Another lazy day

Another day of "nothing to do" because the kids are still too sick for me to risk exposing them to the world - or the world to them. I really need to get to the store and we have things on Wednesday and Thursday that we can't get out of, so I hope that there are some miraculous recoveries by tomorrow.

Cameron started the day with Spelling Time but only did the first lesson. I don't blame him since there are thirty words on the review lesson! I'll ask him if he wants to work on it again later tonight and then again tomorrow to see if we can get him on a lesson-a-day pace with it.

Next was Phonics and since there was only three words and two sentences to read, lol, it went extraordinarily smoothly. Grammar was a narration of the fable, The Lion and the Mouse, which you can see by clicking "Narrations" to the right. Math was the final exercise in this section before the first review and before we move on to measurement. I'm definitely going to add in at least one of the extra practice pages. He is rushing through the problems and making lots of careless mistakes in borrowing and carrying... or maybe that means it is time to move on? LOL, I hate that. You get it set in your head what is "right" and then someone else offers another suggestion, which also makes sense, and then you are forever going back and forth trying to decide what to do. Thanks a lot, Cathy. :P OK, final decision: I will have him do the Review section and if he struggles with the carrying and borrowing in that, where it is gradually led up to, I will take that as a sign that the concept needs work and do the Practice pages. If, however, the change of topics and gradual build up eases him into the more complex problems and he does not struggle then I will assume that he knows the concept and is just worn down by the repetition, in which case we will move on. OK, don't let me change my mind again. ;)

Science today was LEGO science. We did the Lever set and he built examples of the three different degrees of levers and then some complex, extending, grabbing pincers. Pretty cool stuff but Cam wasn't really on his game today. He's still recovering from his cold, I think (though he's not really acting sick), because he kept making mistakes and then getting very frustrated by them. Much more so than usual. Anyway, he only did one of the two building cards and we decided to save the other one for Thursday.

I finished off by reading two more Middle Eastern folk tales. They claimed that they didn't want to listen, but again I found them gathered around me hanging on my every word. We read The Queen of the Serpents from Deborah Nourse Lattimore's Arabian Nights and then read Eric A. Kimmel's retelling of The Three Princes. Both were very good. My plan is to read our last two fables tomorrow and then move on to Babylon and Assyria next week.

Now it's cleaning time. Somehow, there are LEGOs all over the floor.

Phonics Mania

We started the day today with Friday's Spelling test. Yes, I know it's Monday. The good news is that he got 100%. Yeah!! Next I had him do the first two pages in the next lesson, which happened to be a review of the first twelve lessons - most of which we did last year. It was easy work and should be fun reviewing all those words in Spelling Time. I'm going to let their Friday test suffice for review weeks.

Next came Phonics. That went surprisingly well until except that he couldn't seem to remember that the "gh" in most words is silent. Words like "through" were being pronounced "trug" but at least he wasn't complaining about doing it.

Math was two pages of subtraction where you need to borrow from the hundred's place, as in 400 - 37. That went really well. We did the textbook problems on slate boards and Cameron thought that was super fun. Greyson thought the chalk tasted good. :P While Cameron did that, Cassia did the pages for the letter "l" in Go For the Code.

We followed that up with Grammar. The lesson was entitled "Picture Narration" though we didn't really do a narration. We just looked at the picture and talked about the people in it. Cassia was much more interested in the exercise than Cameron was. She had a good time making up a whole complex story to go with the scene. Cameron was happy to let her do all the talking. I was happy to too because she was having fun and I didn't really see the point in the exercise. But maybe I'm just dense. ;)

Finally we got to History and I finally got to the library this weekend, paid my fine, and picked up a couple books on Sumeria and some ancient Arabian folk tales. We read You Wouldn't Want to Be a Sumerian Slave! and Aladdin from Arabian Nights: Three Tales. The book about Sumerian slaves was interesting (to me) but didn't really hold anyone's attention, except for the two pages on the bloody war, of course. Aladdin was another story though. They were both hanging on every word and afterward we watched Disney's Aladdin to compare. We decided that we like them both, lol.

Next Cassia brought me some Bob books and said that she wanted to read them. I suggested that maybe we should work on some more phonics first and so we did another lesson in OPGTR - the letter "b." After that she went and got the Bob Books again, she was determined! She "read" the first two books, but by the third it was obvious that she just had them memorized from the last time she tried to read them, lol. She demanded that we finish all the red ones though so I fed her the words for numbers three and four. After we finished all the easiest red books, she went and got her ETC primer again and moved on to the letter "g." That girl was motivated today!! Anyway, I'm going to wrap this up now, however ineloquently, because blogger has a scheduled outage in 3 minutes and I must save before then...

Surprised? Not me. ;)

No fever? Do your math!

Cameron was much better today. YEAH!! No fever at all and his cough was totally controllable. Whew! Greyson has a bit of a runny nose and hasn't been sleeping all that well. Last night it was so weird, he was waking up crying every hour (and I had already given him Tylenol before bed because he decided to climb out of his crib and land ON his head. *sigh*) so I brought him into my bed so that I wouldn't have to keep getting up to comfort him. Well, he slept fine with me! He woke up a lot and changed positions, usually on top of me in some way, but he never cried. Weird, huh? I'm thinking maybe it's just his sinuses hurting and so keeping himself elevated over my back helped him sleep. Except that frequently he was laying in a teepee style over my back: head on one side, legs on the other, butt up in the air, lol. Like I've repeatedly said, the kid's a nut. ;) Cassia has seemed fine so far but she slept in until 9:30 this morning which is about two hours later than normal. She also burst into tears this afternoon during hide-and-seek when Cameron found her too fast, which could be a big sign that she's headed downhill too. We'll see. DH comes home tonight so I'll have some backup if I suddenly have an onslaught of sickos.

So I tempted Cameron after lunch with some Spelling Time. He did the last lesson, a spelling test in which he only missed one word, book (spelled it "booc"), and then played a snowboarding game. One thing I like about the program is that you have to earn tokens to play the games, so you can't just spend all day there playing games. I think I'll give him his official test sometime this weekend.

He had started playing LEGOs almost as soon as he woke up today and built this elaborate space station and so he went back to that as soon as his Spelling Time game time was up. After another hour or so of that, I got out the math book. When he protested I told him that unless he could come up with a fever, he had to do his math. He felt his head and then agreed, lol. Math went slowly. I think that maybe I am going a bit too fast on this section. He kept making mistakes in borrowing so I put on my old math tutor hat, got out my scratch paper and colored pens, and slowly went over the problems. He was able to keep better track of things using the colored pens but I think, for the rest of this section, we'll do the textbook problems either on the white board or on scratch paper instead of just doing them orally. I *might* even have him do one of the practice sessions but I know he is anxious to move on to the next chapter, measurement.

Cassia did some work in her math book today and coincidentally that was on measurement too. She's not as interested in doing the measurements as doing the coloring of those measurements, but that's ok.

It was raining today so both Park Day and a soccer game were canceled but that's ok because we weren't planning on going anyway. I feel like I'm forgetting something I wanted to say.... ???

Sick Day

Poor Cameron woke up miserable this morning, so no school for him. He spent most of the day on the couch watching tv and napping. He did feel better later in the afternoon so we played a couple games of Crazy 8's and then I taught them how to play Rummy. Cassia kept winning, lol.

Greyson also spent much of the day in his crib either napping or in trouble. Yes, I know, you can't really punish a baby (even though he knows what he's doing!!) but when he starts getting super crazy, nine times out of ten when you put him in his crib he will scream for a minute and then fall asleep. Today was not one of those days. He decided to continue freaking out in his crib and apparently bashed his face on the crib rail, giving himself a "bleedy" nose, as Cassia said. Luckily it stopped really quickly because he would not let me anywhere near his face with a tissue or washcloth. The boy is a maniac.

So that left me and Cassia to ourselves for most of the morning. We put together a Hawaiian Hula Girl craft that she had gotten at a birthday party a couple weeks ago.

