Three Plus Two

A Little Birdwatching

The birds come out when the snow melts.

 

Katydid took this picture on Thursday. At one point there were seven blue jays on the ground eating chicken scratch. (Chicken scratch is a mix of cracked corn and other grains, also loved by juncos, crows, squirrels, and rabbits.) I've never seen so many blue jays together before -- usually the most we ever see at a time is two -- but this winter has been tough, with a lot of snow cover.

 

This photo also taken by Katydid.

You can see why we have scratch left over for the birds. Katydid likes to keep the chickens well fed. (The chickens could not be happier to have GRASS available to them, by the way.) 

 

More bluejays this morning, cleaning up the chicken's leftovers...

 

A small flock of robins also visited us on Thursday. During the cold weather, they huddle in the deep woods. Our temperatures soared to 58 degrees on Thursday (you didn't know that temperatures could "soar" to 58 degrees, did you?), so they came out to eat the remaining crabapples on the tree above the chicken coop.

This morning it is 12 degrees with an icy wind blowing and flurries. I think I will hold on to Thursday a little longer.

 

Country Diary: Still Winter

Today Is: February 22, 2009... George Washington's birthday... and my sister's birthday :-)

Weather: Let me show you:

And this is the view out the dining room window where I am sitting right now:

For once, however, we are not on the bullseye for a snowstorm. This latest storm is dumping most of its snow east of here. Our prediction is for 2-4 inches. I think we've already gotten about two, so we must be working on the 4. Periodically the wind will kick up and a cloud of snow will billow off the roof. The light seems to be the only thing that changes this time of year, and it is coming back.

I am thankful... that every day sunset comes a little bit later! And that we will be spending some time in Tennessee with family next month.

From the kitchen...  a cup tea with milk and honey right now. We had tacos for lunch and Chipmunk mostly ate taco sauce, which he licked off his fingers. Tonight I am thinking about curried lamp chops -- because I need to use up the rest of this lamb in the next month or so -- with some veggies from the freezer. We're still working on our own beans and corn. The lamb chop recipe comes from Quick Fix Meals: 200 Simple, Delicious Recipes to Make Mealtime Easy. I got this book a few years ago... I think when I was pregnant with the twins. I have never actually cooked out of it, though.

I am wearing... plum-colored fleece shirt, fuzzy tan pants, Birkenstocks, and a baby, sleeping on my shoulder.

I am reading... lots of books about homeschooling in high school, and also The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. I started this last year and put it down when I was about half way through. Now I'm picking it up again. Good stuff. The author was the scientist in charge of the Human Genome Project. Oh, and Discovering Fossils: How to Find and Identify Remains of the Prehistoric Past (Fossils & Dinosaurs) for Gareth's new paleontology "course" (I have had this book on my shelf for years -- bought it for $.25 at a library book sale -- and now it's finally coming in handy!) And Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook. Gorgeous book -- lots of photos -- lots of inspiration drawn from medieval monastery gardens.

I am creating...  a paleontology course for Gareth. I've been collecting resources off the web, books, and project ideas, and now I need to pull them all together onto a sheet that Gareth can reference himself.

I am hearing: Farmerboy adding up how much money he can make on extra chores as he puts on his snow gear to head out to the outer garage with Andy. They're going to clean up a bit and take an inventory on lumber; a new chicken coop, turkey roosts, and brooder boxes will need to be started ASAP.

From the learning room... see above for the paleontology course. I need to switch out the early February books for Lenten materials and also our books about sugaring time, which ought to be here soon... We're going to wrap up our study of ancient Africa and move on to ancient China, and we might switch from caves to weather, based on interest.

Farm and Garden: Well, stuff is finally happening. We got our seed order in, finally, even though Seeds of Change was completely out of cover crops and we had to scout around. This year we ordered seed from R.H.Shumway, Baker Creek, Pinetree Garden Seeds, and smallish amounts from Territorial and Seeds of Change. I didn't get any tomato or pepper seeds this year because we will be out of town just when we need to be starting them, so we'll buy 99% of our tomatoes and peppers as live plants from a local farm. I say 99% because I could not resist buying sweet pea tomato plants from Territorial. Next up: I'm about to order 15 heritage turkeys from Murray McMurray, and chickens from Meyer hatchery -- 30 heritage breed meat chickens (White Rocks and Delawares, not the typical Cornish X Rocks), 10 laying hens of various breeds, and 10 Old English bantams for Katydid and Farmerboy.

