If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you've probably noticed that my kids like earth science. This year Gareth has decided to make high school level earth science his focus, and as is often the case when one child becomes interested in a thing, the interest spills over into the rest of the family. A couple of weeks ago, his reading about plate tectonics (the theory of continental drift) sort of collided with the boys' love of shovels and their collective invented universe (I'm sure I have pictures on the blog of the "cities" they built in New York, but I can't find it now) and Minn of the Mississippi, and this is what happened:
The kids found a good place to dig in the backyard and dug a river system. Then they added mountains, mesas, and plateaus. They discussed and defined all the terms. Gareth explained continental uplift to the 7 and 5 year olds. The 3 year old was identified as the primary cause of erosion; one of the twins earned the nickname "Earthquake". Of course, forts were constructed, too, for empires that rose and fell.
In the midst of all the digging, Katydid decided to also dig a model Mississippi, using the maps in Minn of the Mississippi as a guide. It's still under construction.
My role in all of this?
I let Gareth read a book he wanted to read instead of one I planned for him to read.
I chose Minn of the Mississippi as a school book for the little boys and I read it to anyone who would listen.
I'm trying to keep everyone somewhat busy and yet still do a lot of sitting (and nursing). "School" is therefore in session... sort of. I'm reading aloud in the mornings and requiring math of the big kids and some phonics of Farmerboy (starting next week, after I get our Explode the Code online account set up.) That's it. But here's what our days have actually been like...
What we did yesterday:
Read aloud 1 chapter of Minn of the Mississippi, 1 chapter of Robin Hood (the Howard Pyle version - forsooth!) in the morning, You Can Name 100 Dinosaurs to Chipmunk and Pip at naptime, and at bedtime Andy read 1 chapter of The Buffalo Knife, by William O.Steele (to everyone) and a chapter of Mattimeo, Redwall #3, (just to the little boys).
Gareth read The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula K. LeGuin) to himself.
Katydid wrote... something.
Boys all built Lego castles.
Katydid made sandwiches for lunch and brought them outside for a picnic while I nursed the baby.
A discussion about the physics of trebuchets at lunchtime.
Everyone played in the hose... for hours and hours.
Gareth looked over his new Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra.
Katydid did a couple of pages in her Key to Decimals workbook.
Katydid and Farmerboy made an "ocean" in a big Rubbermaid container. Then Farmerboy made his own ocean in a 2 liter bottle (i.e., water + dirt, rocks, shells, sticks, etc) and noted later that everything had settled to the bottom. Had a discussion about sediment.
Gareth and Katydid played Wii Secret Agents.
Everyone except Gareth (who had a doctor's appointment) spent a good long while watching the Giant Ocean Tank webcam at the New England Aquarium... and also grousing about how their mother had already packed all the ocean books.
Kids decided to watch Finding Nemo. Gareth and Andy went to Scouts.
What we did today: (I'll try and update tomorrow, since we still have an evening to get through!)
More webcam watching to start the day. The nurse shark with the ripped fin was somehow christened "Fred".
Scrounging for unpacked books resulted in a little information on tidepools, coral reefs, and sharks.
The latest "cliffhanger" chapter of Mattimeo narrated to me by Farmerboy (don't worry; I don't assign narrations of bedtime reading!!)
Taught Katydid to make fried eggs.
Read aloud Little Farm by the Sea to Chipmunk and another chapter of Minn of the Mississippi, roughly half a chapter of Robin Hood. It's not bedtime yet, but I expect that Andy will continue to read from The Buffalo Knife and Mattimeo (especially since Farmerboy is adamant about NOT MISSING any of these books.)
Katydid drew in her nature journal.
Gareth worked on a map for the novel he's writing.
Lots more play in the hose.
More model "oceans".
Discussion about how the oil spill might affect migrating birds.
I boiled a batch of eggs. (Hey, that was a big deal. I have a 3 week old baby.)
Katydid worked on decimals some more and Gareth started on chapter 1 of LoF: Beginning Algebra. He got frustrated when he saw how much there was to chapter 1, but felt much better when we looked at the table of contents and realized that if he did an entire chapter a day he'd finish algebra I in 12 days. We're shooting for 45 minutes/day.
I read more of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and discovered that lichens are so slow-growing that big ones are probably hundreds or thousands of years old. Had to stifle the impulse to run out to the woods and see some really OLD lichens. I was sitting on the couch, nursing.
Spring has arrived in upstate New York. Beautiful temperatures and only one day of rain, so we took most of our learning outside.
Maybe it doesn't count as "learning", but the little boys are a lot happier that they can spend most of the day outside!
