Three Plus Two

Spring Term, Week 7

Week "7" -- or whatever number it really is, considering the fact that I have lost track -- was very, very busy.  Mostly because we were cleaning, But also because I had to go back to the doctor for my asthma (hopefully coming back under control now!), and there was vision therapy, and a family Scouting project (helping clean up a park), and Andy had a late Friday night meeting, and Saturday we hosted our Little Flowers and Blue Knights group so we could finish putting in the garden we're growing for the Little Sisters of the Poor.  (Andy and I joke that the Sisters' garden will probably do a lot better than ours because they have St. Joseph on their side.  We are having a really bad year in the garden this year, so the Sisters might need that help from St. Joseph!  Hardly anythng we planted from seed has come up.)

I also had to finish up our quarterly reports for the school district, which I did, and write letters of intent to homeschool for three students this year, which I also did, yesterday afternoon.  I keep feeling like there ought to be time to take a breath here. Well, maybe tomorrow.

In lieu of extensive commentary, I'm going to post some photos:

 

The remains of dinosaur building.  We're making dinosaur sculptures using newspaper and masking tape armatures, as demonstrated in Make-a-saurus: My Life With Raptors & Other Dinosaurs.  We checked this book out back when Gareth was obsessed with dinosaurs in 2nd grade.  We were living in St. Louis then, and were happily surprised when we found the book recently in our local library here in New York.  I really should own this book and I don't know why I don't.  It's about how an artist goes about recreating dinosaurs. The second half of the book gives directions on how kids can make their own.  The armature making is a bit too complicated for the younger kids because you have to roll tight tubes for arms, jaws, legs, etc.  But they should be able to do papier mache and paint without much help.

We're keeping the pieces of skeleton in bags at the moment.  Hopefully we'll get to the papier mache part in the next day or so.

  

The other "big" thing around here lately...

 

Eastern Tent Caterpillars.  Of which Pip is king.

 

One of his has even made a coccoon.

 

The thing about Pip and caterpillars is that sometimes he wants to sleep with them.  And sometimes he sleeps with them inadvertently because they crawl out of their container and end up in bed with him.

The boys "helped" Andy build a turkey roost:

 

And, as I mentioned, we hosted our Little Flowers group:

 

This week should be a little quieter... but I think it's going to take me a few days to adjust!

Spring Terms, Weeks 3,4,5... and 6??

I think I've lost count of where we are in our year, other than "almost done".

A few highlights of the past few weeks:

• Volcanoes
• The Ecosystem Game
• New musical instruments -- a piano, and now, a dulcimer for Gareth.  Katydid played "The Star-Spangled Banner" for her violin recital.

• Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs.  I need to update my sidebars.  It's been all dinosaurs all the time for two or three weeks now.  We made a trip to Wal-Mart last week to pick up supplies for a dinosaur-related project... I'm falling behind on that, actually, and the little boys are letting me know it approximately seventeen times a day.  It's a whole family project, not just for little boys, though.  More later (I hope).

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians -- the new book came and Gareth disappeared.  Katydid is almost done with the second one. Lots of Percy Jackson banter being batted back and forth between kids.  Katydid is working on a book report which is turning out to be an opportunity to teach summarization.

• Katydid is continuing her work on Pilgrims of the Holy Family -- something I was never able to get going with Gareth.  Katydid is highly motivated, though, and has earned two badges so far: Reading and Bird Study.  Now she's working on Communications, Animal Husbandry, Entymology, and Conservation.  Last week she wrote a report on insect body structure, spent A LOT of time taking care of our new delivery of 50 chicks, and helped her father hang bluebird boxes.

• Gareth has done quite a bit of weeding.  The penny-a-weed payment structure still stands, but clump grass, lamb's quarters, and knapweed -- which all must be dug -- earn more money.  So Gareth has been doing a fair amount of digging to earn money for Scout camp.

• Making Math Meaningful is working for Katydid... which is a RELIEF, let me tell you.  Saxon is not working for Gareth, though. In fact, the rest of the year has been a fairly rapid implosion.  I've been searching for a different pre-algebra program for next year.

