Magic and Mayhem

Various members of our family are currently sick as dogs. Or sicker, actually, since Layla is perfectly fine.  I’m still battling it and it’s a proud moment that I’m even blogging at the computer right now.  I’m off to the couch again presently (after making food for Toria, who’s also still recovering from surgery).

We’re getting a lot accomplished despite our maladies, though.  Alex and I did speech practice on the couch.  I wrote out words for Jack to copy for handwriting and spelling practice.  And so on.

So my plans for the next day or two, sick or not, from the couch or not, are as follows…

• Assemble a list of inspirational people for each child to read about or research. They can decide how they’d like to start logging them, but I’d like to start doing character study as a part of our homeschooling.  There are just too many amazing people in the world whom we all should know about. 
• Find great quotes for Jack to copy for handwriting, spelling and character study (classic Charlotte Mason teaching there).
• Do some readers’ theater scripts on things like how bills are made into laws from the couches.
• Strew lots of books, fiction and not.
• Do poetry exercises with Anna on the couch each day. (Here’s my series of free lessons if you want to join in.)
• Have the kids do math apps on my iPod.
• Watch “Forks Over Knives” as assigned by a great homeschooling mom we know (whose partner was given a prescription to watch it by her surgery after heart surgery!).
• Rest, read, draw, talk, cuddle, laugh.

If you’re sick or on bedrest or that sort of thing, I have other ideas on how to homeschool anyway here.

Now I’m off to take care of Toria and perhaps sneak a bit of danish that made its way into the house.  I promise to chase it with something healthy. 

Here’s a fun way to test your history knowledge (and the kids’!) and start some discussions on the topics that come up.   Play the History Channel’s Ultimate History Quiz.   It’s 10 questions each on a variety of American history (from Charles Manson to Robert E. Lee).  The faster you answer the right answer, the higher your score.  You can even play against others!  Keep loading for more quizzes.

Egads, we’ve been busy! Here’s how last week looked for us…

Monday — Jack turned 9, Victoria graduated from archery class. We had a small birthday party, I baked a gluten free chocolate cake and made a special meal, Victoria had horse class and we all watched her archery tournament (she came in second in the class!).

Tuesday — Victoria turned 14. We had a small birthday party and I made a special-order cake (brown sugar cake with lemon curd filling and cream cheese frosting with a hint of grape juice from local vineyard grapes we gathered, pressed and canned ourselves in 2009 — best cake I’ve ever eaten if I do say so myself!).  I also made a special-order meal.

Wednesday — Victoria had surgery. We had to bring her in to the hospital at 6 a.m. and she needed an IV (which they could not get in and finally gave up on until after she was unconscious, poor girl) and a breathing tube.  The surgery took longer than expected but went well.  She emerged with a lot of stitches going down her jawline from her ear and a drainage tube that she had to keep for two days.  Recovery has been intense, scary and painful, though the worst seems to finally be past.

Thursday — Alex turned 5. I made a gluten free white cake with dairy free white frosting and his special meal. We drove to Marshall (an hour each way) and went shopping, played at a park and shot off foam rockets.

Friday — We drove 3 hours to the Minneapolis area to check into a hotel.  Friends took in Layla (our new pooch) for the stay.

Saturday — Daryl taught a historic telegraph presentation at a wonderful Civil War living history site known as The Landing.  We had a great time riding horse drawn trollies, exploring the site, talking to fabulous reenactors and playing.  Victoria’s friend Carmela met us there to come back home with us for a week.  We withstood torrential rains that ended the event early and drove 3 hours home.

Sunday — We drove an hour each way to Hanksa and  New Ulm (a wonderful German area).  We climbed to the top of the Herman the German statue and learned about Varus, the Romans, Herman and German-Roman history.  We played at the park, we gathered caterpillars, the girls found four and five leaf clovers and we had ice cream treats on the way home.

Today — I’m looking out my upstairs window at Victoria and Carmela dancing in the street.  They’ve also been lighting unknown things on fire.    Smoke bombs perhaps?  Daryl was out talking with them as they did it and I couldn’t see what the fun was.  Victoria has her horse class but I’m pretty sure they won’t let her ride because of her surgical ordeal.  Today is the last day and she’s been really looking forward to it, so I hope they work something out.  Who knows what other adventures we’ll work into the day!

