I did it . . .

You know that scene near the beginning of Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts, while covered in bubbles in an enormous tub, is negotiating her week-long price with Richard Gere? And once they come to an agreement, she squeals, "Holy shit!" then giggles & sinks beneath the surface of the water?

I feel a little like that right now. Of course, there's no Richard Gere, no enormous tub, and I'm wearing clothes. But I do have a bit of that giddy feeling.

I just ordered the bigger, 6x zoom camera. Eek! I'm really excited!

Control

One of the classes I work on at our homeschool co-op is Yearbook. It's been a huge amount of work, and next semester is going to be even more so, because we actually have to do all the layouts. Luckily, the guy who did it last year is doing it again next semester. Even better is that he now has a laptop, so the kids should be able to do a lot of the work themselves. So there is going to be another person to do a lot of the work--that's a good thing, right?

You don't know me very well, do you?

I want to be in charge of the yearbook. I like doing layout, and I want to be able to make sure that everything gets done. And, to be brutally honest, I want the accolades that will come with it. There, the ego has spoken. Of course, the ego is stupid. This is a huge amount of work, and I should be immensely grateful that I have someone who is willing to take it on. The fact of the laptop alone is a huge relief. I will still be involved in it, I just won't be the top dog. Damn, I hate that I hate that.

Greed

The Canon PowerShot A570IS has been on sale at Amazon for a while, and I told Jeff that it was all I wanted for Christmas. It's rather out of budget for what we usually spend on each other, but I told him that I'd use some of my leftover birthday funds to make up the rest.

It's a definite upgrade over my current camera, which is ok but not great. It's more megapixels (more than I really need, in fact), and has higher zoom, which I'm looking forward to. I'm also looking forward to hopefully doing better in low light situations, and being able to play more with the settings.

But then. Then I saw the Canon PowerShot A720IS. It has 8 megapixels instead of 7, but what really has me drooling is the 6X zoom. I love being able to zoom in from a distance and get in really close. It's also about $50 more. Much as I want that extra zoom, I can't justify the extra money. But I still covet it.

Free Passes

I hereby declare that 2008 will be The Year of the Museum. Our library is participating in the Detroit Adventure Pass, where you can "check out" free passes to 25 different local museums. Some passes are for two people, some for four, but since I can use Sarah's and Lauren's cards, as well as my own, to check out passes, it shouldn't be an issue. The passes are only good for one week, but we can go again and again. This is going to be awesome!

Home Ec

Home Ec is once a week, alternating between Cooking and Sewing. I've tried to tie the lessons in with Geography. The first week, we made a couple recipes from Amish Cooking for Kids, with moderate success. I'm a little skeptical of an Amish cookbook that calls for the microwave, you know?

Last week's project was Bandana Bonnets, keeping with the Pennsylvania theme. I made one for Lauren (she chose a very bright print, with "Love" written all over it), and Sarah made her own (from a more sedate blue/green). They turned out cute, but if I were to make them again, I would make the front part narrower. The proportions seem a little awkward. Also, I used fabric glue instead of fuseable web to attach the ribbon. I didn't want to do any more ironing, and I think glue holds better. She did a good job with it (sewing a seam, running elastic through the casing), and says that she likes the finished product, but not as much as she thought she would.

Tomorrow, she's going to make Pineapple Casserole to take to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. We got the recipe about a year ago from a woman at church, and have made it a couple times. It's kind of like a pineapple bread pudding.

I know, that doesn't tie in with Geography too much. We've been doing Arizona and Oklahoma last week and this (next week is Texas), and she's so not a fan of southwestern food. I'm going to look around for a Native American type sewing project for next week, unless I come up with something else. Oh, and I'll probably also show her how to make (not sew) a chiton, which I found in The Daring Book for Girls, to tie in to Ancient Rome.

Ultimate Resource

Holy cow, am I drooling. I just got Best books for children : preschool through grade 6 from the library. I thought it would be another nice list of fiction, like The Read-Aloud Handbook. What I got was an incredible reference book. It lists over 25,000 children's books, arranged by theme. It also has an author list and a subject index. Each book only has a one-line summary, but it's enough to get me to investigate more through Amazon.

