Three Plus Two

Week in Review: May 24-31... More Nature Study

Officially, this week was our last week of school.  What this really means is, this is the last week I'm going to make anyone do math or Latin until sometime in July. 

I imagine that the nature study, building, etc. will only continue.

Katydid giving the boys an impromptu class on caterpillars.

We seem to have more butterflies and moths than usual this year, and a really large variety of caterpillars.  Of course, there are the ever present Eastern tent caterpillars:

 

(Katydid took both photos.  She especially liked this close-up.)

We also found two moths we can't identify.

 

This moth is large -- maybe 3 inches long? 

 

A much smaller moth, which we think probably belongs in the tiger moth family given its coloring... but we haven't been able to figure out the actual species. 

(Katydid took both these pictures, too.)

 

Another Katydid picture of a caterpillar... a Black Swallowtail.  We found this one on a parsley plant at the farm where we buy our vegetable plants and flowers every spring.  Since we're moving this year, I resisted the urge to buy any tomato plants, but I did rationalize the parsley by saying I could put it in a pot and take it with me.  The caterpillar was just a bonus science project.

 

Katydid planted all the flowers for me when we got home.

We had a brief incident with the chickadee nest, so no pictures this week... Katydid opened the nest box and two of the fledglings fell out.  She had to pick them up and put them back in the nest box.  "They're the lightest things in the world!" she said.  We do hope they're all right. 

The tree swallow nest also has eggs in it, but the tree swallows are a little more anxious about intruders than the chickadees are.

However, Katydid made an exciting sighting of a pileated woodpecker right outside her window.  Maybe that will make up for the lack of nest pictures.

 

In addition to all the hands-on nature study, we did manage to wrap up our history for the year by reading the John Lackland chapters in Our Island Story, watching Becket (the 1964 movie about Henry II and Thomas Becket starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton), and using some of the Story of the World vol. 2 activity sheets I found when I was packing boxes.

 

Farmerboy started working on a coat of arms, which he drew on a shield template included in the activity sheets.

Gareth and Farmerboy both colored a panel from the Bayeux Tapestry, also included in the activity sheets.  This panel is Farmerboy's, which he worked very hard on.

Gareth marched with the Boy Scouts in the Memorial Day parade, Chipmunk came down with a stomach virus, and Farmerboy worked more on his stone wall, especially after we discovered a pamphlet at Agway describing how to build stone walls.  We stood in the store and examined all the diagrams for building a dry stack wall (which is what Farmerboy is building.)  Since we're trying to save money right now (more on that shortly), I didn't buy the pamphlet, which meant that the next day Farmerboy was rather disgusted with me because he wanted to refer to those diagrams, especially after he knocked his wall down so he could dig the foundation V-shaped trench.

The reason we're saving money?

We just bought a house.  In northern Mississippi.  

Now we're taking deep breaths and packing A LOT of boxes.

Week in Review: May 17-23, Stone walls and Birds

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.

 

We also read a few rock-related picture books:

• The Pebble in my Pocket: A History of Our Earth 
• The Big Rock (Aladdin Picture Books)
• How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World

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):

• Stone Wall Secrets
• Matthew Wheelock's Wall
• Talking Walls

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.

Week in Review: May 10-16

It was the sort of week that goes by without being captured on film.  Or pixels.

We started off with a trip to the doctor for Farmerboy, who was diagnosed with a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics.  In the middle of the week, I had a doctor's appointment.  Then on Friday it was back to the pediatrician for Katydid and Pip, after a loooong night of coughing.  More antibiotics.  I was sick -- not too sick, but sick -- for most of the week, too.  But it has meant a lot of draaaaging in the mornings.  And a bit of fretting, since I was just scheduled for my C-section: June 15.   I am only fretting because I have to meet the requirements for New York state's homeschooling laws, which require me to document 180 days/900 hours (990 for Gareth) and turn in quarterly reports on everyone and (because we aren't testing this year) yearly evaluations, too.  I make this all harder on myself by actually providing a narrative.  Quarterly reports are about 2 pages long; yearly evaluations about 3.  I could have given the kids standardized tests this year, but that takes so much time out of our normal routine (going through the test prep book, taking a week out to do the testing...)  that we only do it when we have to.