Farmerboy did a lot of practical work this week. He informed his father that he wanted to practice driving nails, so Andy gave him a hammer and told him to pound all the loose nails popping up in the deck. (Katydid joined him.) He also helped Andy weed flower beds and edge one of them with a bunch of big rocks.
Rocks and fossils, in fact, have made a comeback in terms of interest -- largely because Farmerboy decided that he needed a stone wall to hide behind when he and Gareth play war.
Katydid was taken with the idea of a stone wall, too, so she helped.
They cleaned the rocks out of the asparagus bed. (Completely off the subject here, but my asparagus is dying and I don't know why. Even though we are moving away, this bugs me.)
After they got to a certain point on the wall, Katydid decided she wanted to build her own house, so she went up on top of the field and raided the rubble pile the former owners built to block snowmobiles from coming across their (our) land. This pile is full of bricks, which she used to build the foundation of a little house. When told of this project, I said, "Oh, like Roxaboxen."
Then they decided to build a village.
Except that took too long (apparently). And Farmerboy wasn't satisfied with the state of his stone wall, which wasn't very stable due to the irregularities of the rocks they'd use. He and Katydid decided to use some more of the bricks they'd found in the woods instead of rocks.
(The sticks set in the slits in the wall are guns, I think. This wall is meant to be defensive.)
The current problem (as told me by Farmerboy) is that the wall is too low, so I'm curious to see how much interest Farmerboy will have in working on that problem this week.
Why do I consider stone wall-building "school" for my 1st grader? Well... in addition to providing experience in team work, perseverance, problem solving, and spatial skills... I think of something that Maria Montessori said. I'll have to paraphrase since I don't have the quote right in front of me, but the general idea is this: "Why do we call it 'work' when we see a man building a brick wall, but 'play' when it is a little man building a wall with tiny bricks?"
In moving all those rocks, Farmerboy revived his interest in fossils as well. He got out his rock hammer and safety goggles and spent a few afternoons in the garden, breaking up rocks.
And we talked about erosion. Often. Farmerboy kept encountering odd holes in rocks and making theories about what caused them. (Maybe water. Or maybe sea worms.)
I picked up a few stone wall-related books to use next week (mostly on the basis of those Publisher's Weekly blurbs on amazon):
But in retrospect, I think that maybe I should have picked up more books on erosion.
The little boys sometimes helped with the stone wall, but they were mostly more interested in collecting tent caterpillars and stag beetles and observing all the ants underneath the rocks Katydid and Farmerboy flipped over and climbing trees.
And also building "huts".
But birds remained somewhat interesting to the rest of the boys, mostly because...
We have baby birds! The chickadee's eggs hatched.
And the elusive Baltimore Oriole ran Katydid a merry chase trying to get a picture.
She did finally confirm a sighting, though.
But she forgot the camera (and her binoculars) when she and Andy went on the annual Early Morning Bird Walk at the arboretum. When they came home, they immediately downloaded iBird, which one of the other birders on the walk had apparently demonstrated. Katydid has been fooling around with it all weekend.
Where was Gareth during all of this?
Reading Sword of Clontarf mostly. But he did spend quite a while with his new Ancient Greek textbooks on Friday afternoon, as soon as they arrived. He couldn't wait until next school year.
We finished up the week with a May Procession at the Little Sisters of the Poor, where Katydid was made an official Marian Aide volunteer. I have pictures... I think... but since the camera is still out in the car, it will have to be a separate post. Katydid was very happy to receive her apron and T-shirt, and the boys were glad to get refreshments. The nuns forced them to cake, brownies, AND ice cream, so a good time was had by all.
Well, today isn't "typical" in that we're just getting back to our routine from being away... and being sick over the weekend... but on the other hand it is typical because something like this always happens to throw off my neat plans of how "getting back into our routine" should go. Over the years I've learned that imperfect is better than nothing, so here we go.
7:30 AM: Since I have been a little sick over the past few days, and Andy has been really sick, and most of the kids have been sick... I wake up late. The twins and Farmerboy are already up. Fortunately, Andy is feeling better and gets them set up in the family room watching Word World while I struggle out of bed and take care of Chipmunk, who tells me he is a "doggie" this morning. I make juice and get breakfast for the little boys and myself, attempt (several times) to wake up Katydid and Gareth, and get online for a few minutes while I eat.