Sadly, it costs $80, so I guess I'll be checking it out of the library periodically and getting ideas for books to last a few months.

And again

I should have mentioned that one of the reasons I got up so early yesterday is that Lauren again found her way into our bed in the middle of the night. I don't mind so much if it's early in the morning, but in the middle of the night, it really does interfere with my sleep.

So before bed last night, I told her that she needed to stay in her bed all night. And that I would make pancakes in the morning. Yes, I use bribery. Gonna make somethin' of it?

Sadly, the little cookie has gotten herself quite a cold. It can be hard to tell a cold with her, because she frequently has the runny nose due to allergies. She was really stuffed up last night, though. Even though I gave her some medicine, she was obviously having difficulty breathing through her nose. She was miserable, so I finally had Jeff bring her to bed. Laying down with me seems to help, although the mention that we had strawberries & whipped cream for the pancakes might have also had something to do with that.

Today, I am totally taking a nap.

Not much today

I had another one of those "wake up at 4, can't get back to sleep until 6:30, have to be to church by 8:45" mornings. So I'll probably be going to bed right after the kids tonight.

Last night, I had yet another "fall down go boom" incident. Luckily, all I did was skin my knee. It's moderately ugly, but not too painful.

In-Freaking-Credible

Beowulf. IMAX. 3D. AWESOME. Story? There was a story? Yeah, the story was ok, and some of the characters' faces were a little flat at times (the queen was the worst example), but that's not why you go. You go for the effects. And the effects rocked.

What we chose

For our anniversary this year (which actually isn't for another five weeks), we are going to dinner (Mongolian BBQ) and a movie (Beowulf at IMAX), which is typical. We're also going back to the hotel where we spent our wedding night, which we haven't done since our wedding. It's a little more special than usual, but still not a big trip or expense, which is exactly what I wanted at this point. My awesome in-laws will be here in about an hour to get the kids, wheeee!

Project Runway's Back!

Yay! Thoughts on last night:

Elisa--I thought it was interesting when she started rubbing grass stains onto the fabric, talking about using natural dye mediums like tea. I thought the blue dress she made was really pretty. Not wanting to finish the edges? OK, say you're going for "deconstructed," but know that it will get you kicked off eventually. Crazy will only take you so far. That train on the dress? Crazy. And you knew it. When you don't edit, you come off looking lazy. So step it up, and stop being such a Daniel Franco/Guadalupe.

Simone--boring and poor execution will trump crazy any day, and I wasn't surprised when she was sent home.

Rami--when I first saw him draping that gray fabric, I loved it. Then when I saw that he had changed it around, I was disappointed until I realized that I loved that version as well. When I saw the third incarnation on the runway, I really liked that, too. Man knows how to drape some fabric! I was glad he won.

Christian--I was expecting to be annoyed as hell at him, but I kind of liked his dress.

Jillian--I made the mistake of watching her submission video. She is annoying. Her voice drives me nuts. I seriously want to stick firecrackers in my ears every time I hear her. Luckily, she wasn't on much tonight, but I fear we'll be stuck with her a good long time.

The Pioneer Woman

I first discovered The Pioneer Woman Cooks, though I don't remember how I found it. But as soon as I did, I was hooked. Oh, the food! The pictures! The witty repartee! I want to cook it all.

Then I found the original. Ree sounds even more fun here than when cooking, and the story of how she met and fell in love with her husband, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, has me checking her page compulsively. Now I know how people in the 1800's felt while waiting for the next installment from Charles Dickens. Well, ok, not exactly. But now that Miss Doxie is posting very sporadically, this is my new favorite "voice." Enjoy!

3rd Grade Spelling

We're using this list, which I think has reasonable words. I like the way they're grouped, and that the choices are spelled out--ou or ow make the "ow" sound for this week.

Last year, I made an effort to make spelling interesting and fun. We'd do something different with her words every day: crossword puzzles, word searches, Scrabble tiles, secrete codes, etc.

