Seasonal Art

L called and kindly reminded me I haven't blogged in a week.  Whoops.  I have no excuse (other than nothing has happened and the camera has been outside all week).

I promised the kids if they get their work done during the week, we do art on Friday.  Today we talked about the seasons, each kid picked their favorite season (which happened to be the season of their birthday), and they made a collage representing that season.

IJ did spring:

S did summer:

E did autumn:

And I did winter.  Which D promptly ruined.  The best part was when the feathers got glued to his arm and he cried.  But I hadn't located the camera yet, so I missed the photo opportunity.  I also get to clean up the mess and put everything away.

I'm always amazed how quickly they run through an art project and move on to watching The Little Mermaid.  One would think my children who dream of becoming artists would spend more time on their projects.  Especially after begging to do art all week.

Autumn

Summer is over.  Yahoo!  I am a PNW girl to the core.  I love spring and I love autumn.  Winter is too gray (it would be different if it snowed here).  Summer is too hot.

I am celebrating by making pumpkin porridge carbonara and sharing my secret trick with you.  My secret that I learned from my husband, so I guess it is his secret.  Pumpkin porridge is easy to make.  You just add some canned pumpkin after the porridge is done cooking and whatever spices and sweetener you like.  Today I added cinnamon, cloves, and brown sugar.  Now comes the fun part.  Take an egg (or more) and blend it smooth.  My Super M can whip eggs with a wire whisk as well as I can with the blender.  So I used my VitaMix.  Then slowly add the egg(s) in a drizzle and stir the hot porridge quickly, like you are making a hollandaise sauce.  The eggs cook without coagulating and making the porridge so creamy, like a custard!  Yum, yum, yum!

"Do I Smell Something Burning?"

That is not the question you want your students asking when they are experimenting with electricity.

Today, we are catching up on experiments that were scheduled in my Sonlight Science Instructor's Guide.  The guide is not approved by the school district because it is published by a Christian company, but the experiment book and the materials kit are approved.

The experiments were easy enough for F to play with, but not so easy that IJ was bored.  The experiment kit came with enough supplies for four children!

I was so glad that I bought these art trays when I realized the light bulbs and batteries would be rolling off the table and falling on the floor.  Each kid got their own color (except E, who got to use her back up color).

The experiments encouraged letting the kids fool around with the foil ribbons, batteries, and light bulbs so they could discover points of contact and short circuits.  I managed to burn my fingers demonstrating a short circuit!  Then I drew pictures of possible connections (straight out of the book, I did not make them up myself) and the kids had to predict whether or not they would work.

After they predicted outcomes, they built the connection, and proved or disproved their hypotheses.  One experiment had them combine supplies to see if they could make the bulb glow brighter!  IJ's mental light brightened when he remembered that he had disassembled a flashlight a few weeks ago and knew how to line up the batteries.  It was a fun morning!

Gold Rush

The year is 1849.  Kitty and her mate, Silver, have headed to California to get rich!  They stake their claim, naming their land Kitty's Claim, and the river, Silver Stream.

Soon, other hopefuls show up.  They sleep in tents, just downstream of Kitty's Claim.  

A mine is built and Vanilla finds the mother lode!  

As soon as the others find out, there is a mad dash for gold.

 Kitty comes to the rescue, throws claim jumpers and robbers in jail, keeps the meals organized at the inn, and prevents the stores from price gouging.    

You, too, can have fun while learning history.  I used the cardboard boxes that my orders have been coming in, plus a few from Costco, and the packing paper for the river.  I painted using powdered tempera.  Once upon a time, when I had only two toddlers, I purchased a set of tempera paint at the craft store.  I thought I was being so smart, buying the big bottles when they were on sale for $1.88!  I got one of each color.  And they are all dried up to a clump and are in the garbage can now.  Powder tempera is far superior, because you only mix as much as you need.  While the paint was wet, I sprinkled gold glitter inside the mine and on the river.  The kids loved picking them off for their gold pile.  I didn't spend much time on detail...but IJ said, "Wow!  This is great, Mom!" so I guess I did just fine

A Better School Day

Today we started to settle into our groove.  I like to take pictures of what we do so I can record our lives and document school just in case I ever have to prove I actually schooled these kids of mine.  I don't take pictures of everything, but I do like to capture the cute and fun things.  Tonight, as I downloaded the camera, I enjoyed looking at the work we did.