She was asking all sorts of questions about Hawaii so I looked up some stuff on Enchanted Learning. I didn't even print anything out but she enjoyed looking at all the thumbnails and the map of the Islands. After seeing a coloring page of a Hawaiian flag, she decided that she wanted to play this freeware geography game we have called Seterra. We spent about an hour taking turns playing that and I still can NOT keep straight the flags of Nicaragua, The Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Guatamala. All those blue and white stripes confuse me, lol.

And then Cameron woke up and then Greyson did and I've been running around ever since. Fingers crossed that everyone else doesn't get what Cameron has (he's been so miserable today), that it's not strep, that it's not mono, and that it's not pneumonia either. All three of those have been going around and I'd prefer to just stick with a plain old cold, thank you very much. I must go, Little Mister Screeching Stompy Feet apparently needs something. *eye roll*

Blissfully homebound

It rained (a tiny bit) this morning and Cameron said that he thought he was coming down with the sore throat and cough that DH and I have had all week, so I took that as a sign that we weren't going anywhere today. After the busy day we had yesterday, I didn't mind a bit! :P So the kids spent all morning watching Time Warp Trio and I putzed around changing sheets and such until about 11:30 when we started school.

We started with Spelling and Cameron was begging me to do Spelling Time again, lol. I had to tell him no though because he only has one part left and I want him to do that on Thursday before the Friday test (that we didn't get around to until Sunday last week). He griped a bit but then saw that he only had one more page to do in the SWO book to finish up the stuff for that lesson, lol.

Next we had mini-pizzas for lunch and Cameron suggested we do Grammar while we ate since that was just oral work (he didn't use those words, lol, but that was his point). I thought that was a great idea and while I was flipping to the right page, he automatically started in by reciting the definition of a noun, lol. I guess the lessons are pretty predictable already. ;) Then he recited The Caterpillar. Then we reviewed common and proper nouns again. I was going to skip it, but it turns out they both needed the review on it. I guess it's tricky to keep track of when you've never even heard the terms before last week. They also had a lot of fun saying a common noun and then coming up with a corresponding proper noun or vice versa. Cassia's favorite proper noun was "Miss Martha," her ballet teacher. :)

After that was Phonics and that was the typical issue of him being able to read just fine when he would stay in one place. But he preferred to jump around and drive me batty. *Sigh* I'm sure I will miss all that energy some day.

Math went really, really well. He only made one mistake in borrowing, unlike yesterday when I think he only got one right on the first try. I guess it was just a bad math day for him yesterday. We're moving through this book really quickly. It's mostly because we are skipping all the Practice and Review sections in the text, but I really don't feel like he needs them! There's no point in just doing busy work, right? There is a review section coming up in the workbook soon and we will do that. If any problems come up during that, maybe I'll assign some of the other work.

And finally we got to History and read a SOTW chapter on the beginnings of the Israelite nation. They colored some pictures and did some map work and it was all very typical. (I think we've definitely hit our groove with this school thing.) Unfortunately, I owe the library a small fortune so I haven't had any books for this chapter or the last. You can't reserve/request books when you owe over $5 so I may spend tomorrow driving up to the branch that has a couple of Ali Baba books that I should've read last week and picking those up.

I spent the rest of the day getting my planner/tracker up to date. Now that I'm "official" I want to make sure my records are complete. I am SO glad that I make such ridiculously detailed blog entries because I never would have been able to do that without them. So there ya go - my rambling nature has been justified. Off to have some dinner now and get away from the computer. :)

P.S.

P.S. I just added the scans of Cassia's interpretations of the Sumerian inventions and Cameron's illustration for The Rabbit and the Turtle narration. You can follow the specific links in the "Fast and Lazy" post below or just go to Shadowlight Academy Nuts & Bolts and scroll through.

P.P.S. I forgot to tell you, we're official!! As of today, Shadowlight Academy is a real live private school. That was actually my lead in to schoolwork today: Since we're an official school now, we'd better get busy and do some schoolwork! LOL.

Busy Day!!

Wow, I can't believe the day we've had today. Busy, busy, busy, but it was all good. We got school done nice and early. Cameron started with Spelling. We decided to get a subscription to Spelling Time and Cameron just loves it. I set him to work on it while I took a shower and he completed four of the five stages for this week's lesson. It's designed to be one stage a day, lol, but I was going to have him do two or three of them on Tuesday and the rest on Thursday anyway. I'm glad he likes it. I just hope the like keeps up enough to justify the $35 a year!

Next was Phonics and we breezed through that.

Math went pretty well too. He was ALL over his chair, lol. He was working in the office in the spinning "executive" chair and it was so comical watching him. He was hunched over the desk with his forearms basically stationary and his feet in the chair. Spinning and climbing and contorting all over the place! I almost took a picture at one point because I couldn't believe the position that he felt comfortable working at, but none of them lasted long. Constant movement of his lower body, but his upper body and brain were (mostly) focused on his work. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is when he spins around in the chair in between each word of a sentence or something which is why I have forbidden the Spinny Chair for any phonics or reading work. ;)

Next came a quick Grammar lesson on proper nouns. It was actually just a review of common and proper nouns but it was a fun one because we got to name all sorts of different professions and people who did them. I did decide to skip one of the lessons before that one. It was a review of common nouns which we've already reviewed once or twice. I don't think we really need to review that many times. I haven't really looked, but I have the distinct feeling that since we are currently focused on common and proper People nouns, that we will spend an equal amount of time on the Place, Thing, and Idea nouns. Lots of lesson skipping may be in our future.

I was pleased to find that Cam does indeed have the definition of a noun memorized. I'm thinking we should be writing those down somewhere. I haven't decided yet if it will be a "Definitions" page in his Language Arts notebook or a file box of index cards with definitions. Maybe even both? After that we had about half an hour for him to play with work on his LEGO Gear set. There was a challenge activity to design a machine to make targets pop up for a shooting gallery. He really couldn't fathom how to even get started, so I let him just build it from the picture of the sample solution. Once he built it though, he was able to modify it to move faster and I'm sure that given more time to mess around with it, he would've come up with more creative things. But we had no time. We had places to be!

So we were off to the monthly 4-H meeting which went pretty well. Cameron's actually mostly interested in what goes on during the meetings which is a big change from last year when he could barely follow them. He was especially interested in the fundraising project which is selling cookie dough. You get club recognition for selling at least two batches of dough which make 40 cookies each. Cameron said, "But that's 80 cookies!!" LOL, I think he thought we had to bake the cookies before we could sell them. He's really excited to start earning those selling incentives. Anyone want to buy some cookie dough? ;) But speaking of club recognition, they passed out the club awards today and Cameron walked away with an armload of them. He was thrilled and gave me a big ole thumbs up from the stage. Included in that was a cheesy little trophy for completing a record book. All the younger kids who do the record book get this trophy because 4-H doesn't believe in kids under 9 competing. Everything they do gets rewarded equally. Well Cameron saw his trophy and said, "Hey this is a gold trophy! That means I must've won first place!!" LOL, so much for young kids being non-competitive.

The after meeting activity was a really fun one where the kids make and pass formal motions for the ingredients of a punch. It was a lot of fun last year. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay. We had to rush off and get Cassia to ballet. And then from there we had to rush off and get Cameron to gymnastics for a make-up because he had missed his evaluations while we were on vacation. I was so proud of him. He worked really, really hard and earned himself five stars. Last time he only got three. You need to get eight out of ten stars for being able to do certain skills before you can move on to the next level. Unfortunately, one of the stars that Cameron got was for a skill in the next level so he only has seven stars in Level 1 and one in Level 2. Too bad that he doesn't get an advancement ribbon but "WTG, Cam" for working hard and earning so many stars. Forgive my gushing, but he has been so apathetic to this class up until a couple weeks ago. It's so nice to see him really trying.

Finally we got to come home around 6:00 pm. I don't see how "normal" people can be on the run all day. That was way too much for me in one day, lol. And this post is way too much too, I'm sure. Hasta pasta, mi compadres.

