The Christmas Aftermath

Well, the gifts are open, the food is eaten, the sugar highs have crashed and I've decided that we will take as little of a Christmas break as possible, lol. We need that "have to do this everyday" aspect of our lives. I tried to get some school done yesterday, but all we did was build this cool solar-powered car. We did some experiments with it, like blocking the solar panel and seeing if it works from the light of a flashlight instead. It was a lot of fun and very educational... but the school books just sat on the dining room table all day untouched.

Today, I demanded that bookwork be done before the Wii was turned on. Two days of video game frenzy are enough! It's time we got back to one hour only and only after the things that we need to get done are done. OK, maybe he'll still play more than an hour because DH is home all week and he loves to play it just as much as Cameron does, lol.

Anyway, we started the day with Phonics for Cassia. She learned the line for the letter K in "The Consonant Rhyme." It's so funny, Cameron learned that poem by us doing it every day for about a month. Cassia is learning it by us doing it several times a month, lol. It's going to take us an entire year to get through it! But she is learning so much more than he is, just by being around him so I'm not going to sweat the fact that she may not know all her consonant sounds by the time she is 4-1/2 like he did. Cameron started his day with a Grammar lesson, picking the pronouns out of a story. I don't think he gets what a pronoun is at all, lol, but maybe by the time we review it the 700th time, he will. The second half of the Grammar lesson was reviewing our initials. We decided that we really like his name being C. E. Berm. It sounds very professional. For reading, Cameron read Cassia the instructions to her math book. She was working on writing her numbers from one to ten and then from ten to one. Next Cameron did his math, a Practice section on multiplying by threes while Cassia worked on her ETC book and the letter Y. We finished off with reading a couple of stories about Anansi the Spider from Story of the World. I have some more library books on him and other African folk tales that I'll try to convince them to read later today... but it is so hard to compete with that Wii!

All in all, we've had a fabulous Christmas. We thought we would be spending the holiday alone, but it turned out that my dad was able to join us for dinner. It was fabulous having him and his girlfriend/fiancé over. We don't see them nearly enough. In fact, we see them exactly twice a year: at the kids' birthday party and at Christmas. And yet they only live a couple of hours away. Oh well, it's not perfect but it's our family dynamic and I really do enjoy the time that we are able to spend together. I hope everyone else had a Merry time and was able to spend time with their loved ones.

Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards Men.

(Oh, and to explain the last two pictures on the slideshow... in Cameron's excitement to grab his Wii controller from the charger and play, he knocked over an entire glass of red wine onto my wireless keyboard! Ugh. So after hours of tedious cleaning and mopping... it still doesn't work and we have to buy a new one. I am currently typing on a hot pink and purple Princess keyboard with keys that are MUCH too small and causing my hands to cramp, lol. Ah, Christmas.)

Merry Christmas!

It's been an eventful year for us. So big, in fact, that we have needed to expand our yearly DVD of family pictures and videos to the Deluxe 2-Disk Edition!! Yes, we went 2 gigs over the limit this year, lol. No way around that. I blame Blogger. I've been much more inclined to document our lives in photo because of you all.

I hope to share some "best of" pictures and videos in the next week, but at the moment I have to check on my Dijon Maple Glazed Ham. Yum.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight. :)

Smells like Christmas!

Mmmm, just finished baking some gingerbread cookies. Yum! We were joking about the gingerbread boys taking off and running away as soon as they were cooked, and who would've known but they did! At least, they're gone now. That must be what happened to them! The real surprise will be if these cookies actually last until Christmas. The kids know they are for Santa, but I just cannot stay away from them, lol. I have two more types of cookie that I want to bake, I just need to get to the store for some ingredients first.

Anyway, yesterday the kids did a make-up class for gymnastics and adding that in with school work and the online obligations I have on Wednesday night meant that I didn't get a chance to blog. We didn't do anything especially interesting... I think. (Gosh, I've already forgotten! I have the worst short-term memory ever. Five seconds and it's GONE!) Ummm, Grammar was /ûr/ in stir, Phonics/Language was a poem about the days of the week and then writing them. That was actually something interesting. Instead of doing the copywork on paper, we did it on the white board and for some reason the kids got interested in me writing them in cursive too. It was a day of new things for both of them: Cameron tried to write in cursive and Cassia tried to write in lower case letter - both with pretty equal results, lol. Math was Timez Attack (he's beaten his 4's!) and then one workbook exercise. Spelling Time was also done and finished out for the week. I think we ran out of time at that point and had to go to the gym, so we didn't do Science or History.

Today, we started the day with Parent Day at Cassia's ballet class. Sooooooo cute! I got some video (I think! I was having problem after problem with the camera.) and if I ever figure out how to get it on YouTube or something I will share. We came home to do more /ûr/ in stir for Phonics, learn about initials for Grammar/Language, do more multiplication for Math - though I have to say I was surprised to see that Cameron got several of them wrong. The one thing I don't like about the Timez Attack game is that once you pass a level (as in 2's or 3's) you don't ever go back and review it again. It *is* reviewed when you come across it in a higher lever (as in 2x8 is seen again as 8x2) but it's pretty much gone once you pass the level. I think that is what was happening today in Cameron's math work. He kept mixing up the x2s and x3s simply because he's now pushed the x2s out of his head. I'm sure that happens to everyone though. For Spelling, Cameron chose to start the next week's Spelling Time work. Fine with me. For History, we read about Ancient Africa in our history encyclopedias. Our library books are all in now, so we will move on to those next week. I don't see how people can do two chapters a week, lol. They must just spend all day reading. My kids just don't sit still long enough for that, lol. And then we baked cookies, so that was Home Ec. Now, we better be off for our second period of Home Ec at the grocery store. I just realized that we have nothing for dinner.

Time to Waste

Ahhhh, what to do? What to do?? After the crazy busy week last week, I feel like I'm forgetting something, lol. I keep walking around going, "What were we supposed to be doing today??" and then I look at the calendar and realize that there is nothing there. Ahhhhh.

So we did school and read a book and now we're playing our respective video games or blog browsing. Ahhhhh.

Cameron started the day with Timez Attack while I was in the shower. He's on his 4's now! Who would've thought that multiplication could be so fun? After breakfast we finally moved on to /ûr/ in stir words in Phonics. He was quite happy to finally be done with /âr/ in hair. Not so happy to find a two page lesson, but we got through it just fine. Next was Grammar where he acted out all the action verbs while I read a silly poem. Cassia did not get to do it though because she was laying in her bed in protest to my horrific request that she make her bed. I said if you're going to tell me that you don't know how to make your bed then you can just lay there until you figure out how to do it. So she did. For about two hours. What stubborn children I have!! She wasn't even upset or anything (though she was very upset and screaming at me when I told her to lay down), she just lay there playing finger games until the need to go to the bathroom finally brought her out. I had even already told her that she could come out, but she wouldn't because she was afraid that I would force her to make her bed. I am having flashbacks to my own childhood when I would sit on my bed for hours at a time when my mother would tell me to clean my room. Feels like payback. Obviously, I need to find a new technique.

But where was I? Oh yes, school. Next was Math where Cameron really breezed through a page on multiplying by threes. Last week he was struggling and counting them on his fingers. This week he knows them. Thank you Big Brainz. Next was Spelling in which he did both the entire Spelling Workout lesson and the first section of Spelling Time. And then we finished off the school day with History where we read a little about Ancient Africa. I was actually pretty disappointed in the chapter because there wasn't really anything on Ancient Africa! It basically just reviewed the civilizations that we learned before and then said that people had lived in other parts of Africa, besides Egypt, too. The rest of the chapter is African Folk tales. Hopefully my library books will come in soon so that we have a little something more to go on.

Something really cool did happen during that History lesson though. Last night we were at my brother-in-law's house and we watched a National Geographic video on the Genographic Project. My MIL had participated in it and sent in a DNA sample and in return had gotten a report of her ancient ancestry and a copy of the NG series that explained the initial compilation of world DNA in an attempt to explain the first human journeys out of Africa. I'd seen portions of the series before and Greyson was causing his usual mayhem so I was only half watching and not paying any attention to whether or not Cameron was watching. Anyway, today while I was trying to read about Ancient Africa from SOTW, he kept interrupting me with things like, "I know there were people in Africa! They started out here," pointing to the map, "and walked this way," tracing the route exactly as had been shown on the DVD, "and walked all the way to Australia!" So he was watching! "Those people were our ancestors! They were the ancient humans!" Cassia, who had fallen asleep during the movie, was very interested in his explanation so he spent a very long time explaining the migration of the early humans over the Ice Age Super Continents. LOL, if I hadn't been so annoyed that he kept interrupting me while I was trying to get through this chapter, I would've been really impressed. OK, I was impressed anyway. I think that boy is on his way to becoming a socio-archaeologist!

