We've haven't done a whole lot of school work this past week and here's why:

That is our office/school room.

Its a mess. We suddenly decided to re-arrange and re-organize both this room and the master bedroom which is right next to it.

I blame this mess on two things.

Books

and

ants.

Every spring we wage war with the ants. We're peaceful people, we don't start the conflict, THEY invade US.

So every year we spray the house inside and out very thoroughly with ant spray. I don't like using a poison, but I've tried various "natural" ant remedies and none are effective. They might work in a house where there is just the occasional ant trail, but sometimes I think our house was built in the middle of a giant ant complex.

OK, so maybe we did invade first.

But we're bigger and smarter so we win, nyah.

So in order to spray thoroughly, we move furniture away from the walls. This year we figured since we have the furniture moved all out anyway, we might as well get that new headboard put on the bed, you know that headboard thats been sitting in its box for a month now.

So we did.

At the same time we were dealing with ants and headboards, we were also dealing with books.

In the past month I have brought hundreds (no exaggeration) of books into the house. I purchased about 50 of them, most I called home from my parents' attic.

More books means more shelves for books. So while we had the bedroom furniture all moved around, we bought 3 bookshelves to go in our room.

And thats where we are stalled. We need more shelves. You can call me neurotic, organized, weird, stubborn, OCD, or unreasonable, but I'm not putting books on shelves until I have ALL the shelves. I want everything I am working with laid out in front of me. I have the books organized into categories, but I need to see what I have to work with before I commit. :P

So our schoolwork has been rather light recently.

We did finish a week on Darwin. We got out the globe and plotted his 5 yr trip on the Beagle. We read several biographies.

Kyden drew a picture for his biology notebook.

Thats Darwin with the Beagle in the background. You can also see the finches that Darwin studied while on the Galapagos. Kyden got sidetracked and drew another character next to Darwin. When I asked about it, he said it was a guy with ants in his pants. Ok.

Here in a closer look, you can see Darwin is holding up his own book.

Aralia also drew Darwin.

Here's a couple more of her drawings. The pink one is a self-portrait on a dry erase board.

This next piece of her artwork requires some explanation. Get comfortable.

A few weeks ago, we saw the movie Ratatouille. Little did we know.

The movie is about a rat that cooks.

Ever since seening the movie, Aralia has been obsessed with rats.

Obsessed is not too big of a word either. The first thing out of her mouth most mornings is rat-related.

She wants a pet rat, but she's a long way from being responsible enough to have one. And I already have the responsibility of the dog, the turtles, the tadpoles, and the fish.

I don't want anymore pet responsibilities.

(The tadpoles, by the way, STILL do not have legs. I think they are retarded.)

So I told her when she turned ten we would see if she was responsible enough to have a pet rat. Which immediately translated in her mind to "I get a pet rat the very second I turn 10."

What amazes me is that the fact that 10 is still 5 years away in no way daunts her. But then, she doesn't have any real concept of how long a year is. Which is good, because if she was upset she had to wait so long things would be a lot more whiny around here.

This has been going on for a couple of weeks now, she re-watches the movie at every opportunity. I did explain to her that rats are not like the rat in the movie. I told her they don't talk, they don't look like that, and they don't cook.

She was ok with that, but decided she's going to teach her rat to cook. I let her think that, 10 years old is a long way from now so why spoil it.

One day she asked me for a picture of a rat from the internet. So we went to Google Images and looked at rats for awhile. She is a VERY selective child. She finally picked one and I printed it for her. You know what she did with it? She cut it out and carries it with her, its her pet rat! I thought that was great.

We also went to a pet store last week with the express purpose of Aralia holding a real rat. I wish I could've gotten pictures of that, but I was using my hands to help hold the rats, I didn't want the kids to accidently free half the rat population of this store.

So this picture is a picture of a house, a rainbow, some clouds, and a rat. You know, the usual "girly" drawing.

Up in the corner it says "mad bi Aralia"...don't take that too literally. Its kindergartenese for Made By Aralia.

She also started on her math curriculum recently. Kyden and I have more or less hammered out our teacher-student relationship. It has its flaws (more on that later) and we are still working on it, but we're down the road a bit. And I've learned much. Now that I have Aralia as a student I'm being very very very careful how our interactions develop. And anyone thats ever met Aralia knows how critical this can be. What ever you give Aralia, be it an inch or a millimeter or even a a micro quark, she runs with it. Before you know it, she's gotten so far out of hand that you can't figure out how she got there. The girl is good. You have to stay on top of her. She knows where your buttons are, she knows where the line is and more often then not she'll choose to push and cross those things just to entertain herself.

So I'm being very careful and slow in how I choose to react to her testing me when it comes to lessons.

