Three Plus Two

Country Diary: Memorial Day Week

(I am really bad at using forms so I'm afraid that my diary entries will never end up the same way twice.  I just occasionally feel the need to document what's going on in my garden. Maybe I should buy a garden journal.)

Weather: The weekend was about half and half for good weather: Saturday it rained most of the afternoon, which was good for the garden but bad for us, since we still had an enormous amount of stuff to plant.  Sunday was cool and cloudy until late afternoon.  Monday was gorgeous: sunny and 70. A stiff wind kicked up in the afternoon, heralding cooler temperatures.   Andy covered all the tender annuals he could -- tomatoes, peppers, melons, winter squash, okra. Good thing, too, because we had a little frost Monday morning. The rest of the week has been fairly rotten -- more rain than we need, cold, blah.

Blooming Now: Lilacs (finally); peonies getting ready to bloom (finally); irises just purple at the tips.  Saturday when we went to the farm to buy plants, there was a dogwood in full bloom.  Andy and I laughed; it's been nearly 2 months since we saw dogwoods blooming in Tennessee. I have seen some roses blooming at lower elevations, but alas, my rose seems to have contracted some disease which is turning the leaves yellow.  It usually blooms in June anyway, so maybe it will recover enough to have a few blossoms. We splurged on an enormous fuschia for the front porch on Saturday; I am hoping it will attract our hummingbird pair.

In the Garden: Rabbits ate half the pea plants. Something ate my asparagus. Half the new strawberries died. Ditto the pawpaw.  I fought an extended battle against bindweed yesterday afternoon, trying to clear out a grow bed to plant melons.  (Michael Pollan agonizes over bindweed in Second Nature.  I knew it was a pain but I had no idea it was so insidious.  New plants can grow from every part of its broken root.  Every little piece!  I combed through that bed for nearly an hour pulling bindweed and sorting through the dirt to get more pieces of root.  It's a losing battle, but hopefully I made a little progress.) I think our water (even after it's been boiled) is killing the shiitake mushroom kit.

On the plus side of the equation (the negative is on my mind this morning, sorry): potatoes are up; we found the carrots in the bed that was a weedy disaster; and somehow in all the other activities of the weekend we made time to plant corn, beans, summer squash, my beloved Italian zucchini from last year (also, Zucchini Rampicante, another Italian zucchini), cucumbers; and as transplants -- more cucumbers (I have rotten luck with cucumbers); 4 kinds of pepper, a bunch of tomatoes, brussel sprouts, a few cabbages; two flats of okra (in black plastic this year for warmth); and roughly half of the melon plants I started from seed.  Still to go: watermelons, Charentais melons, pumpkins, and Gareth's experiments of the year: Chinese noodle beans and a couple different open-pollinated varieties of corn (he wants to see if they'll cross.)

I'm also putting in a modest herb garden this year by the deck: cilantro, parsely, thyme, rosemary, oregano, basil, chocolate mint (in a pot!!), dill.  I already have invasive amounts of lemon balm and mint from the previous owners.

Barnyard: This is not going as well as I had hoped.  We got 15 turkey poults last Thursday - 5 Blue Slate, 5 Naragansett, 5 Bourbon Red. We've lost five so far. So now we're down to 4 Naragansett, 4 Blue Slate, and 2 Bourbon Red.  Unfortunately, heavy losses of turkey poults seem to be the rule rather than the exception.  This doesn't make me feel any better. Those little poults are terribly cute. 

From the kitchen: I think I'm going to be able to pull radishes this week.  What to do with radishes when the salad greens aren't ready? I also have mint.  Radishes and mint?  I don't think so!

What else is going on?: Maybe a better question would be, what's not going on? Sports. Sports are not going on. Otherwise... Katydid is getting ready for a violin recital, we're preparing for the arrival of 52 new chicks next week, various children have had eye exams and well-child checkups, I had to go to Urgent Care for oral steroids since my regular doctor's office was booked solid (but I feel almost human again, so it was worth it), Andy's in NYC again this week (only once, though), we're finishing up school books, I'm trying to write a guide for Gareth's study of evolutionary biology, Gareth marched in a Memorial Day parade, and Katydid and Andy got up really early to attend the annual Early Morning Birdwalk at our local arboretum. And the snapping turtles are trundling through our field and yard en route to their breeding sites.

