Anne Frank Project

Okay, so here's the end result of the Anne Frank project this year, which turned out rather well.  You can see the timeline Madison added, along with quotes from Anne Frank, a diagram of the Annex her family hid in, family photos, a picture of a portion of her writing, as well as pictures of the different Jewish stars that were used to identify Jews during that awful time.  The golden star was always the same, but the words in the middle varied from country to country, depending on the language.

To the right at the bottom, you see another Jewish star, which Madison says is a "button" that can be pressed.  It's a "Living Wax Museum" tomorrow, which means the students are frozen, and when the button is pressed, they begin talking, somewhat like "A Night at the Museum."

I think one of our favorite pieces is the diary itself.  Mommy got a journal from a discount store, and Daddy found that someone had posted the plaid pattern from the actual diary online somewhere.  Special thanks to whoever did that, because we cut it out and wrapped it around the journal, and created a book that looks very much like the original diary.

Obviously, on top of all this, Madison has been reading up and writing her index cards to help her along with her presentation, learning key facts and so forth.  We worked on this a good while, and in the end, her presentation should be very good tomorrow.

Today was another piano class, and just one more to go after this.  It's been a good run, and we're not sure right now what is next, but we'll certainly keep it going.  Madison wants to keep it going as well.  It's been raining, and the rain feels nice out there with the temperature not that warm at all, or not too cold.  It's just right, and the sound of rain hitting the leaves on trees is just so soothing to the soul, especially when combined with the song of the birds in the forests.  It's a perfectly lovely day.

Although, we did get caught in a torrential rainfall on the way home from piano, and that was a little nerve-wracking.

Today Daddy was printing a couple thousand things - literally - for Summer Xtreme.  Also, a new series starts this weekend, and we were working on material for that as well.  Most of it is done, so we'll be focusing mostly on Summer Xtreme for the time being.  With so much to do, it is always a significant weight on our collective shoulders, but as the weeks go by and tasks are completed, we'll have more time to enjoy the week itself.  Only twenty-seven days to go...

Tomorrow we'll see Madison's yearbook.  It was supposed to be there today, but hers - along with a few others - were damaged in shipping on the way here.  The teachers spotted this, and ordered new ones to come, hopefully by Thursday.  We'll see them then, and we're pretty excited to see how they turned out, having so much direct involvement.  Madison saw a few pages of some of the yearbooks today, peeking at a few that were handed out to some other kids in other classrooms.  She's in the booklet a lot.

We squeezed in a few games of "Battlefront II," which Madison adores right now.  She wanted to be an Ewok on Endor, and those little teddy bears can be vicious!  She loves it.

We read a few more chapters from our book tonight, also our devotional.  And then we said our prayers, as there's a lot going on in the world.  Volcanoes in Hawaii, Korean diplomacy, Israeli celebrations and protests... and that's just the beginning.

The best thing to do when all this starts worrying you is pray, when weights of responsibility descend upon you, pray.  Go outside and listen to the relaxing sound of rain, and remember who has the whole world in His hands.