9:45 AM: We're finally sitting down for prayers. When I got out of the shower, I was greeted with the news that one or both of the twins had gone on a rampage, which meant the family room had been destroyed. What I mean by "destroyed" is: all the toy bins were dumped out, there were blankets strewn all over the floor, and at least one of the book bins was scattered everywhere. I had the offending twin help pick up the books at least before we sat down to prayers. Otherwise, prayers wouldn't have happened until 11 AM. I had already decided that after prayers I was just going to go over what to expect today, this week, and the next 5 or 6 weeks, but the little boys treat it as if we were reading: I must find dinosaur coloring sheets, get out the markers, etc.
10:15 AM: I send Gareth and Katydid off to get dressed and do chores. We've talked about what we're doing for history until June (William the Conqueror/Battle of Hastings), the merits and demerits of various planning tools, Katydid's Literature for a Young Lady plans, and Gareth's science -- physics. The physics discussion turned out to interest everybody, as it involved cannonballs. I am pleasantly surprised to cover Newton's Laws and Galileo's famous gravity experiment in the space of about 15 minutes.
Farmerboy has been so taken in by the physics discussion that he has his "experiment kit" out before I can tell him to change his clothes so the rest of us can work on the disaster in the family room. This kit is a Sonlight Science supplies box augmented by lots of batteries, copper wire, tape, and whatever else Farmerboy felt like keeping there. He does a few battery experiments, then he thinks about taking something apart, so he and the twins get out our broken "stuff" and the screwdrivers, then the Snapcircuits... which eventually turns into about an hour of science/art work for all the boys, including Chipmunk.
The robot mobile Pip and I made from circuit boards.
11:20ish AM: By this time, Katydid and Gareth have finished their chores (Katydid took over Gareth's chicken chores because he has a sore throat) and are settled into... some kind of work... I don't know exactly what because I am still darting hither and thither to keep up with the little boys. Now that the boys are done with their work, they want to hunt flies and ants with a fly swatter but they're also demanding food, so -- snack time (various fruit, mainly). I finally get Farmerboy to change clothes, but I give up on getting the littler ones in clothes before we tackled the family room... and another big mess I just discovered in their bedroom. We all work on the mess for a good long while... some of us more willingly than others.
12:00: Good enough. I'm starved. And tired. I wrestle the boys back to the bedroom to change their clothes and brush their teeth. Yes, right before lunch. Farmerboy turns on a Redwall CD; Gareth has drifted away from his work back to his room (he was reading volume 1 of Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, and then we had a discussion about what to do for spelling); Katydid is hard at work on a bird book she has just decided to write.
12:30: Finally it is lunchtime. Leftover pasta and sauce (for some of us). Chipmunk eats 3 or 4 chunks of pineapple.
1:00 PM: The twins have gone on a rampage again because I was trying to finish my lunch, and it was raining so I couldn't let them outside. This time they rope Chipmunk into turning on the water in the bathtub so they can go wading. They all suffer the consequences, which seems to be what they need in order to calm down. The boys (except Chipmunk) settle into setting up a war of Confederate army guys, Playmobil pirates and knights, and aliens? Katydid is playing with Chipmunk. I am making notes on this post.
2:00 PM: I've gotten some laundry going, lunch chores are done, and now it's time to read to the boys before naptime. Pip mysteriously crawls into bed instead of reading or wrestling with Chipmunk. I read a couple of transportation-related board books to Chipmunk, then Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln and part of Ghosts of the Civil War to Pop and Farmerboy, by request. Gareth and Katydid begin their math in the dining room.
3:00ish: After a short nap in the rocking chair, it's time to do Farmerboy's required work. He's listening to Redwall again and is not happy about stopping to do phonics and math. We manage about 30 minutes and just finish by the time Chipmunk comes out and wants me to hold him. Then Pip arrives and starts pestering the big kids, who are working on a One Year Adventure Novel lesson.
4:15 PM: I release the hounds. Gareth has worked through algebra, Latin, and a novel-writing lesson, and read a bit of Rosemary Sutcliff's Outcast. It is now his turn to have computer time. The little boys decide they want to watch a Star Wars movie for their screen time. (It's been raining all afternoon.) Katydid is still working on her Wildflowers, Weeds, and Garden Flowers notebook (begun today), and then decides that for her computer time, she will write a blog entry about her chickens. Chipmunk's asleep again and -- wonder of wonders -- stays asleep when I put him down.
5:00 PM: More laundry, unload the dishwasher, start dinner. Crustless cheese quiche. I use 14 eggs and we still have 5 dozen in the refrigerator.
6:30 PM: Andy is home and we sit down to eat. In addition to the quiche, there are peas, and strawberries and blueberries (thawed from frozen. The strawberries are local.) I don't have to fight with anybody to eat, which is nice. After dinner, there is a giant light saber battle and then chores. My wonderful husband does the dinner dishes for me so I can sit down and put my feet up.