• I've made a new summer schedule with some dedicated time for working on merit/pilgrim's badges.  Now if it would only warm up enough to feel like summer!!!

(Note: I'm having a really hard impossible time pulling up posts on typepad blogs right now, including my own, so in the interest of just getting this FINALLY posted, I'm going to eschew links and photos and just hit "publish".)

Spring Term, Week 2: Winding Down

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

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

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

A few pictures from the week:

  

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

 

Watermelon seedlings are growing...

 

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

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.

Winter Term: Weeks 3,4, and 5, or Cabin Fever Hits and I say, "No TV".

Weeks 3, 4, and 5 are being lumped together as cabin fever weeks.  I think we did actually do something, and I have a few pictures to prove it, but mainly winter insanity took over.

This week (week 5) ended up a little better than I expected, after a disastrous Monday on which I informed my husband that I was going to pack the kids up myself and head south for a month or two, just so the three year olds would be able to GO OUTSIDE.  The twins have broken every Christmas present that can be broken.  Every time I go outside to feed the chickens I come back in to find that they have been throwing Duplos as "bombs". Invariably, this means that the living room looks like a bomb has gone off in it.  They have completely demolished the laundry room (we haven't replaced the fifth gate to be broken in two years), the hallway, and their bedroom (daily).  They hit each other with wooden blocks, light sabres, and anything else that can be pressed into service as a weapon.  Of course, it's easy to focus on the twins because they're usually the loudest, but really, all of the kids have been a bit out of sorts. (Cough.) On this particular Monday, every single time I opened my mouth to read, Chipmunk and at least one of the twins would be involved in a punching, hitting, kicking wrestling match on the floor. There were more tantrums than I care to mention, and my older kids were not helping.  Thus, the threat. Sensing things had gone a little farther than normal, my dear husband met me at the optometrist's office so we wouldn't all have to stuff into the small waiting room, and he took the other kids to Home Depot where he bought me a plant.

So I did not pack off after all (although my mother called on Friday offering to fly up here and drive down with us so Andy could stay here and work, an offer I may just accept.) What I did was to take away TV time in the morning.  I had to do this with Gareth, too, a long time ago.  No TV time in the morning, no background music during the day, no media period. Not even Bach.  Too much screen time, too much noise = too much hyperactivity. But, being a sluggish riser, I had wanted a babysitter for the mornings.  TV as a morning babysitter was doing more harm than good, though, and the rest of the week saw a vast improvement over Monday. I haven't revoked all TV, but it's down to 30 minutes a day, in the afternoon.

Because I said "no TV" in the mornings, I am also having to deal with my own screen-time habits, namely computer use.  I used to get online while the boys watched TV, but since saying, "No TV," I thought I probably ought to tell myself, "No computer," too.  Revoking my own online priveleges in the morning means I'm less distracted about getting the day going, and I can hop right on it if the boys start revving up.  I find it immensely difficult to be "on" all day like this -- considering that sometimes the boys open their eyes and immediately start climbing all over their beds and hanging off the bed rails, hooting and pretending to be monkeys, and when they do go down for a nap is the only time my older three can concentrate on academics, and Chipmunk will only nap on me, and then it's time to start dinner -- but it is introducing some sanity to our days.

But enough of my winter woes and on to some actual accomplishments.

• We finished studying ancient India and moved on to ancient Africa. There isn't a whole lot of information on ancient Africa for kids, so we are mostly focusing on folk tales.  (For ancient India, we also focused heavily on fairy tales and the Ramayana.  I should post some book lists.)

• We started learning about caves.  We watched Mysterious Life of Caves - NOVA and were all suitably disgusted and amazed by the formations eloquently named "snottites", which look like... well, you can probably figure it out.  They're formed by bacteria which produce sulfuric acid.

• In an ironic twist of fate, just when I had given up on the Montessori materials because I had to put them all away to keep Chipmunk from scattering them everywhere, the little boys decided that they really wanted to use all the sensorial stuff I have tucked away in the linen closet. This week (week 5) the boys used the color boxes, the geometric solids, the knobbed cylinders, and the constructive triangles.  Chipmunk just loves putting objects in containers and putting the lids on them.