Two Peas (S on D duty during math)

Although my fancy, pre-made timeline hasn't arrived, we started our timeline activities.  We started by making our own unprofessional timeline with one of the 50 pieces of white poster board ($20) I ordered.  Since my arms were full of cranky D, I turned the timeline making into a cooperative brainstorming problem-solving activity *clear throat*  The boys had to figure out how the cut the poster board in half lengthwise and have both side be equal.  They had to tell me what tools they needed.  They had to honor each other's ideas. It was cool.

S's first day without pain medicine!

E chose how the two pieces would be assembled: glue or tape.  She chose glue and poured on so much we couldn't add the line or numbers today.  It'll have to dry for awhile.  Then we decided what symbols we were going to use for the books we've read so far.  IJ chose a gear and a shoe for Shoes for Everyone.  S chose a bear paw for Moccasin Trail (IJ wanted to add a wagon to illustrate Jim's inner conflict-but I won't tell, you will just have to read the book!)  A pile of gold glitter will be the symbol for the Gold Rush.

This is E's math sheet.  She is my third child to go through Saxon 1, but she is the first to put so much beautiful detail in her work.  I was wondering what was taking her so freakin' long to finish!  I'm pretty sure her brothers used one color and didn't stay in the lines.

"One...What's next?"

Because Saxon starts out so easy in every level, I told E that one of her jobs was to teach F how to count.  F gets to 3, has E finish up to 9, and then she calls 9, "P."  Very cute.

"I'd rather be doing Latin!"

I had a little creative fun time before language arts...tonight.  Yes, it takes us all day to do school.  But we take a lot of breaks.  IJ above is using a device I made to help them with writing.  It is based on the worksheets from Sonlight's Diamond Notes.  I was supposed to make a million copies of the baseball diamond worksheet for writing on, but instead I made this big, colorful baseball diamond.  I used two more pieces of the 100 pieces of colored poster board ($36) I ordered.  I covered with four of the 75 feet of clear contact paper I ordered.  (I'm recording the use of these materials because the school district didn't think I could use 150 pieces of poster board or 75 feet of contact paper in one year-I guess we'll see about that!)

Anyway, they start out writing the topic with wet erase marker on the pitching mound, three specifics on the bases, and home plate has a topic sentence that joins the specifics to the topic.  It was a great tool for my baseball players.  I've used Daily 6-Trait Writing in the past, but it just seems to be too disjointed and not really related to writing.  The kids never use the skills covered in the workbook to write anything more than a sentence.  And IJ needs to be writing reports by now!  Not just free form poetry and fables!

Tomorrow is Saturday, and they owe me one more day of work.  I'm hoping tomorrow goes as smoothly as today!

Crazy, yet Cozy

Yesterday was slightly crazy, yet left me with such cozy happiness in my heart.  I had to write up my first review of the school year in the morning.  This didn't take too long because we hadn't spent much time working in the books that were late arriving.  But the day's routine was upset enough that I just told the kids we were taking a Saturday and the real Saturday is going to be a school day.  To this they readily agreed and we headed off to roller skating.

This is our third year roller skating.  It seems forever ago that we were coming home looking like this.  Now they zip around like nobody's business.  After roller skating we headed off to a new friend's house to kill some time between skating and a church function held to bless homeschoolers in their upcoming school year.  My original plan was to run to the store and library during the family's dinner time, but they insisted we stay.  And it was awesome.

 (The pictures today are unrelated to the post, but show other uses for the MegaSaucer)

Dinosaur Watering Hole

We met this family when they moved here last year.  They came to roller skating.  I saw them a few times at the YMCA.  And at other homeschool things here and there.  They joined Cub Scouts near the end of the year and went on a camp out.  And it was at the camp out that S and his best friend discovered each other.  When I went in to the church the very first time and saw the mom there, I knew something great was going to happen...

Between us, there are nine kids-seven are boys.  The ages stair-step from 10 years old to one year old. One of them is S's age and they are best friends.  IJ and the oldest get along splendidly.  And all the younger ones are indistinguishable.  The mom and I get along wonderfully and do Bible studies together.  She is a hoot!  We (with her husband flipping pancakes) managed to feed the kids and have them out the door in 20 minutes!  An all time record!  And we made it to the church on time.

Beyblade Battling Arena

At church our two families always sit together.  It is hard to tell the D kids from the S kids because they travel in this huge group!  The moms sit behind the kids so we can flick the boys' ears when they get loud.  The girls like to sit with the moms and babies.  After the blessing, we headed outside to play until dark.  And when we left, the chorus of goodbyes was heartwarming!  It could have been a Norman Rockwell painting.