10:00 PM: The little boys are finally in bed and asleep (Chipmunk finally decided to give up the fight) and so am I, after an evening of reading stacks and stacks of books to Chipmunk, discovering with Farmerboy that the French burned Schenectady in 1690, listening to Gareth read Pokemon field guides to Pop, trying to figure out how to handle copywork for myself... and worrying about Pip, as we try to determine whether or not some of his behaviors indicate that he has Tourette Syndrome, too. I try to read the Bible and pray in bed before I go to sleep, but Chipmunk has a lot of "vim and vinegar" tonight, so... I hope God understands.
Watching the Olympics -- trying to deduce the rules of curling without looking anything up. Wondering why it looks like they're using shower scrub brushes, and why brushing the ice in front of the stone makes it go where you want it to. Realizing that we have lived in upstate New York for 5 years now (almost) and have never been skiing or snowboarding. Wondering when hockey is on??? Working on a 2010 Winter Olympics unit study (Katydid) and remembering how very, very tall the ski jumps in Lake Placid are.
And also swimming and Marian Aides with the Little Sisters of the Poor (Katydid) and Farmerboy listening to The Goblet of Fire on CD over and over again (minus the last three discs, which are being held hostage by Gareth because he says they are too scary) and watching the snow blow out of our yard and into the road and wondering if the sun is ever going to come out again and knowing it will take a few months and building rock forts inside since the rocks outside won't be available until April and anyway, all the little boys have a cold and must stay inside out of the snow and wind. And building Sculpey creations to go in the rock forts, too.
And reading Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Medieval World and Sons of Charlemagne and, if you're Gareth, a bunch of old Anglo-Saxon poems, just for fun. And also if you're Gareth, you are beginning to think about Scout Camp and wonder if you might be able to work on the Sailing merit badge, because like the rest of us, you can't help dreaming of spring.
And me? I'm learning to soak grains and make old-fashioned oatmeal (soaked in buttermilk overnight) and getting in over my head because now the boys want "porridge" every morning, probably so they can pretend to be pioneers, and I do not have enough good glass or ceramic bowls to soak all the flour I need to keep everyone supplied with muffins and bread, and my counter space is really shrinking, but you know what? Oatmeal tastes better this way.
For a while now (a long while) I have meant to put out some of the broken machinery hanging around our house for Farmerboy to dismantle. Farmerboy likes to build things. He likes machines. He likes to know the way things work. As far as the little boys go, we have been in kind of a lull between interests, and I imagine that Farmerboy has memorized a few of the Harry Potter books by now, as many times as he has listened to them on CD. (At the very least, I believe the rest of us have memorized them.) It was a good time to bring out something new.
In the picture above, Farmerboy and I are taking apart a wall clock from Katydid's room that doesn't work anymore. It runs on a battery and uses plastic gears. From reading Magic School Bus and the Electric Field Trip a few times, Farmerboy could also identify the coil attached to the battery that ran the gears.
Of course, when one kid starts to do something interesting...
Everybody wants to join in.
(Katydid joined in, too, with an old, unworking digital camera. She's just not in these pictures because she took most of them -- with my working camera.)
Stuff we took apart this week:
clock
clock radio
phone bases for cordless phones
flashlights
digital camera
printer (that would be Gareth's project)
And this is the sort of stuff we found inside:
circuit boards
pulleys
gears
coils
computer chips
And yes, it was all junk that was hanging around our basement. One advantage to being the sort of people who take a long while to get rid of junk, I guess.
Anyway, a number of questions were raised about circuits and electronics in general and how gears work. To support the investigation I dug out a few more hands-on kits we had hanging around, including a Gears! set (not exactly the one I linked to, and missing many pieces) and a couple of erector sets: a metal one for ages 8 and up and a plastic one with bigger pieces for younger kids (again, missing most of the pieces.)
The twins built war machines with it, of course.
Farmerboy and I had a hard time with the older erector set, though, which was mechanized and required a battery pack to be assembled. But none of the bolts seemed big enough to go all the way through the pack and still have enough length to put a washer on the end. I do have a little mechanical skill here and there, but we decided this might need a consultation with Dad.
Considering the level of interest that carried through the week... and the fact that it's just about February... I'm hoping to free up some money for some kits with all the pieces. Here's what I'm looking at:
The K'nex simple machine kits Jen posted about here
This is just my wish list. We already have a more complicated electronics kit, which we got for FREE because somebody left it at the dump and Andy picked it up. When he brought it home, we were amazed to see that it was completely intact and looked as if it had never been used. This was a few years ago and the kids were really too young to use it yet. Now, however, Gareth should be able to put it to good use.
