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The Plan was, the PLAN was that I would read a chapter a day from James Cross Giblin's The Mystery of the Mammoth Bones, since it's a bit thick and wordy for a seven-year-old (so I thought), and that would lead into some fossil studying and so forth. But I guess I wasn't remembering how I devoured the whole dinosaur section of James Michener's Centennial when I was in first grade--anyhow E sat right down last night and plowed through 2 more chapters all by herself, so I guess I'll just have to pick up the story tomorrow at Chapter 4, and hope she can fill me in on what's going on...so much for plans!

This morning we went to E's piano lesson, then the library, and we went to Pizza Hut for lunch with one of her Book-It coupons (E: "Did I meet my reading goal, then, Mommy?" Me: "Yes, sweetie, if your reading goal was 'Read constantly', you certainly met it..."). When we got back E traced out and memorized the second verse of her poem, learning and writing definitions for "cotton to", "dote upon" and "stately". I read Clamshell Boy: A Makah Legend by Terri Cohlene and (in anticipation of the arrival of the microscope which I knew was on the porch already) Greg's Microscope by Millicent E. Selsam. She and T watched Peep while I got the microscope unpacked and then we looked at many many small and tiny things. Actually, the microscope we got is really cool; it's called a duoscope, and you can use it as a regular compound microscope, or as a stereo or dissecting microscope, for looking at small solid things, like bugs or rocks, without the use of slides. After that, I let her look through a neat book of mine called Then and Now, which has photos of ancient ruins paired with acetate overlays that show what they might have looked like when new. E's verdict: "I think the new looks much better than the ruins!"

Yesterday she was asking about holograms, because there is one on one of her bookmarks. I tried without success to find a suitable book at the library or a website that wasn't too confusing, but then, oh joy! I remembered that I had bought for them years ago a copy of David Macauley's The Way Things Work--and it has a section about holograms! Yay for the Ann Arbor friends of the library book sale all those years ago--they thought I was crazy buying all those books for my 6 month old! Who's laughing now?