However, in between and around (and at) doctor's visits, most of us managed to get a few (unphotographed) things done.  We...

• Took a brief walk with Daddy after dinner on the one warm evening of the week, into the field and along the treeline to check on trees downed by the snow this past winter.  We noted that the horsetails seem to be invading the top corner of the field, that the pin cherries were still blooming a little, and that the bee tree was quiet... hopefully because it was dusk.  The kids and Andy did a little running; I just kind of lumbered along behind. (***Note here: if you're curious about finding bee trees, there's an excellent description of "bee lining" in Bernd Heinrich's The Snoring Bird, which is a terrific book for all sorts of reasons... but unfortunately not the sort you'd probably assign your high schooler, due to all the complicated relationships Heinrich's father is constantly getting into.  You can read the description aloud, though, which is what I did as we were driving home from Tennessee this year.  If you'd like a simpler, picture book description of finding bee trees... Patricia Polacco's The Bee Tree is one of our favorites.) 
• Listened to the song of a Baltimore Oriole.  Read an old I Can Read! book about Baltimore Orioles the doctor's office conveniently put in their waiting room for us.
• Tried to watch the History Channel's new series America: The Story of US, which we have DVRed.  The problem is that the episodes the boys are most interested in -- the Civil War episode, for example -- are quite graphic for prime time TV... in my opinion anyway.  It was a good thing we had the episodes DVRed so we could fast forward through the gorier parts, but the younger boys were not happy at having to miss the battle scenes.
• Did a little Montessori.  A very little Montessori.  Chipmunk retrieved the knobbed cylinders from my rotation closet (which also holds sheets) and started working on them again.  He has also been a fiend with a pair of tongs lately, using them to open doors, pinch his brothers, pick up toys, etc.  I tried to channel that energy into a pom-pom and ice cube tray activity, but that only kept him happy for about 5 or 10 minutes.  Then it was back to using the tongs to turn door knobs.  (He also figured out how to open the gate latch on our fenced-in area of the backyard.  Not a good thing.)
•  Sold some eggs.  (Gareth and Katydid's new business.)
• Watched some John Wayne movies.  Does that count as school?
• Did a little math.  Gareth wrestled with functions.  Farmerboy worked on telling time. 
• Used the markers.  Sometimes even on paper!!
• Decided that Gareth will be adding Greek to his schedule next year using the textbook Athenaze.
• Built tractors out of Legos.
• Packed a few boxes.                       

As for me, I dug Women with ADD out of my "to be read" stack and started reading it again.  I had, um, lost it actually (I should probably insert a blush here at the irony)  when I started reading it before we left on our trip to Tennessee.  I had been planning on reading it in the van.  Anyway, it's been sitting on my nightstand for a while, but last week was definitely the time to pick it up again as much of the world which I have responsibility for managing and organizing seemed to be growing ugly people-eating tentacles at an alarming rate.  Anyway, I am finding the book quite helpful and when I finish it I do hope to post a review.  If the tentacles will behave, of course.  

Week in Review: May 2- May 9, or All About Birds

Bird Week!

The chickadee nest in our bluebird box, with eggs (photo by Katydid)

I had nothing to do with the "theme" of this week.  It was a force of nature.  Farmerboy, Pip, and Pop all suddenly decided that birds were fascinating and wanted to tag along on all Katydid's nature walks, keep their own nature journals, listen to bird call CDs, and color bird notebook pages.

Pip's cardinal page

So of course I was happy to oblige.

A chipping sparrow that the kids saw on one of their walks (photo by Katydid)

The kids also took a "night" nature walk (really, dusk) along the edge of the treeline in the field to listen for night birds.  Pip and Pop started out with Katydid and Farmerboy, but soon decided that it was "too scary" and came home for ice cream.  Katydid and Farmerboy came in later and reported that the only night bird they'd heard was a screech owl, but that was apparently exciting enough.

