Three Plus Two

Not quite your average day

The other day I picked up an old favorite that I used to read every year, Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days: Share a Day With 30 Homeschooling Families.  Reading it reminded me of what homeschooling used to be like before blogs.  It also reminded me that I haven't done a "day in the life" post in a while.  As it happens, on the day I decided to do a day in the life post, it also turns out that it was "Day in the Life Week" at the Not Back to School Blog Hop over at My 3 Boybarians.  But, as usual, it took me a week to actually write this post (because I don't know how to do anything that isn't long and complicated) so I missed the deadline.  However, if any of you, dear readers, would like to share a "Back to School" day at your house, I would love to read it.  Just leave me a comment with the link!

A few notes before I start. 

1) This day was "not quite average" because Andy was home for the morning, and then left around lunchtime to go on a business trip for most of the week.  This happens often enough, though, that it's just not "quite" average.  This is just our second week of school, so we did do school today. 

2) I don't usually work this hard first thing in the morning.  Usually I'm on the computer for a little while.

Monday, August 24

7:15 AM  I wake up, later than I wanted to.  Chipmunk went to bed at 11 last night and I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I might have a touch of whatever Pip and Farmerboy had this weekend.  Thankfully, I feel decent this morning.  The little boys are getting up, and Andy takes care of them while I take a shower.

8:00 AM: The boys are eating breakfast when I come out.  Gareth is up, too.  I head down to Katydid's room to begin the process of getting her up. (Which sometimes takes a while.)  The little boys finish their breakfast and talk Andy into letting them watch Chased By Dinosaurs: "Most Dangerous Seas of All Time". Andy made me some eggs, and while I eat I switch around some binders so I can organize the originals of some new recordkeeping forms I handwrote over the weekend.  (The USB ports on our desktop are fried, and the software from our printer is incompatible with the Vista on my laptop.  So I have a copier, but no printer right now.)

 

My "desk": tea cup, garden/nature journal, planner, record-keeping book, new Circa notebook for forms, etc.

8:30 AM: Katydid finally comes out. Now everyone is watching Chased By Dinosaurs.  Andy wants to take some food from the garden we (along with our Little Flowers/ Blue Knights group) are growing for the Little Sisters of the Poor.  We have a couple bushels of potatoes to give this time, several pounds of zucchini and patty pan squash, and there's more zucchini out in the garden to pick.  I head out while everyone is occupied and come back with several more pounds of zuchinni.

9:00 AM: Time for prayers.  After prayers, Gareth and Katydid go to brush their teeth and start on their chores, which include feeding and watering all the poultry (turkeys, layers, meat chickens, and bantams).  All together, we have a total of 59 chickens right now, and 6 turkeys.  It takes a little while to get it all done.  The kids dawdle a while, so they're a bit late getting out.  When they come back in, they do their inside chores: collecting and sorting laundry, and wiping out the bathroom sinks for Katydid, and cleaning up the breakfast kitchen for Gareth.  Andy takes the time to take the trash out to the curb so I won't have to do it tomorrow.  Farmerboy is supposed to be picking up the family room, but right now he is involved in a complicated game of "Divers into Dangerous Seas."  Props for this game include all my pots and pans, and cameras, which the boys construct from various toys and tape:

(I help with the tape a little bit.)

9:30 AM: Pop used buttons (like the kind you sew) for his camera, and Chipmunk (who is sitting on the table) is enthralled.  He wants me to identify the colors of all the buttons.  The other three little boys are still involved in their diving game, so I sit down with Chipmunk and help him sort the buttons according to color.  On one of Pop's trips through the dining room, he notices what we are doing and wants to sort, too.  I don't have enough buttons for that, but I set him up with some dyed feathers. Chipmunk soon moves on to pouring the buttons.  He's been occupied for about 30 minutes.

10:00 AM: The boys decide they want to glue.  I get them set up with collage materials, cardboard trays, scissors, papers, and their choice of glue -- Elmer's in a bottle or Mod Podge in a bowl with a brush.  Chipmunk is soon covered in glue, but does manage to also put some on his tray.  There is some frustration on the twins' part: Pip is gluing natural feathers to a piece of cardstock and unfortunately, most of them are small down feathers which are hard to glue without getting all gummed up and coming apart.  And Pop's scissors are not cooperating with him.  This is pretty typical.  My role is to dart from one kid to another providing help, encouragement, and exhortations for patience.  Andy tells me that there is a special room in heaven reserved for homeschooling mothers. 

Pip sets up his collage as part of our nature area.

10: 45 AM: By this time Katydid and Gareth are involved in their own activities.  We're experimenting with different ways to plan for them... or actually, to help them plan their own work. I asked on the 4real boards about planning with Literature for a Young Lady and Jen helpfully replied with how she helps her eldest plan her own work.  I presented that as an option for the kids, and they decided they would like to give it a shot.  So I wrote out a chart (no printer, remember) with days and times on it, and on Sunday we sat down to figure out what they wanted to do during the week, and also what was required for them to do (like math, Latin, and language). 

