the old one, that I watched as a child!), but that’s about it.

Anna and I decided that we’d do a literature based project on the books when we first saw the trailer for the new film - somehow a project seems to have a nice ‘end’ with a film, but I’m hoping we’ll carry on past the first two books and look at all of them, even if we do it in dribs and drabs over the next few years.

As below. I reserve the right to add more in due course if things don’t fit neatly into one of these