And speaking of future careers, the reason we were at my Brother-in-Law's house was that Monday we went to homeschool day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and BIL lives much closer to it than we do. Their homeschool day is an incredibly generous affair where they let all homeschooled children ages 4 - 17 and one adult per child in for free. They had tons of activities, demonstrations, and workshops set up and they even had a behind-the-scenes tour for teens. Way cool stuff. You did have to come in a group and register in advance, but that's a small price to pay for so much value - especially since they then sent a big cd-rom of educational supplements! We had the best time. Cassia told me that she wanted to take care of the jellies. I told her that she could definitely do that when she grew up. Later in the day, we saw the otter keepers bringing them their toys and she said that she wanted to help bring them their toys. I said that she couldn't because only the staff was allowed into the exhibit area. She looked at me with that look that she's been perfecting since she was a toddler and said, "Mommy, I meant I want to do that when I grow up." Duh. So then I told her that she was going to need to study marine biology then and she agreed. So her future is now set and ready to go. ;) Cameron liked the sharks. Greyson liked his shoes. ;) Actually his favorite part was a recreation of a tidal wave crash that goes over your head. He'd just stand there and laugh. We did get some cool pictures but they are, of course, on DH's laptop.

This was the first time I've really gone to a major homeschool event. I was just electrified to be surrounded by so many homeschoolers. There were all types, sorts, and stereotypes there and I loved it. One thing I did notice was that there was a much more relaxed atmosphere of parenting than is usually present in a big public space like that. It's hard to describe but there wasn't that big push for the kids to "behave" or not to wander off or anything. I'm not saying that everyone was well behaved, I'm just saying that the homeschool parents just aren't as concerned with minor wanderings. Kids were all over, learning on their own, and everyone was cool with it. Usually you'll find some overbearing dad freaking out because a child wants to linger somewhere when the family itinerary says that it's Time to Move! LOL, or maybe that was just me feeling more relaxed than usual because I knew that I was in an aquarium full of people who respect my educational and parenting choices. In other words, I didn't feel like a freak for once. ;)

Blog Contest!

Contest to win a $50 gift certificate at Homeschool eStore! Go to the Just Some Stuff blog for the rules!


1. How many children do you have / homeschool? 3 children - one in 1st, one in pre-K, one in constant trouble
2. How long have you been homeschooling? We have been an official, registered with the state, private school for two months now - but honestly, we've been homeschooling since the birth of my first child, August 2001. I know it sounds cliche', but it's true... especially since it's now trendy to send your child to preschool, at least part-time, at age two.
3. Have they always been homeschooled, or did they ever go to public/private school? Always homeschooled. I actually decided that I wanted to homeschool when I was pregnant with my first.
4. Do you plan on homeschooling until graduation? Absolutely.
5. Do you belong to a co-op? No, but our homeschool4 -H club is very co-op-ey.
6. Do you school all year long, or use some other schedule? We pretty much school all year long though we take a lot of time off in the summer and whenever life dictates the necessity.
7. Do you use textbooks only, or do you like to supplement with other materials? We use both textbooks and other stuff. Most of our subjects are at least supplemented by living books, internet research, and hands-on activities. Some subjects are entirely that.
8. Are field trips included in your school plans, or are they just family time? Again, both planned and "other." I will plan certain trips to coincide with our studies, some trips because there is a homeschool group going, and some trips just for fun. They all count though.
9. Do you and your kids do crafty stuff together for school time? We try to, but not as much as I'd like. My oldest doesn't like them much so it isn't really worth the effort to get all that mess out. Everyone loves experiments though. We really should do more of those than we do.
10. Would you consider everyday household life stuff ‘home ec’? Absolutely.
11. Do you have any advice for new homeschoolers? Don't get hung up on labels and don't worry if your homeschool doesn't look like anyone else's. What works for your family isn't necessarily what will work for anyone else's and that's ok. In fact, that's great! It means that you are truly giving your children the education that's right for them.
12. Do you have advice for homeschoolers with little ones under foot? Deep breaths, deep breaths! LOL, but seriously, flexibility is the key. Save the stuff that needs quiet and uninterrupted concentration for naptime. Try to get the little ones involved when you can. And most of all, remember that this is a short time in all your lives. Appreciate it for what it is and try to remember that you have a lifetime to do "serious stuff."

I have a few minutes

I have a few minutes while our spaghetti water boils, so I figured I'd come report on our exciting day, lol. Cameron spent all morning playing Times Attack. He just had to keep playing until he passed those 2's. When it came to the final battle where you have to get every one of the problems right to move on, he kept missing a different one every time he tried. At that point it would send you back to review the ones you missed but then he'd miss different ones the next time. I finally convinced him to just start his game over so that he could review ALL of them, and then he passed the level in two tries. Then he moved on to threes and I finally had to make him stop. He wanted to keep going until he finished that level too! LOL.

Next was the park. Nothing too interesting or exciting there. It was a great time as usual. There's a new mom who has been coming the last couple weeks and it's been nice getting to know her. (She's the type who likes to talk so there isn't a lot of initiating conversation on my part, lol.)

On the way to and from the park though, we listened to Tikki Tikki Tembo over and over and over. I only had the read-along cd because there was a waiting list for the hardcover book. We ended up getting them both at the same time but I didn't really expect to listen to the cd. We've never had any success with books on tape at all. But I decided to pop it in on the way to the park today on a whim and WOW was it a success. I don't know if it was the actual story or just the fact that it was one of those read-along books with the chime that tells you when to turn the page, but they loved it! They passed the book back and forth between tellings and we listened to it four times on the way to the park! They kept chanting "Tikki Tikki Tembo-No Sa Rembo-Chari Bari Ruchi-Pip Peri Pembo" over and over at the park. Cassia even said she wants to name our next boy baby that, lol. And then we listened to it another four times on the way home! Cameron was really making an effort in trying to read along too. It was fun, but I don't think I'll ever get that name out of my head!!

OK, my water is boiling. Have a nice weekend, everyone. :)

Upgrade!

This morning's activities didn't go exactly as planned. We had a sudden (ok, I think we had 12 hours notice) visit from Comcast to upgrade our internet. So back to cable we go after three years of ever-slower DSL. It's funny how you have to just keep hopping back and forth between technologies as they improve and compete. Anyway, I'm not taking advantage of it yet - gotta wait for my tech support DH to hook us up this weekend ;) - but next week I will be able to do such amazing things as watch crazy people on YouTube without pausing to buffer first. You know, Quality of Life stuff. ;)

Actually, I saw on our tech's laptop the Comcast Customer Creed, lol. I unsuccessfully tried to find it online to accurately quote it, but it was something to the effect of "to do our best to be the ones our customers come to for the things that are most important to them." Cable TV? Internet? Phone? Sad that those are the things that are most important. What about love, family, and honor? I suppose you can use the previous three to find the latter, but still...

So while they were here working, Cameron did some work memorizing his multiplication tables with this amazing game. It's like Doom with multiplication tables (and no blood, just an ogre with a club that never really hits you). Very cool. Needless to say, he loved it. He spent over an hour trying to get the 2's down perfectly. That game is brutal too - it won't let you move on until you KNOW it. The Comcast crew (yes, they had to call in a backup team to get us installed!) finally left and we were able to hit the afternoon ballet class instead. While Cassia was in class, the boys and I ran over to K-Mart to pick up some things and look what we ran across...


Guess who wanted to rush home and do his schoolwork as quickly as possible?? LOL. So we came home he started off with Spelling Time. He got another 100% on the end of lesson test. I don't know if it's sticking or not, but he sure is enjoying it and doing really well in the short term. Phonics was an /âr/ in hair review. Cameron read really, really well. It is finally kicking in for him. Wow this has been a long journey and each little itty-bitty success has seemed so huge - but they really have been. I am almost ready to say that he is a reader. Almost. He still has to voluntarily pick up a book, but I think that may be coming soon (knock on wood). Next was Grammar where we reviewed all of the poems that we've memorized so far. Both Cameron and Cassia remembered them all - even the obscure ones that I didn't like and only spent a day or two on, lol. Math was next: a quick exercise on the three times table, backwards. (As in 3x10 = 30, -3, 3x9 = 27, -3, 3x8 = 24, -3, etc.) We finished up with the Chapter 2 workbook pages in Science. Again, I was really impressed with Cameron's comprehension of the subject and Cassia's ability to come up with obscure vocabulary words. Another thing that impressed me was how much writing and spelling Cameron chose to do while working on this. Like I said, the whole reading thing is really coming together for him. :)

And then we watched OotP. It was pretty good, but being a recent reader of the book all I can say is whooooooooooooshhhhhhhhh! WOW they sped through things! I guess you have to in order to keep it from being a 5-hour epic and I suppose they hit all the major points... but at one point my cell phone rang and I was on the phone for less than five minutes. I got back and was shocked with how much I had missed already. Dolores Umbridge was great though, but I'm disappointed that they left off her trademark black velvet hair bow. Cameron loved it. Cassia actually watched the whole thing. I'm not sure why it was PG-13? Maybe just intensity? I am really curious to see DH's reaction to it. He hasn't read the books and doesn't want to for fear of "ruining the movies." LOL. But I wonder if it will make any sense. So much is missing. He's always asking me questions about the other movies, but why did they do this and why did that happen? I tell him as best as I can but it gets confusing, lol, so I just have to tell him that if he really wants to know then he just better get busy and read the books already. That's when he stops asking questions. ;)

Nothing official on the schedule tomorrow, so it should be a nice relaxing day. Speaking of relaxing, I think it's almost time to put the kiddos to bed and jump into a nice hot bath. Mmmmmm

The Wild Life

OK, you're going to have to forgive me here. I have a total Mommy Brag. Big time, Mommy Brag. Several of them, even. ;) So a big group of us met up at a local Wildlife Museum run by the High School. It's a really neat place and one of the best parts is that is is entirely run by the high school students. They do the maintenance and upkeep of the displays, the care of the animals, give the tours, everything. It's really pretty impressive.