Other birds Katydid listed as "heard but not seen" this week: ovenbird and American woodcock (very exciting).

One morning a bird hit the dining room window while I was eating breakfast.  This in itself is not an odd occurrence -- even though I put things up in the window to make it look less like a fly-through.  But when I got up to see if the bird was all right, I saw a bird I'd never seen before.

A common yellowthroat.  And for a size comparison:

Yes, that's a Duplo brick someone left outside on the patio.  Tiny, tiny little bird.  The little boys all drew it for their nature journals, then colored a coloring page of the bird. 

The same day we read the section about Baltimore Orioles from The Handbook of Nature Study because...

... the crabapples and wild apple trees are blooming.  (Photo by Katydid)  The orioles always come back when the apple trees bloom.  Katydid informs me that she has heard an oriole, but we haven't seen one yet.

My personal favorite part about the crabapple in bloom (apart from the fragrance, which is phenomenal) is standing beneath it and listening to the steady hum of honeybees working the blossoms overhead.

Wild apple blossoms in the woods (Photo by Katydid)

We did a little math this week, and we read more of Our Island Story, and Gareth continued to read 1066: The Year of the Conquest instead of being interested in birds, and Katydid worked on about three different books that she's writing, and I sorted through all my writing and was pleasantly surprised to find that even though I have produced very little over the past five years, some of it is Not Too Bad, and by the weekend, all the kids had developed another cold with a wicked cough, and Sunday morning we woke up to find a dusting of snow on the ground when we had spent all our time before thinking about birds and eggs and flowers. 

But mostly this week was about spring time.  And our spring time girl...

... turned 11!  Happy Birthday, Katydid!

A Week in the Life: Saturday 5/1

All photos in this post by Katydid.

This Saturday was a little different because Andy was still out of town and didn't get home until late that night.  But on the other hand it was fairly typical in that the line between "school" and "life" gets blurred even on the weekend.

This is my third attempt to write this post (my first two attempts were eaten by Typepad), so it's going to be a little less detailed than some of the other posts.

Basically:

With swim lessons done for the season, our Saturdays are a lot less hectic.  This morning we did our normal chores and then headed outside to enjoy the beautiful WARM weather for a while before we left for Katydid's violin lesson.  We noted that the crabapple trees had burst into bloom overnight:

 

And that the yard was now full of dandelions, which the boys enjoyed decapitating (way too much):

 

Then we brought Katydid to her violin lesson.  She's practicing for her recital at the beginning of June, and has chosen to play two hymns from her traditional Catholic hymnal.  While she is at her lesson, the boys and I run a couple of quick errands and then we go through the McDonald's drive-thru for lunch.

Back home, we pile out of the van and spend a couple more hours outside.  Katydid immediately grabs her nature journal, binoculars, and the camera.  The little boys alternately climb around in the woods looking for fortresses and follow Katydid on her nature observations.

One of the first things she does is to check out the bluebird boxes, because the boys and I discovered nesting materials in both of them the other day.  It turns out that a chickadee is using at least one of them.

(Note: as of a few days later, she counted six tiny eggs in this nest.)

Later on she takes the camera out to the outer garage and manages an extreme close-up of the Eastern Phoebe nest in the rafters:

 

Because the camera was so close, the eggs look more like our bantam chicken eggs, so at first we were all a little confused.  But then Katydid explained how close this shot was, and we realized that the eggs look a lot larger in the photo than they are in real life.

Considering that we started the week off with rain and sleet, we are more than happy to spend as much time outside as we possibly can.  I make an easy puff pancake for a late dinner, and we somehow escape Andy's trip without our own trip to the ER... although the evening did not pass by without a big wagon accident, in which a 13 year old learned that he is capable of pulling a kid's wagon far faster than is probably good for 4 year olds, even if they really like it. 

We finish up the day by all crowding onto the couch to watch Doctor Who, because well -- daleks!  Winston Churchill!  Spitfires attacking space ships! What could be cooler, I ask you?