A few pictures:

 

Pip is a deep sea diver, isn't that obvious?

 

Katydid in her element. (Photo by Andy.)

 

The snapping turtle we found in the field last weekend.  The females apparently come out this time of year to lay their eggs.  This particular turtle was fairly large -- probably about a foot long -- but apparently they can grow much larger.  Later in the weekend we saw another, much smaller snapping turtle on our front steps.  All children now know how to identify snapping turtles and have been warned to STAY AWAY from them.

 

The snapping turtle's head. (Photo by Katydid.)

I have only ONE picture of Gareth in the Memorial Day parade, and it's hard to pick him out.  Then my batteries gave out.  Andy and Farmerboy got to march along with Gareth's Scout troop so Katydid and I "had our hands full" with the twins and Chipmunk.  It is therefore doubtful whether I could have gotten any more pictures anyway, but just so you know... they all looked wonderful.

What I'm pondering right now...

How do small children know the exact moment I plunge my hands into gooey salmon patty mix?  Does an alarm go off in their brains that tells them their mother will not be able to snag the back of their shirt to stop them from slamming a cabinet door into their brother's block tower (more than once), using a piece of the Brown Stair to club another brother in the head, or to climb on the handle of the oven drawer to see what's cooking? 

I have no other explanation for why a group of children who were just playing together companionably would devolve into total chaos.

I bet Maria Montessori never had to deal with this.

The Ecosystem Game

 

For the past week or so, all of the kids (except Chipmunk) have been caught up in a game they call "Ecosystems."  The idea began with Katydid, because she has been reading about ecosystems in the Harcourt 6th grade science textbook, which we have hanging around the house from when we signed up with Kolbe a few years ago.  It was Katydid's idea to read the text, and she chooses the unit she's working on.  There is a whole section on ecosystems, which she wanted to learn about, so she's been reading and explainin, to us and to her brothers, how ecosystems work.  She wrote, edited, and rewrote a nice report for me.  But she planted the germ of a more useful idea in her brothers.

I think Gareth was the one who actually started the game.  Gareth -- since the age of 7 -- has been deeply interested in paleontology.  His birthday request when he turned 12 was for a book about prehistoric mammals.  The only one I could find that he hadn't read, or that wasn't a slim picture book, was a technical book called After the Dinosaurs.  He's been reading this book all year, along with others, and by now he has a pretty good idea of what an "ecosystem" is and how it works, too.  So one day he gathered up all the Schleich animals in his room and set one up.

Of course Farmerboy -- who is currently fascinated with mammoths and dinosaurs and how paleontologists can know anything about creatures that died so long ago -- thought setting up an ecosystem with Schleich animals sounded like a great idea.  So he and Gareth divided the living room up into habitats.  They said they were living on an island, and they each had their own territory.  (Territory is big around here, I have to tell you.)  They divided up the animals so that each of them had carnivores and herbivores.  Then they spent an hour or so inventing natural disasters, migrations of invasive species, regular climate patterns, etc. so the populations of their animals (each population represented by one toy animal) could rise and fall, and in some cases, go extinct.  Katydid and the twins soon joined the game as well, and now that the weather is nice, they often bring their toys outside to play Ecosystems in the ferns.

When I asked Farmerboy if I could snap this picture, he was explaining to me how his ecosystem worked. There had just been a devestating flood, so the horses were having a hard time finding food.  But the hippos were plentiful, and the smilodons (saber-toothed tigers) had plenty to eat, since they ate hippos.  But the horses, he said, shaking his head, were likely to go extinct.

So what was my role in all of this, if none of this learning was "planned"? 