And, of course, we have our share of batteries, wires, and little light bulbs... and lots of Legos... and pen and paper for designing our own fantastic machines...
I'm not going to try to catch up on weeks 14 and 15, as mostly we cleaned house, had Thanksgiving, visited with Grandma and Grandpa, and I chewed gum assiduously in an attempt to keep early pregnancy nausea at bay... and alas, I have no pictures from this week because I was too busy participating in whatever activities the boys undertook (cookies, glitter) to wield a camera at the same time... but here are a few notes from this week... whatever number it is.
We actually had a couple of other picture books which it wouldn't let me add to the carousel. The boys enjoyed them, though, so I thought I would mention them, too:
Farmerboy's comment about Gawain... "It's a really strange book, isn't it, Mommy?"
The big kids seem to be slogging through some of their reading right now... Gareth informs me that The Two Towers has hit a "boring" point, and Katydid is determined to finish Little Women, even though, "The ending isn't as interesting as the beginning. They're all older."
I had to confess to her that I had never finished Little Women either.
The boys made cardboard spaceships from pizza boxes. J. covered his in glitter. Farmerboy got immensely frustrated trying to contrive a way to put landing gear on the bottom of his ship so that they would stay and hold the ship up. N. cut himself with a pair of safety scissors while I was in the shower and bled much more than I thought possible from a cut given by "safety" scissors. (He's ok.)
Chipmunk lovingly covered many, many sheets of construction paper in lots and lots of glitter. I am thinking of cutting out ornaments from his glittered paper. It can't actually matter that any more glitter comes off considering the amount of glitter already swept into the corners of the room.
Chipmunk really would do well at a Montessori school. He is in a "washing hands" period right now. The problem: I can't really stay in the bathroom with him as often as he wants to go in there and wash his hands. Sometimes this can be disastrous, as today when he got bored with washing his hands and decided to wash a sink full of stuffed animals, dirty socks, Legos, and a walkie-talkie. Later, he got bored washing his hands and stuffed a foam sword and a bunch of Legos in the toilet. And no, I do not really let him in there without supervision. His siblings just need to learn how to close the door.
More on the Chipmunk/Montessori theme... he also likes to watch me cook. I must supply him with measuring cups and spoons of his own and something to pour and scoop. Not thinking one night, I supplied him with sugar. Sugar should not really be used in Montessori pouring and scooping activities. I mean, if you thought you might try it sometime.
One thing we have not done lately is go outside. I just haven't had the energy to get everybody bundled up and deal with the mud. I did stuff everyone in snow clothes to go outside on Tuesday so they could play in what snow there was before it melted, and good grief, it took at least 45 minutes, if not more. It's no wonder I'm ready to move to Florida by the end of January.
The big kids continue to be dedicated users of the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum, putting in at least an hour a day, and sometimes two or more. I would like to do a review, but I can't say when that will happen. I will say that I think, in spite of the price, that it's been worth it. I don't know that I'd consider it for a child who is a self-starting writer, who will sit and write for hours on his or her own... but for a child who wants to write a book and can't figure out how to start or where to go from the beginning... it's excellent.
We're having a relatively warm November, which means that last week we were outside a lot. The question here is not if it will get cold soon, but which day. Our forecast doesn't look bad, but usually the snow moves in around Thanksgiving and stays until... oh... April... May... a long time anyway. So I think we can be forgiven for ditching some academics to take advantage of the occasional warm spell. It's a really long winter.
Anyway, the little boys spent a lot of time this week digging.
In a Montessori classroom, I guess "digging" would count as practical life. The boys actually dug their deep holes so they could be "cities". I have had a hard time making "cities" into a formal project, but I think that's because it's really a game. They don't really want too much interference from me, because this is a kid universe. So they dug deep holes and tunnels all week, and built up "volcanoes" and "cliffs", and told each other how people got around their cities, whether they could use cars or not because there were or weren't roads.
One day I was trying to keep the little boys occupied while we read in the morning and I suggested they might like to draw a picture of their cities. Somehow this became drawing planets and imaginary solar systems.
N. started it, and soon all the other boys (including Gareth) were doing their own solar system pictures.
(My camera lens seems to have a tiny scratch on it which sometimes shows up as a smudge. I dropped the camera a while ago and smashed the viewfinder, too, so I may be in the market for a new camera soon.)
The solar system pictures aren't finished yet, because the boys wanted to add background and didn't have time. I'm hoping to give them time to finish their pictures this week in the midst of all our Thanksgiving cleaning. Or maybe next week while I cook. Farmerboy started painting a model solar system, too, but hasn't finished it yet.