And now that you know we are a family of TOTAL geeks, our week in the life is done.

A Week in the Life: Friday 4/30

Friday is "extra chore" day.  All I have from our Friday (4/30) is one lone picture:

 

... in which Chipmunk and Pip put pots on their heads and pretend to be daleks.  (We have to be prepared for Saturday night.)

After that the day is much less exciting.

Our usual Friday routine goes like this:

• Breakfast
• Morning prayers (at least a Morning Offering, Our Father, and Hail Mary to start our day. Our Lady of La Salette instructed the children to whom she appeared to pray both morning and night, at least an Our Father and Hail Mary, if they couldn't do more.  So this is what I take for our bare minimum every day.)
• Baltimore Catechism (we're currently working through #2) and read aloud (in today's case, more on William the Conqueror in Our Island Story).  The kids usually draw or color during this time.  This morning I must banish Lego daleks from the table so that certain boys can concentrate on the catechism.
• Kids dress, brush teeth, and start daily chores --  Gareth (collect eggs, empty and load dishwasher, wipe counters, take out recycling); Katydid (feed and water chickens, bring and sort laundry, MTWTH wipe out bathroom sinks); Farmerboy (pick up family room); little boys (brush teeth and put on clothes without driving everyone insane).
• After their daily chores, we move on to extra chores -- Gareth (clean all bathrooms and take out bathroom trash); Katydid (fold one basket of laundry, put it away, pick up the always messy laundry room and vacuum it, help watch little boys; Farmerboy, Pip, and Pop (pick up the hallway that functions as our toy room for Legos, Playmobil, and Star Wars action figures); me and Chipmunk (work on bedrooms, picking up, vacuuming etc.) 
• Lunch time!
• Outside (This Friday happened to be warmer than the previous Thursday, thank goodness, so we spent a while outside.  Considering that we had been mostly stuck inside all week, I chose to let the big kids have more outside time when I took the little boys inside for naps, instead of making them take the usual two hour work period.)
• Work on Fridays generally consists of projects, nature walks, art, maybe a Latin quiz, reading... but no math or grammar or other textbooky things.
• Wii and computer time for all (including me)
• Dinner (frozen pizza tonight, as I am tired and Andy will be out of town until very late Saturday, but we do often have "pizza night" on Fridays)
• After dinner chores --  Gareth (pick up living room and entryway, sweep floors, vacuum rug); Katydid (wipe table, pick up and sweep kitchen and dining room floors); Farmerboy (clear table, pick up family room and vacuum rug), Pip and Pop (assigned each to a big kid as a helper); me and/or Andy (dinner dishes and kitchen duty, laundry).
• The usual stack of books for the little boys and bed... 10:30 at the earliest when Andy is out of town.  I stopped trying to put them to bed earlier, because they went to bed at the same time whether I tried to put them in bed at 8::30 or 10:00.  It's much less of a fight to wait. 

A Week in the Life: Thursday 4/29

Thursday begins about 5:30 AM when Andy leaves for the airport.  I should get up, but I go back to sleep until 6:45.  Around 7, I find that the twins are up and have opened all the drawers to Farmerboy's dresser and are climbing them like a ladder.  This dresser is not attached to the wall.  The boys therefore begin their day with serious discipline.

Then we move on to breakfast.

And Pokemon...

 

The twins are their usual whirlwind in the morning.  After we all do catechism together and I read aloud to the bigger kids, I sit down with them and we do "math" (what they call workbooks).  They like having books like the older kids.  Both of them go through several pages of Modern Curriculum Press Phonics K because circling is a novelty.  Then it's on to Montessori animal puzzles.

We get the Botany puzzles out, too, but they're a little more difficult.  Katydid gives a lesson on parts of the flower.

 

And again, outside after lunch with tulips.

It's about 55 degrees and the wind is blowing 20 or 30 mph.  Cold.  But sunny.  

Gareth tells me the twins are playing in the garden, but a few minutes later they take off up the hill.  Fortunately Katydid follows them (with the camera).