I clipped off a bit of the top, but you get the picture. 

When I emerge from helping the boys with their collages (and washing all the glue off Chipmunk), I find Gareth working on his math and Katydid comfortably esconced on the couch with Little Women.  Andy takes a break from working on the computer to get the little boys dressed and play with the transportation counters on the floor -- more sorting. Farmerboy can no longer avoid his chores and must get dressed and pick up the family room.  Because people need me -- often -- it takes a good 45 minutes to clean up the dining room. 

11:15 AM: Gareth is now working on his religion and informs Farmerboy that he's going to be done soon so Farmerboy had better get to work if he wants to go out to the archery range.  Katydid didn't know that Gareth was going to do archery, so she scraps the plans she made yesterday to go out and shoot, too.  She's been reading for about an hour with only a brief break, so it's just about time for her to do something active.

11:30 AM: The dining room is not completely clean, but the little boys are clamoring to be let out of the small fenced yard by the deck, and it would be nice to talk to Andy a while before he goes.  Andy takes the little boys out with him to feed greens to the turkeys, and the three older kids head out to practice some archery.  I pick up the transportation counters for the nth time this morning and follow.

 

(Andy took these pictures.  Gareth told me later he got a bullseye!)

While the big kids shoot, the little boys play "dinosaur hunter" in the sideyard with me.  They're gathering sticks and pretending they're dinosaur bones.

12:15 PM: Everyone is hungry by now, so we head in for lunch.  Someone lets Chipmunk in the bathroom first to wash his hands and is not supervising and Chipmunk dunks his truck in the toilet.  I clean him up (and the truck) and then make cheese quesadillas for the kids.  Andy and I eat leftover steak from the night before (I found a stash in the back of the freezer) and canteloupe. At lunch Andy mentions a book that has been recommended to him called The Ten Commandments of How to Fail at Business.  We have a discussion about that, and also about how a Christian should view or use wealth.  Then Andy loads his luggage and the vegetables for the nuns into his van and heads off to the airport.  The big kids are in charge of cleaning up after lunch.  The little boys and I go outside to play some more dinosaur hunter.

2:00 PM: I'm taking the little boys in for some read alouds and a nap.  Katydid comes in to get the camera, because she says the older three want to "study turkey behavior".  It turns out they just want to make the toms strut.

(Pictures by Katydid)

While I admit that the Naragansett tom is particularly impressive when he struts, banging things and making a lot of noise to get him agitated is probably not a good idea.  So no more "studying turkey behavior".

While the big kids are outside, I read Dinosaurs Big and Small (A Let's Read and Find Out title) , Little Tom Turkey (a book about wild turkeys told from the point of view of a small male poult; the writing is not so great, but it's tough to find picture books about wild/heritage turkeys), and a tractor book to the three little boys.  Then it's to bed for them.

2:45-3:00 ish: I've gotten the boys to sleep. When I come into the kitchen, I notice that the cleaning job done after lunch was not all that great.  But now it's time to do some concentrated book work with the older 3 kids.  Since the twins and Chipmunk require most (if not all) of my attention in the morning, the bigger kids have to save anything that needs my attention until the afternoon.  This is not my preferred way of doing things -- nor, to be honest, always the preferred way for my kids either.  But it's what we have to do.  It turns out that they have come in at 2:30 just like they were supposed to and gotten to work.  We've had this basic template schedule for a long time now, but this is only the start of our second week after being "off" for summer.  So I'm pleased that they're readjusting to our school schedule so quickly.  Katydid is working on the first lesson of Lingua Mater 6, and Gareth has finished his lesson for the day in Lingua Mater 7 and is on the couch reading Fellowship of the Ring.  Farmerboy has already done his handwriting (Handwriting Without Tears, My Printing Book) so I take him into the dining room to work on some phonics.  First I need to see what letter sounds he remembers from earlier in the summer, so we do a short "quiz".  Turns out he's forgotten about half his letter sounds.  He wants me to write some words for him to read, though, so I compose a variety of silly sentences using mainly -at words. (Sample: "I sat on the cat.")  He enjoys this and runs to show Katydid and Gareth how silly the sentences are after we're done.

3:30 PM: Katydid is done with her language, so we move on to Latin.  We're redoing the lesson we ended with in June, Review Lesson III from Latina Christiana I.  For some reason we only got through half the book last year.  I'm hoping to do better this year.  Farmerboy wants to get a board game out of the closet and "pretend to play it himself". Ok... he actually chooses the Rush Hour puzzle, which I mentally chalk up to math for the day.  I'm still trying to figure out math for him. I bought Making Math Meaningful Level I for him in the spring, but it turns out I don't really like it at that level. 

