Agenda

The weather this past week has been amazing. It's been more like mid-October than the end of November. We've been in the 50's and low 60's. Since Jeff is home today, I was planning to go run around and get some Christmas errands done. But today it's raining and chillier (we're supposed to get snow this weekend, which thrills Sarah beyond words), and I'd rather stay home and finish my book. I'll go out eventually, but right now I think I'll put some butter and cream cheese out to soften, so I can make my first batch of Pecan Tarts.

Arr, Matey!

I thought of Pez when I saw this, but I think it's fun enough to post on my own. Captain Bogg & Salty's Pieces of 8ight video. If you can't see it there, it's on YouTube. I want a substitute like this!

Did you realize?

I knew Christmas was coming. It's kind of hard to miss. In spite of that, the realization that Christmas is just four weeks from yesterday sends me into a little bit of a tizzy. I have so much to do: baking, shopping, sewing. Nothing has been done so far except for two rather important tasks.

1. I know what I'm planning to get just about everyone.
2. The photo albums are done.

Other than that, I'm utterly screwed. Happy Holidays, all!

Homeschool: English/Reading

For Reading, we're using a site called Book Adventure. It has quizzes on different books, both fiction and nonfiction, and you get points. You can cash in the points for prizes at the site, but we are just coming up with our own prizes. We started doing this in May, and Sarah has read 101 books as of today. She's earned a badminton set, a snorkel, swim fins & mask, computer games, and a magazine subscription. The quizzes are weighted by age, and if you don't get enough questions right on the first try, you get a second chance. I like that there is already a substantial bank of quizzes, although sometimes I question how they level them. Some books seem like they should be considered higher, and some seem too high.

When we go to the library, I take a list of books that I know have quizzes, which requires a bit of work ahead of time. I maintain a list, print it out whenever we go, and add to it when I have time. I also maintain a list of all the books she's read, or I'd be getting the same things out again and again, because I can't keep track. We also get out a longer book for me to read to her at night. We've been doing a lot of the Ramona Quimby books, which she likes, but I don't think she realizes that someone else in this house will probably identify with Ramona more than she does, at least eventually.

For English, we're working on Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives. We've been spending more time on these than I thought we would, because Sarah's having a hard time with them. We've recently added Common and Proper Nouns into the mix.

English Basics has a lot of good stuff, as does ABCTeach.com. Grammar Gorillas and Noun Dunk are good for practice. Naturally, IKnowThat.com also has lots of stuff.

I'm falling down on the job

by not posting every day lately. Unfortunately, today will continue that, because I just got out of the shower and the kids just woke up. In the next half hour, we have to eat, find clothes for church, get dressed, and get rolling. So--later, all!

So did I do it?

Did I go out shopping today? Hell, no!

When I was in college, my stepmom & I would go out for Black Friday, and we had a great time. We'd get up at 4 AM in order to get to the nearest mall by the time it opened at 6. Said mall was 60 miles away, via a 2-lane road (that's one lane in each direction), usually with a fair bit of snow. We'd go in and shop until lunch, then get McDonald's (a big treat, since that was also the closest McD's as well).

Now, though, it just isn't worth it. It's too cold, the lines are too long, it's too dull to go by myself, and I get too many good deals from shopping online. I'm still tempted sometimes ($1/yard flannel at JoAnn's!), but I haven't even bothered to go near a store the past few years.

I'm thankful . . .

that I have wonderful in-laws, who like taking my kids for sleepovers. :)

Sinuses . . .

suck. That is all.

Homeschool: Writing

Writing is one of the things I plan for us to do every day, but is likely to be shoved off until the next day. Which means that it just doesn't get done. I'm working to get better at it, but it doesn't help that it's far and away NOT Sarah's favorite subject.

There are a bunch of sites with suggestions for daily writing, and I pick and choose each week. One thing that has helped is that I put an organizer on the board, and do a lot of writing myself. That way, she doesn't have to worry about spelling, but can concentrate more on getting her thoughts down.

