Three Plus Two

Seven Quick Takes - Is it Spring Yet?

One

We've had a nice run of weather over the past week or so, and our snow is melting bit by bit.  Yesterday it was 55 degrees.  Unfortunately it takes more than two weeks above freezing to melt four feet of snow.  It seems a little insane to have to put everyone in snow pants, boots, and gloves in order to go out in 55 degree weather, but the only patch of bare ground is a pond that has formed near the chicken coop.  The kids have found that the huge melting piles of snow beside the sidewalk make excellent slides, though.

Two

When you wait long enough to finish a post, the weather changes.  Looks like we're in for another nor'easter tonight into tomorrow -- freezing rain to snow to rain.  Next week looks decent, but one day I will learn not to get my hopes up about the weather in March.

Three

The blog has been quiet because I haven't really had time to write or take or post pictures... and I've also been... hmmm... consumed? with other, homeschool-related stuff.  At the end of February, I realized we were yet again in self-destruct mode and some changes needed to be made.  The most successful change was buying a Seton math workbook for Farmerboy.  He was not enthused about using it for the first time, but once we started in on some subtraction, we ended up doing 4 pages.  At the end, he said, "That was sort of -- kind of -- I mean, well, a little... fun." 

I couldn't believe it either.  Math, fun?  Really?

I don't think his sister is ever going to let him live it down.

Four

Another area I've been trying to clean up is science.  Not so much for the younger kids, although I did invest in a Sonlight Science I guide just to provide me with some guidance on what to do every day for my science loving 6 year old; ostly for my 13 year old, who has not been terribly interested in science for most of the year.  Trundling along in our usual flighty, unschooly way has left him with a 30 hour deficit in science (according to New York laws) here at the end of the year.  So I have been on a mission to figure out high school science.  I have had a number of interesting conversations with various bright and thoughtful people, and I feel like I have a better idea of how it all fits together now.  I've also been able to make some decisions for the end of this year and into the summer and next year... which, I will tell you, is going to bring us some changes.  I was sent down this trail by the abysmal failure (after a week) of a popular Physical Science textbook.  I do hope to write up a post sort of synthesizing my thoughts, plans, and everything I have learned thus far.  But we have A LOT going on in the next few weeks, so... I suppose it will get done when it gets done.

Five

We're heading down to Tennessee soon.  Trying to get all our trip preparations taken care of, in addition to planning out school for the next few months and writing up quarterly reports which must be mailed before we go is making me a little nuts.  Have I mentioned that my husband has been in California all week???

Six

Since we're going to Tennessee (where temperatures run about ten degrees warmer in a really *good* week and usually at least twenty degrees warmer), I have to do our winter to spring clothes change up early.  This time around I need clothes.  In my online search for decent maternity clothes, I have discovered a few things.

*I am the only short pregnant person on the planet. 

*Maternity skinny jeans exist.  I am sure these were designed by someone who is in favor of population control.  He (had to be he) sat down at his desk and rubbed his hands together gleefully.  "How can we make pregnant women feel so fat and ugly that they will try to avoid pregnancy forever thereafter?"  Sorry, but the words "skinny" and "maternity" should never even be in the same room together.

*I still have SMALL and MEDIUM maternity shirts from 6 or 7 years ago that work for me all the way through pregnancy. So why do I have to buy 1X shirts now???  Clearly, another ploy to make pregnant women feel bad about being pregnant.

Seven

Chipmunk has recently become very interested in letters.  His favorite bedtime read is The Red Letter Alphabet Book, which he wants to read at least twice in addition to a stack of other books, usually including Katy and the Big Snow.  So there I am, giving my two year old phonics lessons at 10 PM, and suffering his wrath when I say we have to go to sleep. 

 

 

Just shoot me

I'm potty-training 3 kids at the same time.

Two of them should have gotten it by now, but haven't.  Drastic measures will have to be taken.  One of them can take as long as he wants but seems to mostly want to rip toilet paper into tiny little strips and throw it into the toilet, then scream when I remove him from the vicinity. (He's the one who's requesting potty-training at this point.  I would be happy to let him go for a while longer.)

I will probably find this amusing some day.  A long, long time from now. 

Somebody found my camera

Guess who.