• I encouraged Katydid to read her science book on a daily basis.  She wanted to, but amid multiple distractions, would sometimes forget. So a reminder or a question from me was welcome.
• I allowed the collection of a number of animal toys ;-), including the new prehistoric mammals purchased at Agway last week.
• The animals are always out where they can be played with.
• I let the kids have time to play their game. If they were involved in play, I was a little looser with times to start chores or seatwork, and the amount of seat work.  I didn't allow seat work to squeeze out the game.
• I asked the kids about their game, listened to their explanations, and through questions, helped clarify their thinking.
• I documented the game (here).  The kids like it when I blog what they're doing, because it shows them that I value their work and their ideas enough to share and display it.
• I'll continue to look for ways I can encourage the game -- maybe by suggesting the creation of props for scenery, or by providing playable plants, trees, etc (artificial flowers, toy trees, and/or sticks, etc from outside), or by reading about ecosystems and habitats.

This is why I like the Reggio approach.  We work in tandem, the kids and I, for deep learning.  I learn as much as the kids do -- about new subjects, sure, but also about the way they learn, about what they think is important, about the enormous creative potential of children.  This kind of learning is what keeps me energized and keeps the kids excited, engaged, and happy.

Our Lady's Eyes

 

Otherwise known as forget-me-nots...

A Simple Life?

A recent thread on the 4Real Boards has prompted me to think about "simplicity" and "simple" homeschooling.  Not "easy" homeschooling, but homeschooling that is simple, rich, and beautiful.  I sat down on Saturday and started to write.

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Here I am on a Saturday morning. It's after 9 AM and I am just now sitting down with breakfast: 2 fried eggs (fresh from the hen yesterday), a piece of toast, coffee.  I don't usually drink coffee, but I have had a cold all week, compounded by allergies and asthma, and Chipmunk woke up at 6:30 this morning and needed to be held.  So I held him and caught up on some blogs and boards (since the twins were still asleep), except I didn't have my glasses on and was apparently too lazy to go get them, so then my eyes started to hurt.  I'm hoping the extra dose of caffeine will help.  Really, though, I am a coffee weenie, and what I am drinking is half coffee, half light cream, with a generous amount of sugar. I don't normally like to start off my day with so much sugar, but when I came out with Chipmunk this morning and "had my hands full", as people like to say, there was a box of Fig Newtons on top of the microwave, so I ate two of them.  Do Fig Newtons count as First Breakfast?

Anyway, I meant to get up earlier because Andy and Gareth got up around 5:30 to go camping with Scouts. Andy was in New York City yesterday, for the second time this week, and to spend a little time with him I decided that we would go pick up all the last minute camping stuff at Wal-Mart and then meet him in town for dinner on his way home from the train station.  He got to Wal-Mart before we were done, and we split up to pick up supplies. I took the cart full of small children -- Chipmunk in the front seat, Pip and Pop in the cart's bucket.  (What do you call that part of the cart? The "cart" part? The buggy? The bucket? A dilemma.)  I then proceeded to whisk down the aisles picking up granola bars, juice, Cheddar Bunnies, bread, and bananas, trying to squeeze all this stuff in around two three year olds playing STRONG MAN! GRR! AND THE X-MEN in the bucket (or buggy) or whatever of the cart.  You should know that what STRONG MAN AND THE X-MEN really means is LET'S PUNCH EACH OTHER AND YELL REALLY LOUD.  It wasn't until we got home that I noticed I'd picked up 2 bottles of "Cherry Burst" juice instead of White Grape Cherry.  Cherry Burst proudly proclaims that it is "20% juice!"  The other 80% is water, high fructose corn syrup, and Red #40.  This is not exactly what I want STRONG MAN AND THE X-MEN to drink. 

In the interval between buying Cherry Burst and discovering that it was, in fact, Cherry Burst, we went to eat at Arby's.  We also dropped sandwiches on the floor at Arby's, screamed and stole our brother's sandwich at Arby's, yelled loudly whenever a truck passed by Arby's, and spilled a full cup of rootbeer all over the booth at Arby's. "Have a nice night!" the cashier yelled as we walked out the door, and I'm glad I had my hands full of toddler and couldn't turn around because I'm pretty sure he was smirking when he said it.  