For examples, yesterday she wrote a movie review of Mary Poppins--we'd watched it for the first time on Friday night. This is the organizer I put on the board (she told me what to write, and those are our current German words are on the left):



And here is what she wrote:












Sites with topics for writing:
Journal Activities
Journal Writing Plan
Journal Writing Ideas
Primary Journal Ideas

This is a good one for 1st Grade: Sentence Starters

For fiction, I just found this, and love it. It reminds me a little of Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, which is one of my favorite books ever.

I think that handwriting practice is important, too. Sarah's handwriting is very poor (mine isn't great, either), but it's hard to find fun activities to work on that. I remember being a kid, sitting at the dining room table, copying line after line, trying to improve my handwriting. It never did help much. I recently read an article that handwriting is rather neglected these days, largely because of computers. I do think good keyboarding skills are important, but I don't want to let handwriting slide, either.

Sometimes I'll use a handwriting worksheet for Sarah's spelling words, but I really like them to give Lauren words to practice. Most of them (Tracing Paper, Handwriting Worksheet Maker) are set up with the words running across the top (good for a sentence), but if you want to practice up to ten different words, this ESL Handwriting Practice is the better way to go. Sometimes we just print blank pages.

Other blogs

No, not the personal blogs I regularly check out, although I probably will do a post about those before the month is up.

These are other funny/useful sites.
Want Not
Parent Hacks
Project RunGay
A Dress A Day
Manolo's Shoe Blog
Go Fug Yourself

Post Secret is only updated on Sundays, but it's another one I wouldn't miss.

Decisions, decisions

I wonder if I can talk Jeff into taking the girls to see Happy Feet instead of a minor league hockey game next weekend? We were supposed to do the hockey this weekend, but couldn't. We've been talking about hockey for over a month, and we all want to go, but Happy Feet looks REALLY cute!

More of the Same

Still trying to get a lot done, still staying off the computer as much as possible.

Resolution

I have a lot to do today, but I don't have to leave the house at all. It's my only "day off" all week. No dance, no story time, no classes to teach, no church, nothing. But I have a lot to do around the house. I was totally unproductive yesterday, and I'd like to take advantage of the time I have today. I hereby resolve not to get back on the computer (except to get stuff for the girls to work on) for the rest of the day. I'll check in tomorrow with the results.

Homeschool: Math

I was lucky to get a complete 2nd grade Houghton-Mifflin math curriculum from Jeff's cousin after she did her student teaching, so that's the text that Sarah is using this year. Since I want to keep it "clean" for Lauren to eventually use, we're either

• answering verbally
• writing the answers into a notebook
• photocopies
  
• making a facsimile with Word or Excel, then printing it for Sarah to write on

There is a long stretch of several chapters that don't deal much with plain addition and subtraction. These include Place Value; Plane Shapes; Data, Graphing and Probability; and Fractions. Last spring, we had started doing addition with regrouping ("carrying") along with the regular addition & subtraction, but this book doesn't get to that until Chapter 10. It bugs me a little to wait that long, but I committed to this book, so I'm not going to skip anything to get there faster.

But there's no way I'm going to ignore addition & subtraction until the book gets back there. We didn't practice much over the summer, and when we started up again in the fall, she had a hard time with 3+6= _____. So besides working in the textbook, we have addition & subtraction practice every day. I try for it to be short--usually no more than 10 minutes, and frequently much less. She's getting better, even if she still looks at her fingers for assistance more than I'd like. I know that eventually, she won't need that.

Practice options include (I'd usually rather she do something on the computer than print more paper):

• a printed worksheet (generator)
• Math Magician
• CyberChallenge
  
• Leon's Math Dojo
• flashcards
• Math Minutes
• Mathblox
• Blackboard Math
• Tic Tac Toe
• problems written on the white board
• Leon Math Movies
  

We also like Brain Teasers, even though they aren't specifically addition & subtraction.

Be careful what you wish for

Yeah, OK, I get it.

I've got my opportunity to make roast chicken for me and the girls this weekend, but I have absolutely no interest in making it. Jeff's going to be down in Florida for his grandpa's funeral. :( This is the first of his grandparents that has died. He was sick for a long time, but it's never an easy thing to have happen. The kids are upset that they don't get to see Grammy & Grandpa today, and that Daddy's leaving (he's flying out early Thursday, and will be back Sunday afternoon), but they'll be OK. I'm glad he can go down there, but sorry for the reason.