4:00 PM: When we're done with our chants and reviewing the vocabulary, Katydid switches to math, which she is able to do independently for the day.  (She is using Making Math Meaningful Level 4, which I do like at least for Katydid, as it seems to be sticking... no small feat for her.  Sometimes it requires me to make presentations, but I think she's finally gotten the concept of multiplying two digits by two digits... albeit in the non-traditional way taught by this curriculum.)  Gareth has written on his chart that he is going to work on a book "response" to Out of the Silent Planet, which he read last week.  He can either work on a graphic novel/comic book version of the book or he can write a book report.  I expect him to choose the comic book, but he surprises me by choosing the book report.  We spend a little over a half an hour discussing the book, how to write a book report, and then planning it out. 

4:45 PM: The kids are done with their work for the day, and Chipmunk is up, but not up, and is dozing on my shoulder.  I check email and the kids have their computer time.  Katydid heads back to her room when it is not her turn to practice her violin and say a rosary.

5:15 PM: Chipmunk is now up and playing with the Rush Hour cars that Farmerboy neglected to put away.  The twins are up and clamoring for their computer time, too. I go to start dinner and realize that I can not make a Dutch Baby because I do not have enough eggs.  What?  Right -- we gave away a dozen eggs on Friday and I made scrambled eggs and ratatouille one night for dinner.  Now we have to wait for the hens to build the supply again.  I remember that I have some frozen spaghetti sauce downstairs in the freezer, though, so I can still make dinner!

I also have to work on the mess left over from lunch.

Chipmunk keeps me company with the pots and pans.

6:00 PM: It took forever to defrost the spaghetti sauce. Dinner is going to be late.  The little boys are clamoring to be let out of the gate (again), so I take my record book and head outside with them while I wait on dinner.

7:00 PM: Dinner's finally ready.  I cave and let the kids eat in front of the TV.  I'd like to say they watched something educational, but no, it was SpongeBob.  And I eat in front of the computer, starting this post. Then Andy calls to let me know he's in Chicago and will be departing for Iowa shortly and also that the Little Sisters would like pictures of us planting the garden for their newsletter.  I am embarassed to say that I have no pictures.  We'll have to take some pictures of harvest instead.

7:30ish: Time for after dinner chores.  Usually I clean the kitchen, Katydid picks up the dining room and kitchen and sweeps both rooms, Farmerboy picks up the family room and vacuums the rug, and Gareth has the living room/entryway area, picking up and sweeping.  This makes it sound as if everything ought to be clean, but this doesn't account for stacks of books and other things on tables and counters, or the disorganization of the toy shelves.  Plus tonight the kids will have to knock off early to do all the chicken/turkey chores that Andy usually does (with Chipmunk and the little boys tagging along).

8:00 PM: The kids are out putting the chickens in for the night and I am trying to hurriedly wash the last pans and sweep the dining room and kitchen floors and switch the laundry before the little boys rev up too much.  (My kids never look tired because they just wind up more and more as they get tired.)

8:30 PM: I didn't make it.  There are still pans in the sink but it's time to get the little boys in their pajamas.  When the big kids come in from doing their outside chores, I ask Katydid to read to the little boys while I put on my pajamas.  Pop has been fascinated by the weather lately, so we also check the weather on the Weather Channel.  Then Katydid reads Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie! while I change for the night. 

9:00 PM: The boys still want books.  Katydid reads a couple of tractor books to Chipmunk, Little Tom Turkey (again), and Where Do Chicks Come From?  I take this opportunity to rotate the books in the book display, which sorely needs it.

9:30 PM: Time for bed.  Gareth and Katydid head back to their rooms and bathroom to take showers and read until who knows when.  The little boys want to know if I will read Farmer Boy while they're in bed like Daddy does.  I tell them that since it's Daddy's favorite book, we'll save it for him.  But I will read the next story from Egermeir's Story Bible.  Chipmunk is not having it, though.  I tell the boys I can't read because I need to nurse Chipmunk.  Pip starts complaining.  I attempt to balance the heavy book precariously past Chipmunk while I nurse him and read the story of "The Great Flood."  It begins with Enoch being taken up to God.  Pop wants to know how people get to heaven, and once you're there, how you can get back home.  Farmerboy tells him you can't get back home.  Pop starts to cry.  Farmerboy tells him that heaven is a wonderful place where you'll know everything, including what happened to the dinosaurs.  Pop says he wants our home to be his home forever.  Farmerboy says, well, his soul will go to heaven after he dies.  Pip says he doesn't want to go to heaven if souls are there.  Farmerboy says everybody has a soul.  Pip is furious because he thought souls were bad things! I'm sure he's confusing them with ghosts.  I would just really like to go to sleep.  But no.  As soon as I get them calmed down, Chipmunk starts fussing because this isn't our usual routine.  I try to take him into my bedroom, and Pip starts crying because he wants Daddy.  I sit back down in the rocking chair, and Pip stops crying but Chipmunk starts.  Finally, I have to take Chipmunk into my room and just let Pip cry for a while.  It's keeping Pop and Farmerboy awake, but I have to get one of the two fussing kids to sleep. 