Around the House: I got a little more caught up on laundry yesterday. I don't do laundry on Sundays, which means I will be behind again tomorrow. Andy finished painting the kitchen today, though, so I am excited about getting all the stuff off the island!

I am hoping... that it warms up soon. Enough to melt some of the snow and get the little boys outside.

A few plans for the rest of the week... We have to make up a vision therapy appointment for Katydid and we'll have Mass on Ash Wednesday, so it looks as if it's going to be a busier than usual week. Andy will have some brief out of town trips, too. So my plans for next week mainly involve survival. :-)

A picture or two:

 

My "new" kitchen!

 

The tea set given to my father and my birth mother for their wedding made it off the island and back onto its perch atop the cabinets WITHOUT BEING BROKEN. I am sure it's a miracle. I think it looks much better against the yellow wall than it did against the white. But it's hard to tell in this picture.

Winter Term, Week 6 and 7: Spelunking and a little glitter

Week 6: Valentines, Valentines, Valentines:

 

Katydid, wearing her rose-colored glasses (they actually are rose-tinted, to help with her headaches) looks very Valentine-ish, doesn't she?

 

Most of the Valentines this year involved large amounts of glitter.  I think this is Pip's. Pip wasn't interested in making Valentines at first.  Instead, he spent a few days making cards for himself. You can see one of them above the Valentine in this picture, but most of them only involved drawing with markers and me writing dictated letters: W G M T... that sort of thing. I wish I had a photo, but I think the cards have all been used past the point of photographing by this point.

Pop was much more interested in the artistic value of Valentines:

 

Or, perhaps more importantly, the artistic value of glitter.

Chipmunk, on the other hand....

 

... Chipmunk just wanted to bite the tips off the markers. So he was confined to his high chair.

 

You can't tell that he colored his nose, mouth, and cheeks orange in this picture, can you. But he did. And his tongue.

Week 6 AND 7: Caves

Inspired by One Small Square: Caves, Farmerboy took his brothers "spelunking" in the closet. (In the closet because it's dark in there with the door closed.) Here you see him with his caving outfit: an equipment bag full of "food" and "first aid", and a camping lantern.

In week 7, we finished reading The Story of Caves, which ended up having quite a bit of information about Howes Caverns, the caverns we hope to visit soon. I suggested that Farmerboy might want to make his own cave one morning, and he decided to make one out of a cardboard box. Pretty soon Katydid and Gareth were also in on the fun:

 

Gareth's cave has stalactites, stalagmites, natural arches, fried egg formations, and gypsum (the white stuff on the wall.) It also has a stream.

In Farmerboy's cave, the stalagmites are made from clay. He also put fried egg formations and gypsum in his cave, and also cave bacon, bats on the wall, and a pack rat's nest in the "twilight zone" in the front of the cave. Then he got his Playmobil guys to be "spelunkers" (no plain old caving in our house). This particular Playmobil guy is outfitted with camera, flashlight, and laptop... in case he wants to look up the animals he finds.

To be honest, the suggestion to make caves was thrown out in desperation, but I was very pleased with the result.  I had no idea that Farmerboy had absorbed such a lot of information about caves.  In fact, he enjoyed this project so much that he has continued to play with and tinker with his cave for a good part of two days. He named his cave "Carlsbad Trap."

While the big kids made caves, Pip and Pop made owlish masks out of paper plates and also decorated some big cardboard letters I picked up from Dick Blick. I had been looking for these things for a long time, and happily, the little boys enjoyed decorating them:

 

Pop glued ANIMAL shapes on his A, but Pip is all about the markers. The ones Chipmunk hasn't eaten, anyway.

During week 6, we also participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Alas, we didn't see too many birds. But we did have pine siskins. And a couple of blue jays...

 

We also (collectively) decided that Gareth is going to be working on a high-school level designed-by-us paleontology course, which he is excited about. He's particularly excited by our discovery that some trilobite beds are just down the road. But those, unfortunately, will have to wait until the snow melts.