Homeschool: Keyboarding

D'oh! I had a nice long post about Math, but it got eaten, so I'm going to do something quicker instead. Typing/Keyboarding is another thing we practice every day. I thought that practice a few times a week would be enough, but it turned out that a little bit every day really makes more of a difference.

For learning to type correctly, Dance Mat Typing can't be beat. It's fun--I've even had adult students use it happily--and it teaches the correct finger placement. FreeTypingGame.net also has lessons, but they aren't nearly as fun.

We also have a few sites to go to play games for practice:

• Spacebar Invaders and The Frogs are Off Their Diet are just two of the games at FreeTypingGames.net. The nice thing about these games is that it's easy to set your level.
• Super Hyper Typer Spider This is probably Sarah's current favorite, and the one she's using today, in fact.
• Type Me
• Cup Stacking
  
• Bubbles
• Nimble Fingers
• Typing Exercises
  

Spelling: Follow Up

Pley: Ha, I never noticed that typo in the link before!

As for the words themselves, I had a terrible time choosing a site this year. It seemed like all the lists were either too easy, too hard, or based on books that class (but not necessarily ours) was reading. I'd like to do literature based spelling words eventually, but at this point, I feel she needs more of the basic instruction first.

As for the words she's having the most trouble with, I think part of the problem is that they really are a little advanced. Not a lot advanced--once we're done with all the lists, I plan to go back and review all the previous words, just to see how well she's retained it, or if it's easier for her.

I also came up with another practice strategy that we're going to try Wednesday. I've had her use Scrabble tiles before, but it's been "Here is the pile of all the tiles. Make your word." This time, it'll be "Here are the letter tiles that make your word. Put them in the right order." We'll see how it goes. (The original suggestion was to write the letters on dried lima beans, and put the beans for each word into a film cannister. I don't have lima beans, nor film cannisters anymore, but this should work fine.)

Homeschool: Spelling

These are the spelling words I'm using for Sarah. I give her the list of words Monday, we practice them through the week, and she takes a test Friday.
To practice, I have her

• type them with WordArt in Word
• write them on slips of paper, then alphabetize them
• spell them out loud
• write sentences using the words
• a crossword puzzle (made here)
• using rubber stamps (a little messy)
• cutting letters out of magazines (complaints about finding the right letters)
• painting them
• sidewalk chalk
• spelling them in cadence, kind of like a cheer
  
• using the "loci" method, where she looks at the word and has to walk to another room to write it down (the back and forth is supposed to help her keep it in her memory)
  

She has a lot of trouble with spelling. This week's words were the worst yet: March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. (she did January & February last week, along with the days of the week.) We practiced them thoroughly, and I even gave her an extra day's practices. Yesterday, she took the test and got three out of ten correct.

She has a lot of trouble remembering/realizing that you need vowels in with all those consonants. Novmbr is missing a few letters--the letter M doesn't "say" em, it says mmmmmm. Luckily, most weeks are better than this past one.

Next weeks words are: because, children, friends, favorite, right, wrong, caught, everyone, answer, and beautiful.

Fun Sites to Kill Time

All very addictive!

• Snowdays Snowflakes Maker
• Make-a-Flake
• Interactive Tartan Weaver
• Jackson Pollock
• Flower Maker
• Jigzone

Groceries

I've discovered Aldi fairly recently, and I love shopping there.

• I love that, if I forget a quarter for a shopping cart (hey, it's only happened once), I can go in and they'll loan me one without batting an eye.
• I love that their soda pop can return is on the honor system: you toss your cans in the bin, and tell the cashier how many you had.
• Most of all, I love that I can get a ton of groceries for about $50.

I can't get absolutely everything I need there. Their inventory is limited (no low-sodium beef broth, old fashioned rolled oats, natural peanut butter, or sesame oil), and some of the brands don't appeal to us (we're sticking to Prego spaghetti sauce, Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage, A1 steak sauce, and Kraft cheese singles, to name a few). But the kids don't care a bit if it's off-name cereal, the butter & ground beef are fine, the 12 grain bread is pretty good, and Jeff actually prefers their french bread pizzas to Stouffers.

