It's a Girl!

I had an ultrasound last week and we found out that our new baby is a girl!  Times sure have changed since my first.  Now I get a CD of the pictures instead of heat paper prints that fade with time.

This little girl kept her hand curled up next to her face and wanted to face the camera straight on.  The technician had a hard time getting the profile picture.  Baby Girl must have my nose if she is so shy.  The cutest thing ever was when she opened her mouth like she was practicing her yawn.  Life is precious.

IJ Independent

Subtitled: Dogs and Brothers are Fun

A Baby Brother Trap- By S

I'm slowly, but surely getting the older boys working independently on their schoolwork.  As much as I love the idea of being the one and only person to spoon feed my babies until they are adults...wait a second.  I don't love that idea at all.  Who wants a 40 year old son lying on the couch asking for a sandwich?  Not me.

Sharing the Sunny Spot (with me too)

This second half of the school year, I am focusing on helping IJ achieve scholarly independence.  It started with the chart that I mentioned in this post.  I also bought him some curriculum that is written to the student with notes to the parents in the back.  One might think I'm doing this only because I have my hands full and I can't possibly do it all.  While I can't do it all is true, it is not my only reason.  One of the reasons we've decided to homeschool is so our kids will learn how to learn.  Not only do I not want a 40 year old son lying on the couch asking for a sandwich, I do not want a 40 year old son (or daughter for that matter) that is dependent on hiring an "expert" to solve every problem.

"Are you sure you're allowed to do that?"

While in college, both M and I took a class that was required for our degrees.  We took the class in different years, but the professor and book were the same.  This professor would lecture for an hour, assign some reading from the text book, and test us twice throughout the quarter.  The tests never seemed to have anything to do with the lectures or the reading.  Luckily the professor graded on the curve and my 50/100 points ended up being a B or so.  We (that would be myself and my friends-not M) constantly complained that the tests had nothing to do with the lectures and he was so unfair.  When I met M and we talked about this class, he said this professor was a great professor and he actually made his students think instead of spoon-feeding every test question to the students.  Can you guess who got a real A in that class? I bet the rest of the students in his class hated M for setting the curve so high!  I know I'm glad God waited to bring M and I together and he wasn't in my class.

"Let's see if it really burns. I'll let you know when it gets hot." ~S

One homeschool subject I've needed to be in control of is science experiments.  I've always thought my kids couldn't possibly do any by themselves and there is no way my precious D will let us do anything experiment related.   There are no such things as naps that last long enough to get anything done!  Experiments are often put off for another day and then forgotten.  For a week now I've let IJ follow the directions of this curriculum using this kit himself.  It is sometimes scary.  Like when IJ started asking where I keep the vinegar and baking soda so he could use chemical energy to blow up a balloon.  And when he informed me he was going to convert light energy to heat energy with that magnifying glass.  He even made a fly wheel generator all by himself!  So for the most part, I'm really enjoying watching him create and learn!

Blue and Gold

Tonight was the annual Blue and Gold Celebration where the Cub Scouts celebrate the anniversary of Scouting in America.  Our pack has a potluck and talent show.  We also have a professional photographer come and take portraits of the pack, each den, and individuals if they so choose.  For the last two years, IJ and S have done Taekwondo demonstrations, but since they are no longer taking classes... they had to do something else.

IJ decided that this was a good opportunity to earn the Showman badge.  He and a friend wrote a script, made puppets, and performed their show.  They did a good job!  They each played several roles and remembered to use different voices.  Their show was about two Scouts at a camp out singing songs and telling ghost stories.

S and his friend sang It's A Grand Old Flag.  They did a good job too!  These two boys are the most active in their den.  Ever since they were Tigers, they both have had nearly perfect attendance.  Are they the perfect Scouts? Nope-their parents are involved so the boys are by default.  Friend's mom is our committee chair and our pack would not run without her.  She is awesome!

Each den also performed skits and songs, so the boys and M had a few more parts to play before the night was over...

...here M is trying to get the audience to participate in the classic Boom Chicka Boom song with S on the mic.  (All pictures are extracted from video footage-sorry about the poor quality!)

The hardest part of the night was keeping E and younger happy and quiet at the table until it was time to eat.  As soon as the talent show was over and the pack headed over for their group photo, I headed straight to the food.  After D trashed the table, we cleaned up as quickly as we could and left.  Three hours was way too long to stay in one place!  But I am so proud of IJ and S.  They worked hard and it really showed.

Mardi Gras

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I found out that tonight is Mardi Gras.  It was about...oh...say, dinner time.  And I decided since M was going to be gone late at a meeting, I wanted to have a Mardi Gras party.

