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Friday: art class


Monday-Wednesday: we took a "field trip" down to the Gulf Shores, where we camped for two nights, played on the beach, observed the banding of migratory birds (E got to hold and release a hummingbird!), visited (and climbed around on) the "Mystery Ship" washed ashore by Hurricane Ike, and toured Fort Morgan. E fished (and was very very excited when she caught one all by herself) and we had a great time. On the way down and back she read 4 books: The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck, Molly Pitcher: Young Patriot by Augusta Stevenson, The Mystery at Mt. Fuji by Carole Marsh, and Facing the Lion by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton.

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Tuesday: In preparation for our camping trip next week, read It's a Hummingbird's Life by Irene Kelly. Then we went over some of the reasons people went West that were covered in Araminta's Paint Box, and I told them there were some people who went unwillingly, then read The Trail of Tears by Joseph Bruchac. It's a good thing for Andrew Jackson that he's already dead, or E would have his head! And former slaves went, too, for their own reasons, as we learned reading Wagon Train: A Family Goes West in 1865 by Courtni C. Wright. Spelling and math, and then I read The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks by Katherine Paterson. Very rainy--we recorded 1.5" at our Weather Station.

Wednesday: Piano lesson and library.

Thursday:Read Calendar by Myra Cohn Livingston and Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington to T. Read some more of ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner. Spelling, and picked out Japan on the world map. Read Jim Haskins' Count Your Way Through Japan, The Stonecutter by Gerald McDermott, and Ina R. Friedman's charming How My Parents Learned to Eat. Then they colored Japanese flags and made little paper Japanese lanterns, and we went to mom's house for E's first sewing lesson. Currently E is reading on her own The Song of the Water Boatman by Joyce Sidman.

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Field trip today! We went to Turkey Creek and listened to a presentation on the Civil War in the area by two re-enactors, then played in the creek after a picnic lunch.

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Read Flash, Crash, Rumble, and Roll by Franklyn M. Branley and Sergio and the Hurricane by Alexandra Wallner, then Look What Came From India by Miles Harvey. Started on the War of 1812 with The War of 1812 by Lucia Raatma. That was all I intended to read today, but when we got to the part about the USS Constitution, E got very excited and told me all about the book she read on her own: The Story of Old Ironsides by Norman Richards. I was amazed at how much she remembered from the book! She wanted me to read it to her so I did. After lunch, she read a book to T: Angelina and the Butterfly by Katharine Hollabird, and had a spelling lesson. All our caterpillars have become crysalids and got moved into the butterfly habitat over the weekend. We also spent some time looking at a really fabulous huge stick insect on our screen door.

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Today we went to a workshop at the Botanical Gardens where the kids learned about the parts of a plant, the parts of a seed, and three ways to propagate plants (seed, cutting, & division). They got to actually practice these three methods and bring the plants home (though I'm sort of hoping the lima beans don't grow--yuck!) We had a picnic there and the kids ran around alot with all the other kids. I was going to do a bit on Aztecs when we got home, but my friend J pointed out that whereas it's 75 degrees today, tomorrow they're calling for snow flurries (yes, we have weird weather here). So E went over to G's to play out in the yard.

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Today has been one of those days. The kids haven't been exactly uncooperative, but they haven't been enthusiastic, either. Going from activity to activity has seemed like pushing water uphill. But we got a lot accomplished anyway. I guess there's only so much you can expect on a gloomy winter day.

We finished the Hopi Pueblo Village model, and glued some cornmeal all around it on the base to look like desert sand. Since it's Ben Franklin's birthday, we read Aliki's The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin, and Bryna Stevens' Ben Franklin's Glass Armonica. Then we watched a video of William Zeitler playing "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from the Nutcracker on an armonica (which it was originally written for) and a short little History Channel bit about the armonica. They also tooled around on a virtual armonica, and we got out the wine glasses and played around with different levels of water to get different pitches and so forth. This really entranced E for a long time, but T didn't like having to keep his fingers wet, so he went back to the virtual version. E did her math, and everyone watched Peep, and then after lunch we explored more homonyms in Allan Fowler's 1-One-Won! and did some reading and experiments with Salvatore Tocci's Experiments With Air. Finally, E copied out her poem, and I made her a Hopi dress (following the very simple directions in More Than Mocassins by Laurie Carlson--only I used some fabric ("Too itchy!"--it figures!) I had instead of a towel.) Oh, and we made pine cone bird feeders and watched birds for a bit. I really don't know how we managed to do so much--some days it works. Today didn't feel like a day that was working, but I guess it couldn't have been that bad.