10:30 PM: Chipmunk is finally asleep and I go back in to sit with Pip.  I bring my book and read a little in the hall light.

11:00 PM: Pip is finally asleep.  I add the last few things to the dishwasher and turn it on.  Then I head back to my bed, where Chipmunk is sleeping for the moment.  I try to write down a few notes, but apparently the scratching of the pen wakes Chipmunk up again.

11:30 PM: Everything is finally quiet.  Andy won't be home till Thursday, and I'm not sure I can survive that long. (But obviously, I do! :-)

 

Ice Cube Necklaces

Yesterday was a tough day, and hot.  But there was a bright spot.  A cool spot?  The little boys and I made ice cube necklaces. 

I got the idea from More Mudpies to Magnets: Science for Young Children.  This is a book I have thought about buying for years.  This year I have a bunch (as in 3) experimentally oriented young children, so I bought the book. 

Ice cube necklaces are super simple.  All you need are a couple of ice cube trays, yarn or string, and a collection of smallish objects that will fit in each cube.  I took the boys on a walk around the yard and garden, and they collected flowers, leaves, sticks, rocks, and a small piece of sidewalk chalk.  I held the ice cube trays, and the boys just put their objects in wherever they wanted.  We insured that one row did not hold rocks or other small chokable objects so that Chipmunk could have a necklace, too, and the boys were warned repeatedly that they weren't to eat these ice cubes since we weren't using food to make them.  (Actually we did use some edibles -- dandelion leaves, rose petals, lemon balm -- but exceptions are too complicated.)

After you fill the trays with objects and water, lay strands of yarn or string across each row of cubes, making sure that the yarn dips down into the water in each cube.  Here's what our trays looked like when I put them in the freezer:

As you can see the most difficult part was ensuring that the yarn stay in the water.  It kept bobbing up and needed a little re-arranging.

The twins were not sure what would happen.  Farmerboy knew the cubes would freeze, but he didn't know how long it would take, so he kept checking until the big kids went outside to play in the hose.  It actually took about 4 hours for them to freeze.

The boys melted the ice in their hands, banged it on the deck to chip it into pieces, refroze parts of it, and tried to wear it... but it was too cold!  We talked about solids and liquids and states of matter, and how you could freeze grapes into ice cubes and then you could actually eat your necklace.  Later that night we read What Is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids, and Gases (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science, Stage 2) and looked through more experiment books.

Simple. Fun. Cold. A satisfying bit of summer science. 

Where have I been?

Well, mostly I've been writing plans for my two oldest.  This is something new for me, writing things down in an organized fashion, and I am hopeful that it will work well this year.  I guess I've still been planning a little differently than most people; the kids' plans are mostly based on lists of interests they gave me last month. Jen ever so kindly sent me some editable tables in Word which she and Elizabeth used to plan their Literature for a Young Lady curriculum, and I used them to plan A Bunch of Stuff I Think My Young Man Will Like.  I'm not sure it hangs together enough to give it a title, but I borrowed the idea of using a guide by Father Lasance -- in this case, The Young Man's Guide -- to be a sort of organizing thread.  Katydid will be following along with the Serendipity plans this year, by request, although I am altering them for a slightly younger girl.  (Katydid is only 10.  I guess technically she's in fifth grade, although for some reason I keep forgetting and thinking she's in sixth.  Oh well.)

If anyone's curious, I'll post my plans for Gareth, who will be in 7th grade this year. (I mean, for real, and not just as pictures.) But I have to warn you, they're a bit individual.

I mean, I doubt that every 7th grader will want to start with prehistoric people before moving on to a study of the Middle Ages.  But, to be honest, the subjects he wanted to study -- prehistoric people and evolutionary biology -- are just the sort of things you want to study with a "shield of faith" in hand.  I gave him the plans today and he seemed to think they were decent... He has the kind of personality that needs both choice and structure.  Using the table I was able to list a whole bunch of choices as far as projects go, which will hopefully solve the problem of the whiteboard.  We'll see how it goes. 

While I was working on the plans, I had to mostly go offline.  Which is okay because I have been in one of those funks where I'm not sure I have anything of worth to say anyway and the blogosphere left me largely feeling inadequate.  It occurred to me that since we usually go on vacation this time of year and I get enforced (and therapeutic) time away from all computers, I usually get a retreat that I wasn't planning on getting this year, with so much poultry to care for.  So maybe it wasn't really that I'm inadequate,  just that I needed some time off.  Then Andy sent me an email asking whether I thought we could make a family trip to New Hampshire with him when he visits there on business, so maybe I will get a brief retreat anyway.

(Actually, what Andy said was, do you think we could stock the chickens, etc. up on water and food for a few days and just have the kid down the street come by a couple times, and what I replied was, do you think we could put the kids in the coop, too?  Okay, so yesterday was a little tough.)