Anyway, this is her making a quadrilateral out of craft sticks. This was kind of her idea, we were using the craft sticks in the lesson for tallying objects. After we spent a few minutes discussing triangles and quadirilaterals and the differences between them she decided she wanted to build the biggest quadrilateral she could.

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Somehow, between the rain and storms, we managed to get our garden in. We planted tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, watermelon, honeydew melon, cucumber, basil, oregano, tarragon, sage, broccoli, and beans.

We already had onions, garlic, horehound, and hyssop growing.

One of the basils is cinnamon basil. Supposedly the leaves will smell like cinnamon. So far they definitely do not. I don't know if they will be any good for cooking or medicine, but they might smell nice if I cut them and brought them in the house.

We had the sprinkler on the garden one day, the kids liked that.

And yes this might be somewhat scary, but this is me, I do in fact exist in this family, despite the lack of evidence in the photo albums.

And I work too. I pretty much planted the whole garden by myself. :)

The tilling of the garden though, that was done by Thomas, so we've both got some sweat invested in it.

We also spent some time getting out the outdoor furniture. I rinsed everything off with the hose and set it all in the sun to dry.  

Zaith had his own plans though.

Kyden provided the theme music for us one day. For a short time. A very short time. Then he provided the theme music for them while I watched from the other side of the yard.

Zaith and Aralia also tried some bird watching.

And then they came in and rested.

Math has been a subject of contention between Kyden and I pretty much since day one. It has recently come to a head. Last week he spent three hours on fifteen problems. At least two of those hours were spent whining, crying, protesting, stomping, refusing, and postponing. I left him to it, we went on with our day.

He does just fine when the lessons are on something easy. As soon as it gets a little bit hard, he has a breakdown. He doesn't want to think. Its not the work is beyond is ability, its not. Its that he is lazy. He doesn't want to apply himself. Effort and attitude, thats what its all about.

So I decided that had to change, because it really is awful to try to teach through that. His attitude is just appalling. So, I made a "mathitude" chart. And anyone who knows Kyden knows he liked the word "mathitude."

Now he has to earn the privilege of playing video games on the weekend. Everytime I catch him displaying a good attitude and especially a little bit of effort, he gets a tally mark. This week, the first one, he has to have 5 marks to earn 30 minutes of game play. I made it an attainable goal, I didn't want to set him up for failure. Next week I will up the ante a little bit, make it 6 or 7 marks, so I can get more than one show of "mathitude" during our daily lesson.

We haven't done math today, its next on our agenda. He has four marks, hopefully he can get that last one.

And thats where I need to go now. Time to break out the abacus. Wish me luck.

Wordless Wednesday

Jenny my friend and fellow Tool fan from the WTM board has tagged me.

Here are the rules:

1.The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.


2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.


3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blog and leaves them a comment, letting them know they have been tagged.


Here goes:


What was I doing 10 years ago? I'd been married a year, I was living in a trailer park out by the lake with DH and two cats. I worked at a data entry job that created the computer book files that libraries use. I was also taking college classes.



Five snacks I enjoy:
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Dark chocolate




In the real world I am:
always thinking, multi-tasking, occasionally obstinate, flexible, thorough, and usually up too late.




Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
I would buy books, I would buy many many many many books


I would adopt an unwanted child, perhaps from China


I would pay off the bills and debt of everyone I cared about, maybe buy everyone a new house or car or boat or plane...something like that.


I would also pay the tuition of anyone of those people who wanted to go to or return to school, including my kids and myself.


DH would quit his job and we would travel.


I would give as much as possible to the causes I believe in.


I would fund scientific research. I would particularly fund sciences that would promote colonization of space.


I would set up an entire organization devoted to the dessimation of misinformation, in all its evil forms.


We would spend a lot of time helping people in parts of the world that need help, in the form of money, food, work, teaching, etc.



Five jobs that I have had:
1. worked in a greenhouse
2. worked at a bar
3. did data entry for various companies, including one where I worked from home
4. worked at two daycares
5. worked as an office clerk



Three of my habits:

1. I bathe every single night before bed, almost without fail, in super uber hot as I can stand it water. Even when its a 90 degree day and we don't have the air on yet, I still take a warm bath. When I'm sick I take even more baths. I've been so sick once I took 6 baths in one day.


2. I read everything in front of me. If there are words in front of my eyes I read them. I did not occur to me that one could make a choice about reading the words around them until I was in my 30s. Once a friend and I drove past a bar that had been teepeed. And while I noticed that I couldn't read all the words on the sign in front of the bar....I did not notice that the reason I couldn't read all the words on the sign was because someone had teepeed the whole thing.