• Gareth was awarded Tenderfoot rank at a Boy Scout ceremony.

• Gareth and Katydid started swimming lessons.

• Katydid wrote and delivered a five minute speech on the life of St. Agnes.

• I started long picture book reading sessions with the little boys after lunch.

• Katydid read aloud Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- the entire book -- to Farmerboy (and the rest of us.)   

• And everyone did math.

To make a long post even longer, how about some pictures?

The kids set up a pet village in the family room.

Katydid, concentrating on writing her speech.

 

Pip is a robot.  Every game the twins play -- farm, dogs, monkeys -- ends up with an evil robot.

 

Andy and Gareth fixed the dishwasher when it broke.

 

Gareth drew more of his invented animals.  This one is based on the marbled cat, which he read about in an old Scientific American.

 

I'm not sure what this one is based on.

 

Drawing maps has also been big around here lately.  Gareth likes to draw maps of the worlds he uses in stories.  He's been working on this map for a while, but this week he started a new map as a collaboration with Katydid and Farmerboy.  The kids have an intricate world system they've formed over the years.  It has its own languages, geography, creatures, planets, cultures, mythologies, and economies. I am privy to some of it, but not all of it. I like watching them map their imaginations. 

Week 2, Winter Term: Break for Blocks

We're having a bit of a problem getting back into a groove again.  While we made it through the holidays without getting sick, a couple of colds hit hard after New Year's.  Last week was a run-down sort of week.  Nobody had very much energy, although I doubt you would have thought that had you peeked in my windows and watched my little boys brandishing light sabers and chasing each other round and round the living room.  Anyway, here's a taste of what did happen around here last week.

 Some Montessorians out there just flinched.  Yes, those are pieces of the Pink Tower and the Brown Stair Chipmunk is loading into Andy's boots.  They are only some of the many things we find in our boots these days.  Chipmunk is a spatial kid, and there is nothing he likes more than testing open containers (or boots) for fit.  His next favorite activity is pushing chairs around so he can climb on them and loot the high shelves meant for the bigger kids.  Therefore, I have very little in the way of Montessori out on any shelves, and I've also had to scale back on our nature area. (He broke the Our Lady of Grace statue on the china cabinet this morning, so I have to find a new home for our religious display, too.)  I do, however, give Chipmunk some Montessori-ish activities to do in a very relaxed manner.  Some of the things he enjoys (other than loading up people's boots):

• putting craft sticks into containers with different sized necks, such as spice bottles and cornstarch containers
• matching lids to different containers
• pouring and spooning cheerios
• Duplos
• putting on and taking off play silks knotted into capes
• pushing carts, walkers, etc

In addition to normal toddler chaos, the twins gained access to one of my Montessori storage closets, which could have been Very Bad.  Fortunately I was right there and could set them up with the knobbed cylinders before they dragged every single thing out into the hallway.  (I would have the knobbed cylinders out, but I don't have anywhere to put them where Chipmunk won't leave pieces scattered all over the place... or attempt to choke himself on one of the small pieces.)  Chipmunk joined in with the knobbed cylinders (of a safe size) and did quite well:

 The twins were both able to do two blocks at once.  The challenge held their interest longer.

It was actually a fairly spatial week. Since nobody felt 100%, sitting down with blocks was a good way to pass the time, especially while I read. 

In this picture, Farmerboy is using Katamino to build 3-D structures, Katydid was making patterns using Pattern Play blocks, Pip and Pop were trading blocks and the Rush Hour game (they just like arranging the cars and trucks on the grid, but here's a neat online version, which is also very addictive), and Chipmunk was sorting fish and transportation counters... after a fashion.

And while we're focusing on Chipmunk for a change, he had another first this week:

 

His first hair cut!

Week 1, Winter Term: Harry Potter, Ancient India, Cardboard Buildings

After a two week Christmas break, we picked up our routine again.  In spite of a few bumps -- which always come after a break of more than a few days -- I think we've gotten going again.  I would not say that we are "in a groove", but -- we're working.  It's been a tough winter so far and shows no signs of letting up.  If it were just me and the big kids, it wouldn't be so bad; they go out almost every day to sled or snow shoe or check on the chickens.  But the snow is either too deep or too icy for the little ones, they don't like the cold, and anyway it takes an hour to get everyone in their outside clothes.  We end up stuck inside much of the time.  I'm thinking about buying a huge full spectrum light to set up in the living room, and I'm collecting ideas about how to get through February already.  (Hawaii Day, anyone?) 