Preparing for Junior High and High School

I am sitting here in the family room on a Sunday, with Pippi Longstocking playing in the background, the Daytona 500 on the TV on mute for Andy, Gareth playing Toon Town on the computer, and an 18 month old who should be asleep running around wreaking havoc. So of course I thought it would be the perfect time to write a post about junior high and high school at home. 

Gareth turns 13 this fall and will enter the 7th grade. I'm thinking of this as "junior high", because New York's homeschooling laws change after 6th grade. As of 7th grade, the law requires that homeschoolers complete "units", not unlike those required of high schoolers for graduation.  (Actually, the same definition of "unit" is used for both 7th and 8th grades and high school: 6480 minutes. No, New York could not come right out and say 108 hours.  6480 minutes, and not a second more.) So in 7th grade, we will have to document 108 hours (6480 minutes) of English, 108 hours of history and geography, 108 hours of science, and 108 hours of math, and provide "regular instruction" in health, "practical arts", and library skills to equal 990 hours a year.  At some point in the next two years, Gareth will also have to complete 54 hours of art and 54 hours of music.

Now, this is not really a big deal; we do more than 990 hours a year anyway. But in the process of doing my mid-year tweaking, and in checking the laws for next year, it suddenly dawned on me... I am going to have a teenager. And it also dawned on me, he will be in high school in two years. And then I realized, he's almost done with Saxon 7/6. What next? He's not ready for algebra, is he?

Cue hyperventilation.

I'm trying to do something novel.  I'm trying to be prepared.  At this stage in the game, I know that Gareth learns best with materials he can use independently.  I know that he needs to follow his interests and exercise a certain level of choice in his studies, but I also know that he needs some structure imposed from above, as it were.  I know that he needs time to prepare for changes, and that he needs to know what to expect ahead of time.  And I also know that his particular mix of intellectual giftedness and learning disabilities (what the educational establishment now refers to as "twice exceptional") means that we often have to meet his needs in creative ways. We have to be willing to ditch grade levels, which are kind of irrelevant when your twelve year old is reading a technical book on prehistoric mammals written for adults AND struggling with a third grade spelling workbook at the same time.  But we also have to know how to work the system.  This is becoming important right now, since he might conceivably do high school level work in more than just Algebra I in the next year or two.   

So here I am, reading, reading, reading, googling, googling, googling, immersed in a strange world of "credits" and "transcripts" and "course descriptions". It seems like there are two common responses to high school in the homeschool.  The first is to go the traditional route -- sign up with a curriculum provider, focus on academics, add in a hefty dose of extracurricular activities.  The other response seems to be along the lines of, who needs college? Think apprenticeships, exploring interests.  But I have seen glimmers of a middle way, and I think that is the path we want to trod.  "Practical bookishness," as David and Micki Colfax named it. Should a teenager read Homer? Yes. Should he be able to build a chicken coop, fix a car, and/or make himself dinner? Yes. Should he be able to draw as many imaginary creatures as he wants, write novels instead of papers, and read stacks and stacks of science fiction novels to the exclusion of all else?  Well... yes and no. (And I say this AS an SFF writer who wrote novels and read stacks of SFF mainly during class as a teenager.) If a twelve year old says he wants to be an astrobiologist when he grows up (yes, an astrobiologist), or an archaeologist, or a paleontologist (as well as a dad), how does one prepare him for that?

So here's where the research comes in.   Right now I'm just becoming educated about the big picture.  How does a homeschooler apply to college? What do colleges want from homeschoolers? What's a credit, and how do you put together a transcript? Will it be better to sign up with a traditional curriculum provider starting in 7th grade or to go our own way?  Through all this, I'm thinking about our philosophy, our faith, and -- most importantly -- what will benefit Gareth. And if homeschooling Gareth has taught me nothing else, it's that nothing we do will fit into anybody else's holes. If there are square pegs and round holes -- we're trapezoids.    

(Since this post has gotten really long, and because it's now time to run downstairs to grab some green beans for dinner, I'll list some of the resources I've found so far in another post... hopefully before next weekend!)

 

Winter Term: Weeks 3,4, and 5, or Cabin Fever Hits and I say, "No TV".

Weeks 3, 4, and 5 are being lumped together as cabin fever weeks.  I think we did actually do something, and I have a few pictures to prove it, but mainly winter insanity took over.