Hmmm.  Looks like the suspect must have had a fondness for cinnamon toast.

You'd think he could have at least cropped out all the clutter in the background!
  
 
 
 
  

A little more learning with Chipmunk

As a (relatively) quiet two year old in a big family, Chipmunk often gets left out of the weekly reviews.  That doesn't mean he's not doing anything, though.

There are his collages, of course, but he has other favorite activities that he concentrates on as he moves through the week.  For instance, as I write this, he is sitting in a chair by the art cabinet using safety scissors to cut tape so he can cover his truck with it.

(Don't worry; I'm sitting right next to him to make sure he doesn't hurt himself.)

I don't know why he likes to cover his trucks with tape -- last night it was a tractor decorated entirely in masking tape -- but I suspect that it has something to do with practicing fine motor skills.  He can't get his fingers inside the scissors handles yet, so he's just working on opening and shutting the scissors once.  And then there's the control involved in getting the sticky tape off your fingers and onto the exact right place on the truck.  Very satisfying.  I would not have set this activity out for him, but I noticed that whenever his older brothers got out the tape and scissors to build something (tape is the connecting material of favor around here), he would get into the scissors and tape, too.  At first I took the scissors away, but then I noticed that he really was trying to cut.  So I just make sure he has the safest ones.

When he's not cutting, he likes to pour:

Fish and truck counters here, from one container to another.  (I haven't really set him up with beans or rice because he does still put things in his mouth from time to time.  And because I can be frequently called away, I am afraid of the mess potential :-/). 

He also likes to line them up, but I'm not going to show you that picture because apparently someone (not saying who) had changed his clothes in the family room and left all his dirty laundry sitting on the couch, where it was caught forever on film.

Anyway... more activities that Chipmunk likes right now?

• Using this stacker
• Duplos
• Playing with the wooden train set
• Moving around big lumps of playdough with his construction equipment
• building with the Brown Stair and Pink Tower
• Building towers with big geometric wooden beads (he's not quite up to stringing yet)
• Sorting anything by color
• Sorting, pouring, and lining up river rocks of various color (purchased in bags at Michael's)
• Reading transportation books and Franklin books with the "big boys"

 

 

Collage with Chipmunk

Chipmunk is two now, and eager to join in with his big brothers -- whether it's playing knights, Jedi, or making art. Over the past few weeks, the boys have done some collage here and there -- usually to decorate a box they want to use as a ship (space or pirate).  Chipmunk's approach to collage is a little different than the other boys', though.

When the other kids do art, we often talk about "filling up the page."  That isn't a problem for Chipmunk.

Chipmunk's method is generally to dig out big handfuls of collage materials and dump them on the paper.  This often gives good results, with a little adult spreading-out:

(I had an idea to try to draw the twins with their egg-interest into an activity using an egg-frame drawn on paper.  I set out a whole bunch of materials, drawing pens, and oil pastels.  The twins didn't want anything to do with it.  But Chipmunk climbed up on the bench and got right to work.)

While we worked here -- Chipmunk scattering sequin shapes and me wielding a bottle of Elmer's glue -- I tried to emphasize that he needed to put the shapes on the glue or they wouldn't stick.  I'm not sure how well that lesson "stuck", but we're working on it.  What I will often do  is to pour some glue (Mod-Podge is the glue I like best) into a bowl and give him a brush.  He gets glue all over himself, but it washes off.  And that way his "stuff" is almost guaranteed to stick.  He can't use a bottle of glue yet, but he does like to have one if the other boys' are using bottles, too.  If that's the case, I often squeeze out big loops of glue for him, and he just focuses on putting the materials onto it.

In the case of his "shiny egg", I have been thinking that maybe I could set out another one for him to make.  Then I could cut them out and glue them together, back to back.  Then I thought I might punch a hole in the top and hang it from the ceiling in the dining/learning room, where it could catch the light.  We'll see if it pans out :-).

