Catch up

Don't you just hate when you're typing up a blog entry and the baby accidentally restarts the computer and you lose the entire thing??? Me too. He's lucky he's cute.

So, where was I? Oh yes, Maria, so sorry to keep you in suspense. I hate when you keep checking and rechecking and rechecking a friend's blog and keep finding the same old boring page. So here's a new boring page for you all. (If I can keep the little monster away from the power cord.)

Thursday was gymnastics. It was Bring-a-Friend Day in Cassia's class and she brought a friend named (drumroll please) Cassia! I just thought it was going to be the funniest joke ever to play on her coaches. I mean, who would've known that there were two Cassias in the world much less that they would be friends? But apparently, I was the only one so amused by that fact. None of her coaches even mentioned it. They were VERY cute together though. They looked like little twins because by some twist of girly-girl fate, they both happened to wear the exact same shade of concord grape leotard and lilac sweat pants.

Friday was Cameron's LEGO Engineering Project in 4-H. First they built towers and tried to see who could build one the highest. One boy built one almost as tall as he was! They learned a bit about stability and structural integrity as their towers came crashing to the floor. Next they built these little trolley type racers that sped along a string on a pulley wheel. They built them and tested them and rebuilt them and tested them and rebuilt them again and tested them again and again. Finally they were ready to race and I am proud to say that Cameron's racer won every heat except for the last one against Project Leader Dad. Of course, this is probably because he used the same design for his racer that Project Leader Dad used, but there's no sense in reinventing the wheel, right? A good student follows the lead of his teacher.

Cameron had such a good time building those racers that Saturday I went out and bought him a Klutz LEGO set of his own. He and Cassia spent all weekend building racers of different sorts and racing them on the laundry line. They learned about balance and center of gravity and friction and drag and all sorts of things! It was very educational fun.

Monday, DH had the day off from work so we went on a hike in the Armstrong Redwoods. We had a great hike and everyone was cheerful and pleasant to be around. A perfect day out. Cassia and Greyson both fell asleep on the way home and as I was laying on the couch contemplating my eyelids, Cameron brings over his schoolbooks and wants to work. *YAWN* We revised our "no video games unless you do schoolwork" to "free video games on the weekends if you do school every day during the week," so he was eager to not miss a day. We did a couple workbook pages in science on choosing the right material for the right job. He really enjoyed that one. Next he did Lesson 3 in Spelling Workout, matching pictures with the same first sounds. Finally he finished off a math exercise that we started a week ago but left half done in favor of some much needed drill work. The drill work apparently helped a lot because he finished the page with ease.

Tuesday, we did school nice and early. It is easier to get him started now that he has the expectation that we are going to do it every day. We did a lesson in phonics on "ea," "ei," and "ey" as long /a/. This was the last lesson in the long /a/ sound, except for one final review game and I think Cameron will be happy to move on to long /e/. Actually, he won't be happy until we are done with phonics, lol. He reads really well now. He just doesn't want to. Too bad! ;) At the end of the lesson was an optional activity where he got to illustrate and label the paragraph that he had read in the lesson. He really got into that. It's nice that even though he says he doesn't like phonics, he does still like the games and activities. He just doesn't like the dryness of the regular lessons, I guess. Next he did a math exercise on subtraction from 10s... 20-7, 30-4, etc. This was where all that practice playing Pyramid really helped! All I had to do was say, "Think about 10 - 7 first. What does 7 pair with to make 10?" and he could do the problem right every time.

While Cameron and I were working on that, I sat Cassia down in front of Starfall. This was her first time to this site and she was enthralled. She spent probably an hour or an hour and a half just going over all the letter sounds. Of course Cameron was very distracted by it too and we took frequent breaks so that he could watch what she was doing, but I didn't mind. If only I could get him that interested in reading a book. Or maybe just reading the computer? I do most of my reading on the computer so maybe he just needs his own computer to motivate him to want to read. Hmmm.

Anyway, that's my big, long-awaited update. I will try to be a little more on the ball so that I don't have these huge novels as entries all the time. LOL, who am I kidding? I still have novels when I update everyday, they're just more detailed!