While we were waiting for it to be time to start, the kids were all acting pretty crazy outside - playing tag, climbing things, etc - and I was a bit worried about how they were going to be inside. The group leader, MomP, was trying to give a little instructional talk to everyone before we went in and I will give you one guess which two kids were not listening at all. Yep, mine were the ones wandering around whispering in other kids' ears and generally not showing any respect to the person in authority. *sigh* I figured we were in for a bad day.

Thankfully, things changed 100% once we were inside. They were attentive, respectful, relevant (for the most part, lol) and altogether a delight. Our group of twenty-seven children had been broken into two groups: ages 7 & under, and 8 - 14. At one point, after Cameron had very accurately explained the purpose of animal camouflage to the group, MomP asked if he might prefer to be in the older group! I declined because topics aimed to the pre-teen group would be WAY over his head, but I was so proud and honored to see him shining so. He was answering all the questions posed by the guides (and even raising his hand to do so), asking thoughtful questions of his own, listening to their directions, and was truly, truly interested in the entire thing. Several times after he made some comment or other, one of the moms would come up and ask me how old he was and comment on his intelligence. The word "brilliant" was even used once! (I told you this would just be one big brag!) LOL, I had to laugh because most of this knowledge of animals comes from tv. But really, he's not afraid to ask questions and he's not afraid to keep asking them until he really, truly understands. I love that about him. It's annoying and very, very trying at times, but it is what makes him unique, I've noticed. Apparently, it's also made him "brilliant!"

Cassia was fabulous too. She was always right up in front not wanting to miss a thing. She and a couple other little girls kept holding hands as they walked - too cute. She was also quick to answer questions and to add her own brand of comments - usually relating to Go, Diego, Go in some way, lol. The cutest thing was that whenever she asked a question she started it with, "I was just wondering..." LOL. Such a sweet thing.

Speaking of sweet things, Greyson was a really good boy too. His favorite part was the live reptile show at the end where we got to pet a ball python, a gecko, an iguana, and something else that I can't remember. He also liked the room with all the animal pelts that you could touch and pet. He liked the coyote the best. He started getting restless near the end because he really, really, really wanted me to let him out of the backpack to run around. I finally did in the reptile room and he just sat on the floor with his face pressed up against the glass cage walls, lol. I think he had a good time.

Now, I don't really mean to brag. Well, I do, but not because I think my kids are better than anyone else's. I'm just so proud with how far Cameron has come. Does anyone remember any of last year's field trips? Oh, the humiliation and frustration! This was just such a nice switch. *big grin*

So then we came home and started in on school work (because the rest of the morning hadn't been educational in the least, lol). Cameron wanted to get started on it right away because he's been on a Legend of Zelda kick lately and couldn't wait to start playing it. So we did Phonics (ear as /âr/ in hair), Spelling (where they have started introducing some proofreading marks), Grammar (picture narration), math (more 3s), and History. I was going to move on to Ancient Africa today but I still haven't requested those books from the library and I have a shelf full of books on China still in our personal library that I hadn't even looked through yet! So, I asked Cameron if he wanted to do some more China or move on and he chose China. First I read them this old Troll book (remember those?) called Ancient China and then we read one on Chinese Calligraphy. Cameron got really excited by that and wanted to try writing the sign for dragon - the most elaborate and complex character that I have ever seen. I convinced him to start small and then got out the poster paint for him.

He spent quite a while practicing his calligraphy with a brush and then wanted to try with a pencil. That led to a whole elaborate picture of combined calligraphic characters and line drawings of dragons and fish. It's actually pretty cool. He told me that I could keep it forever and ever and hang it up in my bedroom, if I wanted. :)

I tried reading The Princess of Wisteria Wood to them from an ancient book of Chinese Fairy Tales while they were drawing and painting, but Cameron kept interrupting me to tell me about the sharks in his drawing, lol. I finally gave up... but not before telling him about the evils of Shark Fin Soup! ;) I had to get a moral in there somewhere!

And that was Day Three of Super-Busy Week, though it didn't feel too busy at all! Our field trip was early enough in the day that we had plenty of time to get school done before 2pm and yet it was late enough that we weren't rushed to get out of the house to make it there on time! That was nice for a change! Tomorrow is just ballet, so that shouldn't be too busy or rushed though it always ends up feeling that way. Friday is park day, so that's more fun than "busy" though nothing else ever gets done on park day, lol. But since we are now only going out of town for the weekend, instead of a week and a half, that lack of productivity shouldn't be an issue at all. So I guess now that Humpday (lol, anyone else hate that term as much as me?) is over, I guess that we have conquered Super-Busy week. WaHoo!

One final note to Meesh and G - LOL, you two! Well, it's nice to know that I don't come off as badly as I feel like I do, but remember that in your cases I've already felt like I have known you before ever meeting you. It's so different talking to someone that you don't know much at all... afraid that every word might be offensive. Afraid that your peculiar sense of humor might not be appreciated by this person. But now that I think about it, one of the people that I was referring to yesterday has that peculiar sense of humor too and that's why I like her. And, now that I think about it, our kids don't get along too badly either. Hers are a little older but they play well enough together in group situations. Maybe I will suck up a bit of courage after the holidays and ask her if they'd like to get together and hang out sometime. But thanks for the encouragement. :)

Well, it's only 3:30 and I've got pretty much everything done for the day! Guess I better go find something to do then. :)

Holiday Party

Today was the big 4-H Holiday Party. There was LOTS of food, lots of music, lots of crafts and lots of fun. :) But first we had to do school. Cameron did a Phonics lesson on word pairs like pare/pair and hare/hair, then a Grammar lesson reviewing action verbs, then finished up the Language Arts block with Spelling Time. Next was math - one exercise on multiplying by threes - and then we ended with Science. I decided to skip the last two activities for the chapter. They were kind of lame, so I just kind of talked over the concepts in them (proving that air is matter) and then moved on to the chapter review and a couple of library books on the states of matter. Pretty routine stuff. Nothing very interesting, I suppose.

But then we went to the Holiday Party! We ate pizza and Mexican rice and black bean salad and nachos. OK, Greyson and I ate those things. The other kids had one slice of pizza and then went straight to the desserts. Three each. Gotta love a party when Mom is too busy to notice that you're taking another dessert until you've already eaten 80% of it. ;)After gorging themselves, the kids made paper reindeer with handprint antlers, origami boxes, beeswax candles, and wool angels. They decorated gingerbread houses. MomSW said that Cameron was "amazing" at that. She said that all the other kids were just trying to glop as many pieces of candy on as they could, but Cameron was doing a very precise job of it and making intricate little patterns with the candies. MomSM gathered everyone around to sing Christmas carols and Chanukah songs. They played a game where they stuck pictures of animals on their backs and went around the room asking people yes/no questions to find out who they were. Greyson would take turns running back and forth between the kitchen and the Christmas tree in the lobby and the giant American flag and the door hanging of Santa and the food table, lol. He did a lot of running. During the carols though, he was either sitting in his seat shredding the song sheets or he would run right up to MomSM and watch her with his face about two inches from her guitar, lol. He was pretty cute and VERY busy. I think we all had a good time. I spent some time talking to a couple of the moms that I wish I knew better. How does one approach that subject? "Hi X! I like you. I know our kids don't really get along, but I wish we could hang out and be girlfriends!" LOL. Maybe not.

So that was Day Two of Super Busy Week. Tomorrow we are touring a wildlife museum. We went last year and had a lot of fun, so I am really looking forward to it. Hey, I think that one or two of those moms I mentioned wanting to get to know better are going too. Maybe I'll try brushing up on my small-talk skills tonight. LOL, is there a website where you can learn that? If only I could just type conversations out and hand them to people. ;) Maybe I could try texting them. TTYL my BFFs. U R GR8.

The Week of Frenzy Begins

Today marks the beginning of our Crazy, Too-Busy Week. Our Crazy Too-Busy Week was going to be the preamble to a Crazy, Too-Busy Vacation followed by a Rushed and Over-Extended Holiday but we wised up and postponed said vacation until after the holidays which will hopefully then become a Peaceful and Relaxing Holiday and Vacation instead.

So anyway, to recap the weekend...

