Magic and Mayhem

Here’s a quick and fun way we did math today.   Victoria and Jack helped me draw circles in sidewalk chalk on the driveway and write numbers in them, and then we played a hopping great math game with them.

For Jack, I said things like “take away 4″ from the number he was on and he had to hop to it.  For Victoria, I just called out random math problems, mostly division.

It got tricky when they had to hop around each other or fit in the same circle.  The hopping was their favorite part!  Except for Victoria, who is far too mature and sophisticated to enjoy hopping in chalk circles, of course. 

Here’s a bit more of what we’ve been up to of late….

1.  Jack and I watched this invisible octopus since we were talking about the way sea creatures use camouflage recently.  Can you believe that it can do all of this and can only see in black and white?!

2.  Victoria got a new bike at a garage sale.  She bargained it down from $15 to $10.  After $1 worth of repairs with Daddy, it works great.  She loves it!

3.  We watched a parade for our town’s “Fun Days.”

Small obligatory rant:  Why do people in small town parades insist on throwing cheap candy into the street for the children to crawl around and dart out to retrieve when things like THIS are coming down the street???

4.  Alex and I spent part of the afternoon today chatting with his girlfriend and her mother.  The love of Alex’s life has moved in next door, you see.  She has wispy red hair and is 19 months old.  She talks much more than Alex does but he makes up for it in silly dances and smooches for her.  He does not love her enough to share his dinosaur, but he comes running when he hears her name.  He even serenaded her under her window with a song and dance after she went inside the other day.  :)  He’s smitten.

5.  Victoria made some earrings for our fabulous friend Nancy and donated beads to her son Miles.

6.  Anna hit garage sales with Daddy and came home with earrings, nail polish and other goodies.  She offered pedicures to everybody, including Nancy’s son Logan (who has been smitten with her since toddler years and would probably happily let her paint his eyelids). 

7.  Jack, Anna and Logan made their own pretend house in the back yard, complete with imaginary walls.  They also tried to build a tree house but still need to perfect their plans for that project.

8.  Daryl, Anna and Victoria are heading into the last week of rehearsals before the Wilder Pageant begins.  It’s been dress rehearsals every night and home late.  Victoria has been feeling especially burned out lately.  She loves all the friends she has at the pageant but it’s such a time commitment.  Anna has yet another new best friend in the cast and seems to be as gung ho as ever.  I think once performances start, it’ll all be worth it for all of them.  Opening night is a week from Friday!

9. Daryl picked up some badminton rackets and birdies at a garage sale and taught us all to play.  We have no net yet, so playing consists of heading to the school field across the street and bopping birdies up in the air at each other.  It works.  Not well, but it works!  We’re looking for a cheap net somewhere to take it to the next level though!

10. Swimming, trips to the lake, playing, bike riding, reading, walks, playing with friends outside, painting, shopping, gardening, climbing trees, playing catch, playing online, doing chores, writing letters, calling friends, doing workbooks, drawing, coloring, finding bugs, taking pictures, making up games, talking, fighting, making mud, bouncing on the trampoline, watching TV, playing with kittens and chickens, dressing up, watching fireworks, running errands, jumping rope, splashing in puddles, riding scooter, racing barefoot in the grass and occasionally collapsing in a bit of this…

Today was a good day.  We went strawberry picking, saw friends, hit the farmers’ market, got good deals on groceries, saw cool sheep, got a new (free) microwave and nobody even fell out a window.

I can’t think of a single educational thing that happened (even the strawberries were an even dollar a pound so there were no math opportunities!) but given enough time I’m sure I could spin some fabulous history, social studies, spelling, you name it.

Um….

Ah, the heck with it.  It was a beautiful day at the end of June, and some days simply should NOT be educational. 

I’ve been rather lazy about blogging lately.  Part of it is that we’ve been so busy.  Part is that it was so hot.  And part is that I’ve just been out of the mood.  I’m patient, though.  I figure the mood will come back. 

But in the meantime, here’s a little catch up about what’s new here.

1.  They’ve changed my blog and I’m having a hard time with the new format.  It looks mostly the same on your end, but behind the scenes it’s like suddenly having a whole new face, voice and attitude on your husband.  I know it’s the same deep down, but I can’t find my footing yet.  I keep frowning at it and going away.

I don’t get all the symbols and sections.  I can’t type my usual rapid-fire way because it can’t keep up and if I make a mistake it takes 30 seconds for it to slowly back up and by then I’ve been too impatient and have hit backspace too many times and I’ve deleted my whole first paragraph.

This will take a little getting used to.  I may mope.  I’ll get over it, but I am darn good at moping and may even glare at my computer screen for a few days.  It’s how I am. 

2.  Both girls failed swimming.  My poor girls.  I don’t even know why, since they have become excellent swimmers and they were enjoying everything they were taught.  The only consolation is that it seems that almost everybody else in both classes failed too, which makes me think that:

a) they do not have realistic expectations

and/or

b) they do not have competent teachers.

This was Victoria’s 5th year and Anna’s 4th.  They both passed every single section of skills they were expected to master, but apparently missed one of the long lists of skills they were supposed to string together.

I believe it was something along the lines of  “Student will execute a shallow dive into the water, swim underwater to the other side, bark like a seal, backstroke back, turn into a magical pony, spit diamonds out of her ear, touch the bottom, hold her breath for 16 minutes and recite Keats while doing the breast stroke back.”  Or something like that.  I could be a little off.

3)  Jack quit T-ball.  Good grief, this boy makes me crazy.  (Yes, it’s all about me.)  I’m not even sure why.  All I know is that he got grumpier and grumpier about going and Daryl finally got tired of putting on his SuperDaddy hat and trying to make it fun enough.  My boy can be sweet and loving and funny and charming, but he can also be stubborn and sullen and dramatic and scowly.   T-ball was bringing all of that out in him, and I need to save my battles for the 80 things that are more important, like baths, vegetables and not whacking your sister.