When I said we "ditched" academics, I meant that we didn't spend long hours on them. The big kids did still actually do some academic work. The One Year Adventure Novel kit arrived and Gareth and Katydid actually gave up playing outside to go inside and start working on it. So far, so good. Gareth also finished his Life of Fred: Fractions book and is preparing to get started on the second half of the pre-algebra sequence, Decimals. Life of Fred hasn't magically cured his math frustration, but he did like it more than Saxon. Life of Fred is much less rote learning than Saxon, and much more application. He covered all the fraction topics included in Saxon's Algebra 1/2 , but in a much more informal, applied way. My only quibble with the book is that there's not enough practice available on topics that students stumble on (say, unit analysis).
And Katydid started working on long division. As with most things mathematical, she is not doing this the traditional way. Which I suppose only proves the maxim that in order to really understand a concept, you have to teach it. I'm 37 years old and have gotten through the last 20 years breezing through long division problems with aboslutely no idea why the method works. Katydid has to know the why's and wherefore's, though, before she gets a concept. Which means I have had to do a little thinking. In the future, I'll try and detail our process, just in case anyone else out there needs a non-traditional approach to long division.
Our history reading in the morning continued to go well this week. We began Beowulf: the Warrior, which is one of the best boy read-alouds ever. This re-telling is awesome. It remains faithful to the poetry of the original, and also -- for the boys in your family -- it still retains the scene where Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm. So there you go.
And just in case you want to envision me and all my kids snuggled on the couch while we read aloud...
You probably shouldn't. (Make sure you look underneath the table. Also, I am sure that even the kind people who said they didn't notice the clutter in the other photos will notice the clutter in these pictures. Why does decluttering always make my house look so bad?)
Not enough picture books this week to make a nifty widget, so I'll just have to list them...
Katydid and Gareth were sick for at least part of week 12. When Katydid first came down with whatever it was, it sure seemed like it was flu because it had all the classic "flu" symptoms: chills, sudden onset, fever, sore throat, upset stomach, body aches. But it didn't spread to any of the little boys, really (although Farmerboy took a nap every afternoon that week.). So I have no idea what it was. The big kids all had their seasonal flu shots and the little boys didn't, so it seems odd that the kids who got flu shots would come down with a flu and and the kids who got no shots would avoid it. H1N1 was aboslutely rampant in our area that week, bad enough that several schools were closed, but... who knows. It was a mystery virus.
Anyway, because the big kids were sick, the week was mainly focused on little kids. We did manage to finally finish The Hobbit, and to start reading Our Island Story and The Story of Europe, both by H.E. Marshall. It felt good to get back to some history again. We're continuing to read A Life of Our Lord for Children by Marigold Hunt. This is the third book we've read by this author (The First Christians: The Acts of the Apostles for Children and St. Patrick's Summer: A Children's Adventure Catechism are the others) and the kids have enjoyed them all. More than that, they retain a lot from those books, some pretty deep concepts.
I'm afraid that we haven't done much that's special to mark any feast days lately, though... We make a point of praying for the Poor Souls every day, which I hope is enough.
Monday
The twins did a lot of "matching cards". I actually had to invent some on the spur of the moment, because they would go through a set and demand more. This is a Bug Bingo game. Technically, it's supposed to be played like bingo, but for our purposes, I gave them the boards and let them match the cards to the pictures on the boards.
Chipmunk liked searching for O's in the Alphabet Zoop cards. (He'd also already drawn on himself that morning, as you can see by the green on his cheek.)
In the afternoon we headed outside to play on the logs:
Which are useful as forts, ships, and also sometimes nature study...
Tuesday:
Tuesday morning was devoted to all things dinosaur. I got down a puzzle and the boys argued cooperated to put it together. I also printed out some matching cards and coloring sheets from this Homeschool Share dinosaur unit.
In the afternoon, the boys shifted gears and concentrated on coloring King Arthur paper dolls from Paper Dali. (HT: Jessica, who shared the Paper Dali link in her Google Shared Items.)
Farmerboy has been on a King Arthur kick lately, thanks to Jim Weiss, and was excited when we encountered Merlin, Uther Pendragon, and Arthur in Our Island Story (in Week 13).
Katydid colored many saint paper dolls, but she immediately whisked them off to her room so I don't have any pictures.
Tuesday also happened to be Daddy's birthday, which he celebrated by making a business day trip and getting home late to eat cheesecake.