Friday: Favorite Park Day. Not only was it Favorite Park Day, but it was also a birthday celebration for two of our park friends. L4 is now L5 and J4 will soon be J5. Poor Cassia is always the last of her friends to turn that year older. Somehow, she managed to make friends with a bunch of kids about 6 months older than she. Not that anyone minds but that always means that we spend 6+ months enduring, "When am I going to be 5 too?" Anyway, the party was really fun except for one thing... everyone but us brought gifts. Arrrggghhh! Every other time we have celebrated birthdays at the park we have ended up being the only ones who brought gifts, so this time I told the kids to just make cards. Oh boy, did I feel awful. I'm sure no one cares but me - because really, no one ever called it a birthday *party* they said "birthday thing" which from our experience means cupcakes as the day's snack but not presents - but I can't help feeling like a cheapskate. OK, really, I'm over it.

After the party part of the *birthday thing* (no really, I'm over it) was over we all went on a little adventure to go find giant mushrooms. One of the boys had spotted one under a tree and I mentioned to him that I had found a huge patch of them on the trail to the restrooms. (Yes, the restrooms are a bit of a hike from the playground.) Apparently, no one else had ever noticed the little magic grove of mushrooms because there was a lot of Ooohing and Ahhhing. It was quite impressive. The colors were stunning. Too bad I didn't have my camera. Next we went to the Peace Garden and the kids ran around playing tag and ruining everyone else's peace and quiet, lol. Ironic, I thought, but no one seemed to mind. Greyson spent his time climbing all the little fences surrounding the Peace Garden and running over to the adjacent dog park to watch the dogs. Luckily, he didn't try to climb the fence that encloses that. ;)

Saturday: Gymnastics. Greyson had gymnastics again and LOVED it this time, like I knew he would. I warmed him up to it by bringing him over to the foam pit where we stacked giant foam blocks for a while until he felt comfortable. He still cried a bit during the structured circle time part, so we skipped it and went back to stacking blocks. His other favorite activity, besides running around in circles, was rolling around on these little four-wheeled wake board/scooter type things. I'm guessing that next week he will be brave enough to start climbing things.

Sunday: The Nutcracker. Late in the morning we ventured out to see the matinée performance of The Nutcracker. It was put on by Our City Ballet/ Cassia's Ballet School and I must admit that I was pretty impressed with the quality. Not that I've seen a lot of ballets in my time - in fact, this season has brought me to my first two live ones - but the major parts were done very professionally and the kid parts were adorable, if not in sync. I think several (most? all?) of the male parts were performed by dancers from the Oakland and possibly San Francisco Ballets. Anyway, I had a great time. I was transfixed. Cameron and Cassia seemed to really enjoy it too, though Cameron admitted that he missed parts of it because "pictures of other things would just pop up in front of my eyes!" namely plans for his next big video game adventure, lol. Greyson was a little restless but I think he did really well considering that it was a two hour ballet! DH was really kind of over-cautious about it and kept taking him out, but I think he would've been fine just running about a bit in the back row. I mean, it's only the Our Town Ballet, not the Bolshoi or something. But whatever, I'm not going to complain since he took charge so that I could share the experience with Cassia.

I think next year I'll just plan on she and I going alone and leaving the boys at home. I'll give Cameron the option, but I doubt he will. I mean, he's been enjoying the ballets we've seen but I think, given the choice, he would prefer to stay home with Daddy and work on the car or something manly like that, lol. Cassia, on the other hand, could not stop talking about the beautiful music and the beautiful costumes and the beautiful Snow Queen (who happened to be her instructor!). Cameron did love the fight between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King (fabulous scene!) and seeing his friend T8 dancing as the Little Black Sheep. I couldn't get over how small T8 looked on stage. He's so big compared to Cameron - bulky, older, football playerish - but on stage he just looked like a little babe in arms. I can only imagine how his mother must have felt. *sigh* I can't wait for Cassia to be in something... if she wants, of course. LOL. Stage-mother in training, right here. OK, I've been rambling about this way too long. Time to move on. ;)

Today: We started the day out with an impromptu visit from relatives. It was a quick visit but it meant that we couldn't do school until after gymnastics. Gymnastics went great. Smoother than it has in a long time, which was nice. For once, I didn't feel the slightest bit frazzled by the time we left (aka, Greyson wasn't cranky the entire time). Cameron did half a spelling lesson while we were there. Once home we did Phonics (more /âr/ in hair), Grammar (learning our home phone number, which was needed), Math (multiplying by three), and History (Ancient China).

Yes, this starts the third week on Ancient China. Not exactly in time with our original schedule - Ancient China should've taken one week, several weeks ago - but with our new schedule, I think it will be ok. Especially so since I think a lot of chapters are coming up on Moses and the Hebrews and I can't see us doing a lot of extra reading on that. I mean, I'm glad it's there because it's important stuff but I think, at this point, that an introduction to the stories is about all we need. I still haven't figured out how we're working in World Religions yet. There was a blurb about Confucianism and Daoism in our Ancient China book today but I didn't elaborate on anything. I think they may still be too young for more than a vague, "there is a religion/philosophy/school of thought called X and this person was instrumental in it's development or teachings" but I don't know that more than that will be comprehended at this point. Especially since Cameron still thinks that the whole concept of a god is ridiculous.

And that should catch you up in our exciting lives. ;) We are almost halfway through Chamber of Secrets now and that is where I am headed to now. Have a good night everyone. :)

Another rainy day

...so of course I just want to lay around all day again. ;) But we were out of bread, yogurt, and apples and we cannot last more than a day without serious withdrawals from those things so we had to venture out in the rain to the grocery store. The kids were splashing around in the puddles and saying that everything was flooded. I took that to be a teaching moment and started to describe what has been going on in Oregon lately. They were suitably impressed. As soon as we got home, they rushed out into the backyard and started playing Flood. They would paddle their pretend boats around the backyard inspecting the damage and then say, "Look out for the flood" and then run for the back door while holding their breath. It was kind of funny and really cute - I'm not sure if the Oregonians would think so though. (Which reminds me that I should email a few people.)

So aside from that meteorological lesson today, Cameron finished off both the Spelling Time and Spelling Workout lessons for the week - acing both. He also played some more math games on Funschool while I folded laundry and I thought he would protest when I brought out the math book later but he didn't. In fact, he did a Review Exercise and then even though I said we could quit, he wanted to move on to the next section in the book! So I introduced the three times table and he did TWO exercises on that! We also did phonics (words that go from /är/ in car to /âr/ in hair with the addition of a silent e) and Grammar (more action verbs). For Science we read about liquids and gases and whether or not they have definite volumes. We did one "activity" and were about to do another when Cassia suddenly decided to go into their bedroom and get her swimsuit... which, of course, woke Greyson up. He wasn't too thrilled to be awake either but wasn't about to go back to sleep. So that was it for Science. I still have absolutely no idea why she felt the need to go get her swimsuit at that moment. She never even did anything with it except parade it around on her head for about 10 seconds.

We also managed to get another two chapters of Chamber of Secrets in today. I was actually quite surprised because Greyson was screeching and howling so loudly most of the time that I could barely hear myself read. I kept stopping thinking the whole thing was pointless in that situation but Cameron kept begging me to continue. He said he could hear me just fine even though I couldn't even hear myself, lol. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere...

Lazy Day

It must be the weather because all I want to do is curl up on the couch with a blanket and a good book or movie and veg all day. And it was even sunny today and about 55˚F. Can you imagine if I lived somewhere where it snowed or something? LOL, I'd probably never get out of bed.

So while I didn't do that all day, I did start our day with a nice long chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. We read two of them last night. I wonder how the end of the book is going to go. We almost never watch that movie, or at least we watch it less frequently than the others, because Cameron hates the basilisk and even had nightmares about it one time. The books are so much more intense that I may have to limit our reading of it to the daytime hours.

For school we started with a review of the /ôr/ in door words. Cam did really well, after a slow start. Next we did Grammar and learned about action verbs! That's two parts of speech in two weeks and I haven't even skipped anything. I have to say that I'm quite relieved because I was beginning to have doubts about FLL. Next was math and he just did two quick pages of word problems, multiplying by two. For History we read a couple of old Chinese fables, Rikki Tikki Tembo and one about the animals of the Chinese zodiac. We also read a book about what a typical family's life is like in China. The family we read about had nine people - grandparents, their two sons and their families - living in a house the same size as ours. I cannot imagine 9 people living in this house! Cameron finished off his school day on Spelling Time. He finished off this week's work and then started on next week's! Here's the funny thing though - next week's lesson is actually a review so I didn't put any words for it into Spelling Time. The words that are in there are the programs sample lessons which are actually much harder than his current book! Coincidentally though, most of them were words with the /ôr/ in door sound. He ended up doing quite well on them.

And that's about it from here. This week we actually haven't had anywhere to go all week, except for gymnastics on Monday, so I've been taking advantage of it and not going anywhere at all. I do have to bake some banana bread on Friday and deliver it on Saturday for a bake sale on Sunday and then Sunday we are going to see The Nutcracker. But other than that, we are vegging. Next week is going to be super busy. We have something almost every day... no, I take that back, we have something every single day next week and then we are going out of town Sunday. So like I said, I am taking advantage of not having anything to do while I can. And on that note, I am going to go snuggle up on the couch with my kiddos and watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. :)

A Bipartisan Home

I am in shock. We got a phone call this morning. A phone call from... can I even write it down?? A phone call from...

