The NIghtingale

For read-a-louds right now, I am reading 'Heidi' for Umayr and 'The Railway Children' for Sofiyya from the Ladybird Classics. The children enjoy listening to stories of the children from a time gone by and I enjoyed reliving the days when I read the original books myself.

After playground time, I told them the story of 'The Nightingale' and drew on the blackboard as I told the story for the children to copy into their school books. We then talked about what makes birds special and I presented on parts of the feather to Ihsan and later the nomenclature for birds with the younger kids.

I chanced upon a site that had colouring pages for the different state birds of the U.S.A and since their father is in San Diego right now, I decided to combine the lesson on birds with geography.

Umayr wanted an eagle, so I had to find a picture of the national symbol instead while Ihsan asked for the state bird, of Minnesota, the Common Loon, as my husband stopped over there before going to San Diego.

Sofiyya took the state bird of California, the Valley Quail, for the state her father is in now. Ihsan then labelled the states on a blank map of the U.S.A as a revision for his Geography lesson.

All in all a fine day and it's nice to skip the usual written work on in a while...