Sarph, The Misunderstood Sea Serpent.

We have been very into the Magic Tree House books lately—going through each book and then using the plots and subjects to work on a ton of related activities. I have been photographing and documenting this as we go—the ideas the girls have are so amazing. We finished up Viking Ships At Sunrise and Sarph the Sea Serpent and Sadie seemed to have a special connection. I was all about making Celtic books and painting illuminated letters and Delia was fixated with the Vikings capturing the monks as slaves. Lots of questions about exactly how that happened. "Were they tied up the whole time? Did the Vikings carry the monks tied, or untied? Where did they sit in the boat? Or were they on the floor of the boat? Still tied up?"

A certain birthday girl happened to visit the house during Viking time and admired Sadie's Sarph drawing—so we made it into a small specimen for her as a gift. I had these specimen boxes (glass tops and wonderful old-timey labels on the back) and reduced Sadie's Saprh, added a little foam tape to make it a relief-shadow-box type thing, and added a label.

Why I didn't make two, I have no idea, so that's what I need to do now because it hurt to give this up. I know it was well received.