4)  The girls finished their California Achievement Tests and they’re on their way back to Oregon or wherever they come from.  The tests, not the girls.

5)  The microwave died today.  I am not taking it well.

6)  Victoria and I converted percentages, decimals and fractions while walking around town today, and multiplied them.  I made it all into sales talk, because you may think you don’t need to multiply 80% by 65.5 until you run into a clearance sale at Dillards and it’s 80% off these snazzy jeans that were ridiculously priced at $65.50 to begin with and you still don’t know if you can afford them. 

7)  Jack’s reading is really taking off.  We have been reading together a lot and I love how he jumps in.  We read a really fun poetry book about spleens and things tonight.  I finally know what spleens do, or at least the part that rhymed happily in two stanzas.

8)  There is lots more — V’s lovely new bike that she bargained down, playdates and HyperDash and seedlings and art… but I am still scowly about this new format and tired of waiting for backspaces and typing in this odd little gray box.  (You SEE where Jack gets that scowly business?!)  Besides, this has gone on really long and has no pictures and there is probably not a soul reading it. 

Tomorrow I will try to be shorter, prettier and wittier.  Wait, I will try to make my POST all of those things.   Oh yes, and less scowly.

Here’s a page where you can find more natural ways to repel ants (and a few other pests).  I do not recommend using borax around kids, however.  It is natural, but it is a poison and an irritant.

Victoria had so much fun with the chalk ant maze that I wonder if we could dream up some sort of cinnamon versus pepper experiment or something.  Which substance will they avoid the most?   We’ve had some ants in the house lately, trying to escape the wet weather.  We could see if vinegar repels them better or talcum powder…

And then I really think I’m done with ants for a while!  Unless someone knows of a good recipe for replacement gel for a gel ant farm…  The Jello experiment was really not such a good idea.   They sank in it!  

It’s not usually hard to find fun ways to homeschool in the summer time, but here’s a few ideas I had for spicing things up around here.

1.  Have a trivia obstacle course.  Set up an assortment of balance beams, hula hoops, kiddie pools and other props in some sort of fun way and get a stack of question cards from any educational game you happen to have (Kids’ Trivial Pursuit, Brainquest Cards, flash cards, that geography game you always meant to play…) or just make up some on your own.  Now challenge the kids to run the course, stopping at each station to answer a question before being able to move on.  Give one child a stop watch and the job of recording times.  Each child gets to run the course three times (with new questions each time) and keep his/her best score.

2.  Give the kids colored chalk and ask them to decoratively cover the driveway with math facts. 

3.  Play FBI Most Wanted with garden bugs.  Give the kids a bug ID book and a bug box, net or jar.  Tell them they’re agents who have to rid the garden of evil.  Their assignment (should they accept it) is to find bugs, look them up and ascertain if they are on the side of good or evil in the garden.  Bad bugs should be captured and sent to prison (a location away from beloved garden plants).  Have them make up ID cards with pictures and descriptions of any criminals they catch.

4.  Spray math.  Put kids in bathing suits.  Turn on the hose.  Ask rapid fire math questions.  They have to answer in under 3 seconds.  Wrong answers or missed answers get sprayed!  Make sure you play this on a really hot day when it’s not so bad to get sprayed!

5.  Give the kids an outdoor thermometer and have them see how wide of a range of change in termperature they can find outside.  Help them hypothesize about the difference between full shade and the sunniest spot, and guess the temperature to begin with.  Place bets about what the temperature will be at 6 o’clock and at sunset.  If you’re up for a little flashlight science, have them perform the same tests after dark.  Is there still a difference in warmth in places that were in the sun all day?  If so, is it as much?  Is it warmer right in front of the flashlight?  Then head inside and see if it’s warmer or cooler in bed. 

Beta mentioned getting ready to start an earth science unit the other day when I posted the geology cartoon.  Here’s another fun way to introduce the unit.  Make meteorite candy!

This activity has been designed as a comfortable introduction to describing meteorites. It helps students become better observers by making a connection between the familiar (candy bars) and the unfamiliar (meteorites).

Edible “rocks” are used in a scientific context, showing students the importance of observation, teamwork, and communication skills. Using everyday terms, students draw and describe the food.. They attempt to match their observations with short descriptions written in geologic “Field Note” style.

These six candies most closely represent meteorite characteristics:

1.  Peanut Brittle (chondrites)

2.  Rocky Road (chondrites)

3.  Thick Bar, Solid Chocolate (iron without fusion crust)

4.  3 Musketeers TM (achondrite with fusion crust)

5.  Rice Cereal Treats (meteorite regolith breccia)

6.  Chocolate brownie (carbonaceous chondirtes)

Get the lesson plan (and recipes) here.

Here’s a good way to start a rock study unit. 

(source)

Common sense is apparently not completely dead in our judicial system.  The Supreme Court ruled that the AZ school that searched a 13 year-old girl down to (and including) her bra and underwear while looking for the equivalent of two Advils violated her rights.  Two lower courts had found in favor of the school.

“Wilson’s treatment of Redding was abusive and it was not reasonable for him to believe that the law permitted it,” Ginsburg said.

More on the story here.

The other day I posted about telling the kids that ants supposedly won’t cross a chalk line and how Victoria wanted to make up ant mazes to try it.  Well, yesterday she did!  Here’s the video result.  Apologies in advance– I am very loud and she is very quiet!  My video camera is not exactly sophisticated. 

And just as we were standing there talking, an ant ran the maze so I got it on tape!