So today, Saturday.  After starting this post this morning, I took a long break before picking it up again.  I broke up a squabble about a snorkel that Farmerboy lifted from his sister's room, and which he wanted to wear as part of his Digimon gear.

I took care of my seedlings, which are mostly holding up, although the watermelons are dying off one by one.  I was surprised to see Andy back home, but he said he came to help me out and Gareth was fine, so we spent a couple of hours attempting to make the house look less like it had been ransacked by a pack of thieves, and while we worked we had a discussion about how we were both aggravated by our inability to pare down various obligations so that the life we actually want to live -- chickens, garden, animals, and all -- wouldn't be so incredibly hard.  Andy mopped all the floors with a tea-tree spray I made yesterday; I cleared some clutter; Katydid did Gareth's kitchen chores; and the boys threw dirt at each other outside.

We decided to order a pizza for lunch and call it a cleaning expense.  Andy went to pick it up, and I went outside with the boys, who were by now finding Eastern tent caterpillars and dropping them into my freezer containers.  Farmerboy directed the twins to find crabapple and oak leaves for them to eat.  We walked over to the crabapple tree, which was loosing its petals like rain in every gust of wind.  "Winter!" Pip called out happily.  "Butterflies!"  The ground was pink with blossoms.  We stepped on them like a carpet and breathed in their perfume. 

At lunch we talked about mushrooms and discovered that Pip's caterpillar was different than the other boys', and possibly a Black Swallowtail caterpillar.  After we were done eating, we all headed back outside.  While I cleaned up the table, Andy cleaned out the back of the chicken coop while holding Chipmunk.  When Chipmunk finally got down, he ran back and forth by the new fence shouting, "Buck! Buck! Buck!"  The kids all picked up chickens while I admonished them not to hold them up to thier faces because a chicken pecked Farmerboy in the eye the other day, resulting in a trip to the doctor and eye drops for a scratched conjunctivum.  Then I attempted to sneak away to thin radishes, but Chipmunk found me out.  We all worked in the garden as best we could, until Farmerboy saw a delivery truck pull into the driveway.

"Our piano!"

We've been thinking about a piano for a long time. When we were in Tennessee Katydid spent hours playing my mother's piano, and Andy started secretly searching for one in earnest.  But everything he could find was too expensive.  I gave him the advice I had once heard given by a mother of 10 in our homeschool group: "You decide what you need, and then you pray." Two weeks ago one of Andy's coworkers was driving down a back road near her house and saw a sign for a FREE PIANO.  She thought of us, stopped her car, and went in to talk to the owners.  It seems that they were trying to clear out the house of their elderly parent.  The piano had not been played in three years, and they wanted it to go to a home where it would be played and enjoyed.  Well, we fit that bill.  We paid for the piano movers, but that was it.  And now we have a piano.

After the piano movers left, the kids messed around on the piano for a while (rules will have to be made about how to take turns, do not bang on the keys when your sister is trying to play, do not drop the keyboard cover on your brother's hands, etc., etc.), then I read a few picture books to the little boys (including a Magic School Bus book for Farmerboy), Katydid went back to her room to read, Andy went back outside to mow grass for an hour, and I put the little ones down for a nap. Chipmunk didn't lie down for long, and I was back where I began this post: reading on the computer and holding him while he slept.

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So.  Do I have a "simple" life?  Hmm.  Some of the accoutrements are there: the fresh eggs, the garden, the chickens, the crabapple.  But you can stop laughing now, because no, I don't think my life is very simple.  It's actually pretty darn complicated.  But as I was writing all this down and thinking about it, I began to ask myself the question, "Are my kids' lives simple?"