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Read a little more from Galen by Marissa Moss, then Neptune by Larry Dane Brimner and Judy Hawes' What I Like About Toads. Then I read Let's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans, and gave them the starter rock collection I got from rocksandminerals.com. They have a set of rocks, minerals and fossils that goes with activities in the book How the Earth Works by Michelle O'Brien Palmer. We labeled the rocks and minerals and I let them play with them and the info cards (from the O'Brien Palmer book) till lunchtime. After lunch, E did her math and several grammar pages, and then we went to Dance and Tumbling classes.

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E read Snakes Are Hunters by Patricia Lauber by herself this morning while I read Lauber's An Octopus is Amazing to T. Then I read a bit more from Galen: My Life in Imperial Rome by Marissa Moss and Linda Hoban's Spend the Day in Ancient Rome. Then we made bullas out of clay, and E did math while T watched Peep. E picked Jupiter to learn about next so I read Jupiter by Larry Dane Brimner.

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Today we tried a workshop at the Botanical Gardens, studying the life cycle of the mealworm and other insects. It was a bit of a bust for 3 reasons: 1) it was bloody cold out there, and of course E, convinced that she is always too hot (though she hasn't an ounce of body fat anywhere) dressed inappropriately; 2) she wasn't all that interested in the life cycle of the meal worm (can you imagine?) and 3) it was kind of worksheety. But it was free so at least it had that going for it.

When we got home we watched a fascinating Discovery channel program called If We Had No Moon. Apparently, without the moon, Earth would be pretty much uninhabitable, by our kind of creature, anyhow. Also, the program featured several kick-a** women scientists, so I give it several thumbs up! Then when Alan came home, they built a set of panpipes (instructions here), though Alan's the only one who can really play them well, and we listened to some ancient Greek music at this cool site.

27--The bad attitude monster strikes again!

Well, yesterday just started out bad. I was sick, for one thing. Then I discovered not one, not two, but three secret caches of toys, dirty clothes, and general STUFF that E had hidden instead of putting away when she cleans her room (probably been going on for at least a week). It was all put into a giant trash bag, which she was made to put away later, on HER time. She was also grounded from reading for a day, which you would have thought she was going to call Child Protective Services about, she wailed so loud. (I've since come up with a better punishment, and I told her if she failed to pass inspection on any given day, {and I'll be looking for the secret caches} she would have to clean her room AND T's room the next).

Needless to say, after all this she was rather uncooperative and balky, and was just not listening to the story for narration. So I lost it, and told her if she'd rather go to public school she could. After I calmed down, I said to her "You know, when you were a baby, I fed you everything you ate. But now you're a big kid, and you feed yourself. I buy the food, fix it, and put it on the table, but you are responsible for eating it so you don't starve, and no one forces you to eat. It's the same way with your education. I can't force you to learn. I can gather knowledge and try to present it in a fun, interesting way, but it's up to you to learn it. You can make your education happen, or you can starve your brain and be ignorant, but it's your education and you have to participate if you want to get anything out of it."

After this little speech she was a lot more cooperative and even (somewhat suspiciously) enthusiastic. But we didn't have much more morning left at that point, so I had her do a leftover Egyptian math sheet, and had her write some numbers in arabic numerals and Egyptian numerals to show her the benefits of our system (99 in Egyptian is something like nnnnnnnnniiiiiiiii). Then I read Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Nancy Ellwood and Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. Then they colored leaves and made leaf men of their own, an activity I found at the book's website. After lunch, we went to their dance and tumbling classes.