Typin’ Tyootorrrial

September 5, 2008 @ 6:34 am | Filed under: Fun Learning Stuff, Games

This quiet blog must make it obvious I’m still taking it slow and easy after last week’s excitement. We’ve kept mostly to home, except for piano lessons. Our old high-tide mood is upon us, has been for a couple of weeks, so there are lots of read-alouds and lively discussions going on (this I can do from the sofa!), and Jane is in love with a giant tome on chemistry, and Beanie and Rose are elbowing each other for FlashMath turns on my iPod Touch, unaware that this game is nothing but math drills. I guess if it’s on the Touch, it’s automatically fun?

Yesterday Beanie asked for a turn on the computer to play “the typing game,” which means the Mavis Beacon typing tutorial CD-rom. Jane hunted it up for her. But I think she might enjoy this new discovery even more: the BBC’s online Dance Mat Typing site. I found the link at Educating Emme. Personally, I’m a little mixed on these lessons—the whole rock-and-roller goat thing wears thin very quickly. I mean, he’s a goat. On the other hand, I love his Scottish accent. On his tongue, banal phrases like “use either of your thumbs on the space bar” become delightful dialogue.

On the other hand, he’s a goat.

(And his cartoon hands—a goat with hands?—in the keyboard demos: shudder.)

But I guarantee Beanie’s gonna love it.


Unrelated note: the nice folks at BusyBodyBook sent me a brand-new planner to offer as a giveaway here. I had planned to do it last week, but, well, you know what happened. I’ll try to get that post up tomorrow, and you can enter the drawing for the free planner in its comments. Not these comments. The new post. Tomorrow. I hope.

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My Bonny Clan


Jane, 13 yrs old
Rose, 10 yrs
Beanie, 7 yrs
Wonderboy, 5 yrs
Rilla, 2 yrs
baby eagerly expected Jan. 2

and Scott, the love of my life




Book Log 09


The Ten-Year Nap
by Meg Wolitzer

The Uncommon Reader: A Novella
by Alan Bennett

World Made by Hand
by James Howard Kunstler






Book Log 08


Lots of picture books
for the Cybils

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
by Alice Waters

How I Live Now
by Meg Rosoff

The Great Turkey Walk
by Kathleen Karr
(family read-aloud)

The Trees Kneel at Christmas
by Maud Hart Lovelace

A Reader's Delight
by Neil Perrin
(a book I have savored, essay by essay, all year—thank you again, sweet friend who sent it)

Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton

The Ransom of Red Chief
by O. Henry
(family read-aloud)

Sign of the Beaver
by Elizabeth George Speare
(family read-aloud)

Stitched in Time: Memory-Keeping Projects to Sew and Share
by Alicia Paulson

Bend-the-Rules Sewing
by Amy Karol

Understood Betsy
by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
(read-aloud to Beanie)

The King's Fifth
by Scott O'Dell
(middle-grade novel about a young Spanish cartographer's travels with Coronado in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola)

A Murder for Her Majesty
by Beth Hilgartner
(I posted about it here)


haystackcover

Haystack Full of Needles
by Alice Gunther
(Here's my post about it)

The Highwaymen
by Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman

Number the Stars
by Lois Lowry

Swallows and Amazons
by Arthur Ransom

A Street in Marrakesh
by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Knight's Castle
by Edward Eager (to Beanie)

(a sequel to Half Magic)



The Creative Family
by Amanda Soule

The Losers (Vol.1): Ante Up
by Andy Diggle and Jock

Green Arrow: Year One
by Andy Diggle and Jock

Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places
by John R. Stilgoe
(here's a post about it)

Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage
by Madeleine L'Engle

Dogger
by Shirley Hughes

As for the rest:

They're at GoodReads


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Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars?

They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.


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A Word about How I Blog

Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.

(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)


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