Learning Lessons

This has not been my favorite Back to School.  In my dream world, I would have ordered my curriculum and had it delivered two weeks before school started.  I would have had plenty of time to go through each book, determine how quickly each book would be worked, and entered the information into my database.  I would have had two computer stations, a geography station, a science center, and a baby/preschool center set up and ready to go.  I would have had meals ready to go for the first month...okay, now I'm joking.  I would never be that organized.

Instead, the school district sent both curriculum orders to the wrong address and had to have them reshipped.  Several items are on back order.  My arts and crafts order was "too big" and put on hold until someone with "more experience" in the school district could approve it.  By the time I got off the phone with the principal, it was clear who has the most experience educating my family.  I got my order (I sure have a lot of paint and poster board).

The first day of school was last Monday.  As of today, I finally have my materials.  I am slowly introducing new subjects and figuring out how our day will flow.  So far, we start the day with our "social studies."  This is the loose term I use to describe history and geography.  We do this subject as a group, one room schoolhouse style.  Each kid, from F on up to IJ, works at their own level (D plays in his prison-I mean play yard).  Social studies takes from 15 minutes to over an hour, depending on what we do.  We are using an assortment of material, secular and not, official curriculum and winging-it supplies.  After we clean up, everyone is hungry and needs a break. I need coffee.

Next is math.  I work one on one with E while the boys take turns on the computer and playing with D.  E is using Saxon 1 this year, S is finishing Teaching Textbooks 4 and starting 5, and IJ will be using Saxon 6/5.  F needs to learn how to count.  She'll hang out at the table during E's math lesson and learning through osmosis.  IJ takes over an hour to get his math done, so by the time he is done, it is time for lunch!

After lunch, D goes down for his nap and the rest of the kids work on Language Arts.  This is the most difficult challenge of my day so far.  Each kid needs to work at their own level.  Each kid gets started on something and then interrupts whomever I am working with.  F usually runs down the hall screaming about this time and wakes D up from his nap too early.  And I feel like this should be the end of the day.

But nope!  We still have Latin and Science.  Today we started Latin at 4:00 pm.  For the last two years, this has been the time we are running madly to an activity.  Or we were already gone.  But this year, we are watching Latin instruction on DVD and listening to our vocabulary on CDs.  I'm going to have in principio erat verbum stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Science is only reading so far.  We have yet to receive our science kits...but we have plenty of things to keeps us busy until then!

The New Nap

Or Like Father, Like Son.

Ever since D weaned, I haven't figured out how to get him to go to sleep.  M has the magic touch though.  He just sits down at the computer, cranks up the tunes, and D falls right to sleep.  I'm not all that interested in listening to music.  Most of it I like, but I can't really listen to music and listen for child-related emergencies at the same time.  But never fear!  I found a solution!  Headphones!

Don't ya wanna just kiss that face?

D, wearing his "I Love Daddy" T-shirt, falls peacefully asleep listening to music, while I check my email and favorite blogs.  Today's afternoon nap is brought to you by Enya.  He also loves The Rolling Stones and Supertramp.  I once tried the Beatles, but he just wriggled out of my lap and ran away.

The Face Mystery

This morning, M went into the girls' room to turn off their nightlight.  He turned to look at F and was surprised to see her messy face.  He came out to me and told me F's face was worthy of a picture.  But it was too messy and how could she have gone to bed with such a mess on her face?  I told him that he was the one that brushed her teeth so he was the one that should have washed her face.  I was thinking there was food or toothpaste around her mouth and why is he making a big deal about the mess?  When F woke up, I saw what he meant:

I found a marker, with no lid, hidden amongst her blankets.  Someone was busy before she went to sleep last night!

An S and His Tonsils

We've always knows S has large tonsils.  When he was four or so, the pediatrician said he would eventually grow in to them.  And since he was never sick, there was no reason to worry.  So we didn't worry.  Last year, I took S to see the ENT, who said that yes, S has big tonsils, but he has plenty of breathing space and don't worry.  So we didn't worry.  After M spent two nights camping with S and listened to him snore and experience apnea all night long we decided it was time to worry.  Back to another ENT we went, who said the tonsils should come out.

Goodbye Large Tonsils!