"Being fast and lazy is no good"

We actually got school started without a fuss today. When I brought out the spelling book, Cameron tried to argue to do phonics first but I told him that today there would be no arguments as to the order of subjects. I was going to decide and that was final. And amazingly, there were no arguments. Spelling went well. He can somehow read much easier during spelling that during phonics. Actually, he's been reading great lately. He did lots of impromptu reading over the weekend - just random things like the Chance cards in Monopoly, but it was great to see him actually wanting to read something. On that note, phonics went really well too with hardly a moan of complaint. I did have to remind him of the sounds of the gh, igh, eight, aigh, and augh combos that we were reviewing but he mostly remembered them in the accompanying story.

Math was the problem today. He fussed and fidgeted and did very careless work. It took about an hour to get through three pages of three digit addition. I guess it's a lot like reading where he can read the lists but gets intimidated by the long stories. It appears that he is getting intimidated by the long math problems. If he can't do it in his head, it's too much. The good news is that he did start trying hard eventually and was very proud of himself when he was actually able to get the correct answer on the first try (which was only two or three times in the whole exercise).

Next I read them a version of the Aesop fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, for Grammar. I guess I shouldn't be calling this subject "grammar" because it is much more than that. In truth, it's a whole language study designed to introduce young children to the beauty, complexities, and forms of the English language. Anyway, after reading them the story I had Cameron tell it back to me in his own words. He told me a wonderfully detailed and original version of it. Some of the analogies he used were quite amusing. For example, "...the rabbit went speeding ahead like a galloping horse." LOL, I love that one. He's going to be a great writer, I think. After he finished his retelling, he and Cassia launched themselves into two full-blown re-enactments of the story, first with Cameron being the tortoise and then with Cassia being the tortoise. Fabulous entertainment, I tell you! Then I had Cameron come back and give me a summarized narration instead of a full-blown story. He had a bit of trouble paring it without losing all the plot, but we finally got a handful of good sentences and then he drew an illustration of the tortoise winning his trophy, lol. You can read both versions and see the illustration here.

Finally we did History and I read to them about Sumer and Akkad from our children's encyclopedias. I had a word search for Cameron to do and Cassia was very sad that she didn't have one to do as well. In a moment of brilliance, I told her that she could draw pictures of each of the word search items and she loved the idea! One of the most notable items was a very modern interpretation of a calendar. The date squares, which ranged from "2, 4, 6, 8" in one to 303 in another, were of all shapes including triangles and ovals, lol. She was super proud of it too. Definitely something to cherish. Oh, I forgot to mention that she did about 5 pages of phonics and 2 or 3 pages of math while Cameron worked on his stuff.

And that was our day, except for gymnastics which we will be heading for in a little while. It's funny how overwhelming it sounded to me to do "so many" subjects in one day, but it really isn't that much. And it's fun too, which just makes the time fly. I really thing that Grammar/Language is their favorite subject now.

Silly Name Tag

If you're reading this: tag, you're it!

1. Your rock star name: (first pet, current car) - Patches Oddyssey
2. Your gangster name: (favorite ice cream, favorite cookie) - Rocky Road Peanut Butter (hmm, not so tough)
3. Your fly guy/girl name: (first initial first name, first 3 letters last name) - JBer
4. Your detective name: (favorite color, favorite animal) - Green Penguin
5. Your soap opera name: (middle name, birth city) - Lynne Grand Rapids
6. Your Star Wars name (first three letter last name, first 2 letter of first name) - BerJe
7. Superhero Name: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink and add "the") - The Purple Cabernet Sauvignon (Hmmm, how about The Purple Cab or The Purple Pinot instead?)
8.Nascar name (first names of your grandfathers) - Robert Gordon
9. Stripper Name: (favorite perfume, favorite candy) - Lavender Chocolate
10. Witness Protection Name: (mother's and father's middle name) Anne Francis

Personally, I think my detective name should be my Super Hero Name. The Green Penguin saves the day again! LOL

In other news, no news today, lol. We spent the day at the park and the only thing I could count as educational (besides all that good park play!) was them watching Time Warp Trio before we left. Cameron also had pulled out the LEGO Gear set almost as soon as he woke up, but he didn't spend too much time on it before getting pulled away by the tv. He did make a interesting car though with two gears on each side, but I don't think they actually did anything, lol.

LEGO Mania!!

Wow, we had a productive day today! This was the only day all week with nothing planned so I decided to take advantage of it and scheduled a full house clean first thing in the morning so we could just enjoy our day. I think I've finally gotten myself into a semi-decent cleaning schedule - or at least one that can grow and expand as my expectations of a clean house do, lol. My expectations are pretty low at the moment. ;) Anyway, the floors were all clean and vacuumed by 10:00 am and the clutter that had been on them was finally put away (amidst lots of whining) by 11:00.

Then I got out the books and Cameron insisted on doing math first. That's not going to happen again. It took him about 45 minutes to get through the first two of the three pages and by then he didn't have much patience left for the other subjects. I *knew* that would happen, which is why I normally insist on doing phonics before math, but I feel like I have to let him have his way with dismal results once in a while in order to make my enforcement of more smoothly running rules easier. (That was a horrid sentence, lol, sorry.)

Anyway, we did Math and then Grammar. To my utter amazement, both Cameron and Cassia have 100% committed the poem, The Caterpillar, to memory. In two days. Actually, it was only one day but I refused to believe it until this morning when they recited it perfectly with no promptings or preablitory readings from me at all. Next in the lesson was the introduction of proper nouns. The lesson was fun and we dissolved into silliness but that was a bad lead-in to Phonics. I had actually wanted to do some Spelling first but, again, I let Cameron's protesting sway my choice. Again, it was a bad decision.

Phonics was torture. He was still silly. He did not want to read. He did not want to open his eyes to look at the page. *sigh* But we finally got through it. Finally, I had him write down his Spelling words for the week. I think next week I'll have him do that on both Tuesday and Thursday. And I will certainly have him do it before phonics to calm down and focus himself upon the page.

At last we reached the point of the day we had all been waiting for... LEGO Physics! We started with the Gear Set and despite my multiple queries of "Are you sure you don't want to stop?" we went through all of the guided lessons in the Teacher's Guide. We learned all about drivers and followers and the direction of rotation and gearing up and gearing down and idler gearing and changing the rotary motion through a 90-degree angle and compound gearing. Phew! He built several examples of each of those and then built a merry-go-round and then fan and multiple variations of each of those. He had been at it for over two hours when I finally walked away, lol. There are actually some enrichment exercises and some free-design scenarios that we haven't done yet but we've got to save something for another day, right? Anyway, he's thrilled with the whole thing - obviously - and asked if he could use it whenever he wanted or if he had to wait for it to be a Science day. I said he could use it whenever he wanted as long as it did NOT get mixed in with the other LEGOs. Mean, aren't I.

I have three more sets: Levers, Pulleys, and Wheels & Axles. I'll spend a week or two on each set, I think, and then I'm sure he'll want to combine all four of them to make some monster creation, lol. LEGOs are cool. I also totally recommend the LEGO Educational Division products (I got mine through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op). The teacher guides and project cards are pretty good. The math's all in there if you want to use it. I mentioned the gear ratios but didn't stress them at all. There's also an assessment page that can easily be made into a review or test, if you're into that sort of thing. And no, I didn't just take a job with LEGO. ;)

Another Fabulous Day

Though we didn't get school started until almost 11 again, closer to 10:30 actually, we did finish before 12:30 which was my goal! WooHooo! I made a goal and reached it!! LOL.

We started with Spelling and Cameron finished up the workbook exercises for the Lesson 11 words. One of the exercises was finding the list words that rhymed with some pictures and Cam said, "Oh, I love these!" Really? I don't remember him loving Spelling, but OK. I'm actually debating whether or not to give a real test on Friday or not. They really seemed to stress him out last year when he didn't get 100% on them. I may just try something like, write the word however you think it should be spelled then write it three times the right way, without calling it a test. He'll hate having to write all the words three times though, so maybe I will make it a "real test" and have him only write the incorrect ones three times.