I think the answer is yes.  For starters, their parents are still married and enjoy each other's company.  For another thing, they do not have to deal with all the weird situations you hear about from people whose kids go to school.  (I'm not talking about academics; I'm talking about "socialization".  This has been particularly driven home to me lately whenever I hear about what other 12 and 13 year olds have to deal with.)  Starting from that base, what about the way we "school"?

To be honest, I just winced when I wrote that word, "school".  It's inadequate for the way my kids live their lives.  I've written before that my kids only think of the sit down work we do -- math, spelling, diagramming sentences -- as "schoolwork".  The rest of it -- reading books, drawing pictures, making volcanoes, collecting caterpillars -- is not "school".  It's life.  Without time to do those things, their lives would be diminished.  And I'm sure they would rebel.  In fact, they do rebel -- if "schoolwork" starts to crowd out what to them are the more meaningful pieces of their world. 

But they are not the kind of kids who, as a rule, will want to do math problems on their own.  And one of my kids would spend a lot of time setting up Lego armies and then wonder where all the time went, because there were other things he wanted to do, too, and now he's frustrated.  So I make some requirements.  Sometimes it's hard to resist just focusing on the basics. For the sake of "simplicity".  But that path only leads to burnout.  Because it's the rest of it -- the walks in the crabapple blossoms, the chickens, the garden, the piano, the sitting at a table on a Sunday morning and trying to build a ship out of a milk jug to go along with the Magic School Bus book you heard yesterday -- it's all that stuff that makes learning real.  Actually, that's not right.  It doesn't "make" learning real, because the learning is real already.  It's the way humans are built.  We were made to learn.

But it takes work on a parent's part to keep it that way. It takes a certain resistance to what everyone else is doing, in order to figure out what is best for your family.  It takes a certain courage, to ignore all the naysayers, and to fight one's own fears of failing one's children in various ways.  It takes a certain humility, to realize one's limitations -- and not to obsess over them.  And it takes a certain sense of humor, to realize that when your three year olds are playing X-Men in the cart at Wal-Mart and you come home with Cherry Burst instead of juice, it's not the end of the world.   

What I have come to believe is that "a simple life" is not really a destination, but a constant road one is always walking.  If I can keep my kids from some of the snares along the way in order to keep their childhoods "simple", then I'll be happy.

Hello, Orioles

(This post is for Dawn, who is trying to lure her orioles out into the open. I would link directly to the post, which is entitled "Yoo-hoo, Orioles!", but for some reason I can't get it to open so I can get the permalink. Ah, technology. Anyway, Dawn, you know what you posted!)

The orioles are back in our neck of the woods, too.  As usual, we first heard them singing loudly in the trees by the garden.  I have never been able to get one photo of an oriole, so of course I rely on Katydid.

 

Orioles make it hard even for Katydid to get a good picture, though.

 

They're constantly doing gymnastics.

They always come back when the apples are in bloom.  We have two crabapples in our yard -- one of which is flowering spectacularly right now, the other not so much -- but there is an abandoned orchard in the woods behind our house.  Last year, Katydid got some really good oriole photos in the apple trees. (And I notice that the apples bloomed a week later last year. Hmmm.) 

My mom gave Katydid an oriole feeder complete with freeze-dried mealworms for her birthday. (Your 10 year old girl gets excited about freeze-dried mealworms as a birthday present, too, right?)  As soon as we heard the orioles, she hung it on the pole outside her window.

 

She set it up with oranges, grape jelly, and mealworms.  She hasn't seen an oriole yet, but she is optimistic that they'll eventually find it.  Maybe when the apples have dropped their blossoms.

 

All photos in this post by Katydid.

That Rosetta Stone Contest

Because I need some help with Latin... even though I never win anything... I am taking part in this marketing scheme. ;-)

***Rosetta Stone is the fastest way to learn a language and has been the #1 foreign language curriculum among homeschoolers for a while — and you can WIN the *all new* version 3 Rosetta Stone Homeschool LATIN program… FOR FREE! This is the first year you can get Latin in the brand new Version III update.