A Busy First Week

According to the state, our new school year starts July 1.  So every year on July 1 I have a tradition of shaking everybody's hand and informing them that they've moved up a grade.  My kids always laugh at this, because I'm sure they know how arbitrary it is. 

Theoretically, we are on summer "break".  All this means is that we're not doing math or diagramming sentences.  At our Little Flowers/Blue Knights picnic Saturday, one of the missionary brothers of LaSalette asked me if we were done with our school and if we would start again on September 8 when our homeschool group has its annual "kick off the new school year" picnic.  I have a stock answer for those sorts of questions, which is that we go year round, taking breaks as we need or want them.  It's hard for me to limit our "school year" only to those times when we do math, and as patient and kind as Brother is, I'm not sure he really wanted to hear the long, complicated explanation.

So even thought it's summer time, I'll be doing week-in-review posts for the new school year as I can.  At the end of the year I print out all the review posts and add them to our documentation.  Even so, they're just snippets of our lives.  If there's anything that seems to be missing or that you'd like me to elaborate on, please feel free to let me know! 

This week was probably one of the busiest of the year (which is why there were no blog posts.)  I still can't seem to adjust to the yearly rhythm of life in upstate New York.  It seems like everyone tries to cram every single activity that could possibly be done into the first two weeks of July.  This year summer soccer season began (three nights a week), Gareth had Boy Scout camp, Katydid went to a day camp at the Farmer's Museum, and our Little Flowers/Blue Knights group had a field day.  That was all we could possibly manage to fit in. What we couldn't do that we had wanted to were botanical drawing lessons and photography at our local arboretum. 

 

Scout camp.  Gareth came within 4 points of earning his archery badge in one week.  He did manage to earn his geology badge and come home with some nifty fossils, and he improved his swimming skills. The camp has a terrific fossil bed with Devonian-age fossils (mainly shells) literally every few inches.  Camp is only about fifty minutes away from our house, so Andy drove down every morning and met Gareth for breakfast, and I brought the little boys and Katydid down for a family outdoor meal, cooked in rock ovens and over the campfire, and for the closing ceremonies' barbecue.  After running around in the woods with the youngest son of Gareth's scoutmaster, hauling firewood, and cooking crescent rolls on sticks over the fire, Pop turned to me with huge eyes and said, "Can we live here???"  Gareth did well being away from home for the first time, but was happy to be back with a hot shower and all his books.

The Farmer's Museum is supposed to replicate a small village around 1845.  Katydid spent her week at daycamp weaving baskets, pounding iron hooks in the blacksmith shop, quilling, making folk art paintings, wandering around the art museum across the street, taking care of farm animals, and playing Native American games.  Since Thursday and Friday were nice days (the other days were cold and rainy), we walked around the museum after we picked her up.  The major exhibit indoors is called "Wild Times" and displays the main animals of the various regions of New York.  They've set up a puppet theater for the little ones -- easily the little boys' favorite place.

 

Although Farmerboy also liked the bear rug. 

Katydid has been very upset with her brothers lately, because they never want to play soccer with her.  Having to play soccer after spending all day at camp made her tired, but happy!

So our daily routine was a little unusual this week, but by the end of the week we had fallen into a predictable pattern.  Andy would get up super early to take care of all the chickens and turkeys and drive down to Scout camp to have breakfast with Gareth.  I would get up and take an incredibly fast shower so I could be in and out by the time that Chipmunk realized I was gone and woke up.  Then I would get everybody breakfast, and we would be out the door by 8 AM-ish.  On the way there and the back, the boys would quiz me on my knowledge of dinosaurs, boa constrictors, insects, and Star Wars.  When we arrived back home, Andy would already be there, getting ready to go to work. We'd chat for a few minutes, then I'd wash dishes and do laundry while the boys watched a little TV or played. After that habits would kick in and the boys would demand to work on some kind of project.  After they were satisfied with their project work, they'd wander off to play before lunch. I'd take a quick break at lunchtime, then more dishes and laundry while the boys played, and it was off a little early to get Katydid so the boys could have a nap in the van. After this week, I have no idea how mothers of large families who have their kids in school manage. We are all very tired and ready to stay home in the mornings.

The one thing I did find very interesting this week was how deeply ingrained our "choice time" routine has become.  I suggested exactly one activity this week, and it was on a morning when some of us were recovering from a little mystery virus that has been going around -- nausea, stomach upset, and cold symptoms, all together.  Everything else was suggested -- "demanded" might be a better word -- by a child.

Here's the breakdown of what the little boys did this week:

Monday: Helped Andy build a chicken tractor. (Andy took Monday off.) Monday was mostly sunny.