Next I wanted to do phonics but he wanted to do math. We went back and forth for a minute but I finally agreed if he promised not to whine when it was time to do phonics. Math was another two pages on triple digit addition with carrying. No big deal.

While he did his math, I actually planned ahead and started putting dinner in the crock pot. He finished before I did so while I finished chopping carrots we reviewed the poem The Caterpillar and Cameron and Cassia both shocked me by having it pretty much memorized already!! FLL wants you to review it practically every day for two or three weeks. I don't think that will be necessary! I see what everyone is saying about the repetition being over the top. When we moved on to the rest of the Grammar lesson, it was also super repetitive. I mean, how many times do you need to go over what a common noun is? And I'm sorry, but I would be pretty shocked (and saddened) to find a first-grader who didn't already know what brothers, sisters, mother, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were. That's not grammar. That's family. So, maybe I need to spend some time each night prereading the next lesson, rather than blindly doing one after another, to see which ones we actually want to do.

So then it was time for phonics and we did a lesson on the long /a/ sound in "eigh." There was a little whining, but nothing serious.

Finally we came to History and read Chapter 5 in SOTW about the Sumerian dictator, Sargon. I pulled out the coloring pages and Cameron asked what color he should color it. When I told him that he could color it any way he wanted, he said, but don't we get maps? I showed him the maps and he cheered. Yes, you read right, the boy cheered over map work. What have I done to these children? ;)

So we finished up by 12:15 leaving me plenty of time to notice that although I had turned the crock pot on I had forgotten to plug it in. I also had time to blog and look up the myriad of overdue library books on Egypt before heading to said library and then Park Day. And I must get on with the latter part of that last sentence before we are late to the park. :) Happy Wednesday everyone.

School on the Fly

Typical of myself, I somehow managed to put off the gathering of my supplies for the 4-H project I was leading today until the last minute. I did manage to get the sample made last night...

...but then I just went to bed and left the final gathering and organizing of the materials until this morning. Although I did manage to get it all done on time, I did not get any schoolwork done before we left.

I'd say the project was a success. We had seven kids show up, I think, not including the four cancellations and two no-shows. It was nice to have a smaller group for my first time. The project was just simple enough for everyone to be able to do it and flexible enough for the older girls, who were 9, to be able to embellish and really go to town. I forgot to bring my camera but most of the little kids' ghosts ended up with lots of silly hair and multiple faces, lol. The older girls tried for actual dolls and spent lots of time piecing together clothing for them. It was a little chaotic at times, but all in all, it went well. Next time I've got to remember to eat first though, lol. I made the kids a sandwich but I was running on coffee only.

We finished with just enough time to come home and run inside to get Cassia changed for ballet and then run right back out the door. I grabbed Cameron's math books though and he spent the hour doing triple digit addition on the coffee table in the waiting room. The receptionist was quite impressed with what he was doing and said something about how that looked like really complicated math for someone his age. One mom came in later with her first or second grade daughter and said, "Steer clear, Honey. That looks like some serious work there." LOL. I hope he takes those kind of comments as the compliments that they are meant to be rather than feeling like he is doing something he shouldn't be. But I was thrilled to death that he actually completed his entire workbook exercise in a strange place with lots of commotion and conversation going on around him.

Greyson said a new word while we were there: cell phone. He was digging through my purse, or at least trying to get past that annoying buckle, lol, and I mentioned to someone that he was probably digging for my cell phone because it was his favorite toy. Another lady asked him what he was trying to get and he said, clear as anything, "cell phone." LOL, what a nut. That, of course, launched us into a conversation about the kind of world we live in that one of Baby's first words is cell phone.

Once we got home again, the plan was to do a quick phonics lesson and then grammar (Cameron's request, I was going to skip it today) and then do a super-duper, exciting science project. I got a whole big box of LEGO Educational kits so I've decided to do LEGO engineering for the next month or two as Science, before we start MPH 4A. Today I was going to start the Gears kit. I even told Cameron that Science was going to be LEGOs but he just couldn't bring himself to sit down and do that phonics. I don't blame him though. He's had to be civilized quite a bit today so he really needed to just run around in the backyard being a kid for a while. It's a beautiful day too, so I just couldn't complain.

In fact, I decided to join him. I grabbed the phonics and grammar books, in case he got a sudden urge to school, and pulled up a lawn chair to peruse the introduction of FLL. I was flipping through the lessons when I noticed that Lesson 2 was the introduction to a poem for memorization. Inspiration struck and I casually said, "Hey, who wants to hear a poem?" As predicted, they both came running over, "I do! I do!" LOL. So I read them the poem and Grammar was accomplished for the day. Sneaky me. I even managed to read it to them again about twenty minutes later.

So we didn't get to Phonics and we didn't get to Science but we did do Math and Grammar on a day when I wouldn't have been surprised if nothing got done at all. So, I'd say we are ahead of the game today. Now if I could just manage to get a bathroom or two cleaned this evening, I'd be golden.

Back and Relaxed

Ahhhh, nothing like a few days alone with the man you love to put life back in perspective. The kids are still crazy, but I sure did miss them in those three days away from them. Of course, the time also went way too quickly - I could've stayed a week or two! The best of both worlds, I suppose. If you've been wondering, Greyson did just fine. We hung out with Grandma for a few days before DH and I took off so Grey was very comfortable with her and didn't give her an especially hard time. At least not harder than he gives me. Apparently Cameron and Cassia didn't fight with each other at all until MIL left to pick us up at the dock. Then they spent the rest of the night and the whole next day fighting to make up for it, lol. At least they were good for Grandma. I have no pictures because they are on DH's laptop. Maybe I can convince him to upload them to a computer here so I can share.

Today was the first day of our Fall Quarter and it went smashingly. We started with Spelling and although Cameron balked a bit at the thought of it, he did beautifully. I have the feeling that his reading just wasn't up to par when we were doing it before and now he is much more confident and capable at it. He was actually doing quite a bit of voluntary reading while we were on vacation. He even read a telling time book to Cassia but kept getting frustrated because she had already memorized the book and kept telling him the words before he had a chance to try and read them, lol.

But back to today, we followed Spelling with another new subject: Grammar. They were both excited to see what this grammar thing was all about and hunkered down on the couch to listen to the first page of First Language Lessons. They were both surprised and somewhat disappointed when the lesson ended in less than 5 minutes, lol. Hopefully that will let it be a fun new thing to learn about rather than another dragging subject. We'll see. Today's lesson included the definition of a noun, focusing on the person aspect, and then the definition of a common noun. I was planning on doing grammar two or three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday if we have time before the park) but I just noticed that there are 100 lessons for first grade! Two lessons a week definitely won't cut it. Even year-round, that won't cut it so I'm going to try really hard to make it happen at least three times a week.

Next was math and Cameron impressed me by remembering how to carry in double-digit addition. I was taking it slow and trying to really focus on the mental steps and how to write it down with the little carried one on top and he just pipes up with the answer before I ever got done explaining it. But then he declined in silly mode when it came time to do the workbook. Two problems into it, I had to crack down on the silliness and thankfully he responded pretty well.

While Cameron did his math, Cassia did the first lesson in her Explode the Code Primer, book C. Coincidentally, it was on the letter C. It's working pretty well to work with her on something while Cameron does his math. I may get the hang of this multiple kid thing yet! I was also surprised that she was so interested in grammar. I may be able to just fold her in the whole way which will be really convenient if we ever start the Classical Writing series. She was also really interested in Cameron's math and phonics. Unfortunately, she showed her interest by guessing random answers to his work, lol.