Here's another of his collages that I particularly like, and that I enjoyed watching him make:

 You can see that I put down a little extra glue -- a bit ahead of where he was, I guess.  Pop was using the beads for something else at the time -- gluing them on a box, I think, as "buttons".  I started out by giving Chipmunk the long beads since he was insistent on having some.  (He does still sometimes put things in his mouth, so while he's doing this work, I have to sit or stand beside him all the time.  If he starts to put something in his mouth, I know he's done because he's not concentrating on his work anymore... he's beginning to just goof off.  He knows he's not supposed to put the art materials in his mouth.) He began carefully putting the long beads together in a train.  If there wasn't any glue beneath them, I moved them over just slightly -- trying not to disturb his concentration -- and squeezed out a bit of glue underneath it.  He had to work very hard to put the beads down just so.  It was good work for him, and he had that happy, fulfilled manner that Montessori talks about when he was done. 
  

Winter Term, Week 11: CAT Testing

Our focus last week was the required standardized testing New York requires every other year in 4th through 8th grades.  This is when one discovers that the state thinks social studies is all about reading charts that tell you how many students belong to various school clubs. And that an important math concept is being able to read a TV schedule.  I used to think -- before the kids took their first tests two years ago -- that the tests were probably totally useless, but I've made my peace with them now. They sometimes point out hitherto unknown problems, such as that one of my children has trouble reading charts (probably due to visual issues, but maybe not), or that another of my children's spelling trouble probably does qualify as a learning disability.  But mostly what we can take from standardized testing is that the relaxed, eclectic learning we do around here is more than enough to match the schools. 

My biggest problem during testing week is keeping the little ones quiet.  Because we're not usually going our separate ways with academic work being done in the morning, being quiet in the morning is a novel experience for my little ones. I could have turned on the TV, but I didn't.  I also could have -- probably should have -- made plans, but alas, I didn't do that either. (The way things have devolved lately is probably yet another post that I won't have time to write, but... maybe.) Instead, I set the microwave timer for the big kids and hovered like a hawk over the little ones, taking their lead.

 

One of the things we did was to make a big mess on St. Patrick's Day by making some homemade playdough.

 

Green, of course.

 

Chipmunk dumped out half a box of cornstarch on the table, but since he was happy and quiet, I left him at it.

   

Which made him happy.

The little boys also had a bit of a knights kick last week, when they spent quite a bit of time perusing knight books and coloring knight coloring books.

Fortunately, we had some nice days during testing, which was good for everyone.  Since Gareth and Katydid decided to do more tests a day than I had originally planned on, they got done early and were rewarded with most of Thursday "off".  Katydid spent her Thursday holiday writing a report on red-tailed hawks and birdwatching, birding journal in hand.  Gareth built Lego space ports.  But of course all I have are pictures of the little boys:

Construction begins again, photo courtesy of Katydid.

Winter Term, Weeks 9 and 10: The Flu Strikes Back

Simple pleasures -- coming up with cheesy titles for blog posts. Actually, this one's not too far off the mark, as a lot of what the little boys did in week 9 was sit on the couch and watch Star Wars.

 

During Week 10, Gareth and Katydid focused on preparing for the CAT/5 tests, which arrived in the mail from Kolbe that Monday.  (We used the Spectrum Test Prep books.) But you can't prepare for those tests all day long, and the little boys had to have something to do, too.  Since I was just coming back from the flu, and the twins have suddenly plunged into extreme out-of-controlledness again, I have almost no recollection of what we did in week 10.  But I do have a few pictures...

 

Katydid took pictures. I always enjoy looking at what's on the camera at the end of the day.  It's almost always a pleasant surprise.  So now I remember that Week 10 had a few sunny days and it seemed like maybe we really were on the cusp of spring...

Another of her sunset pictures that I like:

 

A while back, I showed Katydid the Pilgrims of the Holy Family program and asked if she would like to earn any of the badges. Girl Scouts was a rousing failure a couple of years ago, and I haven't had any luck getting in touch with anyone about 4-H.  Gareth has been doing Boy Scouts, but Katydid has, I think, felt a little left out.  She jumped on the opportunity to do the Pilgrims program, and in fact, earned her first badge -- Reading-- during Week 10.  To earn this badge, she kept a reading journal for about a month, read one of the gospels, spent 10 hours (actually more) reading aloud to Farmerboy, and memorized and recited a poem of 14 lines.  One of the badges in the program is for photography, but she was disappointed to see that it focused so much on film and not digital.  So we ordered the Boy Scout merit badge booklet for Photography and will probably rely on it for her Photography Badge. I have had plans for a loooong time to actually print, frame, and hang some of her work, but -- that adult ADD is at work here.  One of Katydid's career goals at the moment is to become a wildlife photographer, and I need to find ways to support both interest and ability.