Tuesday: Built spaceships out of cardboard boxes. This is the one activity I suggested.  Pip was still recovering from the sudden onset of our virus on the sidelines of a soccer game the night before, Farmerboy wasn't feeling too well, and neither was I, so I let the boys watch an episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars.  It was raining, and after the TV was turned off the boys were a little at loose ends, so I thought spaceships might be welcome.

 

This is Pip's spaceship.  We covered the outside with aluminum foil. The paper plate "steering wheels" were Farmerboy's idea, as are the feather "lasers".

Wedsnesday: Yet another TV inspired activity, I'm embarassed to say, but this one was entirely the twins' idea.  They'd watched an episode of Sid the Science kid about leaves. Pop immediately wanted to draw leaves, and then collect his own leaves. Pip really got into collecting leaves (in between rain showers). He did not want to draw them himself, so I relented and drew for him.  Both twins wanted to tape leaves on their papers. And Pop told me some stories about them to write down.

We put them on the bulletin board.

Thursday: Another cold, rainy morning. After a long discussion about fossils in the van, the boys arrived home ready to work, and my desire to load the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher was nothing but a pesky obstacle.  I decided to get with the program and do my chores later. First the boys got out the fossils, then the shells, and then the playdough to make their own "fossils":

 

 

Pop lined all his shells up below a fossil guide.

Then the boys decided they wanted to paint.

 

Pop and Farmerboy are painting dinosaurs. Pip likes to paint boxes.

 

Farmerboy's dinosaur. 

I have a whole post I want to do about painting with little ones. Hopefully soon.

Friday: Friday morning was sunny -- finally.  The boys found some earthworms and rolie-polies in the flower bed where they can play with their trucks and spent a good long while setting up worm farms and rolie-polie habitats in my good freezer containers. (All in the name of science, right?) Then Pip wanted to build a bug out of clay. They used sculpey, plastalina, and florist's wire.  (And Pip actually made a spider.)

 

Rolie-polie habitat.

 

Studying insect books.

 

Pip's spider close up.

A rolie-polie Pip made, Pip's spider, a bee Pop and I made together, and a plastalina butterfly with proboscis by Farmerboy.

This week was a lot of work, but I was pleased with the results.  I was proud of Gareth for doing so well at camp, happy that Katydid was able to follow her own interests, and very satisfied with how independent and motivated the little boys were in doing their own work.

Volcanoes!

 

Yesterday morning I sat down with Gareth and Katydid at the dining room table, so I could read Penelope Lively's In Search of a Homeland (a retelling of the Aeneid) to them while they drew.  We had gotten to the section in which the Trojans land in Sicily near Mt. Etna and encounter the cyclopes who previously had terrorized Odysseus on his voyages.  The kids weren't exactly sure what they wanted to draw, so I suggested cyclopes. I got up to change a diaper, and when I came back I found that my book had been purloined to serve as a model for cyclopes illustrations.  Since I couldn't read any more of In Search of a Homeland, I poked around in the basket which I had just made of all our Roman-related books (of which there are many) and pulled out a book on volcanoes.  Hmmm, I thought, Mt. Etna is a volcano...  

So I read about volcanoes, and we found some pictures of Mt. Etna in a few of our children's atlases, and Katydid added Mt. Etna to her picture of Polyphemus, the cyclops.  The volcano book we own is actually a bargain book I picked up at Barnes and Noble years ago, and it has a lot of nifty pictures, but it isn't so great to read aloud. So I actually ended up reading the volcano section in a Physical Science textbook, where we all learned a lot about viscosity.  Then we got up to do chores. 

But the little boys, who had been building pillow forts in the other room the whole time, had apparently been listening a little more than I realized.  As soon as the big kids got up from the table, the little boys descended upon it -- and me -- demanding to draw volcano pictures.

 

 

Here are the boys' pictures hung up on the bulletin board. Pop drew the two pictures on top -- can you tell they are volcanoes erupting? You can, right?  He's starting to do representational drawings. Big transition, there. Pip's drawings are in the middle row. While they are not technically representational, I believe that they are fantastically representational of a volcanic eruption.  I may be a little biased, but I love them -- especially that exuberant spray of yellow and orange and red, which, when placed above Farmerboy's drawing in the bottom corner, makes it look as if Farmerboy's volcano is really erupting.  Farmerboy had a little difficulty with his drawing -- all of my kids tend to be a bit (*cough*) perfectionistic -- and he wasn't sure that he wanted to put in the effort required to finish the drawing.  But when he did, he was very proud of it.  He colored the sky brown because it's full of ash, see, and there's a tree being burned up in the foreground.

Since everyone seemed to be very interested in volcanoes and since it was a gorgeous day (a little on the cool side, but in an invigorating way)... I asked the kids if they would like to build volcanoes outside and "erupt" them with baking soda and vinegar.  NOT a terribly original idea, but... a definite kid-pleaser, and something I've had in the back of my mind to do for a long time. So... we all headed out to the garden after lunch.

Gareth's volcano, with various vents and dandelions for trees.  His volcano is a composite volcano, because it has more than one opening.  Mt. Etna is also a composite volcano, with 4 main vents.