... the Republican Party. My husband has betrayed me. He, who incidentally never registered to vote before this, his thirty-third, year because he didn't want to be called to jury duty, registered as a Republican. I always knew he leaned that way a bit, but to actually register red?? *sigh* I feel like a woman who has suspected for years that she was being cheated on and has finally found the proof. All he could say in his defense was, "Hail to the Chief." *sigh*

Our home has gone bipartisan today in other, less horrifying, ways too. We went with a half traditional-half technological school day. Cameron set the tone this morning with Spelling Time. He finished up last week's Spelling Lesson but then accidentally closed the browser before he got to play his reward game, lol, so I reset his lesson so that he could retake the test and get his game time. He then wanted to go on to this week's lesson but I wanted him to do the first half of his Spelling Workout lesson first as the introduction to the words. He decided that he wanted to do the entire thing instead. OK! And then he went back to Spelling Time and did the first two sections of the week's lesson. He wanted to keep going but I made him stop, especially since he used the hints to help spell all the words even though he had just written them several times in SWO. If you can't retain them five minutes later, I think a longer exposure time is needed!

Next was Phonics and Grammar. Nothing too exciting in either of those except that Phonics went very easily and Grammar was a little touchy since Cameron refused to even try giving an oral narration to the fable that we read. The book suggests that if the child can't remember the story to go over the review questions. Well, he easily got all of those right but still couldn't "remember" the story to give me a narration of it. So I gave him one instead. I didn't want to stress over it. I just wanted to show him how easy it really was. He still wouldn't try though. Oh well.

Next we did Science and started learning the three states of matter. The book is very leading in its explanations, asking rhetorical questions, and Cameron was tending to guess what it was going to say next quite frequently. I was very glad to see him really thinking about what I was saying. Next we did an experiment to determine the volume of an irregular solid. We found the volume of Han Solo and Yoda and a motorcycle. Can't get that kind of education in public school! ;)

For math I let him play math games on the computer. He played Addition Attack and Cannon Math at the Funschool Arcade and kept playing each of them over and over and over until he was finally able to beat all the levels. I had wanted to find a game where he could practice his multiplication by twos but wasn't able to find one before he started getting impatient to play, lol. But it worked out well because those addition games really helped him to solidify those facts. He still has some problems with things that add to more than 10 (i.e. 8 + 5 or 18 + 15, whereas 12 + 16 is ok) but he was really starting to remember more of them by the end. And I'm not surprised, that was like 45 minutes of drill!

And that was our school day today. I've been doing some thinking about our history cycle but I won't bore you with it here. I will bore you with it here though if you are interested. ;)

Update: I just IM'ed with DH and he now claims that he's *not* a Republican, he's just open-minded. Now what exactly does that mean? Why is he evading my questions of his registered political affiliation? It's all very suspicious...

Happy Pretend Birthday to You!

Today is my DH's Pretend Birthday. Tomorrow is his real birthday, but he has to go out of town for work so we are celebrating today. I am making his favorite Curry Chicken Casserole for dinner and blueberry pie for desert. So, to that end, I must blog now when our day is really only half over.

This morning, I had the most wonderful surprise. Cameron and Cassia had found a book of Christmas stories, poems, and carols and I found them laying on the floor with Cameron reading the lyrics to Oh Come All Ye Faithful. My boy is reading. By choice. WooHoo!!!!!! During History he was also reading the history encyclopedia over my shoulder... literally, I was laying on the bed and he was laying on my back reading over my shoulder, lol. It's like he's just finally figured out that the words I'm saying match the words on the page. Yay!!

But Phonics was a chore. He didn't want to do it and so started our session off with some passive resistance. I responded in a manner typical of the dictatorship in which we live and told him to go to his room if he was not going to participate. Suddenly, the R-Changed Vowel Chant was not such a horrible thing to do afterall. Next was Grammar and the pronouns they, them, their, and theirs.

He was on a Math roll today. He did four workbook exercises! Of course, some of them were only one page long but he just kept going and going and going. By the end he was really remembering his two times table and not having to count by twos on his fingers. Actually what he would do was think about it, then check back on one of the previous pages to see if he was right or not. He was trying to do it all slyly, as if he were cheating or something, but I didn't care. I know I can't memorize anything without repeatedly reading and writing it, so why should I expect him to?

He did Spelling next. We're a little behind in Spelling. He hasn't been keeping up on Spelling Time very well. I mean, he does several sections of it several times a week, but he never seems to get around to the test and review until Monday of the next week. This week was even worse. He'll have to do last week's test and review on Tuesday and then we'll start the next SWO lesson on Wednesday.

We finished off the day with reading about the Ancient Chinese Shang Dynasty in our history encyclopedias. Never did get around to those crafts. I think the clay bowl craft won't even be appropriate until the Ming Dynasty anyway, so I'm not sweating that. We really should do that pictograph writing though... But I think we also need to pick up the pace a bit! Most people say you should do one to two chapters of SOTW a week and I think we're averaging one chapter every two weeks! The ancients are going to take two years at this pace! My theory was that we could move slowly since we started early and are pretty much schooling year round, but we started in June and people who started in September or October are starting to catch up to us! But I don't want to rush and get all caught up in that stress of not being "on schedule." I did write a rough schedule last year trying to figure out where we should be when. I wonder where we are in comparison to that - behind I'm sure. Better not to look in that case, lol. I can't hurry too much anyway because only about half of the Chinese library books that I requested are in. Many times those are what really bring a topic home. Many other times they are just drudgery but I'd hate to skip something that might be a winner. Like the one about the man who finally deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics - I never would have thought that they would have been as captivated by that story as they were. So anyway, I guess I'll just remember my Aesop, "Slow and steady wins the race." But I also think I had better get busy requesting our library books for the next topic!

Pretend it's Friday

LOL, slacker me! I forgot to post on Friday and then I meant to do it Saturday but didn't and now I just realized that I better do it now or I will forget what work we did on Friday (and my tracker/planner is about a month behind again!).

So Friday was park day and that means a slightly lighter day. We skipped History and I was actually going to skip Grammar and Phonics but we ended up doing it anyway! Cameron started with copywork: On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree. LOL, he loved it. He has been obsessed with that song, making me sing it over and over until he had gotten it memorized. He saw the page of copywork, gave me a sly look and said, "What does that say?" I said, "What do you think it says?" and he proceeded to read it to me... except he keeps saying "pearrage" instead of partridge. Next was math and the continued work on the twos times table. After math, he asked to do Grammar. Like I said, I was going to skip it but I didn't want to deny the poor child. ;) Then he asked if we were going to do Phonics next and again I couldn't deny him. OK, he didn't really ask to do it but he asked about it so I took that to mean that we should. It all went well.

Then we went to the park where nothing extraordinary happened except that we all ended up leaving by 4:00. That almost never happens! We usually stay until 5:00 but it was cold and windy.

Saturday (and I guess I should be glad that I forgot to blog on Friday or else I probably would forget to write about this) Greyson had his first gymnastics class. It's a free play class for one to three year olds. There were lots of kids there. He was terrified. The poor little guy clung to me and whimpered the entire time. Cassia was pretty nervous her first time too, so I was expecting it, but I was a bit surprised at how long he was scared. He's usually so friendly and outgoing! Everyone always comments on it, so he must be unusually friendly too. But I just sat down on a mat and let him sit in my lap and people watch or climb up into my arms when he needed to. Finally, five minutes before the end of the class, he got brave and decided to stand up. And then he stood on a folded mat without freaking over the coldness of it on his bare feet. And then he jumped. And then he laughed. And then he jumped off and laughed and got back up on it over and over and over again. Motorboat, Motorboat rides on a parachute are the last thing that they do before everyone leaves and it was at this point that Greyson decided that this was fun and took off running and playing. He was bummed (and so was I) to have to leave just when he was starting to have fun, but hopefully next week he will warm up to it a little faster.

In other Greyson news, he fell off of a chair last night and bonked his eye on the table. It's a wooden table with rounded edges, but somehow he managed to cut his eyelid and we had to take him in to get it glued. Here's a picture or two of his shiner. I couldn't get him to turn his head the right way though.



And here's a picture of Cassia just because she wanted to have her picture taken too. ;)

Time Warp Thursday

Today was the strangest day. I woke up with a sudden reason for my slothlike nature of the last couple days - head cold/flu - but then, as soon as I had some coffee, I suddenly felt better and with more energy than I've had since before Thanksgiving. The whole day was like that. I was running slow and late and then suddenly I was done with time to spare!