 

We also got the clay out again.  The little boys can concentrate on clay, which is a blessing... although Chipmunk still has a tendency to try and eat it.  He was quite happy at being included, though:

  

The one problem I have with keeping this clay is that when the Rubbermaid containers are closed for a long time, the clay starts to get moldy? I've never had this problem before. Anybody know how to solve it?

Chipmunk was also happy to finally get to play outside -- as were the rest of us (including the chickens)!

We had a huge delivery of firewood, since we ran out this winter.  (No, we would not be good pioneers.) Everyone helped stack it.  We couldn't get it back to where we usually keep firewood because it's too muddy, so Andy decided to build a windbreak in what will hopefully be the location of a brand-new, larger chicken coop.

 

 

 

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.

Just Popping In

I have a number of posts I'm working on right now -- ordering seeds, ancient India, weeks 3 and 4, a book review of The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron, a library day post -- but I don't think any of them are going to be finished in a hurry.  So I just thought I'd pop on and let everyone who is not following me on Twitter know that I am still alive -- barely -- just without enough time to make posts longer than 140 characters on will our van make it out of the driveway or not.  Even natives have pronounced this a bad winter, and what that means for me is that I am stuck inside with a toddler and two three year olds going batty because they can't go outside.  Actually, I think that's a pretty good definition of "going batty" for grownups -- being stuck inside with a toddler and two three year olds who are unable to burn off enough energy to behave like human beings -- as opposed to, you know, monkeys or boys shipwrecked on an island for whom civilization has totally broken down.

Ahem.

Anyway, it looks like we're in for another big snow this week, so I doubt the situation is going to change any time soon... unless we move to Florida, which is unlikely although I keep threatening to pick up and go every time I have to wrestle three small children into snow suits and snow boots just to go to the doctor's office.  (Also, every time Chipmunk picks the snow off my boots and starts eating it, particularly when I've just been to the chicken coop.  And when the big kids get into a snowball fight and a certain child hits another child in the face with a plastic sled because that child has been "complaining too much", and "I didn't *mean* to hit him... *hard*." And when the twins start hurling Duplos like bombs.  Actually, I guess I threaten to move to Florida a lot.)

But - the sun is out today, and I did manage to get the big kids to their swimming lessons, even though there were no signs for the pool or where to go once we got there, which is so typically New York because you're just supposed to KNOW see, I mean who VOLUNTARILY moves here anyway? Hmph. Well, the kids did get to their lessons, and they did well, which was a relief, because the instructors had them jumping in the deep end on the first day and, well, my kids don't actually swim that well.  So you can bet I was saying a few Hail Mary's as I sat on the sidelines.  Our carefully thought out logistics worked very well today -- swimming lessons, library (I paid my massive fine and was removed from the most wanted list), violin lessons, stop at Rite-Aid, *cough* Arby's *cough*, home -- but Gareth actually needs to move up a level in swimming and they had too many kids in the beginner level so they're going to have to break them into two groups, so the times are going to be moved all around and now the violin lessons that we had to rearrange so Katydid could do swimming is still going to be in the wrong spot.  Getting kids to activities is turning out to be like one of those logic exercises on the GRE. ("If G needs to be at swimming at 11 and K has swimming at 10 and violin at 11:30 and the library is only open from 10-1 and Farmerboy wants to take swimming lessons, too, only his will be at 8 AM, what will the twins and Chipmunk be doing?"

There was at least one other mother there who was doing the same sort of logic exercises out loud to her children, though, so I felt better.

Another thing that deserves its own logic exercise: why were there 6 fish in the parking lot of the music store this morning? Not supermarket fish; I mean, real fish with fins and spines and eyeballs.  Right beside the running boards of my van.  Stepping in a fish would have been quite the surprise, but fortunately I managed to avoid it. (I shudder to think of Chipmunk eating the snow off my boots in that case, but I doubt moving to Florida would solve the problem of fish in parking lots.  The fish in Florida probably aren't frozen stiff, so I imagine they would stink.)