Poor Baby

Various viruses are making their way through our family.  Daniel seems to be hit the hardest.  As a person who has a hard time relinquishing control, he really struggles with a stomach bug.  His body rebels and there is nothing he can do.  Except scream about things he *thinks* he has control over.  Like whether he should have peanut butter and jelly or oatmeal with raisins for lunch (instead of choosing between a bite of Gerber rice cereal or one saltine cracker).

I love how kids describe their various hurts and illnesses.  Ami used to say her neck hurt when she had a sore throat.  Daniel says his tongue hurts and he "choked" on Daddy's shirt, when he actually barfed.  At least he is learning how to use the bowl!

Blue and Gold

We just had our annual Blue and Gold ceremony for Cub Scouts and there were a few changes this year.

Nice shiner, Shane (trampoline injury).

Instead of potluck on paper plates, we had catered food on glass plates.  The food was good, but I did worry about spills on the table cloth and broken plates-neither of which happened.  Well, we had one little juice spill, but nothing major.

Couldn't listen quietly to the story and had to leave.

Instead of a talent show featuring our scouts, we hired a professional story teller.  I missed watching all the boys do their thing, but there was no stress of keeping the little ones under control.  Because Daniel wanted to run around during the story teller's performance, Mark gave me the look and we had to leave.  So I went out in the lobby area and caught up with my scouting friends and met a few new ones.

Fiona loves our friend who is always all glittery and sparkly.

This fun friend of ours has horses, goats, chickens, and a pot-bellied pig.  We are making plans to go over to her house so the girls can brush her miniature ponies.  She only has boys and loves our girls.  Especially how Fiona oooo's and ahhhhh's over her big sparkly rings!

I've never put flowers or sunglasses on my baby girls, but now that I see how cute they are, I may change my mind!  Each kid got a parting gift (another new thing) when they left the banquet and we got to keep our pretty centerpieces. 

Tag You're It

Fiona (using her most frantic tattle-tale voice): Daniel scribbled all over the bath tub with a marker! It was him, I know it! Because I didn't do it and he is the naughtiest person in the house!
Me: Daniel, did you color on the bathtub with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Fiona: You did so! You did!  You're a LIAR!
Daniel: No, YOU'RE a liar!
Fiona: No I'm not! You're a liar! Because I didn't do it!
Daniel: No, YOU'RE a liar!  I'm not a liar!
(etc, etc, etc)
Me: Daniel, did you color on the refrigerator with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Me: Did you color on the train table with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Me: Did you color on the floor with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Me: Did you color in the school books with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Me: Did you color your toys with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Me: Did you color all over the white board with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Me: Did you color your body with a marker?
Daniel: No!
Me: Did you color your face with a marker?
Daniel: No!

Definitely a Liar

The Park

Friends are nice *smile*

Mammal Experiment

This is our last week learning about animals in biology.  The boys are each picking an animal to write a report about-and it has to be a specific animal, not just a class of animals.  IJ picked ball python.  Shane hasn't decided yet.  In the meantime, we did two experiments.

The experiment demonstrates the importance of fur or blubber for mammals, who need to regulate their blood temperature.  We had two sets of "blood." One set represented an orca and the other represented a hairy mountain goat.  (The experiment calls for plain water, but I added red food coloring to make the experiment more realistic.)

The orca set asked, "What takes more energy to stay warm in, cold air or cold water?" One bottle went into the freezer and the other into cold water with "icebergs."

The hairy mountain goat set asked, "Which goat stays warmer, the hairy goat or the bald goat?" One bottle sat on the counter and the other nestled into a scarf.  The scarf does not contain any goat hair, so we used our imaginations.

We were amazed at the temperature difference between the orca bottles.  The cold water was ten degrees warmer than the air in the freezer, but the "blood" from the ice bath was a good fifty degrees colder than the "blood" from the freezer!  This was a great way to see why marine mammals need so much more blubber than land mammals in the same temperature.  And why we get so cold swimming down at the pond in the summer.  And why hiking scouts shouldn't get wet.

I've incorporated writing into every subject for the boys, especially Shane.  He is facing his first written portion in the annual standardized tests this spring and I want him to be completely comfortable.  I don't expect him to score very high considering he is younger than 99% of the 4th graders (and a large percentage of 4th grade boys are Ian's age).  But I do want him to practice and do well.  I had him write the data for our goat set and write up the conclusions.

But sometimes picture is worth a thousand words:

Of course my silly boys had the most fun toasting each other and drinking the red water with their lunch.  Sigh.

Fourteen

Coincidentally, he says it fourteen times.

Independent Learning

We are two weeks in to our rearranged schedule and I have seen a lot of really neat independent learning.

IJ's Science Project

Because the older kids have lots of free time in the morning (provided they have their math done), and they can't play video games or watch movies, they end up finding something interesting and productive to do.  IJ decided to grow avocado plants, using instructions he researched online.

Cobra, Rattlesnake, and Anaconda

Evie colored these three pictures of snakes, complete with habitats, which is a perfectly acceptable method of assessing learning.  I did let the kids watch an educational video about anacondas on Discovery Education, which led to me finding more video clips starring The Crocodile Hunter handling venomous snakes.  Today, in between dance classes and toddler time, we watched the last documentary Steve Irwin filmed: Ocean's Deadliest.  (Can you imagine? I had Daniel watch sharks biting a boat and then I put him down for a nap-sweet dreams!)

The other morning, Mark caught IJ helping Fiona read and write short words.  IJ is also doing a great job reading Evie's science books out loud to her on Tuesday mornings while I have dance/toddler time with the youngers.

Evie's math assignment yesterday was building three dimensional objects from two dimensional instructions using plain cubes.  I pulled out the Equilibrio cubes and the Architecto book and set her loose building more objects!  Now everyone is playing with the blocks.

One ongoing project in the lower levels of Saxon math (which we are not using this year) is recording the daily temperature and charting it on a graph.  I had the best intentions to keep this project going with the boys....for about three days.  I found a better project for my artistic child: a temperature scarf knit along!  My knitting and crocheting friends MUST read about it.  Evie and I are busy picking colors out of my stash of yarn.

"Please, sir, can I have some more?"

And of course we have reading.  Shane has finally caught the reading bug and is enjoying Choose Your Own Adventure books and Shel Silverstein.  IJ reads anything he can get his hands on.  And Lula? She devoured Oliver Twist!  Mark called me while I was driving home from wrestling last night and said something about Lula being fussy all evening.  But as my Nana always says, "This too shall pass." but I'm sure she wasn't talking about Oliver, specifically *wink*