W sat on my lap today and breezed through 1/4 of the hardcover Dick and Jane 3-in-one book I got at Borders the other day for $3.99 ($3.19 after educator discount!) in the clearance bin (yay me!). There's something about that book that just did it for him. It's repetitive with the sight words and the pictures are cute. As annoying and outdated as many people find it, it sure made him feel like a very competent reader today.

After that, I read to the kids about the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan empires. We have "The Everything American History Book" which has short chapters and covers everything in a nutshell - it's a great starting point for further discussion and activities. So we went online and found sites about the history of these empires, their gods, artwork, and culture. That led to Spain and Hernando Cortes, and North America. This led to the 13 colonies and into westward expansion, and touching upon the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, slavery, the Civil War, the Spanish-Indian War, the Alamo, and the Oregon Trail. J was really into it and asked lots of questions. Now that she has a basic understanding and definite interest in American history from the 1300s, we're going to go back and delve into it, one area at a time.

I also wanted them to check out the new poetry book I picked up. So later on, I just started reading various poems to them while they did other things. I used silly voices and foreign accents and within 10 minutes, both of them were on either side of me. W had me repeat the funny ones a few times. J took over reading aloud on a couple of them. Again, this is a fantastic treasury of poems - everything from Mother Goose rhymes all the way to Whitman, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare (bargain bin $7.99 - $6.39 after educator discount!!). They even protested when we had to put it down to go pick up K from school.

We went to Claire's to get the girls some accessories for Halloween and W asked if we could also stop in the bookstore. Now, W never wants to go to the bookstore. I played it cool and asked if there was something he was interested in getting today. He said, I wanna get my own poetry book and hey, maybe I could use it for copywork, too. Wow.