Irregular Plurals, Music, Jewelry, and a Letter to the Mayor

I wrote about this not long ago, but I just have to say it again. Doing grammar straight off the screen is awesome. We also work with another grammar resource that I do print out. But, with this one, today for example, Lu is reading the sentences out-loud (with the required corrections) and raising his hand for every irregular plural noun, instead of copying the whole sentence and changing the underlined noun, bla, bla, bla, busywork. But, at the end of each couple of lessons - and this is the reason I like this resource so much - he does a creative writing assignment in his notebook. He gets all the concepts without all the copying - but does do the real, interesting writing.

Lu has two really old keyboard/pianos. One was mine when I was his age (!), and the other was left behind by someone. Anyway, both died a few months ago, after Lu had really gotten into playing. Something got into him the other day and he decided to fix one of them. He got inside of it, cleaned it out, reattached some wires, and voilá, it was fixed. He's been playing it every free minute he's had since then.
I guess that's music class taken care of!

This is Lu's jewelry-making station, in his room. This week he is working on a present for a little friend who is turning 5 on Saturday.
I love watching him work (and find it especially fascinating since I'm terrible at making things with my hands).


I've mentioned before that we're not nappers, but here's Lu passed out after yesterday's impromptu Civics field trip.

Last year, for a writing assignment, Lu wrote a letter to the incoming mayor asking him to please install trash cans in the park, so that the children wouldn't have to play amongst the rubbish.

(It's a pretty pathetic little playground, but it's all we've got).

We had to wait for January, when the new mayor would start his term, to go give him the letter, but things got hectic, and we forgot. Then yesterday we finished work up early and Lu suggested that we go present the letter, so we did.

Now, if you've been visiting us for a while, you know that Lu has been on stage many times. He gave a presentation on Dinosaurs. He performed the Pluto Monologues. He dances. He sings... But when Mr. Mayor came out of his office to see us, he FROZE SOLID.

I tried to eyeball him into talking, and told him to shake the mayor's hand out of the corner of my mouth. But Lu just stood there, looking at me and shaking his head in short, quick side-to-side movements, his hand waving the letter in front of the mayor with an almost neurotic twitch. Poor little guy, but I had to laugh. It was just so funny. Especially because it was unexpected. He's usually so outspoken!

So, I ended up presenting the letter, and the mayor kindly thanked Lu, who recovered and was able to laugh about it as soon as we left the building. I'm still giggling. It was a good little field trip too. We visited the police station (one room in the town hall, with one desk, two cops, and a telephone), the office of justice (one empty desk in a room with red curtains), the town treasury where town taxes are paid, and of course the mayor's quarters.