Book Club!!

For the past four weeks, Bean has been participating in a homeschool book club run by one of the other moms in our local homeschool group. The first book she chose for them to read was Island of the Blue Dolphins. One of the things I love about this club is that the leader assigns each kid a project to do based on the book. Bean's project was to write a report about a real-life survival story. She chose to write about Bethany Hamilton.

Soul Surfer

Surfer Bethany Hamilton, 13, lost her left arm to a vicious tiger shark attack in Hawaii. She went surfing October 31, 2003, with her friends in the “tunnels,” a great place to catch up to 80 foot waves. She was on her surfboard lying parallel to the waves when the ravenous 14-foot tiger shark chomped off her left arm and took a big bite from her board in 2-3 seconds. Bethany told her friend, Holt, that she was attacked by a shark; he didn’t believe her until he saw the blood in the water. Holt swam towards her and used his rash guard as a tourniquet. All she could do now was pray, while her friend’s father rushed Bethany to the hospital. Fortunately, Bethany’s father was going to have a routine knee surgery there and she took his place in surgery. Bethany lost 70% of her blood volume that day. It was her favorite board, with the Scriptures she had written on it, that got bitten. Within a month of the attack, she was back on her board and within three months, she was competing again. Bethany has chosen to overcome her circumstance through the power of Jesus Christ. 2 years ago, she visited the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to pray for and talk to the wounded troops. She has written an autobiography of her life titled Soul Surfer and this year a movie is being released on DVD about the attack and her recovery. She is Bethany Hamilton: a soul surfer without a left arm.

Bean has been working very hard on incorporating what she has learned with IEW into her other writing assignments. I love to see how her confidence has grown in this area!! Last year at this time, if she had been asked to write a report, she would have tried to convince me to let her drop out of the book club. When she was given this assignment, she didn't even bat an eyelash. She knew right away what her subject would be and just went about it like she'd been writing reports for years! I'm so grateful that homeschooling affords us the option to try different things so that kids can overcome their difficulties (instead of being faced with a lifetime of failure!). I love homeschooling!!!
TTFN!