First, I had to tell my kids about Mardi Gras; they have never heard of it.  So we ended up having a mini homeschool unit where we learned about Twelfth Night, Ash Wednesday, Lent, and... Pancake Tuesday!  Sorry, IJ.  This wasn't on your chart.  I just have to go with my spontaneity sometimes.  Boy, do I love Wikipedia.  We learned that carnival is from the Latin words carne and vale, which mean meat and goodbye.  And of course we learned that mardi and gras is French for Tuesday and fat.  I showed them Louisiana and New Orleans on the map. We read about how different cultures celebrate Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day and they really liked the story of the woman who was so busy frying pancakes, she forgot to go to church until she heard the bells ringing.  She ran down the street in her apron with a pancake in her frying pan.  To this day, people have pancake flipping races running down the street in housewife gear.

While the kids made sparkly crazy masks (and the school didn't think I could use that collage and glitter kit for a million things this year) for their costume parade, I made New Orleans Banana Flapjacks and smothered them in chocolate sauce (high fructose corn syrup!).  They dressed up as a crazy clown, a clown with a sparkly mask, and a strange monkey thing.  F was a wizard.  IJ tried to be a vampire because I am halfway through the best scary book I've ever read- Dracula-and he wanted to scare me.   Too bad he can't scare me better than I can scare myself.  Every time I woke up last night I covered my neck.  Anyways....my costume was...the pancake flipping housewife.  What else could I be?

And what children's version of Mardi Gras would be complete without a Princess and the Frog movie night? They finally understand the whole parade/Mardi Gras wedding thing now.

As the movie was starting and IJ was still packing away his chocolate banana pancakes (made with white flour and butter-gasp! talk about fat!), I continued the history lessons and placed the movie in its historical context.  When I got to the jazz music, IJ informed me he does not like jazz, only rock n' roll.  "Jazz is the grandfather of rock," I told him.  He doesn't care.  There is no electric guitar or heavy drums in that old-fashioned jazz music.  I must speak to his father about his horrid taste in music!  Or maybe not.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent.  I think I may continue this lesson and see if we can give up the sweets for the next 40 days...

February

We are nearing the end of my least favorite month.  The month where we always get sick.  The month where peace and happiness disappear behind a thick layer of clouds.  The month that seems to go on forever...and this year it is one day longer!

Blowing a ping pong ball (white streak)

Besides having the flu, my spirits haven't been as dumpy as they have been in past years.  I owe this all to my vitamin D supplements.  When I stopped taking them after I was sick, my spirits plunged.  When I started taking it again, I'm back to normal.

Bernoulli Principle: Can't blow the ball out of the funnel

And by normal I mean trying to keep up with laundry, making sure the school work gets done (and is interesting-see ping pong ball experiment pictures), taking the kids to their fun activities (wrestling is now over), feeding everyone, and finding joy in my little projects and adventures.

The best way to get schoolwork done: petting a dog by the fire

IJ has reached the age where he is no longer content to take every day as it greets him.  He wants to know what is happening when and how long it will be until we do projects like build rockets, paint, go on field trips, etc.  We've compromised and he watches D for me while I keep a chart of our next 18 weeks of school updated.  Now he knows he will be learning about energy and reading The View from Saturday for the next two weeks while he finishes up his puppet show for the Blue and Gold celebration next Sunday.  After that we will have a unit on poetry and study the 50 states.  We'll field trip to the Puyallup Farm School and the Museum of Flight.  Anyone want to meet us in Seattle?

Standing on Mount Firewood

M and IJ have been busy hauling firewood/storm debris out of the woods before the blackberries and nettles grow over the top of them.  Once the growing over starts, the mowing becomes impossible.  We are happy to report we only burned half our firewood stash this winter, burned very little heating oil, and have secret stacks of firewood curing around the property.

This little guy is a worker.  He cannot be entertained with little toddler toys that flash and play music.  He won't watch TV for very long.  He can't play nicely with his sister.  He wants to work!  With people!  He wants to move laundry into the dryer (whether it is clean or not), put clothes and dishes away (not necessarily where they belong), put movies in the DVD player, and mostly, he just wants to go outside.  Preferably with his dad, "Ee," and his purple boots, "bups."  He has made this school year...challenging.  Both the girls happily colored at the table while their brothers worked.  This one cannot be satisfied.  I can't wait to see what next year brings!

