Pinewood Derby

 Pinewood Derby always starts with a last minute panicked building and painting of cars.  We always let the kids choose their shapes, sand their cars, and decorate them as they choose.

Daniel's Car:

 Fiona's Car:

Genna:

Heidi's Car:

And I don't know what Lula's car looked like because for some reason, I didn't get a picture of it!

Waiting for the race to begin

Racing!

There were so many racers.  The Cub Scouts.  The girl scouts. The Boy Scouts.  Adults.  And siblings.  They all raced in their own races.

Daniel got fastest Wolf Car

 Genna got first place and Fiona got third place in the sibling division.

 And Daniel WON THE PINEWOOD DERBY FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW

 What can I say? You can't keep a Downen down!

Spelling

Today I got to show Daniel why it is important to be a good speller.  He doesn't want to be the adult responsible for this:

I do love getting a spelling/vocab lesson out of this blooper (wolves/wolf's/wolfs).  I asked what he was wolfing down in the picture and he laughed. I heard they are going to do retakes because the pictures aren't even in focus.  And that's why you should never hire your friend to take "portraits" unless your friend happens to be a real professional.

Holes

We have a long history of deep holes being dug by kids...

Like this hole back in Ferndale...

Here is a link to when the current hole was first dug (the hole that Shane was in when Ian put the garbage can over him and split his head open).  The garbage can ended up being turned upside down in the hole and buried.  We paid too much money for that can to let it stay there, so we started the arduous process of digging it out and filling the hole permanently.  Until Daniel came along.

Daniel has been working to re-dig the hole...

Where's Jason?

There he is!

He told me he was stuck and I needed to get him out.  Liar.

Obviously Jason has been helping.

Laughing Lula, Daring Daniel

"Five plus five is ten!" followed by joyous laughter

Joy was the perfect middle name for Lula.  Everything she hears or says is followed by laughter.  I read a short story about iguanas to her today and she laughed all the way through.  It wasn't funny though! She was just delighted that iguanas can be six feet long and walk on a leash.  How amazing that they eat fruit and can climb curtains and sit on your head!

She also talks at a higher than normal volume, much like her older brother and her grandad.  Those three have no inside voice.  When Lula reads out loud, I have no problem hearing her over the cacophony these two make:

Trolls under the table

Jason is a nice little buddy at the table when he isn't being a demanding two year old who wants workbooks too.

He likes to joke about putting the wrong colors together.

 The little kids are finally trained to know where their place is at the table and which workbooks (coloring books) belong to them.  What a relief.

Daniel has hit his first wall for math and it's about time!

Double digit addition with carrying has slowed him up a bit.  He is the kind of kid that is always in a hurry, so he tends to get sloppy.  He wasn't too happy when I erased a bunch of his answers.  But I did the writing the second time around so he could focus on carrying the one.  What do you do with a kids whose brain is as fast as a computer, but the programming is glitchy? Sigh.

But at least I have this:

Making the lower living room great again! (joking!!!)

He loves history and exciting stories of daring and adventure, especially if there is a lot of battle and killing.  I have a picture book version of Gilgamesh that he enjoyed. He has spent the last two days building walls around his great cities.  We also have a hardback copy that Grandad bought many years ago that my older students can read.  If they dare.

Fairy Shrimp

Hi. It's been awhile. 

Earlier this month, Daniel found these really cool creatures that I have never seen before.  I spent so much time trying to figure out what they were and I have a real science degree and I even spent many many hours identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates. Mark didn't even know what they were and he knows this property better than anyone.

My science teacher friend identified them as Brine or Fairy Shrimp.  Otherwise known as Sea Monkeys!  I had no idea they could live in pond puddles, but that is their special niche.  They live in ephemeral bodies of water and have a very short life cycle.  They lay their eggs in the mud, which survive until the next rainy season.

Field trip to the pond puddle

 This puddle was so much bigger when it was full! By the time Daniel discovered the fairy shrimp, most of the water had dried up.

 There are two fairy shrimp in the picture above.  You can see their orange egg sacks.  The coolest thing (besides their life history) is that they swim upside down!

Daniel collected a bucket of specimens and he is planning on letting the bucket dry up so he can see if the eggs survive and hatch after he adds water again.  Fun project!  They are sitting in my school room right now.

But guess what? They are already hatching:

Brand new baby fairy shrimp with no legs yet!

 And guess what else? Fairy shrimp aren't the only thing in his bucket....

... this is a mosquito, halfway through metamorphosis.  I saw some empty exoskeletons floating around in the bucket this morning and Fiona exclaimed, "I was wondering where that mosquito came from!

Daniel now has a lid on his project until all the mosquitos are done hatching!