This week (week 5) ended up a little better than I expected, after a disastrous Monday on which I informed my husband that I was going to pack the kids up myself and head south for a month or two, just so the three year olds would be able to GO OUTSIDE.  The twins have broken every Christmas present that can be broken.  Every time I go outside to feed the chickens I come back in to find that they have been throwing Duplos as "bombs". Invariably, this means that the living room looks like a bomb has gone off in it.  They have completely demolished the laundry room (we haven't replaced the fifth gate to be broken in two years), the hallway, and their bedroom (daily).  They hit each other with wooden blocks, light sabres, and anything else that can be pressed into service as a weapon.  Of course, it's easy to focus on the twins because they're usually the loudest, but really, all of the kids have been a bit out of sorts. (Cough.) On this particular Monday, every single time I opened my mouth to read, Chipmunk and at least one of the twins would be involved in a punching, hitting, kicking wrestling match on the floor. There were more tantrums than I care to mention, and my older kids were not helping.  Thus, the threat. Sensing things had gone a little farther than normal, my dear husband met me at the optometrist's office so we wouldn't all have to stuff into the small waiting room, and he took the other kids to Home Depot where he bought me a plant.

So I did not pack off after all (although my mother called on Friday offering to fly up here and drive down with us so Andy could stay here and work, an offer I may just accept.) What I did was to take away TV time in the morning.  I had to do this with Gareth, too, a long time ago.  No TV time in the morning, no background music during the day, no media period. Not even Bach.  Too much screen time, too much noise = too much hyperactivity. But, being a sluggish riser, I had wanted a babysitter for the mornings.  TV as a morning babysitter was doing more harm than good, though, and the rest of the week saw a vast improvement over Monday. I haven't revoked all TV, but it's down to 30 minutes a day, in the afternoon.

Because I said "no TV" in the mornings, I am also having to deal with my own screen-time habits, namely computer use.  I used to get online while the boys watched TV, but since saying, "No TV," I thought I probably ought to tell myself, "No computer," too.  Revoking my own online priveleges in the morning means I'm less distracted about getting the day going, and I can hop right on it if the boys start revving up.  I find it immensely difficult to be "on" all day like this -- considering that sometimes the boys open their eyes and immediately start climbing all over their beds and hanging off the bed rails, hooting and pretending to be monkeys, and when they do go down for a nap is the only time my older three can concentrate on academics, and Chipmunk will only nap on me, and then it's time to start dinner -- but it is introducing some sanity to our days.

But enough of my winter woes and on to some actual accomplishments.

• We finished studying ancient India and moved on to ancient Africa. There isn't a whole lot of information on ancient Africa for kids, so we are mostly focusing on folk tales.  (For ancient India, we also focused heavily on fairy tales and the Ramayana.  I should post some book lists.)

• We started learning about caves.  We watched Mysterious Life of Caves - NOVA and were all suitably disgusted and amazed by the formations eloquently named "snottites", which look like... well, you can probably figure it out.  They're formed by bacteria which produce sulfuric acid.

• In an ironic twist of fate, just when I had given up on the Montessori materials because I had to put them all away to keep Chipmunk from scattering them everywhere, the little boys decided that they really wanted to use all the sensorial stuff I have tucked away in the linen closet. This week (week 5) the boys used the color boxes, the geometric solids, the knobbed cylinders, and the constructive triangles.  Chipmunk just loves putting objects in containers and putting the lids on them.

• Gareth was awarded Tenderfoot rank at a Boy Scout ceremony.

• Gareth and Katydid started swimming lessons.

• Katydid wrote and delivered a five minute speech on the life of St. Agnes.

• I started long picture book reading sessions with the little boys after lunch.

• Katydid read aloud Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- the entire book -- to Farmerboy (and the rest of us.)   

• And everyone did math.

To make a long post even longer, how about some pictures?

The kids set up a pet village in the family room.

Katydid, concentrating on writing her speech.

 

Pip is a robot.  Every game the twins play -- farm, dogs, monkeys -- ends up with an evil robot.

 

Andy and Gareth fixed the dishwasher when it broke.

 

Gareth drew more of his invented animals.  This one is based on the marbled cat, which he read about in an old Scientific American.

 

I'm not sure what this one is based on.