Their produce section is also limited, but not bad. I prefer to go to a local produce store, which not only has incredibly inexpensive apples, lettuce, green beans, and broccoli, they regularly have more obscure stuff. We've gotten lychees, dinosaur eggs (speckled plums) and Christmas melon there, and you never know what will be there. I try to get one new thing every time we go. They also get wonderful bread from a local bakery. When I go there, I come home with bags of stuff, but never manage to spend more that $12 - $15.

Pasties: a Follow-up

Pasties are, essentially portable meat pies. Pie crust wrapped around a filling of ground beef & pork, diced potatoes, carrots, and rutabaga. This is the base recipe I use, although I leave out the MSG. I'd like to leave out the rutabaga, too, because I don't really care for it. But they're cheap, and I don't need more than half of one for a batch of pasties, and Jeff insists it isn't an authentic pasty without them.

They're somewhat time consuming to make, so I usually only do one batch a year, but that batch lasts quite a while, since it makes 8 or more, and the kids don't eat them. Some people eat them with ketchup, but Jeff insists that brown gravy is the way to go.

They're originally made by the wives of Cornish miners, who would take them to work because they're so portable and would hold them to keep their hands warm. It's a traditional Northern Michigan food, too.

And for Evil: Pasties rhymes with last-ies.

And that's our Nutritional Anthropology/Cooking lesson for the day. Hee, I'd love to video 10-minute cooking lessons and put them on YouTube or something.

Dinners

Dinner last night was supposed to be pork chops with apples, rice, and salad. But when Jeff got home, the pork chops were still one big solid block of frozen meat, so I whispered in his ear, "We haven't been to Coney Island in a long time." I barely had time to put my shoes on before we were out the door.

So, tonight - pork chops. Definitely.

I get so stuck in a rut with cooking. It seems like we're always having spaghetti (with meatballs or Italian sausage meat sauce), stir-fry, pot roast, spiral sliced ham, pork chops (though I have about 6 different things to do with those), tacos, kielbasa with potatoes & green beans, sloppy joes, or hamburgers.

When I try new things, sometimes they're a hit, but often not. We got a butternut squash at the produce market a few weeks ago, and Sarah wanted me to make soup out of it. When I did, everyone ate it, but no one really cared for it. That's kind of typical.

I'd like to make a roast chicken sometime, but it's stupid to do that when Jeff can't eat it. Of course, I'll be making a batch of pasties* sometime soon, so he could have one of those when I make chicken for me and the girls, and we'd just have lots of leftovers. I miss homemade chicken soup.

Yeah, maybe I'll do that sometime this month.

* Regarding the pronunciation of pasties: my mom once told me, "Past-ies are what you eat. Paste-ies are what Brooke Shields wore in The Blue Lagoon." I've never mispronounced it since. That also gives you an idea of about how long it's been that I've been eating pasties.

Homeschooling: Lesson Planning

Since Homeschooling is such a big part of my life right now, I'll probably devote several posts to it over the next month.

Today's is about Lesson Planning. I try to plan out lessons for the week over the weekend. I might make notes about things I want to do even after the next week, but if I get too far ahead, it gets too hard to stay on top of things. I use an Excel spreadsheet to plan things out for each day. I can link to online things, as well as things that are saved to my hard drive. I use one file per month, with a sheet for Sarah, a sheet for Lauren, and one for record keeping of how they do at online games.

We have several topics that we work on every day, because it's easier to spend a little time on them frequently than to devote bigger blocks of time less often. Repetition really does help, and although it may look like we do a lot, it still only takes 3 - 4 hours of our day. In spite of all that, there are many days when we don't do everything I have planned, and it gets pushed to the next day (usually) or dropped altogether (occasionally).