Next was History. First off I had Cameron draw me an Egypt picture and do a narration on the subject. I told him to tell me everything he knew about Egypt and he told me some things about pyramids and mummies and then said that that was all he knew. Then Cassia pipes up with, "I know something else about Egypt!" We asked her what, expecting something silly but she said, "Egypt is on the River Nile." Cameron, looking embarrassed said, "Oh yeah, I know that too but I forgot." LOL, gotta love a little sibling rivalry. So that sparked another paragraph in the narration. I was going to move on to chapter 5 in SOTW after that but then I realized that we still had a bunch of library books on Egypt that we hadn't gotten to yet (which are seriously overdue and must go back soon). I asked Cameron if he wanted to move on or read book on Egypt and he chose Egypt. The sweet boy lay his head on my lap while we sat on the couch to read. Can't get that kind of love in a public school lesson! He complained when I pushed past his one chapter limit, lol, but we ended up reading half of Cat Mummies, which is a 60 page book, and flipped through two others about mummies, gods, and pyramids.

Now I need to test-make the craft for the 4-H project that I am leading tomorrow. I hope it works, lol.

"I love studying Egypt!"

Yes, that sentence was heard coming out of the mouth of my son. My son who whines and gripes about having to do History "every day!" My son whose favorite phrase is "do we have to?" My son loves studying Egypt. He says they were people who came after the early people. (I guess chronological history is paying off!) He made a mastaba out of wooden ABC blocks. He made a sand pyramid at the park - at least he tried to. And he told one of our friends that he loves studying Egypt and told her pretty much everything he knew about it. I wish I had had a tape recorder because it would have made a fabulous narration.

So yes, it was park day today so we didn't do any actual work but Egypt was all around. On a semi-related side note, it looks like I'm going to have to do some schedule revamping because it turns out that this park day, my favorite park day in the whole world, is going to be meeting every week instead of every other week. There's no way I'm going to be able to do phonics, math, grammar, spelling, history, and art on park day. We're generally very lucky if we just do math and phonics on park day. It's so worth it though. I really, really love this group of people.

Happy Autumnal Equinox. Our Fall Quarter officially starts today but since we will be on vacation next week, we'll formally start the Fall Quarter on October 1st. See you then. :)

Not what I should be doing now

Blogging, that is. The homeschool newsletter deadline is tonight and I still haven't done the New Member paperwork that I need to have done for that and I'm supposed to write an article too. Did I mention that I am a procrastinator? You should've seen my senior year in college, lol. But since I'm here, I can't deny my loyal throngs the blow-by-blow of the day.

Started with a doctor's appointment. Lovely joy. My hCG is at 48. Almost zero, but not yet zero so I have to go get yet another blood draw in a week or two. Yes, I'm on a first name basis with the lab tech now. She loves Cassia, especially because she is so very interested in whether or not it is hurting yet. ;) Next was Trader Joe's. At one point there were cherry tomatoes all over the floor of the produce department and it ended with Cameron and Cassia forbidden to let go of their opposite sides of the shopping cart. I'll leave the rest of that trip to your imagination.

I don't know what happened to the rest of the morning, but we started school at around 1:00. (Again, super thankful that I came to my senses and postponed the first 4-H cooking project meeting, that was supposed to start at 1:30, until October. I would NOT have been at my best to teach/lead after that shopping trip, lol.) Phonics went ok. There was a review of all the weird short-vowel sound vowel pair words and Cameron read all of them like a pro, but then when it came time to read them in a story he just fell apart. Lists that follow a pattern, he can do. Random sentences overwhelm him and he just starts guessing every word. The word on the page is "they." He tries "the, there, chair, hippopotamus" until I final give him the ok that he found the right word or tell him what it is supposed to be. I don't know. On one hand, I guess that's a sign that he's still just not ready to read and it's stressing him out and he's not remembering and getting flustered. But on the other hand, when I freak out and demand that he stop being silly, sit down THE RIGHT WAY IN HIS CHAIR (oh, we have serious chair issues), and actually READ the words instead of guessing... when we get to that point that he knows I am really and truly at the end of my rope with him... he can read just fine. It's bizarre. I really don't believe in forcing a child to do something they aren't ready for just because *I* think they should be able to, but it really seems to be that he just doesn't want to. But I guess that's his right too, isn't it? Anyone have any brilliant advice here? He can read. He even finds it a useful novelty on rare occasions. But he refuses to sit still and look at the word long enough to do it right. OK, enough whining on this. Phonics took about forty-five minutes today because he had to go take a restroom break in the middle of it (whole other issue which I'm not going to get into, lol). Like I said, the list of words he read fabulously and then we struggled through the 15-sentence story.

Math was a disaster, but that was probably my fault. He's been doing so amazingly lately with working on his own that I just read the textbook lesson with him and then leave him on his own to do the workbook. I've been using that as my History/Science prep time, lol, bad me, I know. Anyway, he was not capable of working on his own today for some reason so it took about an hour and a half to do a three page workbook exercise. Yikes. Also partly my faulty because I kept reading mummy riddles to him. OK, totally my fault. ;)

But then, finally, we got to the mummy. Yes, THE Mummy. The infamous, ever debated and feared Chicken Mummy. Cornish game hens, in this case, but it was a big deal all the same. Cameron has this thing about getting his hands dirty. He thought the chickens were really gross and didn't want to touch them, lol, but made exceptions for the cool parts like rinsing the body cavity and patting the whole thing down like a baby out of the bath. Yes, we love our mummies like babies. Cassia was all over it though. That girl is NOT afraid to get dirty. Today we just washed them with water, dried them, washed them with saki (it's what I had, lol), and then filled them and their plastic bags with a baking powder, baking soda, and salt mixture. Next we read Mummies Made in Egypt by Aliki (our favorite author, I think!) and then called it a day. I had tried to read Cat Mummies while Cameron did his math, but he said it distracted him too much. Dust was distracting him today, but whatever. ;) At least he told me. Better that than for him to listen to the whole thing and do all his math wrong. I'm a one-at-a-time person too, so I totally get it. I can't even listen to music while I read or blog or anything like that.

We finished the day with a 4-H Leader training meeting for me (a big reason I felt no guilt in canceling the project meeting today - I'm not trained yet!) while the kids went to MomM's house for a couple of hours. Cameron and Cassia, apparently, played very, very well with L5 while they were there but sweet little Greyson cried the entire time. Poor guy. :( What is he going to do next week when we go out of town for our 10th Anniversary and he is left with Grandma for 3 days?!?!?!?!? He's still nursing first thing in the morning and sometimes in the afternoons (this second time mostly because of teething) but I was thinking that since it's really just a "I want Mommy" thing that if I weren't there, he would be fine with just cow milk or juice at those times. Now I'm thinking that maybe that little taste of Mommy - no pun intended - might help him to relax in those moments when he's missing me most. I haven't even looked at my pump for over a year. I've only used it once or twice this babyhood. I pumped all the time for Cameron, lol. Never let that first child be deprived!!

Anyway, this is way too long. It's now almost 10:30. I have one hour and forty-five minutes to do what I should have done several weeks ago. But at least I got a good, heart-felt blog in. ;) Gotta remember what's important, you know!

Walk like an Egyptian

Oh we had so much fun today!!!! We went to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum today and OH! what a field trip! It's always been one of my favorite places and I can't tell you what a treat it was to share it with my children. We used to live nearby and I was even a Rosicrucian for a couple years. That's on my list of "stuff to get back into" someday when I have more time, lol. Their spiritual philosophy (which is spiritual, not religious, and is supposedly compatible with all religions) just resonates right with my mind and my soul, but I got really behind on my reading. Months behind. Many, many months behind, lol. Always the procrastinator! I used to hide it because I was afraid people would think I was a freak, but now I realize that anyone who knows me already knows I'm a freak and doesn't care. Anyone who either doesn't know me and thinks I'm a freak or knows me and doesn't like me because of my freakiness, well, I think they're freaks. So there. ;)

Anyway, the museum has one of the largest collections of ancient Egyptian artifacts outside of Egypt. I love looking at all the little household statues and cosmetics pots and the gorgeous handmade jewelry. And to see the hieroglyphics... paint that has been there for 4000 years! It just leaves me with my mouth hanging in awe. The kids liked the mummies, lol. Human mummies, cat mummies, hawk mummies, even a baboon and baby crocodile mummies! They also liked the toys and games - something they could relate to.