Not this year. This year, I write the words on Monday and she has to copy them twice for handwriting practice. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, she writes them on the white board, and I help her if she has trouble. If she has a lot of trouble, she then copies them five times on a separate piece of paper. If she has a little trouble, it's only two or three times.

Spelling is easily her most difficult area. She really has a hard time with it. I don't know that this year's boring, repetitive approach is better--she's still barely getting a 7/10 average. It frustrates me a bit because I'm generally a pretty good speller. We'll see how the rest of the year goes.

Sewing

Sew, Mama, Sew Handmade Holidays-- 30 Days of Gifts to Sew!

Can you imagine how excited I was about this? Incredibly excited. Most of the tutorials haven't been earth-shattering (though I still want to try making some totes), but some of them could prove very useful.

One of the links took me to a tut about making a kid's belt out of fabric & a couple D-rings. Some of you might know that I have some skinny girls here, who constantly complain about the droopiness of their drawers. It appears to be very quick and easy; I'll post results once I get to it.

Geography--United States

For Geography, we're slowly making our way through the United States.

For each state, we read one of the alphabet series (M is for Mitten, L is for Last Frontier, G is for Grand Canyon). I also like the Welcome to the USA series, Portraits of the States, and Rookie Read About Geography. The Rookie series is a pretty easy level for Sarah; I like mixing it up a little, and a lot of the other books are considerably more difficult. We also used the Enchanted Learning site regularly.

I'm also trying to get as much fiction that relates to the state as I can. I came across a list from Scholastic last year, of books that "go with" each state, broken down by grades. It was a great find, but some of the books leave something to be desired. See the Yak Yak is a fun book, but I don't see what it has to do with Alabama. So I'm adding to the list as I go. Last week, for Pennsylvania, it was Shoo-Fly Girl by Lois Lensky. We're almost done with it. With longer chapter books like that, I'll usually read her a chapter at night, and then she'll go and read some more before she goes to sleep. I got Brighty of the Grand Canyon for Arizona this week, and that is a long book! We'll be doing Oklahoma next week, and I doubt we'll be done with Brighty by then, so we'll skip a long book for that one. I try to get more short/picture books that she can read to Lauren.

For each state, she

1. fills in a blank map, and draws the flag, describing it a little.
   
2. does a spider graph with basic information: capital city, climate, resources, landmarks, etc.
   
3. answers ten questions that came from the non-fiction books we've used. She's allowed to look at the books for the answers.
   

After we've done some more writing practice, we'll start including a paragraph for each one as well.

Last week, we also tied Home Ec into Pennsylvania. I found Amish Cooking for Kids, so we made a couple of recipes. We did have some limitations, though. The oven is still unreliable, so that let out making bread. There were several other recipes that called for using the microwave--not so Amish, methinks. We ended up making Vanilla Pudding on the stove. It tasted ok, but sadly, was not as smooth as it should have been.

I'm going to start making extra credit available as well. I borrowed a book called Geography Challenge, which has 190 questions. I've copied about 45 of them so far, and am going to print them on little slips of paper, then put them all in a container. She can pull one out and try to figure out the answer. Some of the questions require map work, but others will let her try some internet research skills.

It's a rather superficial study (just sounds really complicated), but I think it's fine for this year.

History--Ancient Rome

I was only going to give Ancient Rome a month, then move on to other ancient cultures before the end of the year, but I found a really good resource from the BBC. It's a little heavy on the "Rome in England" end, not surprisingly. I'd rather it have a little more about Roman life, and Julius Caesar (rather than so much about Hadrian's Wall and Boudicca), but it has a lot of materials for us to work with, and I think it'll do just fine. Actually, I was relieved to find something that had so much of the work already done.

If we do History twice a week, we'll be done with this unit in about two months. In addition to that site, I have a bunch of books from the library. The one I like best for this is My Best Book of Ancient Rome. For fiction, we'll read Galen: My life in Imperial Rome. We already read The Roman Twins, which was cute (and tied in nicely with our Poetry unit, since it's written in couplets). I also found a cool Construct an Aqueduct site. I'd like to try some recipes, but I don't know that they're feasible. As a final activity, we'll do a Venn diagram comparing life then and now, and a time line--that'll probably be the hardest part.

