Riddles and a Second Breakfast

The more you have of me the less you see.  What am I?

What gets wetter the more it dries?

What can you catch but not throw?

What belongs to you but your friends use it more than you?

There is a girl in a butcher shop in Chicago who is 6 feet 8 inches tall, has a 42 inch waist and wears a number 12 shoe.  What do you think she weighs?

I have a head and a tail but no body, what am I?

It occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, and yet never in one hundred thousand years.  What is it?

A duck, a frog, and a skunk went to the circus. Tickets were a dollar. Who got in? Who didn't?

 We read the book The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien for book group this month.  I've never really wanted to read it....I've started it, but always stopped halfway through somewhat bored.  But book group forced me through this "stopping point" and I'm glad it did.  This was good.  I now see why the boys have loved it for years.
Cailin's begun to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy because of it

The younger kids went on a treasure hunt to find:  Sting, the ring, spiders, and an archenstone.
We talked in riddles... Connor stumped us with some of the stuff he's reading in his logic book, but then again, he stumps us quite often with all sorts of things ...and ate a yummy second breakfast, just as Bilbo did before he began his grand journey.

 

 Mmmm, buttermilk pancakes with blackberry syrup, scrambled eggs, pineapple and banana slices.

We also talked about The Path to Success.. which is:  The Call    Opposition    Chasm    Hard Work    Endurance    Ultimate Test    The Pressure Lets Up. (....and Barry adds a little bit of luck) We found that path in Bilbo's journey to the mountain and even compared it to the story of the Three Little Pigs!   This is something we'll use with all our books...and personal problems in life.

Christine explains it better than I...so I added her written thoughts here:

One of the common models for studying novels is the Hero Cycle.  “The Student Whisperer” by Tiffany Earl and Oliver DeMille uses a similar but different  model called “The Path of All Success.”  Almost every story uses this Path to show success and sometimes failure.

There are seven “tests” in the Path.  They are:

1)    The Call

2)    Opposition

3)    The Great Chasm

4)    Hard Work

5)    Endurance

6)    Ultimate Test

7)     The Pressure Lets Up

A familiar fairy tale demonstrates the tests.  In “The Three Little Pigs” the pigs are called to leave their home and venture out into the world.  They meet opposition in the Big Bad Wolf.  We have the three pigs constructing their homes, two with inferior materials and one who works hard to build a solid home. The great chasm includes the idea of choosing the less popular path rather than the easy way. Two pigs choose inferior materials to build their house and the third pig chooses the harder path.  The Big Bad Wolf destroys the two other homes and goes after the third.  The third has to endure several trials. The wolf tries to trick him out of his home and the pig leaves early to beat the wolf at his game.  The ultimate test ends up with the Big Bad Wolf trying more directly to get into the third pigs house resulting in the death of the Big Bad Wolf and then the pressure lets up and the third Little Pig continues on with life.

Answers:
darkness
a towel
a cold
your name!
She weighs meat
a penny
The letter M
The duck got in because she had a bill, the frog got in on his green back. But the poor old skunk couldn't get in because he had only a scent, and it was a bad one.