This is a $259 program (and believe me it’s worth every penny!)This is a computer based curriculum and Rosetta Stone will also include a headset with microphone, and a supplementary “Audio Companion” CD so you can practice lessons in the car, on the go, or where-ever! Students participate in life-like conversations and actually produce language to advance through the program. Rosetta Stone incorporates listening, reading, grammar, vocabulary and writing along with speaking and pronunciation lessons. For parents, the new Parent Administrative Tools are integrated into the program to allow parents to easily enroll up to ten students in any of 12 predetermined lesson plans, monitor student progress, grade completed work (the program grades the work automatically as the students progress- I love that!), and you can view and print reports for transcripts. Homeschooling a lot of kids at your house? This program is designed to enroll and track up to ten students (five users on two computers) and will work for nearly all ages — from beginning readers up to college students.

To win this most excellent Latin program copy these paragraphs and post them in (or as) your next blog post, and/OR link to the contest from your facebook page and/OR email the information to your homeschool support group – Then go to the original page http://Jeneralities.com and leave a comment saying that you’ve posted about, or have linked to, the contest. Please make sure the link works to get back to the original contest page when you post.

And good luck!****

Wordless Wednesday: Spring Goldfinch, by Katydid

 

 

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:

Spring Term, Week 2: Winding Down

I keep whittling down my expectations of this year. I have marked on my calendar that June 18 will be our "last day of school".  This week I looked at our attendence calendar and realized that our 180 days will be done sooner than that.  Usually I don't pay too much attention to "just" getting in 180 days.  Instead, I like to keep working until natural breaks.  If that goes over 180 days, so be it.  But this year, I think I will be happy just to make 180.  We're stopping at the end of May and taking off June and July.  I'm not quite sure I understand the level of burnout this year, considering that I didn't have any babies, I wasn't pregnant, and we didn't move. Of course, I started the year wheezing, Chipmunk started walking (and climbing), and the twins were 3.  I guess that might make a fair case for burnout.

In any case, I'm trying to muster the strength to recover from our trip and Andy's heavy travel schedule, which will last until the end of May... add in 15 turkeys coming in two weeks, and 52 chickens after that, plus the garden... that's why we're winding down.   Here's what we did accomplish last week:

• I got some softball and T-ball equipment to replenish our stores.  The little boys have enjoyed playing catch, and Katydid has found a new interest in softball... and a new frustration when she can't get her brothers to play with her.  The library had a display on baseball, so she checked out Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen.  Not only is this a true story about a girl who strikes out Babe Ruth, but she also played for the Chattanooga Look-Outs, a city in which we recently spent some time. 
• The boys are all interested in dinosaurs... mammoths... prehistoric fish.  The little boys are enthralled with Chased By Dinosaurs and Gareth has been reading The Book of Life: An Illustrated History of the Evolution of Life on Earth, Second Edition.  (You know... I link books sometimes so I can pull up actual titles and authors when I write my quarterly reports for the school district.  But sometimes the actual titles come out sounding a bit ridiculous.And I'm not really trying to make money at this.  Just so you know.)  We got a very cool book out of the library called Prehistoric Actual Size, which I'm hoping to use as a springboard for some outside measuring activities with the little boys this week.
• We started reading about Romans: Augustus Caesar's World and In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid.
• Katydid started working on a Blurb book of her photography.  But we ran into a snag: the resolution of our photos isn't good enough for the layouts she was attempting.  So now I need to figure out how to resize the photos.  This means I need time to fool around with software without 5 or more people asking for things at the same time. Wish me luck.

A few pictures from the week:

  

We celebrated Katydid's birthday with carrot cake cupcakes from the farm store...

 

Watermelon seedlings are growing...

 

I've started paying kids $.01 a weed to pull zillions of weeds in the garden. (Actually, I think this would be a challenging problem: estimate the number of weeds in the garden. How much money could you make if you pulled all of them? Are Mommy and Daddy banking on the assumption that you'll lose interest before you get that far?)  Pip and Pop have been very interested in earning pennies, and will accept no dimes, nickels, or quarters. These are not weeds, by the way.  These are peas.