I do however draw the line at reading commercials when I have the mute on. Its bad enough when I have to listen to someone trying to sell me something. it, I'll be damned if I'm going to read it. But its HAAARD not to.

3. I have to lie on my stomach before I fall asleep. However, I can't fall asleep while on my stomach. Its tricky.



What do you want others to get from your blog?:

Just to see what we are doing, the particuluar way our family does homeschooling, and life in general. And maybe learn a little something in the process. Or not.




So now I tag:
Tawni at Memories and Milestones

Kel at Fawkes Academy

Shasta at Voyage of the Orion

Melissel at Tall Oaks Academy

Paula at Wakefield Academy

Won't they be surprised. :P

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Here's the flower, as blue as we got it before it wilted.

The letter sound that Zaith has the most trouble with is Y. He always wants to pronounce Y as the W sound. So last week we made a Y booklet, here's the cover and one of the pages.

Thats some yogurt and a yak. Focusing on the Y alone did help, we'll continue to concentrate on it for a few more days just for reinforcement.

This last week was one which we took off from academics. We had some nice days, so we spent some time outside.

Here they all are in the pear tree. I think we have four pear trees, this one is the biggest. Its the one that has perfect branches for climbing. Zaith figured out all on his own how to get up there, didn't ask for help or anything. I just looked up the yard from what I was doing and there he was.

The boy has a good grasp of fundamental physics, better than the other two did at his age. His balance is good, he seems to have a fine understanding of the way liquid in a big boy cup behaves, he seems to be advanced in his comprehension of cause and effect and he just "groks" things that I would've thought to be beyond him.

Oh, and he's finally potty trained. ;)

(hows that for a reality check?)

Here are a few samples of Kyden's art from the week.

What he's working on here is a playdoh sculpture. And pretty much nothing is off limits for Kyden as art material.

This one had to be disassembled upon completion because he used our scissors among other things. Its a spider on its web, the web being made of scotch tape.

We also had a little drama over the week. Showing true shades of her mommy, Aralia stubbed her toe. I stub a toe pretty much daily. Occasionally its pretty bad, like this one was for Aralia. It was swollen and hot and really pained her, so she spent some time soaking it in cool water. That however, is a completely opposite shade from her mother, no way do I put my foot in anything less than room temperature. She did a great job with that, much more resolution that I could muster, even put the second foot in to keep the first one company.

We went to a park that we'd never been to, even though the day was chilly and windy. The kids had fun, weather schmeather.

The blossoms on the fruit trees were at their peak last week. This picture and the one up at the top show our most productive apple tree.

The redbuds are also blooming.

And here's a little honey bee doing its job. I don't know if you can see it or not, but the bee's pollen bags on its legs are full.

And this weekend we did some more yardwork. Thomas and Kyden raked up some sticks and debris from the garden spot so we can get it tilled tomorrow (finally). I cleaned up the hosta bed and got it ready for two or three more hostas to be fitted into it. I also cleared out two groups of irises that were in too much shade to ever bloom very well, and I put them into a new sunny flower bed that I made last fall which has a rose growing on a trellis in the middle. Pictures of that maybe next time.

While digging out one batch of irises, I found a gigantic earthworm. When it stretched itself out, it measured at least 9 inches, maybe 10 or 12. It was big. Here it is in my grubby hand.

While Thomas and I were busy working on our yard projects, the kids had one of their own. This is a bird trap. There's birdseed in the dumptruck bed, and some nesting material in the buckets. They also wanted to build a moat around the tree to prevent cats from eating the birds they caught. They think of everything don't they?

And thats pretty much what we've been doing. Tomorrow its back to acadamia. We finished the study of Ancient Greece and now we will work on Ancient Rome. For science, we're going to finish up the evolution unit, we moved kind of slow on that. Its hard to find resources for grammar age kids on evolution. Which is a shame because children have no problem grasping the fundamentals of evolutionary concepts. Not only that, but evolution is the theory upon which modern biology is built, so its really a disservice to leave this key out of their education.

I've managed to find some things though, and there are at least plenty of resources on Darwin himself. So we have a few more books to read, a DVD, some writing, and a couple of activities before we are finished. Then we will work out of the REAL Science book again and do 4 to 6 weeks on plants.

Aralia will be starting math this week, the curriculum I ordered for her arrived. Its RightStart level A, a GREAT program I can't say that enough. I think even Zaith will be able to join us. After looking through it, I believe its something he's ready for. Whether or not he will go through the whole book with her I don't know, he is only 3.

After these next four weeks of learning (I'm trying to avoid using the word school around here), we'll have another one week break and then seven weeks of light summer....learning. I'm going to need a thesaurus.

Have a good week, I'll update the pagesides soon.