Wednesday:
Daddy celebrated the day after his birthday by making a trip to Boston. The boys demanded American Revolution paper dolls. They also complained that they couldn't build really good castles because there weren't enough wall blocks for all 4 of them to use at the same time. I took a deep breath and offered to go down to the basement and bring up all the blocks I had taken away a few months ago because they were not being picked up in a -- shall we say -- timely and cheerful fashion. We spent the morning sorting and building with the "new" blocks:
That's what it looked like on Wednesday of last week. By Friday night, all the "new" blocks had been put up in a closet out of reach again, because that was the deal: If I bring these blocks out, you have to pick them up when you're told to, or I will have to put them away again. Oh, yes, Mommy, we'll pick them up, can we pleeeeese play with the blocks? Unfortunately, there was a breach of contract, proving yet again that home is not like school. Many of the Reggio books you read have fantastic block creations and/or block areas, or at the very least inform you that you are to include lots of different kinds of blocks and other materials for children to build and dramatize with. Personally, I agree. It is hard to build big castles if someone has used all the wall blocks. But at home with a large family, reality must be negotiated. I don't have time to pick up millions of blocks every day, and I shouldn't have to. (The two year old is actually far better at picking up than his brothers.) So at some point the environment must be used to teach responsibility, respect, and obedience instead of science, math, or anything else. In my experience anyway.
I do hope I can try again with the blocks, though, because I really like some of them, and so do the boys.
Thursday
Thursday we went outside. We had been stuck inside for two days, which is not good for active young boys. (Can you hear my fear of winter?) Anyway, it was a bit chilly -- temperatures down around 40 -- so we put on our bigger coats and headed outside while the nearly-recovered big kids stayed inside where it was warm and read books.
Did you notice N's new glasses in the block picture? It turns out his eyesight is really bad, and that's the reason he has always seemed so clumsy (which is why we took him to our developmental optometrist at just barely 4 years old.) Now, his brother, J., has never seemed to trip as much or run into things as much, so I didn't schedule a screening for him. When N. got his glasses, J. was most upset. He therefore decided that he would wear his sunglasses just like N. wore his real glasses. So he put them on in the morning and took them off at night. I tried to comfort him by telling him that he does have an eye appointment scheduled in January, but of course that might as well be twenty years from now if you're 4.
(And, yes, we do still think they're identical. How identical is identical often depends on conditions for each in the womb, and N had to deal with an improperly implanted cord while J did not.)
Anyway, while we were out, we decided to take a short nature walk in the field, which was cut short by J being accidentally hit in the eye by Farmerboy. On our way back we stopped near the house to investigate the milkweed seeds by the deck. (J was feeling better by then.)
The boys called the seeds "parachute guys" and brought some inside to play with.
Friday
Friday is extra chore day, so mostly we clean. But in the morning, the boys set up some domino rallies...
That's N, who should have his glasses on. Confusing, I know. And actually, Friday morning went kind of like this:
8:30 AM -- the little boys have already watched Curious George, a Dinosaur Train episode about poop, been banned from playing monkeys (an old rule) and orangutans (a new rule), searched through a stack of old copies of Ranger Rick and Your Big Backyard to find animals they are allowed to play ("We could play worms, Mommy!"), requested a stack of books about "jungles", moved on to dinosaur books, asked if I could go downstairs to find the dominoes and what about "that number matching game?" (Triominos), set up domino rallies, argued about who has more dominoes, and received instruction in both counting and social skills. Can I take my shower now, please?
I was going to do a 7 Quick Takes post, but never got the chance.
So that was our week, with the exception of the picture books, of course...
Just the highlights... I imagine everyone in the US is either tired of pumpkins by now or has at least moved on to turkeys. Our turkeys are spending their last days out in the field eating pumpkin seeds, which gives one a completely different perspective on the usual turkey crafts that crop up during the month of November. But, back to Halloween. This is what we did during Halloween week:
Gareth started his Teach Yourself Old English course. He spent quite a bit of time with it, actually. The new grammar book he's using, Our Mother Tongue: An Introductory Guide to English Grammar by Nancy Wilson, also contains some neat little sidebars about the history of English. One of those sidebars happens to be The Our Father in Old English. I have to admit that I like languages, and when I was in college I took a "History of English" class from an excellent professor and studied a bit (a wee bit) of Old English. So I attempted to read the prayer out loud to Gareth in Old English. He, apparently, thought this was quite interesting, and so here we are. The grammar book itself is also going well, too. In addition to being much more interesting than your typical drill-and-kill grammar workbook, it also seems to be less... hmmm... condescending. This quality is hard to explain, but what I like about the book is that it seems to treat the subject manner in a much more adult way than most 7th grade grammar textbooks while also being easily understood by 7th/8th/9th graders. I think this, along with the historical selections and the use of real literature as examples, appeals to Gareth. The book is recommended in Ambleside Online's Year 7.