But the best part was the replica of the stone tomb. We silently crept into the darkness, our footsteps echoing ominously against the cold stone walls. We stepped back into time. They took slow, quiet, tentative steps (MY kids!) as if they were the first to ever explore this tomb. It was magical.

Part of the way through the museum, during a bathroom break, I asked Cameron if he was enjoying himself and he said "Oh yeah! This is THE coolest thing EVER!" Gotta love that. Also gotta love the fact that we have been studying Egypt so they recognized things. They knew hieroglyphs and the Rosetta Stone and they recognized quite a few gods. They knew the difference between cuneiform and hieroglyphs. They knew how the clay tablets were made. But they were most thrilled of all to find that it was all, or at least most of it was, real. Such a cool thing. Did I mention that I love this particular museum? I also loved that I felt like an expert, lol. I recognized a lot of things from our studies and also from the museum's Teacher's Study Guide (from 2001) and informational pamphlet (copywritten 1974, lol) that DH's retired school teacher aunt gave me. I felt very powerful just pulling up strange facts from the top of my head without having to read the blurb, lol. It's the little pleasures. ;)

On our way out, I happened to notice that we were just in time for the planetarium show, so I asked the kids if they thought they could sit through that. They did fabulously! Greyson amused himself with a fruit bar and then a nice long sleepy snack of Milky Milk. Cassia, my princess, belched very loudly once, but other than that they were perfect! I am officially sticking my tongue out at all the doubting old people who rolled their eyes and groaned at us as we walked in. :P~ When it was over both Cameron and Cassia said, very loudly, "That was so cool!" I'm so proud of my little homeschoolers!

One final gush. As we were noisily traipsing from the last gallery into the gift shop, the little ones' patience at its end - though still cheerful and having a blast - an eldery man (see, he was nice so I'm not calling him "old people") said, "You need some more of those!" I think he was being sarcastic, his wife swatted him for saying it, but I just grinned and laughed and said, "Yep!" We had such a great time. I am so glad that I chose to cancel the stressy things this week and keep the fun ones.

I will end with the other favorite activity of the day: pose like a statue.






And let's not forget Greyson's favorite activity: running around the fountain.

Still here!

Sorry, it's always hard for me to blog on Mondays. Let's see, what did we do...

Monday was the typical one phonics lesson and one math workbook exercise. Cameron has really, really, really gotten the hang of this three digit addition stuff. I'm really proud of him. Cassia's getting all mathy on me too. We were on our way to WalMart and she starts in with, "Did you know that one plus one is two? And two plus two is four?" She got a little bit thrown once she got to three plus three because she had already told me that two plus four was six, so it didn't make sense to her that three plus three could also be the same thing. I tried to show her with my fingers, while driving, lol, how one finger from three plus three can move over to the other side to make two plus four, but I'm not sure if it sank in. I think it might be time for her to spend an afternoon with the Cuisenaire Rods. For History we read about the first writings in our encyclopedias and then we headed off to do a bunch of errands before gymnastics.

Tuesday we did a phonics lesson and I was able to leave Cameron alone to do his math all by himself. I really like this independent worker thing. Next we did History again and read in SOTW about mummies and pyramids because tomorrow we are taking a field trip to a local Egyptian museum. Monday, we had also gotten all the ingredients for making a mummy, except for our victim. I wanted to get that started today but I wasn't able to drag us to the store to find Cornish Game Hens.

We were also supposed to start a 4-H cooking project on Thursday - ok, I was supposed to start - but I've realized that I just had way too much on my plate this week, so I canceled it at the last second. I may piss off a couple people but it's better than completely freaking out from stress. It's been a tough couple weeks, especially when DH is gone. I was fine this weekend but today I am barely holding it together. *sigh* I see the OB on Thursday so I'm going to mention it to her. Hoping it's just hormones and will clear up in a few days.

So that's the news from here. Hopefully, I'll have some nice pictures for you tomorrow.

The Push

I'm going to take a shower and then it's time to get dressed and then do school.

K.

OK, I'm out of the shower. Time to get dressed and make your bed.

Whhhyyyyyyyy?

Because I said so.

Can't I just play a little longer??????

*sigh* Determined not to have a repeat of yesterday where school was procrastinated all the way until after dinner, I pushed back. Several time outs later we finally finish a phonics lesson and a math lesson. And then we did Science. Yesterday was supposed to be science day but we never got around to it. I had told Cameron that for Science we would talk a little bit about the reproductive systems and really look at what has happened and is happening in my body. I keep being afraid that they will walk in on me in the bathroom and see the blood and be freaked out by it. I felt that I really needed to explain what has happened and clarify that the blood is the lining of the uterus and not the baby's blood or something horrid like that. Anyway, since we never got around to that yesterday, Cameron asked - begged really - to do Science today. He said he really wanted to know what was happening inside my body.

So we went over ovulation and fertilization (and thank goodness he did not think to ask how the egg and the sperm get together even though they are made in different people!) which we have discussed before, and how the lining of the uterus builds up and sloughs off each month and how that will happen to Cassia too once she becomes a woman, which we had never talked about before. She seemed to gain a certain amount of pride from that secret womanly knowledge. We talked about implantation in the lining and looked at some sketches of developing embryos. I told them that our new baby stopped growing at about this size (while pointing at a 5-wk old embryo) and then flipped back to the picture of the empty uterus and said that once that happened, my body shed its lining once more to begin preparation for a new, healthy baby just like it does every other month. I tried to stress the normalcy of the whole process but told them that that's why I'm tired and a bit cranky because it's a lot of work for my body to do all this. It's made me sore and tired, as well as sad. They seemed to understand.

And then of course that led to the usual marveling that a newborn baby can actually got out of that tiny space!! I think it hit Cameron especially hard since I said that it made my body ache to get that tiny embryo out, he suddenly gasped and said, "A full grown baby comes out that way too?!??!?!?" LOL, be thankful you're a man. ;) But then that was a nice progression to just talking about babies in general which is always a welcome conversation. Greyson walked in the room at just the right time too. I think the sadness of the whole affair is dampened by the fact that we do still have a baby wandering around to marvel at. We talked about the bones in a baby's skull. We talked about umbilical cords. We talked about lots of stuff. It was a nice conversation and I'm glad we had it.

Next was History and we read SOTW Chapter 3 on the first writings in Egypt and Sumer. The kids colored pictures of a scribe chiseling hieroglyphs into a stone. They found Egypt and Sumer on a map. Cassia and I made clay tablets with our names in cuneiform but Cameron didn't want to get his hands dirty so he wrote his name in hieroglyphics on a paper scroll. We also read the Egyptian creation story of the Benu Bird which kept Cameron's interest surprisingly well. He thought it was hilarious the way things were formed and they were both excited to see gods that they recognized in the drawings. I am willing to bet that they wouldn't be remembering a single Egyptian god if it were not for our Egyptian god dolls. Yeah me!

So school was done, with an extra subject even, by 2:30 and I only had to threaten him a few times, lol. Actually, after being sent to his room for three consecutive time outs for having a bad attitude he was quite happy to cooperate in the end. ;)

The Day of Distraction

Ready for school yet?

Nope.

Ready now?

Nope. Let me ride my bike for a few minutes and we'll do it then.

Are you done? Can we do your schoolwork now?

(No comment.)

Dinner is over and now he is wondering why I am so mean as to bring out the books now.

I'm thinking that although this technique may sink in the principle that school needs to be done each day no matter what, no matter how much he procrastinates, I'm still thinking that I don't like this approach at all. I barely have enough patience left after dinner to get everyone ready for bed without killing someone. This is not the time to be attempting schoolwork. This is my blog time. My dishes time. My glass of red wine time. School needs to be done before 2pm. No exceptions.