Yesterday, S had his tonsils out.  He was such a trooper about the whole process.  All morning I was a nervous wreck, a fact I kept hidden.  They kept telling me that if S experiences bleeding after the surgery, I need to call 911 and get him to the ER right away.  But S was (and is) blissfully ignorant of what was going to happen.  All he knew was that his tonsils were too big and they needed to come out.

He was nervous about the IV

My favorite memories are: S insisting that they only trim the tonsils.  He actually needed his tonsils, so they couldn't completely cut them out.  The nurse tried to explain that he didn't need them, but I knew a quick, "Okay, they'll just shave a bit off," was all he needed.  We had rock, paper, scissor battles in the "emperor chair" while we waited for his meds to kick in.  I used my psychic mind power to influence S's decisions.  We tied five times in a row because I'm not physic enough to tell him what to pick and then do what beats that with my own hands.  The anesthesiologist told me S would start acting sleepy and goofy.  I thought to myself, "What else is new? How will I know the meds are kicking in?"  His "finger people" were having great adventures falling off the arm of the emperor chair when they checked on him-they thought the goofiness was happening; I knew nothing had changed.

Not feeling great today

When we got home, he was normal.  He went right back to playing Beyblades with IJ and was super-excited that I let him watch SpongeBob.  But by bedtime, his throat was hurting enough to make him cry.  I gave him his medicine and we camped out on the couches together with D.  (I had to monitor S in case of respiratory distress or hemorrhaging).  Today, he is very sleepy and not talking.  He tried to play Beyblades, but I sent him back to the couch.  His throat hurts, but he won't take his medicine.  My poor baby!

First Day...

...finally!  We are still missing quite a few books that were ordered two weeks ago and the arts and crafts supplies, but we survived. I planned to start school promptly at 9:00 this morning.

IJ works on his South America map

At 8:30, I thought to myself, "Why wait? I should get a head start so I don't freak out when I get an interruption."  *Sound of breaking glass*  "Mom? Did you hear that?  S broke a plate and its all over the floor and he's barefoot and standing on a chair!"  Corelle plates may be break-resistant, but when they break, they shatter!  I spent that 30 minutes running my hand over the kitchen floor and vacuuming invisible shards of glass out of my shoes.

E and S work on their maps.

At 9:00, we started school with a prayer, The Pledge, and a map of South America.  And non-stop screeching from The Baby is the Lesson. He wanted pencils.  He wanted school boxes.  He wanted to color on the Atlas.  He wanted up.  He wanted down. (I think he had a tummy ache- he's been asleep for 3 hours now)

D smells the flower.

My 3/4 preschooler had much better behavior.  Of course her school work was right up her alley.

F colors her Cinderella book.

We make it through history (Simon Bolivar), geography (South America),  PE (Simon Says and Smile Toss), read aloud (Moccasin Trail), math (IJ only), recess (picking blackberries and holding roosters), Lunch (mac n cheese), language arts (individual), and science (early inventions).  At 3:00, we have:

Abandoned School Table

Beyblades (S) and Horses (girls)

First night of Scouts, ready to go

Dinner on the stove, laundry on the line

And just when I think we are back to "normal," S gets his tonsils removed tomorrow.  And for the record, I wasn't kidding about D and F.  Enjoy this nine second slice of my morning:

Never-ending Summer

Pet Rabbit

I've been told not to mention we eat rabbit to those who own rabbits as pets.

F enjoys her rabbit leg, while Oreo watches

Are you going to tell me that you don't have chicken in your freezer?

E and Rodney

Dinner tonight was delicious- Thank you L and Big S!  As soon as we are "organized," we are going to raise rabbits too... after the cow and goats and new dog, of course.  (Did I hear someone laugh?)

Kindergarten

This is the third time I haven't had to send one of my precious children off to school on the yellow stinky school bus for their first day of Kindergarten. 

A Girl With Style

But instead of getting lots of work done like I did on IJ's first day or getting some work done like I did on S's first day we got no work done!  In fact, I have no memory of what I did on Wednesday, which was the first day of school for the locals.  My school books still haven't arrived, so we are experiencing extended summer vacation.

Although E started kindergarten early last year in our parent partnership program, she will have to remain in kindergarten until next year.  Unless I want to drive her to Bellingham and have her tested into 1st grade.  I consider this unnecessary.  She will be doing first grade math, first grade language arts, and hanging out with our history and science lessons as well (I'll expand on that in a few days)... what grade the school district has her listed as doesn't matter as long as she is learning at the appropriate level.

Now hurry up and get here, packages!