Slow start to the morning. I didn't even get around to reading my blog list because I was afraid we were going to be late for ballet. I rush everyone out the door in a huff and get there with plenty of time to spare. Instead of torturing the boys with the usual waiting room ordeal, I decided to take them to a nearby park for a few minutes. My cell phone died (which reminds me... ok, it's charging) so I couldn't call the family that we were going to meet up with there and I had no idea of what time it was. I ended up just playing it by ear and asking random strangers for the time. I was afraid we'd be rushed, but we had tons of time to play. Grey had a few little hissy fits because I wouldn't push him on the swing the entire time, lol, but he ended up having fun too. We got back to the ballet studio in plenty of time so I bought our tickets for The Nutcracker and chatted up a couple of the moms. MomP, the other homeschool mom there, told me that MomK had told her that I had a great blog. LOL. I hate when that happens. I get so embarrassed. But she kept asking me how I managed to keep up with that and homeschool three kids. I said that I simply skip the housework. ;)

She made me feel really good though because I've always admired the way that she can homeschool with twins. She's one of those super active types too - tons of classes and field trips and lessons and she's one of the few workbooky homeschoolers around here. I don't know how she does it all and she's always so calm too - rushed, but calm. But anyway, she kept asking me how I do it! Stuff like, "Do you ever get to sleep?" HA! "Don't you ever get any time alone?" and "You don't even have a babysitter?" I guess she has a lot of extended family help with the twins. That outsider's perspective is a nice thing once in a while. I guess I do handle things better than I feel like I do.

Well, that was tangential! Back to the mundane... we decided to stop off at Trader Joe's on the way home and no one acted like a crazy person!! First time ever. ;) Then we came home for lunch and I spelled it all out - I'm going to put away the groceries, make lunch, and then we are all going to pitch in and clean. (Two days of internet gluttony does bad things to a house.) I told them if they really wanted to be nice that they could get started on picking up their toys while I put away the groceries and made lunch. They promptly went outside to play. So we had lunch and then I got started on laundry. They played. To their credit, when I did specifically ask them to do things (like put away their laundry from several days ago) they did it without hesitation. I just got involved with the most immediate tasks (i.e. folding that laundry from several days ago and sorting and washing the new mountain that had built up) that I didn't get on them to do anything else. I also spritzed up both bathrooms pretty quickly so that at least something would look cleaner. Instant gratification does a lot for motivation levels. I was really getting into this cleaning high (and not from the fumes, lol, I use natural non-toxic cleaners, thank you very much!) but I suddenly realized that if we were going to get any schoolwork done today that we had better get started quickly. It had crossed my mind to just skip it, but it really has to be possible to do both schoolwork and housework in the same day. It rarely happens for me, but I figured it had to be possible.

So I rallied the troops and led Cameron through the most fabulously effortless Phonics lesson ever. He still doesn't really like to read, but by gum he can do it! Next was Grammar where we went over he, she, him, her, it, his, hers, and its. Then we did math where Cameron has now embarked on the fabulous journey of memorizing his multiplication tables. I really played it up by stressing how this is the secret to doing it "super-quick like me!" Cassia decided to show off her new talent of counting by tens to one hundred and I said, "Congratulations! You know your ten times table!" Both she and Cameron looked at me in awe, lol. I haven't stressed the memorization of addition facts much. I figure that will come with use, but with multiplication there's just no other way. Now if only I can remember to drill him on them! We finished up with Science and did the last four workbook pages for Chapter One. Cameron has really impressed me with his understanding of this topic. He may forget the terminology sometimes, but he gets the concept. He answered all of the questions right without much help from me at all - and this is a fourth grade book! Cassia helped him out once too, lol. He just couldn't wrap his head around the right word and she came up with it for him. I didn't have him do any writing today because he had spent a good portion of the morning copying a Pokemon card to his own drawing, words and all. Copywork is copywork! If he wants to use a Pokemon card that's fine with me!

So after starting out the session feeling like it was way too late and going to be a complete nightmare, it went totally smoothly and we were done with everything before 4:00. I even managed to get some chicken marinating for dinner and then sat down with the kids to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Even that, I thought was going to run long but it finished just as dinner was ready. Time was just really on my side today. Ironic too that that is the Harry Potter with the Time Turner. If only I had one of those...

But today I don't need one. The wash is done. The dishes are dishwashing. The bathrooms are clean. My blog is written and now I can go watch DOOL guilt free. I might even straighten up the living room and dining room while I watch.

Addiction of the worst kind

I don't know what has hit me, but I have become seriously addicted to wasting time online. What the heck? I have so much to do. I even have tons to do on the computer, but I have spent all day poking around at various things and being absolutely unproductive.

I did manage to get a full day of schooling in but we didn't get started until after 11:00! That's usually the sign of an uncooperative day, but luckily it wasn't at all. We started with Grammar and learned some more pronouns. The book is having them memorize them all. So far, we've learned me, my, mine, you, your, and yours. Those were also the copywork for the day. I've backed off of my own copywork since there are some written into the Grammar lessons but I'm finding that he doesn't like them as much. Writing a couple lines of poetry a day is more fun than writing a list of pronouns. Mostly though, I've just been lazy and haven't written any up, lol. Time to start doing that again.

Next we did Spelling. He did really good with the jumbled letter words, but not so good picking out the words that belonged in a story. As in "Bear is carrying a big box to the post office. 'I hope I do not ____ it,' Bear says," and he wanted to put the word "got" in the blank. I hope I do not got it? (The word was "drop" if you were curious.) He also had a bit of a hard time with the opposites. He said the opposite of "on" was "no." LOL, logical in its own way, I suppose. But then we just started naming some opposites and I threw "on" in there and he got it right away. It was connecting the word on the page with a real thing that was the problem. That comes with reading experience, I assume.

Math was next and that was a review exercise before we move on to actually memorizing times tables. :O He did pretty good with it and with figuring out which operation to use on the word problems.

I decided to skip Phonics today. It was a really long lesson and I just didn't feel like it, lol. It's good to be the king.

We finished up with History and read the final story on Ancient Chinese Farmers in chapter 10 of SOTW. The kids did their coloring pages and maps with their typical enthusiasm. Cameron colored the farmer, his son, and their ox all black. He said it was because they worked in the mud all day, lol. Cassia just drew mud at their feet which looked really cute. Our books on China have not come in to the library yet. Hopefully they will soon! I have some Chinese crafts that we can work on too... if I want to deal with the mess, lol. I'm hoping we can do them on Friday. I just have to make sure we get started with school early enough so that we have time for the Chinese crafts before it's time to go to the park. One of them, though, is painting Chinese pictograms. That might actually be a fun thing to take to the park and share with our friends.

The rest of the day, I spent wasting time online. *sigh* I did get a big pot of bean soup made, which no one but Greyson and me liked. Hopefully, after the monkeys go to bed I will find the motivation to do one of the million things that I should be doing rather than wasting time online or watching DOOL. Anyone care to place bets?

great day

We had a great day of school. Cameron did Phonics and Grammar (pronouns finally!), and Math (doing great with division), and Science, and then tons of extra-curricular (and is anything really EC in homeschool?) dot-to-dots, both his own and some super complicated book ones. I'd love to blog more fully about it, but I've wasted my entire evening reading a stupid Harry Potter fan site and now it is too late. Well, honestly, it's not that late but my Aunt has gotten me hooked (for the bazillionth time) on Days of Our Lives so I need to watch a couple TiVo'ed episodes before bed. ;)

Ahhh, where has the intellect gone? Not here, apparently. You now see why I so vehemently avoid discussions of "twaddle" (as if! Do you see Harry Potter on that list? Me either! Do you see any other book that I have mentioned my children liking? Me either! I like "twaddle-free" in theory, but not in my house. I have to live here!!).

Tomorrow, I promise, lots of ramble. ;)

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Something in the Air

We had a lovely Thanksgiving, as usual. So lovely, in fact, that no one wanted to get back to work today! I told Cameron that if he didn't shape up, stop complaining, and do his work then we would just have to bring our schoolwork with us the next time we went on vacation and not take ANY days off. Not surprisingly, he suddenly wanted to do his work. ;)

So we started with Spelling Workout. And then Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading. For the first time in I can't remember how long, we actually got through a two page phonics lesson in one day. We generally have to break them up into two days but Cam's doing pretty good with the "/ar/ as in car" words. Next was First Language Lessons and we reviewed Thirty Days Hath September, and all the different types of nouns. We finally get to move on to pronouns next time. Yeah! All in all, Grammar went ok, but C&C were just crazy. They were bouncing all over and sitting on their heads and climbing on top of me... ugh. Next was Singapore Math and the introduction to division! This went fabulously. You could really see the wheels turning in Cameron's head as he worked over this never-before-thought-of concept. He not only did both of the workbook exercises in the first section, we also moved on to the second section and he did the two workbook exercises for that too! Next we moved on to Story of the World for History and went back to Crazyland. I finally had to separate them and make Cassia sit in my bedroom, on the bed, while we read. She was just psycho-crazy. We read the first two stories the chapter on Ancient China and learned how silk was discovered (at least the story of how silk was discovered) and saw some examples of Chinese pictograms. Very interesting stuff, once Cameron had settled down to actually listen to it. Lastly, Cam sat down to Spelling Time and I went into my bedroom to do phonics with Cassia. She was very sad that she missed the stories about China and spontaneously promised to never act like that again. We'll see, lol. But she was very attentive and cooperative for Phonics however and learned the line for the letter J in The Consonant Rhyme.

And then they played. And then we went to gymnastics and back, once again, to Crazytown. I spent all of Cassia's class telling Cameron to stop running and jumping and to calm down. Oh. My. God. I swear, if I didn't know better, I'd have thought that he had pure sugar for breakfast! And lunch! There is a strict "no running, no jumping, no horseplay" rule in the mezzanine area because it is located directly over the offices and I thought for sure that we were going to get into BIG trouble. Luckily we didn't, this time. Cassia earned three of five stars in her class. I'm not sure if that will earn her a new star on her name tag or not.