This is what happened inside this week:

 

Katydid has been zooming through the Harry Potter books and decided one day last week to pretend she was at Hogwart's.  "I got up at 7 AM to do a herbology lesson," she said, "and I was supposed to go to Potions at 11, but I'm still doing chores so I'll be late and Professor Snape will give me a demerit."  She also asked me if she could do a book report on The Goblet of Fire.  So of course I replied, "No, absolutely not, why do you think I would ever allow you to do a book report???"

LOL Actually, I think I just blinked at her in surprise for a few minutes and then I said, "Of course!"  I gave her a list of questions to answer in the report, and after she was done with her first draft, I sat down with her and helped her edit and refine her thinking.  Then she rewrote the report and gave it to Andy to read.  "Writing something for Daddy" has worked wonders with getting Gareth to write, too, although he hasn't gone so far as to ask if he can do a book report.   This week he did write a really long (page and a half) description of a culture he made up, though -- probably the most he's ever written at one time. 

(An aside here: I believe Katydid is looking at Theresa's blog, where I was looking up Theresa's Term at Hogwarts.  We did part of the Magic or Muggle activity, and succeeded in dyeing the floor, ourselves, and everything else bright yellow.  We haven't managed the rest of the experiment yet, though.)

The little boys played a lot of dress-up themselves:

 
I think they were pretending to be "Scary Romans".  (And as you can see, we are not done wall-papering their room yet.)  They have a round of dress-up that they do basically every day.  First Pip and Pop play priests and pretend to say Mass.  Then they change their vestments for light sabers and play Jedi.  After that, the light sabers become guns or swords and they play cowboys or Romans.

At Choice Time, they've been making cardboard buildings:

Pip was working on a "chicken coop".  Here he's gluing craft sticks onto the top of the box for a "roof" and the bottom of the box for a "floor".  The next day, he painted some of the box green and black.  When I cut a door into Farmerboy's cardboard prison (he wanted to use it for his Playmobil policemen), Pip asked me to cut two doors into his coop... which he had decided would now be a "chicken prison."  The doors are small, about the size of a chick, and on either side of the box.  Katydid informed him that she thought the box could actually be used for bantam chicks, and he was very pleased with that, but asserted that he really wanted to put toy chickens in it.

Katydid has been engrossed by chickens lately. (That doesn't sound right, but I can't figure how else to say it right now -- extremely interested? Investing most of her waking hours in the topic?)  She drew some plans for chicken coops because she wants to raise bantams this spring, and she wants to keep them separately from the other chickens.  I encouraged her to model her plans using craft sticks and glue.  It did not go well.  The thing about art is that it often presents gifted perfectionists with the opportunity to do something truly challenging... something that doesn't go as expected the very first time.  I am hoping that she will come back to this project and try it a different way -- with different materials, maybe, or perhaps with more of a mindset toward experimentation. 

In the meantime, we're trying to figure out what the black spots on our chicken's combs are.  I don't think they are pox or frostbite.  Katydid has been helping with the research, and she took some pictures of the chickens for me:

We had a record 8 eggs today from 11 hens, with no lightbulb in the coop.  I'm impressed.

There have also been many and varied Duplo creations with the enormous box of Duplos Santa brought.

 
 A farmstand built by Katydid and Farmerboy for the twins to play with.

We also started reading about ancient India, listened to a lot of poems by Jack Prelutsky, went sledding with two other homeschooling families, and picked up math and spelling again... a decision that did not find favor with everyone.  And Gareth spent quite a bit of time with his kit of ancient Roman coins.  Hopefully I will post about ancient India, Jack Prelutsky, and Roman coins in the future, but for now I have to unload the dishwasher and pull a tortilla casserole out of the oven for dinner.  Hope you're staying warm on this cold winter evening!