Changing a Tradition

For the past few years, I've been making photo albums as Christmas gifts. They started small, and have gradually grown. This year's album looks like it might have 29 pages in it (I might edit). I make them for our parents and grandparents, as well as one to keep for myself. In the past, the digital albums have been in addition to traditional scrapbooks. Lately, I've had less and less interest in traditional scrapping. The digital version is simply more appealing to me, and I've pretty much decided that I'll be doing that exclusively.

The only problem with the digital albums (other than not being able to incorporate actual physical objects, but I can deal with that), is that, in order to have them back by Christmas, I have to submit them by the middle of November. That means that Christmas photos have no place to go. I've always intended to do a "Christmas over the years" album (even when I was doing the hard copy scrapping, I kept Christmas separate), but it's not really the same.

So this year, I've decided that I'm going to go back to a "Year's Highlights" format for the gift albums, and I'm going to wait until January to submit my own album. That way, I'll be able to include all the end-of-year activities. This is going to be more expensive; in addition to not getting the discount for buying in bulk, my personal album is going to have a lot more pages (I'm predicting close to 40 for this year). Don't care!

To Grade or Not to Grade

This year, Sarah got a progress report, her first one. I started keeping track of her stuff fairly recently, but now the whole grades thing has really taken off. I've been keeping track of certain things for a long time: her Book Adventure points last year, her Math Magician scores practically since we started. But for the other stuff, I didn't assign grade values.

In some ways, homeschooling can be anti-grades. True understanding of the work is more important than a grade, right? Well, yeah, of course. That's true in any situation. But grading has had a few effects.

1. It's made me more accountable. I'm keeping better track of what we're doing, and I'm forcing myself to come up with concrete, objective, "grade-able" assignments.
   
2. Sarah seems more invested in how she's doing. Time will tell if that continues.
3. It's giving me a new place to go crazy with Excel. Seriously, I love setting up the formulas and formats so that all I have to do is plug in the numbers, and I get instant results.
   

I don't think every family needs to use grades, be they letter or number. In fact, they're kind of a crutch for me. Like the schedule I use that some of my homeschool friends really admire. Ha--I use that because I have to. If I didn't, nothing would get done.

As for Chicago, I love Chicago. Jeff suggested it early on, and I jumped on it. Then he reminded me that it will be cold there in late December/early January; I hate the cold. That makes Chicago a lot less appealing. It's still a possibility, but a slim one.

Suggestions?

Our tenth anniversary is coming up, and we'd like to do something special outside of our usual "dinner and a movie." We want to go some place for the weekend. We want to be able to drive for a day or less. Actually, the top contender right now is the Great Bear Lodge. It's reasonably close, and it's self-contained, so we wouldn't have to go out in the cold. There aren't any other "sights," though, and it would be fun to go someplace new. We've thought about Nashville or Kansas City, but I have no idea what there is to do in those places.

Any suggestions?

Story Time

Lauren is still young enough for Story Time at the library, but not for too much longer. I'm going to be sorry when that's over, because she really likes it. A few weeks ago, we started Story Time here at home, too. For about half an hour before lunch, Sarah reads out loud to Lauren. We have a bin of books from the library, and they choose from those. Sarah gets practice reading out loud, and they both really enjoy it. Sometimes they surprise me--in the second week, I had the adventures of Hercules for Sarah, but Lauren ended up requesting it pretty frequently.

Story Time also has historic precedent. When I was a kid, my brother was diagnosed as "hyperactive." My parents decided to forgo the Ritalin and do some other things instead. I vaguely remember some dietary changes (a different milk), and half an hour before bed every night, we would have Quiet Time. I'd get to do funny voices for the different characters, and he'd mellow out before it was time to sleep. It was a great bonding experience. When I found one of our favorites at a garage sale a few years ago (The Monster at the End of This Book, with lovable furry old Grover), the rush of memory that came flooding back was amazing. Those are the kind of memories I hope my kids will have.