What can the family consequence be if we don't? Taking away tv and such - though it seems like a horrible consequence at the time - just ends up resulting in very fun imaginative play, so that's not much of a deterrent. In fact, for me, when we don't get school done early in the day it's usually because they've been playing so nicely that I didn't want to break it up!

So I guess the punishment, for all of us, would be this - to do schoolwork after dinner. We finally got through the math worksheet that wasn't finished yesterday (20 minutes for 5 problems, sigh) and a phonics lesson (10 minutes for that, not too bad). Then, the History reading went much better than expected. We read Seeker of Knowledge: The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the kids were really enthralled with it. They instantly wanted to go try to decipher some hieroglyphs themselves, but I told them that we'd have to wait until tomorrow. Very cool thing to look forward to though because DH's aunt used to teach 4th grade GATE classes and passed down boxes and boxes and boxes of materials on Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China and there's lots of stuff on hieroglyphics for us to explore. We've got a soccer game tomorrow evening so that's an incentive to get things done nice and early tomorrow so we have all day to play Egyptian.

PS To the lovely lady who sent us clay: Cassia now has very short bangs because clay does not come out of hair. We also have nice little clay shadows up and down our walls where they were bouncing big balls of clay down the hall. *sigh* Thanks again, so thoughtful of you. :P

The Wednesday with No Clever Title

LOL, even less clever the second time, isn't it! ;)

Things have been busy here. It's been a rough couple of days but I'll spare you most of the details and just give the highlights.

Tuesday morning was spent at the OB's office. Then Cameron and I had to rush off to the first 4-H meeting of the year which went quite well. There are a lot of new families this year giving a nice big age range. I had quite a few people sign up for both of the projects I'm leading which means I need to get busy and start organizing something! One of them has its first meeting next Thursday so I really need to get cracking.

DH was working from home the first part of the week so he got the honor of taking Cassia to ballet. He actually got her there on time, but forgot her ballet slippers at home so she ended up being about fifteen minutes late to class. Not great when the class is only 45 minutes to start out with! I had a feeling that was going to happen but yet I still didn't mention to him that there's a huge box of loaner slippers in the waiting room. I guess I figured that might make him think it was ok to forget her slippers or something? I don't know, but I stupidly didn't mention it. Next time I will. ;)

Anyway, we made it home before they did and took advantage of the time to do the schoolwork that we hadn't had a chance to get to yet. Cameron did one phonics lesson and one math exercise before DH got home with Cassia and Greyson. Next I brought out the Science workbooks and we got started on the half a million workbook pages on magnets. I am really tempted to skip most of them but I know Cameron is looking forward to finishing the book. You can't "finish" the book if you skip all the pages!

Wednesday we had to start the day by watching our library videos that were due back. The morning was spent watching "The Big Submarine" and "I Love Toy Trains #8." Certainly more educational than what a lot of kids watch for their morning brain candy! ;) Next I tried to rush us through math and phonics so we could go to Park Day. Cameron had other ideas. He wanted to start with math and finished up the first exercise pretty quickly. So quickly that he hadn't gotten his math fix yet and wanted to do another! So we had to read another section in the text first and his attention started waning. We finally made it through that but then he just got silly and careless when trying to do the problems and I finally just took the book away. Yes, I am the mean mother who takes extra math work away from her son and forces him to go to the park instead. LOL. First I had to rush him through a phonics lesson though and once I got him to stop spinning in the stupid chair (I HATE that stupid chair) and look at the words he was supposed to be reading, he did great. He's quite a reader now but you'll never get him to admit that.

Then we finally got out the door to return our library movies and then go to the park. We got there, with a bucket of dinosaurs, to find that L5's mom had brought just about every board game in their house! Cameron and L5 just played and played and played. They barely left the table at all in the two hours we were there. Her mom was joking that we really needed to teach those two some manners on how to get along, lol. Greyson, on the other hand, kept wandering away and climbing into the middle of a lawn bowling tournament. Crazy baby.

And then we came home to find a lovely box of hugs on the front porch. Thanks again, my friend, from the bottom of my heart. You don't know how much it means to me... or maybe you do. :)

The Monday with No Clever Title

Today we started the day with the typical whining about phonics. I decided to be nice and start him off with math instead but it turned out to be a VERY reading and writing intensive lesson, lol. He had three pages of reading and writing numbers in the hundreds. Big numbers like seven hundred ninety-nine. Ah, the irony. I told him that that could count as reading today if we also did another math lesson which was more mathy.

Meanwhile, Cassia did about eight pages in her new math book. She's pretty unstoppable once she gets going. There was one set of pages where you were supposed to match up a one-to-one correspondence of items and then write how many there were left over. Well, she didn't even need to match the items up! She just looked at the pictures and wrote down how many more there were in the larger set! Looks like I've got another math prodigy here. ;)

Next was History and we spent the "period" (for lack of a better word) reading library books. We read Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile by Tomie dePaola- weird story. I have NO idea why it was recommended in the SOTW activity guide. It was neither educational nor a particularly enjoyable story - I'm not a big Tomie dePaola fan though. It was just strange. I'm sure a lot of kids love it. Mine didn't. Then we read Croco'nileby Roy Gerrard. That was a fabulous book. The art was gorgeous. The poetry a delight. The story both fun and funny. Big thumbs up on that one. We finished with your favorite teacher, and mine, Ms. Frizzle's Adventures in Ancient Egypt. Always a good read there.

We finished off the day with gymnastics. Nothing new or exciting there except that now that school's back in session there are only three kids in Cassia's class and the rest of the gym is deserted! What a switch that is! If only we could get the same for Cameron, but his class is full of about forty-five kids who would rather be just about anywhere, I think. He did a really good job of trying, for a change, though. :) And now DH is home so I better get dinner started.

Meet the gods

I just finished our Egyptian god dolls. I love them! They are so cute! The kids love them too. They're already playing with them and having epic battles, lol. So without further ado...

Osiris and Isis


Amun and Horus


Thoth and Khnum


Anubus and Seth



Here's a decent site with some quick descriptions of each, if you're interested.

Hanging in there

Thank you all so much for your support, your hugs, and prayers. It means so much. So sad that so many of you have been through it too. I'm doing pretty good. Physically it's not too bad. Emotionally, I'm hanging in there.

Yesterday for school, Cameron just did math. I didn't feel like bothering with anything that was going to involve even the tiniest bit of stress. The section was numbers up to 1000 and Cameron was so excited by it that he did two workbook exercises instead of just one.

After that we spent the rest of the day doing crafts. The kids painted these little wooden toys that we had picked up at Michaels for a dollar or less each.



Next we started working on our Egyptian god dolls. We got the bodies made and the face appendages molded. The picture didn't turn out too great, but you get the idea.



I've found that crafts are great distraction techniques. I spent all morning today gluing the pieces together and making little felt outfits. Now we just need to paint them. I really had a fun time with them. I know, I know, they were supposed to be crafts for the kids but the perfectionist in me wouldn't let them help much. They are coming out really cute and I can't wait to share them with you. I hope I will allow myself to let the kids play with them when they're done, lol. I may not. I've grown pretty attached. ;)

No schoolwork was done today because I spent all morning playing with dolls and then it was time to go to our favorite park day. There was a wonderful group of people as usual and thankfully only two knew I had been pregnant. One was G, who knew the whole story and very sweetly avoided my gaze the entire day so that I wouldn't start crying again, lol. Unfortunately it didn't work because I had to tell my friend M about the loss. She was almost as heartbroken as I because she had been planning on vicariously living through it with me. And then as we were leaving I had to tell someone else because she saw me popping a pain killer and asked what I was taking it for. I started to cry almost as soon as I said, "nothing I want to talk about right now" and then felt that I owed her an explanation lest she think I had terminal cancer or something. I probably should've just told everyone when we first got there but it's so much easier to talk to my virtual friends about. I hate for people to see me cry.

So that's what we've been doing. Thanks again for being here for me. You guys are the best.

I have no words... just tears.