 

(You'll have to excuse the smudges in these photos... it was bright outside that we couldn't tell there were fingerprints on the lens until after the pictures had been taken.)  We added red food coloring to the vinegar, but of course you couldn't see the red except when the baking soda foamed up at first... after that, everything just sort of turned to mud.

 

 

This was a great boy activity.  They got to dig holes and simulate an explosion.  I think that Farmerboy was a little disappointed that we could not accurately simulate lava bombs, however. Nevertheless, some of us were quite disappointed when we ran out of vinegar:

Winter term, Week 8: More glitter

 

Mardi Gras masks!

You'll have to pardon this post, because I am ending up the week with a cold and three sick little boys. (The littlest boy was sick over the course of the week, but was he sick with what we've all come down with today or with the last mild cold that passed through our ranks?) I did want to post about last week while it was still relatively fresh, but I'm afraid that my commentary might be a bit on the brief and unenlightening side. I am very bad at just vegging out, though, and I have spent all day investigating correspondence and umbrella schools and tutorial services. I doubt that we will ever sign anyone up for a full program, but using bits and pieces... that's something we do around here.

But without further ado, a brief glimpse at Week 8. Week 8 was...

...the beginning of Lent, when I brought all the kids to Mass on Ash Wednesday by myself and had to drag 4 small children - 2 of whom were screaming that they didn't want to go -- into the cry room during the homily. The cry room was inexplicably full of grown-ups. But this was still a better experience than last year, which you really don't want to know about. And then we went to vision therapy.

... also Mardi Gras, which involved mask making and listening to Cajun music.

We had cleared off the china cabinet and set it up for Lent, but unfortunately there was nowhere else to dry the Mardi Gras masks. But we can lay both sorrows and joys at the foot of the cross.

 

   Lots of glitter -- Pop's, of course.

 

Gareth's cat mask.

I tried setting up a few activities for Chipmunk on the train table while I read aloud. The plastic jug is probably his most beloved "toy"; he loves taking the top off and putting it back on again. The oatmeal containers have various sized balls in them for pouring out and putting back in:

 

The oatmeal containers are also well-loved. This set up kept Chipmunk occupied for about fifteen minutes, after which he did this:

 

I have no idea where he found that purple marker, or why he loves biting off the tips.

 

Pip practiced his scissors skills by cutting yarn. And those boxes...

 

... became a tank. Built by Farmerboy, of course.

 

Soon turned into a fleet, so everyone could play.

As for the big kids, when they are not battling prepositional phrases or grappling with the mysteries of percentages or multiplication, they have been doing a lot of this:

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.

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. 

A Little Bit of Christmas

 

City building and clay fungi are not all we have been up to lately.  No, we've been doing some Christmasy things, too.  Nothing overwhelming or very difficult (or especially organized), just -- a little Christmasy.

 

One of the mothers in our Little Flowers/Blue Knights group wrote a Christmas play for the kids.  She did a great job -- combining the traditional Christmas story with the Joyful Mystery of the Nativity, which we prayed on our rosaries.  Katydid was Mary, Gareth and Farmerboy were two of three kings, and Pip, as you can see here, was totally in his element as both the donkey...

 

... and a shepherd.  (Sorry. These pictures were just too cute not to share.)

We also baked cookies for the Boy Scout bake sale.  And the boys bought cookies at the Boy Scout bake sale:

 

No, I didn't bake these.  I baked plain old chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles.  But maybe next year...

I also put out a simple activity that I did with the little ones last year.  I drew Christmas trees on long sheets of paper and let them "decorate" them however they wanted.

 

This is Farmerboy working on his.  I put out markers, glue, and foam shapes to use to decorate the trees, but some good additions might be yarn (for garland), glitter (probably not for the faint-hearted), beads (if you're not worried about anyone choking on them), or really, anything you can think of.  The kids have been working on other things since they did these trees, but I'll probably offer again with some different materials (maybe not the beads.)

This week all of the kids have been involved in making clay ornaments.

 

We just use regular cookie cutters.  Most of the kids painted their ornaments today, using tempera paint:

Here's a selection from Katydid, Farmerboy (the pink Christmas tree), Pip (the blue Christmas tree), and Pop (the orange star).  Gee, I wonder who made that mallard in the middle...

Pop also made something which I'm hoping he paints and finishes.  (The painting and finishing of ornaments today hit a few glitches, resulting in a bit of orange hair and blue eyelids.)

 

It didn't photograph well, but in person, I thought it was some interesting work and would make a good plaque.  He scored the clay with a couple of different tools and pressed other cookie cutters around the edges of the star cut-out.  Unlike the painting today, this kept him busy for quite a while. 

We've also been reading quite a few Christmas books, some new, some old.