Katydid started First Start French. This program is set up in a very similar way to Memoria Press' Latina Christiana program, which we also use. She has been very excited to start French, but was a little daunted at the pronunciation when we first began. She wants to be able to talk to my mom in French over the phone.
( I'm going to start calling the twins by their initials instead of "Pip and Pop". I considered more pseudonyms like "Tom and Huck" or "George (Curious) and Dennis (the Menace)", but finally I thought that they will grow up one day. So Pop -- pictured here -- will now be known as "J." and Pip will be "N." Not as colorful maybe, but easier for Mama.)
J. produced a whole menagerie of "good animals" using 2 lbs. of Model Magic.
Chipmunk found Duplos to be good for squishing Model Magic. Here he's also shining a flashlight onto the blocks. Flashlights were also a fascination this week, probably as much for the way they could be put together and taken apart as for their light.
Model Magic after it has been impressed by Duplos.
Chipmunk also informed me that he needed better activities on his shelves:
Yes, those are plastic counters (fish mostly). And, yes, he did stick them all, one by one, through the bars of the fan. I could hear the sound of the counters in the container and on the floor, and silly me, I thought he was pouring them. But instead he invented his own Montessori activity.
We also did some painting, because J. wanted to paint his "good animals". Farmerboy had some problems with the dinosaur painting he wanted to make, so I took a piece of paper and sketched out a painting in the style that Farmerboy had wanted, demonstrating how to sketch with a small brush, how to make drips of paint into something else (birds, in this case), how to hide lines I didn't want... My picture is at the top. After watching me paint my picture -- just meant to help him learn to calm down, really, and deal with "mistakes" -- he decided to copy it. We used acrylics. Chipmunk mixed the blue paint for us. ;-)
We did do some pumpkin related "stuff" as well.
One morning while I read -- well, actually Gareth ended up reading more than I did, which has become a common occurrence lately -- I set out some construction paper shapes so the boys could make pumpkins. I had tried to suggest earlier in the week that we paint pumpkins, but that suggestion went over like a lead balloon. Nobody wants to paint the same thing. So we just did collage pumpkins.
After they were done, I mounted them on construction paper and put them on the wall of their bedroom, by request. J. (Pop) did the yellow pumpkin face and the pumpkin on the very bottom right corner. N's (Pip's) are the pumpkin that looks like it is set on a pedastal and the one mounted on green paper. As you can see some of the pumpkins have arms and eyebrows, yarn hair, and -- because we are talking about boys -- "bottoms". However, you cannot see the "bottoms" (insert wild giggling) because they are appropriately located on the backside of the pumpkins.
Farmerboy (I'll probably be changing his name, too, as soon as I decide on something) whisked his pumpkins away and taped them to the wall by the bed before I could mount them. (The pumpkin on the left has a mustache and a beard.)
Katydid did her own version of pumpkin collages, but made the collaged illustrations into a Halloween book for the boys.
." 
mostly. But he did spend quite a while with his new Ancient Greek textbooks on Friday afternoon, as soon as they arrived. He couldn't wait until next school year.
(not exactly the one I linked to, and missing many pieces) and a couple of erector sets: a metal one for ages 8 and up and a plastic one with bigger pieces for younger kids (again, missing most of the pieces.)
and 
. Her favorite is A Fairy-Tale Christmas, I think. She has loved fairy tales since she was very small.
(illustrated by Steven Kellogg, one of my kids' favorites)
and 
are the others) and the kids have enjoyed them all. More than that, they retain a lot from those books, some pretty deep concepts.
course. He spent quite a bit of time with it, actually. The new grammar book he's using, 
by Nancy Wilson, also contains some neat little sidebars about the history of English. One of those sidebars happens to be The Our Father in Old English. I have to admit that I like languages, and when I was in college I took a "History of English" class from an excellent professor and studied a bit (a wee bit) of Old English. So I attempted to read the prayer out loud to Gareth in Old English. He, apparently, thought this was quite interesting, and so here we are. The grammar book itself is also going well, too. In addition to being much more interesting than your typical drill-and-kill grammar workbook, it also seems to be less... hmmm... condescending. This quality is hard to explain, but what I like about the book is that it seems to treat the subject manner in a much more adult way than most 7th grade grammar textbooks while also being easily understood by 7th/8th/9th graders. I think this, along with the historical selections and the use of real literature as examples, appeals to Gareth. The book is recommended in