Favorite Writings

Best Novel I've Ever Read: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Best Non-fiction Book I've Ever Read: The Power of Myth By Joeseph Cambell & Bill Moyers

Favorite Short Fiction: Gertrude Talks Back, from Good Bones and Simple Murders, by Margaret Atwood

Favorite Poem: Invitation, from Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein

Favorite Fiction I've Read Recently: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Most Disappointing Recent Read: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Book I'm Most Likely to Check out of the Library Next Week: Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Book I'm Most Eagerly Awaiting: A Dance With Dragons by George RR Martin

The other pictures

I was getting my photobooks all set to go (MyPublisher's new software is nice, and something of an improvement), when I realized that it's set up so that the first page is a dedication page, with just text. That would be really nice for an introduction, or a recap of the year, except that that's what the pictures are for! I've gotten around it, but now of course I'm thinking about putting some text there after all, even though I have no idea what I'd write, and the books have to be submitted by tomorrow.

Anyway, here are the other two pictures from the photographer. Lauren's, I love. She's got a very familiar expression. Sarah's is nice, but the photographer had to retake some shots, because the first batch had the backdrop set too high, so you could see duct tape at the bottom. I don't think her personality shows through the way Lauren's does.

Christmas Pictures

I realized that I could just post a page a day from the Christmas album for the rest of the month, and that would take care of it. Tempting though that is, I've actually been thinking of things to write about.

Our last session to the photographer was a little frustrating. Although they have the nice backgrounds & the crate for the kids to sit on, and know how to pose them, they don't have time to make sure they get really great expressions. Don't get me wrong--I like the pictures, but I'm used to having to force myself to choose just three, instead of picking the only three that have good expressions.

Not sure yet how I like this sepia background, with the color popping up. This is going to be the first page of the album, with no other background, so I want it to look great.

The "Joke"

OK, so I've been reading about Kerry's botched attempt at a joke at President Bush, which came out as a dig at soldiers.

Taken at face value, the "joke" was insulting. I believe that he didn't intend it that way--he intended it as a slam on Bush. But even then, it doesn't really hold up. I mean, Bush was never a brilliant scholar, but he did go to college. So he does have an education. Also, military standards are higher these days. You don't go into the military because you're too stupid for anything else. So, dumb joke, however you look at it.

It's not like Kerry is the first politician to make a gaffe like this, and he's not the first one to be villified over it. I can't count how many lists of stupid things Bush has said there have been, and let's not forget Dan Quayle. Yeah, the guy made a lot of dumb flubs. And got raked over the coals for it. Why should Kerry be any different?

Maybe a mistake

I'm taking the girls to have Christmas pictures taken today. If I want to get those pictures into the annual album and have the albums ordered by Friday to take advantage of the 50% off coupon, pictures must be taken today. That means they won't be wearing Momma-made dresses. I can live with that. I'm having a hard time figuring out what they will wear, though. They don't have to be Bobsey Twins, as Jeff says, but they shouldn't clash, either, and it can be hard to put stuff together when you're dedicated to not buying anything new at this moment.

In anticipation of said photo shoot, I took them both to SuperCuts yesterday. Sarah got her hair cut there last summer, and it was cute, so I had no qualms about that. Lauren's only had her hair cut once, by the stylist Jeff & I go to (read: pricey), and her hair is naturally more of a challenge, with all the curl, but I just wanted it a little shorter, a little layered, to bring out some more of her curl again.

Now, her hair was pretty long. It was well down her back, and she frequently got compliments from strangers on how gorgeous it was, even when it was a crazy mess. The stylist asked how much length to take off, and I indicated about two or three inches, still leaving quite a bit. Well, she took off a good four inches. From the front, it looks like she has a bob. A cute bob, but still pretty short. The hair in the back is longer, but not by much, and it looks like an inverted triangle. It's odd, and I'm not sure how I like it, but we'll see how it turns out after I wash it this morning. Both girls love their hair, and that's what really counts, right? Right.

Oh, trick-or-treating. It was chilly, but not too bad (Monday evening was 66 degrees at 6:30, which was amazing). We went out with a neighbor from 6 to 7, and turned off our porch light at 8. Jeff said kids were coming to the door pretty much constantly while we were gone, and once we were home, Sarah & Lauren both scrambled to be the ones to give out candy. They had a pretty good haul, and now I'm glad I can take some time to get back into the swing of things. Let's just say that the state of the house makes it very apparent that I did a lot of sewing last week.