Project Learning: Cities

   

Yes, there is an Advent wreath hidden somewhere in this picture. (I also just noticed: Pip's cardboard castle is positioned just right to make it seem like something is nesting in an open woodstove. I feel like I'm posting a version of hidden pictures!) But, obviously, Advent and Christmas are not all we are about this December.  Farmerboy built this cardboard castle a couple of weeks ago after being inspired by Superboy's Colossal Castle.  He built the cardboard form all by himself, with the help of copious amounts of masking tape.  The blue cardboard you see taped beneath the staircase (which I think was originally supposed to be a drawbridge) stands for the moat.  He constructed a tower out of a toilet paper tube and made a top for it by cutting up a cardboard carton of some kind, then anchored it using masking tape (of course).  Before he added on, the castle also sported swinging doors: little pieces of cardboard connected to the walls with scotch tape that functioned as a hinge. 

He spent about an hour on it one cold afternoon. I was pretty impressed -- with the level of concentration, perseverence, problem-solving, and independence he exhibited, as well as the creativity involved.  Lately I have been practicing a difficult parenting skill.  I have been practicing the art of saying yes.  Yes to big, messy projects.  Yes, to the use of large amounts of masking tape.  Yes, you can... do it yourself.  Without me.  Without my ideas about how you should do things.  You will have to get everything out yourself.  You will have to put it all away.  I can't help you now, but yes, you can do it.

This is tough.  I have had to shift gears.  In my head, I still think they need me, see, for lots of things.  They do still need me... but not for everything.  I am not required for every project anymore.  My role is often simply to supply space, materials, permission, and encouragement. 

After doing some research into Reggio Emilia, I have also been enouraged myself.  I've been encouraged to take some of what I thought were minuses -- our inability to follow anyone's predetermined plans, for instance, or our collectively disorganized creative right-brainedness -- and consider them instead as pluses.  I've been encouraged to hone and build on what for me is my natural homeschooling style: listening and observing my kids, scaffolding and encouraging their interests, documenting what happens, and using that documentation to make further plans.

So.  I had been hearing about "cities" since this summer.  Gareth, Katydid, and Farmerboy had all built (and argued over) their own "cities" in one of our flower beds, as an on-going, kid-initiated, adults-have-nothing-to-do-with-this project.  They built these cities out of excavated dirt, rocks, bricks, sticks, and anything they found while digging in the flower bed (plastic potsherds, for example), and used them as the stage for Playmobil wars, archaeology digs, and construction sites.  I took some pictures this fall:

(The feather sticking up behind the wall marks the site of an ancient tomb, according to Gareth.)

(A cave, excavated and reinforced by Farmerboy.)

Farmerboy gave me the tour of the cities, punctuating his descriptions with statements such as: "Gareth's city is rich in bricks.  My city is rich in rocks."  The city building echoed another game they played this summer called "Civilizations", in which they all pretended to live in three different civilizations and trade with each other.  I'm pretty sure this play was encouraged by our reading about Mesopotamia and Greece, but the cities in the flower bed have been around for a while.

The cities outside can't really be played in during the winter because the ground is frozen and/or covered with snow.  After reading about the Reggio Emilia way of encouraging learning with preschoolers by picking up on themes from their play, I wrote a few notes in a journal about possibly doing a city project with the kids.  Another key element of the Reggio approach is collaboration, and since working together is a skill I would like my kids to develop (if only to cut down on the bickering), I thought that "cities" might provide a point of common interest for all of them -- including the twins, who also like to excavate in the flower bed.  I brainstormed a list of topics I thought could develop from a focus on cities -- cities in the ancient world, how cities developed, city planning...  well, actually it wasn't a list so much as it was a map of topics and their connections.  (I didn't scan or photograph it, but I can if you'd like.)

Anyway, after I made the list, we got interested in painting for a while, and then there was Halloween and Thanksgiving, and I wondered if maybe I should just sit on the idea  of a city project until January.  But as Farmerboy was covering his cardboard castle with "Fast-mache" (not very fast, by the way, and we had to scrape it all off yesterday -- the subject of another post), he was talking to Pip and Pop (who also wanted to make castles) about how they were building a village with a castle at one end.  So I decided to go ahead and ask the kids whether they were interested in building a city inside.

"How can we build one inside?" they asked.

"We'll need somewhere to put it," Gareth said.

"We'll get a board or a piece of plexiglass or a large section of cardboard to use as a base.  Then I thought that we could just move the whole thing out of the way when we needed to use the table, " I told him.

The response at that point was more positive than I could have hoped.  The kids had a lot of ideas, each building on the others.  They decided how to divide the city up so that each of them would be responsible for a piece.  They made a list of the materials they thought they might need.  They got out some books to use as a reference.  They wanted a a big piece of paper so they could draw plans.

 

So it looks as if, along with baking Christmas cookies and reading Christmas books, we are going to be investigating cities.  I'm waiting on a box from Dick Blick to really get started, and it looks as if it might have just been delivered to our front porch...