 

Drawing maps has also been big around here lately.  Gareth likes to draw maps of the worlds he uses in stories.  He's been working on this map for a while, but this week he started a new map as a collaboration with Katydid and Farmerboy.  The kids have an intricate world system they've formed over the years.  It has its own languages, geography, creatures, planets, cultures, mythologies, and economies. I am privy to some of it, but not all of it. I like watching them map their imaginations. 

Library Day Retrospective

 

Well, I'm behind.  This beautiful stack of books is actually from last week's library day -- the first in a long time, mainly because I had a massive fine to pay and some "lost" books to recover, which happened to be recovered from the bookshelves of various people who shall remain nameless.  I have a sort of love-hate relationship with libraries now that I am a grown-up, particularly with the libraries of the county in which we currently live; that is, I love libraries, but I hate the wonky hours of our libraries which make it so hard to actually use them, and I am consistently foiled by overdue fees.  Limited selection is another thing which often makes me mutter under my breath, but now that we are in the nearby town with the bigger library on a regular basis, I am feeling a little more generous toward our library system because a)this particular library has a few more books than I actually own and b)if I designate this library as my home library, I can reserve more than 6 books at one time, which actually makes it possible to use the library and not come away completely frustrated.

I did not actually reserve any books last week (or this week) because I was just trying to get going again, but I did manage to find some good books on topics we're studying at the moment.  And I also found some good picture books for the little boys.  Here's a quick tour of the highlights.

Great Books : I'm really enjoying this one.  It's subtitled: "My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World."  It caught my eye because I have been lately immersed in researching grades 7-12 for Gareth and thinking a lot about "great books", but it isn't really "research".  David Denby goes back to school in the early 90's to reread the Great Books in Columbia's required freshman seminars.  At the time these books ("the canon") were under heavy fire from a variety of leftish types who accused the canon of being imperialist, of "enforcing hegemony", etc. etc. I was in college at the time, majoring in cultural anthropology, and oh, I could tell you about the discussions.  Anyway, I am enjoying this book a lot, mainly because Denby doesn't really toe any party lines, and his reactions to the books themselves, and the way he weaves in the classroom discussion, characters of the students and professors, and his own life is really absorbing.  The general atheism of the classrooms is a little like watching a train wreck, but it's a good book, and a real testimony to the power of books and reading and teaching.

The Story of Caves: I like finding books written in the 50's.  Some of the science has changed, but books written before digital photography and cheap color printing are always more about story than they are about image.  We were kind of limping along with science, so I decided that a field trip to a cavern near here would be in order. And, of course, the trip would need to be set up before hand.  Thus, we are studying caves. I'm reading this one aloud.

What the World Eats: Gorgeous book.  Nobody seems to have taken it up yet, though. I am going to leave it on the couch this week.

The Underneath: Katydid had already whisked this book back to her room before I took the picture.  She has been heavily involved in Harry Potter this week, though, so I don't think she's cracked this one yet. A novel about a dog protecting a family of kittens under a deck, told from the animals' point of view. Lots of awards on this one.

Anansi and the Magic Stick : We're also studying ancient Africa, so I picked up some African stories.  This retelling of an Anansi story by Eric Kimmel is really funny and bears a lot of resemblance to The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Beautiful Blackbird (Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Winner): Another African story.  This one wasn't as good as Anansi, but the cut-paper collages were interesting to the kids.

Bark, George: A favorite.  I don't know why I haven't bought this book yet.

The Best Pet of All: Is the best pet of all a dog or a dragon? Funny book.

The Diggers: A Margaret Wise Brown book for little boys.  Read three or four times a day this week.

Maybe next week I'll report on some of the books we checked out this week!

Midwinter

 

The squirrels are trying to take over the bird feeder. We counted eight the other day.  We've never seen so many at once.

 

 

The chickens come out as long as the sun is shining, but I'm sure they would rather have grass, too.

 

You'll note that the chickens have a few guardians out there in the yard.  The crows ate the sunflower seeds we used for snowmen faces, though.  (Sorry about the glare in this picture, but you didn't think I was going to go outside to take it, did you?

 

The snow is pretty deep in some places.  Deep enough to build a curtain wall for a snow fort.

 

Or a really big snowball.

 

(That would be the driveway.  The driveway is good sledding.)

 

February.