No baby. I suppose the time just wasn't right. It's tearing me up though. :(

Egyptian gods

Today we got school started around 10:00 - after we got everyone out of the toilet. *sigh* We started with math and learned about the greater than and less than symbols. I can see where some people could get confused by Singapore's methods without the teacher's manual. Luckily, I had learned that the alligator eats the larger number when I was a kid so when a big crocodile was the only explanation of the section, it made perfect sense to me! I'm kind of weird that way though. ;)

For phonics we finished the second half of Tuesday's lesson. Phonics lessons are still a struggle, but Cameron is finally reading things when we're out and about. He reads words all the time now. He read "Read and Grow" on a sign at the library (except that he said the wrong form of read (red)). He read "Press Here" in the back of 10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle. He's reading the names of animals off of a big blow up globe that we have. So all the guilt about forcing him to read and possibly turning him off of it forever seems to be sinking away at last. He still has a fear of books - I can't get him to finish that Level 1 reader on rockets that we started last week - but at least he is reading in the real world. And it's not like he's trying either. He can just look at a lot of these words now and know what they say. That must be so liberating for him.

We had another reading breakthrough tonight at bedtime. I've been slowly reading Dar and the Spear-Thrower to them each school night before bed. They're more willing to listen then because it means they get to stay up that many minutes longer. Anyway, the chapters are only a couple of pages long so it's been taking us forever to get through it. I've been ready to give up more than once because they just don't seem to care most of the time. But tonight, even Cassia was hanging on every word! It was a super exciting chapter (finally) and I think that if I had offered, they would have even wanted to read another. But it was late and I think I like the idea that they might actually be looking forward to hearing what happens to Dar next. If we make it through, which I'm almost positive we will, it will only be the third chapter book that we've ever finished reading aloud. (The other two were Akimbo and the Elephants and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.)

For History today we read the Usborne Book of World History and the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia entries on early Egypt. Cameron woefully lamented having to do History "every day" but then ended up very, very interested in what I had to say. Silly boy. I remember being the same way as a kid: I never wanted to do anything but then once I was forced to, I enjoyed it. Anyway, we talked about kings and pyramids and gods and afterlives. There were some tough parts to the conversation. We've never really discussed god or religion or anything. I have my beliefs and they are very personal to me. I feel it is something that you have to reach on your own and I would never in a million years say that my views are the only ones or the right ones for everybody, even my own son. My thoughts on god are complex and have taken decades to make sense to me... I can't explain that to a six-year old.

But I made an attempt. I tried to explain god(s) and how people need him/them to make sense of the world and to explain things that can't be explained, etc. I must not have made a very good case of things because he said that was silly. He said, very point blank, "I don't think there's a god." I told him not to make a decision about that until he had time to learn more about the subject. I also told him that no matter what he believed, it was most important for him to not belittle anyone else's beliefs. I tried to stress very strongly that everyone has the right to believe in whatever god they want to and it is nobody's business but their own. I hope that made an impression. I think it did because when we were talking about Egyptian gods later, he did actually wait until we were in the car and the door was closed before he repeated, "I don't think gods are real." We will be studying world religions as they come up in the progression of History so hopefully he will get a greater understanding of what god means to people. I think we may have just started with a rather outlandish group of gods for an introduction to the topic, lol.

But back to those Egyptian gods, a reference on Maria's blog to these adorable little apostle dolls sparked my imagination and we ran off to the craft store to buy little wooden doll heads, felt, and pipe cleaners to make Egyptian god dolls. I also bought some clay, both air drying and oven drying, to try and mold some of those funky animal faces. Well see how they turn out. Who knows if they will be recognizable or not but I'm sure they will be fun.

For those of you who doubt

the truthfulness of my claims that Greyson is a big-time trouble maker, I share this:


Look at the pure joy on that face! Look how much he LOVES driving me crazy. And he managed this amazing feat in the time that it took me to go into the office, which happens to be the room right next door to that bathroom, and shred a couple pieces of junk mail. All I can say is that I'm glad he decided to go feet first and from now on, would you all please remember to shut the bathroom door when you're done!!!

P.S. Forgive the picture quality. I couldn't find the camera and didn't want to leave him in there too long while I searched for it, so I used my phone.

When life gives you lemons...

make fruit salad! Or rather, when you go take a shower, leaving your 6-yr old in charge, and he decides to not notice when the baby (who happens to only be two feet away from him) pulls down the fruit basket and takes a bite of every, single piece of fruit, make fruit salad. The good news - besides the good news that we're having fruit salad with dinner tonight - is that if Greyson is anything like Cameron then that means we're in for a pretty easy Terrible Two. Cameron was a demon at around 18 months and then was positively delightful at age two. Then a demon again at three. Four was okay. Five was great. Six, so far, is headstrong but I am really enjoying the person he has become. His babysitting skills need a little work though. ;)

Cassia, on the other hand, didn't have the huge burst of demon-like behavior around 18 months. Two was definitely terrible though! Three was okay, a little whiney but generally an enjoyable year. At four she is amazing me with how grown up she is.

Funny looking at my declarations of good and bad behavior - I think I see a trend. Years when I am pregnant, I have proclaimed horrible behavior and years with a newborn are delightful. Perception is everything, I suppose.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything, lol. Today Cameron only did half a phonics lesson. It was a two-page lesson and he had some trouble with the first page - read and read, wind and wind - so I decided to save the second half for tomorrow. Next was a math exercise that he breezed through. It's still in the review part of the book but it's getting him used to doing more problems per page. We finished off with a couple of workbook pages in science. There are about a million workbook pages on magnets, stuff that I really feel we already covered with our experiments and readings, so I tried to skip some of it but Cameron wouldn't let me, lol. He hates leaving blanks unfilled-in.

Cassia made some great progress on her math book this weekend. She's just breezing through Earlybird 1B and only has two or three pages left. She tried to finish it off this morning but it was just too much. I did finally have a successful session with both of them working at once. Cameron is finally able to work on his math without help, at least this chapter, and Cassia was identifying and coloring different shapes, something she needs no real help on either. I was able to easily flit back and forth between the two keeping everyone moving smoothly along.

Next we were off to run some errands, make a quick stop at a friend's house and play with all of her kids' toys (but not her kids, lol), and then off to ballet. Cameron and I had our traditional quesadilla and mandarin Jarritos while Greyson smeared sour cream all over his face. The waitress there just loves Greyson, lol.

Nothing too exciting today, sorry. I did finally start the final Harry Potter book last night. The problem is that while I am so excited to finally be breaking into uncharted territory, as it were, I am a little burned out with the series. I mean, three months of the same books is a little hard on my poor brain, lol. But I know I will miss Harry when he is no longer such a big part of my evenings. Gosh, I might even have to straighten up the house or something after the kids go to bed instead of just curling up with a book! Nah, maybe I'll just find a new book. ;)

Welcome to My New Blog Face!

Let's all say a big giant "Thank you!" to Darcy at Life with My 3 Boybarians for my beautiful new blog face. Isn't it gorgeous?!?!? Isn't it just so me?!?!? What a wonderful birthday present for me.

And speaking of birthdays, we had the best time yesterday. We spent the day at Salt Point State Park and let me tell you, I have rarely seen anything more gorgeous. We started with a short hike along the coast. The sandstone and mudstone was like something out of this world. Cameron and Cassia were quite the adventurous little rock climbers. We found little dried up pools in one spot where the depressions just glittered with crystallized salt. Science and art all wrapped up in one.

Next we took a hike inland a bit to the Pygmy Forest. Apparently, there used to be at least twenty of them in our county but all but this one have been bulldozed to make way for "progress" - aka housing developments. So the Salt Point State Park Pygmy Forest is one of the only places in the world where the effects of impoverished soil on the environment can be studied. Again, science and art all wrapped up in one.

We finished off the day with an overindulgent meal at Olive Garden. Yum. I really could not imagine a better place to spend my day. The kids were angels, my DH was the perfect husband and father, and my day could not have been better. Here's to a year just as wonderful. Salut.