Cassia was pretty good during Cameron's class - she has a little posse of three and four year olds that she bosses around directs and they always have a good time - but Greyson was miserable. I'm not entirely sure what was wrong, aside from the fact that I am a Mean and Evil Mommy, but he cried almost the entire hour. Cried in the play area. Cried in my arms. Cried on the floor. Wahhhhh. Probably just the usual tired and teething thing, but sheesh it really got old. Luckily the other moms there had total sympathy for me and only laughed instead of giving me that "can't you do something about that" look. Thankfully he is asleep now. Cameron earned five stars today and received his ribbon for passing Level One. He's also halfway through his stars on Level Two and will probably get that ribbon next time (8 weeks from now).

And that was our crazy day today in Crazytown. No more breaks for us! I'm going to have to keep a strict schedule for a few weeks to keep everyone in line. But then we'll be going off for our pre-Christmas vacation and that will throw us all into turmoil again. The joy of the season I suppose. ;)

Short school week

Really short. As in one day, lol. And I think it's a half-day too.

We're leaving to go out of town tomorrow so there's not much point in doing anything major. I know we won't actually do any bookwork while we're at our relatives' house so I'm not even going to bring anything. I printed out a couple of Thanksgiving activity books from Enchanted Learning that the kids did this morning. Right now, they're eating lunch and watching Bindi the Jungle Girl. Later they have gymnastics and at some point today I'm going to read them The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh. I picked up this copyright 1954 book at the library store last year for $1 or less and I was quite impressed with it. Shortly before reading it to the kids for the first time, DH and I had just watched Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower and were shocked with how accurately this 1954 children's book told the story. I mean, I thought there was supposed to be some big secret cover-up? The children of the 50's knew the real story. How did the facts get distorted and forgotten so quickly? We've also gotten the mis-impression that everything was sugar-coated in the 50's. Apparently that's not true either. What does seem to be true is that nowadays, we take fact and turn it into scandal. And that is the real big scandalous cover-up.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I probably won't blog again until next week.

Just another quickie for the day...

A friend at Favorite Park Day today was asking me if I let "just anyone" read my blog and if people comment. LOL. I spent the next 10 minutes gushing about all my cyber friends and especially those of you that I've had the privilege to meet in real life. Then she asked me how she could start one of her own. I told her about blogspot with the caveat that she instantly send me the url as soon as it was live.

It kind of reminds me of how my DH never drank until he met me... I'm such a corrupter. ;)

The Spirit of Thanksgiving

Just read this post on my morning blog perusal and had to share. Reason #437 why I homeschool.

Can we just call it Thanksgiving already?

Not that we had a bad day and didn't get anything done... we did! But with Veteran's Day on Monday, 4-H Tuesday and today, and then Favorite Park Day tomorrow, I'm thinking that the whole week is going to be a wash. And then I remember that next week is Thanksgiving and we'll be going out of town on Tuesday, so next week will be utterly pointless too! Oh well, I guess with what we got done this week added to next Monday, we can call that "a week." Cause you know it matters. *snort*

So today started with ballet. Cassia is such a ballerina. It's all she thinks/does lately. Her library movie yesterday was an Angelina Ballerina one. The week before it was The Nutcracker. (Don't let me forget to buy our Nutcracker tickets!) She dances all the time and it's always on tippy-toe and with arms in perfect "beach ball." She says she really needs to practice her plie´s in 1st position but she does them ok in 2nd position. Today she was getting frustrated because she can only do a single spin and not a double. Sheesh! Prima Ballerina in the making! But, oh, is she adorable. Cameron still dances like a madman at home but is very stoic when we are waiting for her. (Though I did see him eyeing the fancy costumes in the dressing room, lol.) I had him bring his math with him today and that went really well. He was a tad disgruntled about it, but then he saw that the (homeschooled) older brother of the twins in Cassia's class had to bring his Spanish work today, lol. He usually doesn't come because he has a charter school "enrichment" class at that time, but they didn't have class today. So that was the extent of the bookwork.

Next we came home and got our stuff ready for our 4-H cooking project and then rushed right out the door again. We made Broccoli-Cheese quiche and homemade Lemon-Lime Soda. Yum. Everyone is really loving this project and I couldn't be more thrilled. We've even somehow turned it into a combo cooking/singing project! One of the moms - who happens to be a friend from Favorite Park Day - has been really good about organizing games and such during the down time while we are waiting for things to cook. Well with quiche, even with making the soda pop while we were waiting, there was so much downtime that the games of Simon Says that worked so well last month just starting getting unruly. So MomS started an impromptu circle time and started singing campfire songs with them. I was putzing away prepping things in the adjoining kitchen singing my heart out too, lol. Anyway, it went so well that she said that next month she'll bring her guitar. So now the official project name is Cooking & Singing for Primaries. ;)

After that, several of us went out for ice cream. I was holding Greyson and ordering a chocolate shake and he parroted "chocolate shake!" LOL, he knows what the words worth saying are! We didn't get home until about 5:00 or 5:30. Greyson fell asleep on the way home and stayed asleep until I woke him at 8:30! Cameron and I played Star Wars Monopoly - I won - and Cassia watched Angelina Ballerina. I finally realized at about 8:00 that it was almost bedtime and we hadn't had any dinner, lol. In my defense, we had eaten quiche at 4:00 and then ice cream after that, so really, we had supper. But I made us some English muffin pizzas and called that a meal. ;) And then it was off to bed for the big kids while Greyson and I folded laundry and blogged. Now it is almost 10:15 and I'm going to see if I can coax him back to bed. He's been up almost two hours, that should be plenty. Hopefully it will mean he'll sleep late too. (In case you're keeping track, he was pretty nice to me last night and slept through until 5.)

And that was school (?) for the day. Oh, I forgot, we read an ancient India folk tale for a bedtime story last night. I'll count that as today's schoolwork too. Cause, like I said, I've gotta make sure we get our week's worth of stuff in. *snort*

Dichotomous Day

Wow, it has been a day of extremes. First off, Mr. Annoying Baby went back to his usual sleep patterns *yawn* so that put me in a tad more emotional place than usual right off the bat. Also, somebody turned Cassia's volume up to 11 today and forgot to turn it back down. So she's waking me up at 7:00 this morning with her high frequency, high volume, fake baby voice, "Hiiiii Gweyson!!!! Does baby want to be tickle-wickled??" and he doesn't, so he's screaming and she's not taking no for an answer. (Did I mention that I had been up until midnight reading and then Grey woke up at 3:30am and then every hour or two after that?) Ugh. So I finally shoo them off hoping to get at least a few more minutes of shut eye. Five minutes later, I hear the phone going berserk because Greyson has both learned how to drag the dining room chairs around the house and how to push the pager button on the phone. I get up to deal with that only to hear more screaming from the bedroom. This time it's Cameron screaming because Cassia crawled into bed with him after I kicked her out. So I start yelling at her to get out of his bed and also for leaving Greyson on his own in the other room (not that him being with a 4-yr old is much better, but the big kids can usually help him to avoid major disaster).

I then give up hope for finding a better start to the morning and just go make coffee. I finally convince everyone to do something calm (and quiet) like watching a really cool version of The Nutcracker that we had gotten from the library. We all ended up really enjoying that. Cameron and Cassia were doing ballet all over the living room, including lifts, lol. They were too cute. Cameron has really taken a liking to ballet but every time I suggest that he try out lessons, he says that he only does ballet at home. Silly boy. We all had a really good time with that and when it was over I went to go hop in the shower while they watched the behind the scenes stuff. I get out of the shower to the sound of very large things going boom Boom BOOM. Very large, 3-1/2 to 4-ft tall things weighing between 40 and 55 lbs. Laughing, blondish things. All I know is that all the cushions were off the couch, the ottoman was in the middle of the room, and I heard Cassia excitedly exclaim, "I just did a BACK flip!!" Can I go back to bed yet? And now I'll fast forward through the part where no one would pick up the huge pile of Pokemon cards that had been strewn on the dining room table since last night, how I took them away forEVER (maybe), and the what-seemed-to-be hours of crying that ensued after that. Oh. My. God. Seriously... kill me now.

And then I put Greyson in bed for a nap and that cut down on the general chaos, considerably. And then we did schoolwork which went fabulously! First Cameron finished off the SWO workbook lesson of the week and then went on to do two sections on Spelling Time. Meanwhile, Cassia and I went and lay on my bed while she learned another verse of The Consonant Rhyme: letter G. It was so cute. At one point, when she had gotten all the short vowel sounds right, she said, "I am so good at this." LOL. Cameron joined us halfway through that and was enjoying remembering that he also had that poem memorized. Then we moved on to his Phonics lesson and learned a little chant to remember all the different r-changed vowels. There was lots of laughing and fun. In Phonics!! Next was Grammar and we reviewed the Thirty Days Has September poem, learned about "idea" nouns, did some copywork, and then underlined all the nouns in those sentences. Math was next with a quick little workbook exercise on simple multiplication (aka counting equal groups of things and rewriting it as a multiplication problem). And then we finally finished things off in my bed again, reading our history encyclopedia entries on ancient civilizations along the Indus River. I couldn't have asked for a better school day.