 

Here they are in the woods.  Without telling me where they were going.  Gareth, Farmerboy, and I spend about 30 minutes looking for them.  When they all come out of the woods, they get the "Tell me where you are going first" lecture. 

Then it's time for a nap, and book work for the three older kids.

Then we have pancakes for dinner in front of the TV.

Then I read a bunch of books to the little boys.

Then it's 10:00 and I wrestle them to bed. 

At nearly 11:00, we all are finally asleep.  Just a typical night when Andy is out of town.

Week in Review: April 19-23

Technically,the only schoolish thing we did this week was to add math back in on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday so we could concentrate on unpacking,laundry,and putting the house back in order -- a slow process, but progress is being made.  Also, most of us (including me, today) have come down with colds.  Not horrible colds, just -- colds.  I could have predicted it, actually; we're always sick this time of year.  Farmerboy's birthday was yesterday and seeing him lying around on the couch listening to book 1 of the Redwall series on audio all day reminded me that the week he was born, Katydid came down with pneumonia.  I always wondered if those germs floating around our house were what prompted his early labor, fetal distress, and 3 day NICU stay.  So, this week, his 7th birthday -- grateful we all just have little colds.

You'll notice, however, that I have no pictures of Farmerboy's birthday.  That's because Katydid used up the batteries in the camera the day before taking pictures of chickens.

A Buff Orpington hen at the feeder.  Note the absence of birthday cake or candles.

Anyway, even though it was not technically a "school" week, you can't keep good kids down.  A few highlights from this week:

• Katydid and Farmerboy decided to make part of our yard a "park", so they cleaned it up (which was nice)
• Katydid spent hours practicing her archery.  Farmerboy and Gareth joined in sometimes. 
• Farmerboy listened to several discs of Redwall.
• Pip,Pop, and Chipmunk worked on the Montessori animal puzzles, in addition to the other puzzles we have the in the cabinet.
• There was NOVA watching.  Now everyone wants to "crack the Maya code".
• There was reading on Gareth's part, but I am not sure exactly what books he had going.  He always has about 10 at a time.  I know I saw The Land I Lost (about Vietnam) and The Encyclopedia of the Ancient Americas. 
• There was a little math: Jacobs Algebra for Gareth, Key to Decimals and Key to Fractions for Katydid, and a page or two from Seton Math 1 for Farmerboy before he got sick.

The big deal this week, though, is worms.

 

And dirt.

The little boys have been building "worm farms".

I saw some instructions in More Mudpies to Magnets to fill a glass bottle with dirt and cover it in black construction paper to block the light.  Because the glass is clear, when you take the paper off in a few days, you can see the tunnels the worms have dug.  Theoretically, anyway.  The boys collect worms every year, but this year I suggested a new spin by covering the container with black paper.  Soon, we'll take off the paper and see if the worms have tunneled or... died.  (Sometimes we have trouble keeping the soil damp enough.)

Pop has been carrying a book about worms around with him for days and does not understand why we do not have a field guide to worms.  We also read A Handful of Dirt yesterday,which was a little difficult for the little ones because it's a longish picture book written for older kids, and because Pip and Chipmunk will not stop punching, kicking, shoving, biting or wrestling with each other for more than about 3 minutes at a time. 

In fact, the hyperactivity level here has gone through the roof over the past week and it is really exhausting me.  But I suppose that's fodder for another post.

What we've been up to this winter

I haven't had time or the inclination to do detailed weekly reports, but I do have a collection of photos I'd like to archive for this winter.

 

Pop's "handwriting"...

 

Chipmunk's flour construction sites...

Light-saber battles  (Chipmunk always seems to be R2-D2.)...

A little math (overseen by clone troopers, of course).

Flowers and candles (and pizza) for lunch on Candlemas Day...

Snap-circuits and battery experiments...

A voltaic pile from pennies with Farmerboy...

Candyland games...

Trains...

Tanks...

... and laundry.  Lots of laundry.

Sledding with friends...

Lots of snow...

Lots of reading...

... and a few nature walks...

And now we're heading for spring!

Bits and Pieces

What we're up to:

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.