Bottle This Moment (Co-op too)

I would love to bottle this exact moment in time.  Right this very second it is Friday, 10:30ish am.  Mark is out here making his breakfast.  Fiona aced her math test this morning (but missed a few spelling words).  Everyone is behaving themselves (or at least I think they are; I haven't seen Lula or Heidi for awhile).  Daniel and Evie are tete a tete, Evie teaching Daniel some tricks she knows about math.  Daniel had a gold star day for behavior (I don't grade his work for the most part-it's always right).  Daniel groaned today when I pulled out a RightStart math sheet.  I had to though, he is flying through Saxon 2 so fast he might as well skip the whole book.  He flew through the RightStart page, adding numbers with nine in them like nobody's business (49+7, 63+9, for example). He wrote in pen, finished a whole page in about two minutes, and made no mistakes.  I hear him say to Evie, "You used to use RightStart? Is that how you got so good?"  He is ready to pass his other sister in math.

We had our second day of co-op yesterday.  I love co-op!  I love all the classes and the friends the kids have made so far.  I love that Fiona has two friends that she has known from dance and taekwondo and church and they all sit together during chapel and I have to shush them.  I love the cute projects Lula and Heidi do in their classes.  Lula sings, "Hypothesis, hypothesis, make a guess. Hypothesis, hypothesis, put it to the test!"  Mark adds, "...with replicates and a confidence interval of 95%!" I love spending three hours in the nursery knitting socks and chatting with moms while someone else teaches my kids.  I get a solid three days at home rocking Memoria Press for five kids and then I'm ready for a break on Thursday.  I'm supposed to teach in the practical needlework class, but Jason won't let me.  Maybe in a few weeks he will.

Competition

Genna and Daniel are very competitive, both with each other and with others.  When they compete against each other, good things happen for the most part.

We've been back in the swing of school things for the last two weeks because they stopped jumping on the trampoline and playing outside and started wanting to play Minecraft again.  One of the hardest obstacles to homeschooling is the mental block that we can't get everything done, so why try?

Once Genna figured out she actually can get everything done if she does a little every day, she has been very productive.  I overheard her say that she was done with breakfast, so there was no reason she couldn't just get started on her math so she can go out and pick blackberries and get back to her experimenting (she, Fiona, and Daniel are experimenting with blackberry recipes).  Daniel didn't want to be left behind, so he was quick to get through his work too...and upped the ante by wanting to be done first.  They were out picking blackberries by 10:30 this morning.

We haven't added all our subjects yet; we are only working on math, spelling, and handwriting.  Plus Latin for Fiona and grammar, history, and geography for Genna.  Shane will start his schoolwork when Ian goes back to school.  I'll write up my back to school post then.

Shark Bait

Many moons have passed since Mark has had a day off that coincides with a good night's sleep and no home improvement projects.  The little kids and I have been neglected in our travels outside the surrounding property, so we decided that today would be a good day to head to the beach.  For the kids' sake.  We, Mark and I, would have been happy to stay home and disappear in our hobbies.

We decided to go to Penrose since we went to Joemma last time.  Penrose has a great intertidal zone with tons of critters and fun rocks and trees to climb on.  I love taking pictures of the kids there, so I made sure I brought my lazy lens.

I was just getting started with picture taking when Daniel, who was swimming barefoot against my wishes...

 ...stepped on a very sharp shell.  He said, "Hey mom, take a picture of my blood dripping into the water!" like any boy would, right?

When the blood pooled all around his legs, I had to get a better look.  I immediately scooped him up in my arms, said, "Come on, Shark Bait, we gotta go home."

After cleaning his deeply cut toe and reassuring him that we would not take him in to see the doctor, we made sure he was nice and toasty warm and not suffering from shock (he cried hard all the way home and he really did bleed a LOT).  He is now happily playing video games with everyone else crowded on the couch watching.  You know, SpongeBob does have a song about the safety of staying indoors...

Water Babies

Water fun abounds this time of year.  So much for schooling year round.  We can't even think during the summer, so I'll just keep heading down to the pond or to the porch to be the lifeguard.

Ian and Shane: The Pirates that Don't Do Anything...But Annoy their Siblings

Ian added a new rope swing down at the pond and the older kids have been testing it out.  Maybe someday I'll get around to adding video links so you can see Daniel's first few go's on the swing...he looks like he just falls out of the tree and belly flops in the water. But...

Daniel has improved greatly!

I've come up with new rules for paddle boards, based on Lula's experience falling off in shallow water and freaking out.  Anyone who wants to go on a paddle board must be able to float in their life jacket without screaming or whining.  Lula and Heidi have been working, first in our wading pool, then in the pond, for the right to sit on a paddle board.

Jason came up with the back floating idea

They haven't made much progress...

Like Cats in Water

Is she 11? Or 16?

The patience this girl shows with her younger siblings and the love on her face as she gently propels her baby brother through the water simply melts my heart.  She has almost never ending grace even for Daniel and is very good at telling him spiritual truths about treating people kindly and forgiving those who trespass against you.  

Surprisingly, Heidi, the one that cries if a single drop of water is splashed on her, was the only one to remain calm enough in the water to SIT on the paddle board.  She can't go anywhere yet, but with the weather forecast being what it is this week, I'm sure they all will have a lot more practice.