Greyson woke up and they all played for a little while. I don't even remember what they were doing, but I don't remember it annoying me much, lol. Oh no, I remember now! Cameron decided that he wanted to play his violin so he played while Cassia danced in the background and DH watched via webcam. Too cute. So since everyone was in a good mood we headed off to the library to return our movies and pick up some Ancient Indian folk tales. They were fabulously behaved in the library. The big kids spent most of their time playing Eye Spy on the library computer and Greyson kept going back and forth between the bathrooms (he's so thrilled that he's strong enough to push open the doors now) and the kid's library catalog computer. He'd just pull up a chair, type a bit on the keyboard (without even banging it!), grab the pencil, try to stick it in the mouse, and then run to the bathroom when I would take it away. LOL. Nut-job kid. ;) The librarian kept eyeing him, especially when I was looking up books on another computer, leaving him "alone." At one point she walked over to him on the pretense that he was about to fall (he wasn't even close) saying "whose baby is this" and then when I spoke up before she even finished her sentence because I hadn't actually taken my eyes off of him she walked away giving me That Look. I refused to feel guilty though because, like I said, I hadn't really taken my eyes off of him and he was behaving like an angel. I proved that by trying to carry him around instead and he just screamed and screamed. So I let him go back to his computer where he was happy as a clam. She stopped giving me That Look after that, lol.

Then we continued our perfect little outing by going to the grocery store. Wait, did I say perfect? Perfectly horrific!! Again... Oh. My. God. Kill me now. Not listening at all. Volume on 11. Spinning in circles all over the place. Cassia smashing her face into a display, probably giving herself a black eye, mere seconds after I told her for the thirtieth time to turn around and walk frontwards before she hurt herself or somebody else. Greyson just randomly reaching out of the cart and pulling things off the shelves onto the floor - thankfully nothing breakable. Greyson also reaching into the basket of the cart and opening every box and trying his very best to break all the eggs. I'm sure there was smoke coming out of my ears by the time we left. The worst part is that this horrible behavior had me so distracted that I wasn't really paying attention to prices and I was buying food for our 4-H project tomorrow. So now, the project which I promised would only have a $2 - $3 material fee is going to have a $5 - $6 one, or I'm going to lose a bunch of money. Grrrr.

So I came straight home to a nice pot of caffeine-free mint tea and my blog to vent while the wild monkeys run around in the backyard. And I feel much better now. Thank you for the free therapy.

Time flies!

I can neither believe how quickly today has flown by nor how much we have gotten done! We had a 4-H meeting scheduled for this afternoon so I approached the day wanting to get things done early. I frequently have that plan, but rarely the follow through, lol. Today, however, Greyson actually slept through the night, came to bed for his morning milk at 7:00 am and then went back to sleep until 8:30!!! I think this is mixed good and bad news. The good news is that his canines have finally broken through - I'm pretty sure that's why he slept all night I'm hoping that means a happier baby all-around. The bad news is that he has yet another cold and that's probably why he slept in. That's ok though. It's much easier for me to have sympathy for a cold than for teething. I always forget about teething until those little white fangs burst through and then I notice how red and inflamed those poor gums are and how much it must hurt. So he gets sympathy after the fact. ;)

Anyway, I woke up well rested and was showered, dressed, and ready for the day by 8:00 am. That's about three hours earlier than usual, lol. When I don't sleep well (or get woken up every couple hours), it takes me forever to get going. Even if I'm up at 7, I'm not really awake until about 10. So we did Spelling at about 8:20, followed by Phonics (in which we finally are doing r-changed vowels. I really feel it has been a disadvantage to Cameron's reading that they have been ignored for so long. When words like "car" don't make phonetic sense, it really messes with your confidence and slows things up.), Grammar, and Math. We started a new poem in Grammar, Thirty Days Hath September, and though I've tried to teach this one before I think it might actually stick this time. It's so funny, when the Grammar Book says repeat something until you learn it, they do. I say that and they ignore me. Hmph. I wonder if I should tell them that tomorrow the Grammar Book says they need to clean their room. ;)

We finished off our day with Science where we read a little more of the first chapter of MPH Science 4A, did Activity 2, and then read a couple of library books. And can I just say that I love this version because they tell you exactly when in the text that each activity is relevant. I totally had to guess in the last book - not that it was hard but I would often forget to do them altogether. I also just realized that the workbook exercises are meant to be done as a while after the entire chapter is over. I had been trying to work them in throughout and then would get frustrated when there were things that hadn't been covered yet. Now I know. I guess it helps if you actually read the introductions, lol. Anyway, the chapter is on mass and volume and those being requirements of matter. The whole Matter thing is a little abstract for them, I think, but it's nice that the mass and volume stuff has come right after we finished the mass and distance stuff in math.

So we finished all of that and lunch by 11:30. It was really nice to have so much extra time in the day to just do what we wanted without the guilt of what we should be doing. One of the things that I found time to do (besides making my own fruit & cereal bars because I don't feel like going to the store to buy any, lol) was to read the premiere issue of a new magazine. It's called Secular Homeschooling and I very highly recommend it. I know many (most?) of my readers are not homeschooling secularly, but it's not an anti-religion publication. It's just anti the assumption that one must be a Christian to homeschool. And it's anti the assumption that a Christian who is homeschooling is doing so for religious reasons. There was something in the editorial about why she felt this magazine was needed and she said that she just wanted to be able to read an article about homeschooling and know that she wasn't going to be blind-sided halfway through by a "blatant assumption on the part of the writer that the reader, being a homeschooler, is naturally a Christian." That totally sums it up and is, actually, a big relief in my reading. I do sometimes have to brace myself when I read homeschool articles and blogs, knowing that I am the outcast. The outsider among outsiders. But of course, I've heard many conservative Christians say that's how they feel everyday, but you know... it's just nice to feel comfortable without having to be apologetic about it. Which is not how I feel writing about this, in case you couldn't tell, lol. Sorry! ;) Anyway, there are some sample articles here, in case you are interested. I feel very fortunate that I caught wind of this publication when it was just in the planning stages and was able to get a charter subscription. They've already sold out of the premiere issue and are doing a reprint.

OK, I must get dinner started. Happy Homeschooling to all. :)

Freaky Friday? Nah, Wubbulous Friday!

What a great day we had today! The official compartmentalization of our unschoolish day is as follows: Fine Arts, Music, Literature, Economics, Architecture, Math, Science, and Physical Education.

We started the day with a play called Suessical! It was so much fun. The kids loved it. The adults loved it. The babies loved it (and eating crackers and crawling all over the empty seats in the theater). I was watching Cameron's face and at first, he looked a little skeptical. Kind of like he was thinking, what the heck is this and why are they singing? but he really got into it and thought The Cat in the Hat, especially, was hilarious. As soon as it was over, they asked when we could come see another one.

We were watching a performance for school kids and our homeschool group had purchased a block of tickets. There were four other families in our group and I found it quite nice that we knew them all!! I have a theory about our group. There seem to be "do-ers" and "not do-ers" and all the "do-ers" seem to go do the same things! When we first started participating in stuff, I noticed that it was always the same core group of about 5 or so families (out of the approximately 200 in our hs group) that were always at these events. We've eventually gotten to know them through field trips and 4-H and park days and I've realized that that core group of "do-ers" is probably about 10 or 15 families... but I just think it's funny that those of us who do stuff, do everything! LOL. Or maybe I've just found the core group of people with interests similar to our own. I actually did see a couple other families that I knew from 4-H who were there with the local charter school, so maybe there's another group of "do-ers" who just "do" with the school. But anyway, that was Fine Arts, Music, and Literature. I guess it was Social Studies too. ;)

Next we went to our favorite park day and stopped for sandwiches at a local deli along the way (Economics). Park was the usual fabulous time with fun, friends, baseball, Polly Pockets, and the sand box. The sand box is always popular but today it got some special attention. I'm not sure how it started, but check out this creation.



Here are the proud builders (Actually this is only the second shift. First shift of architects had to leave early):


And one more shot for good measure:


The pictures don't really do it justice, but it was the coolest sand castle ever. They worked on it for hours. Some kids, like Cassia and B6, worked the entire time. Others, like Cameron and J4, would go off to play baseball or hide-and-seek for a while and then come back to it. They worked together. They worked separately. There were wooden bridges, a multitude of tunnels and spired towers. They captured dragons in the moat and protected the castle from dangerous volcanoes that erupted (and babies that loomed) just outside the castle walls. It was truly phenomenal. So that was Architecture, Math, Science, P.E., Interpersonal Relations, History, etc., etc., etc. (And speaking of Social Studies, notice the kid on the bike in the background. He wasn't with us, but he stood there for close to an hour just watching. He never said a word and didn't want to join in. He just watched and watched and watched until his mom said it was time to go.)

It was a good day at the park and a very good day for Shadowlight Academy. :)