I just got a poster for "100 Picture Books to Read in Kindergarten," along with stickers so that you can mark off the title when you're done with it. That'll give us fodder for quite a while! I'm so glad that I can reserve and renew books on-line. I love letting the librarians do most of the work for me! Sometimes it's a little embarrassing when I have over 15 books to pick up, though!

Lauren's current favorite is Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse--it came with an audio CD, and she is in heaven. I really need to start making more use of that medium.

Homeschooling: This Year

I really like The Well Trained Mind's attitude toward homeschooling. The general idea is to delve very deeply into subjects--really take your time with them and be thorough. Another concept is that History is the framework for most other learning, including Geography, Literature, and Science. They also advocate a cyclical pattern.

• First grade covers "the ancients" (science is about things the ancients could see: animals, plants, and the human body)
  
• Second grade is medieval/Renaissance (science is the earth and sky observations--thank you, Copernicus!)
  
• Third is 1600 - 1850 (time for basic chemistry: atoms, molecules, elements)
  
• Fourth is modern times (beginning physics)

The idea is that "these divisions correspond to the child's growing ability to think abstractly." The cyclic part is that when you get to fifth grade, you go back to the ancients, but start dealing with it more in depth, as better fits the child's capabilities.

I like this book and its ideas a lot. They make sense to me. I haven't followed them exactly, though. I've used it more as inspiration. For one thing, Sarah's already in third grade. I don't want to start in the middle, so I'm compressing things a bit. We did Greeks last month, Romans this month. Next month we'll cruise on toward the medieval period, and in the spring we'll get to the "correct" time period. This has an added benefit for Lauren. She'll be starting the ancients next year (and we will take the whole year to do it), but she already has some background, thanks to Sarah. Also, it'll be good review for Sarah next year.

I am using the Usborne Book of World History quite a bit. So far, I keep getting it from the library, but I really need to break down and buy it. I'm also trying to get lots of literature from those time periods.

We are doing different things for Geography and Science, but that's for another post.

A Typical Occurence

In which Lauren acts out of turn, but gets rewarded for it anyway. This is from a page that's going into the Christmas album, with a few edits.

We went to the symphony last week, and the conductor did an amazing job really engaging the audience. Little did we know that he would engage Lauren most of all!

He was talking to us about each piece, how the composer was creating imagery with the music, such as “Waltzing Cat,” and “Painted Desert.” After one rollicking piece, he asked some of the high schoolers what they thought the characters in that piece were doing. None of them had much of an answer, so Lauren yelled out, “Riding a horse!” He looked around and asked who had said that. He got her name and age, then teased the older kids that they had been “owned by a five-year-old.” Then he came back over and asked Lauren if she would marry him. She just smiled while everyone laughed. Later, he asked her about another piece, which she said made her think of God.

After the performance, he said, “I want three things: I want everyone to wait to be escorted out by an usher, I want to meet Lauren, and I want a big hand for our world class symphony!” After a big round of applause, we waited a little bit, and he did indeed come out to talk with all of us, which really made our day. We’re definitely looking forward to making the symphony a regular excursion!

So here's the thing. When I originally wrote this all down, I thought that Lauren had raised her hand and waited for him to notice her and call on her. Why I thought that, I'll never know, because Lauren is apparently incapable of waiting for much of anything, much less to be noticed. So while other kids were waiting, doing the right thing, Lauren did what you're always told not to do. And got to be the belle of the ball. I wonder if she were in public school, if she'd learn to restrain herself better. I really should ask her co-op teachers how that aspect of things goes, but I think I know the answer already. I do realize that she's only five, and I don't want to stifle that exuberance and enthusiasm, but I would like her to have better manners.

Obligatory Halloween Picture

That's Daphne (although she usually said "Daph-a-ne," which sounded like "Stephanie," so it was a little confusing at times), and the biker chick. The daylight savings threw me for a minute ("Isn't it usually darker when we go out?"), but I liked being able to see them for the first hour or so.

That didn't take long.

When Sarah had her first loose tooth, I swear it took weeks for it to come out. Lauren pulled hers out tonight while I was at work. Jeff said that the thought of the money the tooth fairy would bring her was very motivating!