And then there is The Pirate.  After having him for only two months, it seems like he has been here forever.  We were really lucky to get this dog before someone else did.  His bad habits include: barking a high-pitched bark when he wants to go outside, chasing cats, chewing up Barbie, and sleeping on blankets.  Not too shabby for a dog!  Now that the Barbies are chewed up and gone, that is no longer a problem.  The Pathetic Doberman doesn't even chew up stuffed animals now that The Pirate is here.  The high-pitched bark will get Pathetic Doberman howling like someone is playing a musical instrument.  That was funny the first time.  Now I holler, "Let that dog OUT!"  At least he knows to go outside to do his business!  And sleeping on blankets and chasing cats? Who wouldn't want to sleep on the blankets and chase the cats?  The cats can climb trees and we have plenty of those.  They learned right away that The Pirate can climb under the van, so that is no longer a place of refuge. 

What a sweet face!

A question we had was would he wander off our property?  Out here, that can be a big problem because if a dog harasses someones livestock or poultry, he can shoot the dog and no one will ever know.  So far The Pirate only sniffs around the pond.  He likes to be outside and will stay out for long periods of time.  We are not used to that!  We are used to our Pathetic Doberman, who will only stay outside if it is sunny and M or I are there to keep her company.  The Pirate is way more normal.  But when dogs are left outside for long periods of time unattended, they get in trouble.  But that is what the boys are for.  Watching their dog while they watch their brother!  It's a nice little circle: the pit bull guards the boys who keep the pit bull out of trouble while the doberman guards the mom who yells at the doberman when she barks at strangers in the yard.
 
Strangers in the yard...that means the septic system is not finished yet.  We can use it, but the county wants to move the whole drain field over 40 feet.  But that's a post for another day...

Math: Who's Right?

After several days of flu and recovery, the D family is back in business.  Today's business is math: double-digit multiplication, measuring, and earning the Cub Scout belt loop for Mathematics.  S has gotten confused with double-digit multiplication and has earned failing scores on his two last math assignments.  I'm so happy I homeschool, can turn off the computer program we use, and not let his scores count against his grade.  We spent some time working through the algorithm this morning when I came up with a great idea.

I asked, "S, do you know the order of the rainbow colors?"  "Yes, don't you remember teaching it to me?"  No, sorry.  Oh wait a minute, I think we covered it last week in our light and color unit in science.  Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, (indigo-but who counts that?) Purple.  I drew him a picture with colored arrows, showing the order and directions to multiply.  I was so excited that S could see the order of operations!  When M came out for his coffee break, I proudly showed him my creation:

"It's backwards," M says. "This is the way the arrows go," and he goes up.  Now how do you convince either one of us that we are multiplying the wrong direction? There is no way! Not that it matters (thank you commutative property).  "In fact, if I were teaching this, I wouldn't even start with the one's column.  I would start with the tens."  What? I've never heard of that! And because I've never heard of it, it can't be right.  I took just as much math in college as he did.  He may have gotten better grades (I seem to remember telling the calculus professor I only needed a C+ to get into the Environmental Science program and I would never take another math class again, I promise), but I had to prove that I was right about the direction of multiplication.  The first place I checked was S's math book:

Uh-oh. No wonder he was confused.  The book draws arrows one way, the teacher draws them the other way.  Fine.  IJ's book then.  He uses Saxon and Saxon is the King of All Math Curriculum:

No definitive answer because no directional arrows are shown.  So I went to single digit multiplication in Saxon and found that my way it right in Saxon and M and Teaching Textbooks are just left-handed. 

S said, "I'm so glad I have a smart mom."  I love that kid.

Camp Sheppard

IJ and M just got home from Webelos Camp with the Cub Scout pack.  They had fun, of course, and are tired, of course.  What I really love about sending them off to camp is...

 ...having the entire weekend to do whatever I want.  All weekend long.  No cooking, no cleaning...wait, I still have four kids at home, one that needed to go to a wrestling match.  And two that came down with a stomach virus.  So much for not cleaning all weekend.

Seriously, what I love about sending the boys to Webelos camp is all the work they get done while they are there.  The Webelos have several steps to advance through before they get their Arrow of Light award at the end of two years.  They work on Activity Badges, which are actually pins, each badge having several assignments associated with them.  There are 20 activity badges, but you only need to earn eight for Arrow of Light.  IJ has earned 11 badges so far.  Nine of them have been earned at Camps Thunderbird and Sheppard.  IJ's goal is to earn all 20 and earn the Super Achiever award.  He still has one more year as a Webelos, so I'm sure he'll reach his goal.

Because we homeschool, I can incorporate many of the activities into our school day, so the scholarly badges will be easier for IJ than for the other boys who are stuck in a classroom not learning.  I am happy that IJ's advancement has been something that both M and I can work on with him.  M can do all the outdoor, camping, and building projects with him, and I make sure all the box-checking gets done.  And next year, we do it all again with S!