This week – We’re going to Sioux Falls tomorrow (for the zoo and/or science museum).  Wednesday we’re hoping to visit the Petroglyphs.  Thursday Victoria gets her stitches out and we’ll probably go to a local state park and perhaps bring the girls’ bikes.  Friday, the kids will be attending the Science and Nature conference at SMSU.  Saturday, Daryl, Jack, Anna and Victoria will have photos taken for the new year of the Laura Ingalls Wilder pageant (roles to be blogged later!) and then we’ll drive up to Mankato to drop Carmela off with her folks.

Right now I have a sleeping baby in my lap and I have to go find out if I really killed the washing machine last night.  I seem to have overloaded it and it was trying to run away!    It smelled slightly of smoke so I’m worried I killed a belt.  Fingers crossed!  Then I really should make some mix and match quick bread and read to the boys and find some outside fun and clean the kitchen and figure out laundry and set up some homeschooling and post 10 ways to make the day magical and catch up on my columns…

Perhaps I’ll holding the sleeping baby a little bit longer...

I’m so behind in posting here!  Life has been busy, but in a good way.

Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to lately. There’s too much to narrow it down to ten!

1. Anna joined Daryl in taking part in Script Frenzy and wrote a screenplay.  She’s also writing a story.
2. Jack has been designing and constructing more and more elaborate LEGO structures, vehicles and inventions.
3. Alex has been playing phonics and reading games, such as sticking labels on things around the house (door, stove, sister…).
4. Victoria has been taking archery class.
5. Fiona is happily rolling over, babbling, sitting on her own and trying to put absolutely everything in her mouth.  She’s still a super happy baby and such a joy to all of us.
6. Jack  has been doing a math program with me so I can review it for my Examiner column.
7. Victoria has been doing math with an 18 year-old college kid online (for fun!).
8. Daryl, Victoria, Anna and Jack auditioned for the Wilder Pageant for another season.
9. Victoria, Jack and Anna have been doing photography.
10. We had a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis that Jack found outside last year!  We’ve kept it safe in a jar on a shelf in the living room all this time, because we knew that some take a very long time.  Anna noticed it (a painted lady) flying around the dining room window yesterday morning so Victoria carefully got it to climb onto her finger and she released it outside.  How’s that for magical — having butterflies appearing in your dining room out of the blue?! 
11. We’re going on lots of walks, hikes, picnics and excursions outside with Layla.
12. We went to the wonderful UU church in Hanska and afterwards made the trek to nearby New Ulm, where we had the most fabulous German food and played at the park.
13. We went to the Mall of America as our reward for doing 100 brave things as a family in “Do Something Brave Month.”  It was a fabulous time!

Here’s a few pics of the fun…

There is a ton of cool stuff planned for the next couple of weeks so we should be busy — but again, in a very good way. 

Latest writings…

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Help pick the 2012 National Homeschool Book Award

Have you been to Teachers Pay Teachers yet?  They have some great freebies and some great lesson plans, printables and more for low cost too.

Here’s a couple of the current freebies that I especially loved.

• Hunger Games creative writing unit

• Facebook timeline template

Also, I’ve been pinning oodles of cool homeschool pages on Pinterest if you’re on there.  Here’s my boards if you want to peek.

• Homeschooling (general)
• Preschool and Kindergarten
• Middle School and High School
• Homeschooling Science
• Homeschooling Math
• Homeschool Freebies

And I’m on these collaborative homeschool boards:

• Hands-on Science
• Hands-on History
• Learning with Literature

I also have boards on organic gardening, fun with kids, fun and learning for each season, gluten free and dairy free cooking, vegan cooking, all natural cooking, cooking with kids, yarn crafts, drawing and journaling, green living, cleaning and organizing, attachment parenting, babies and toddlers, projects, crafts and way too much more if you want to look. 

Things are going well here.  Life with our new dog is a lot of fun, and spring has given us all an extra bounce in our steps (not that Alex needs any extra bounces!).

(photo by Victoria)

I emailed this to Victoria and Anna this morning…

Today’s assignment (due by Thursday midnight):

1. Go to this web site on genetics.
2. Look around and learn a lot.  Play games and interact with it.
3. Write me a paper about genetics with a minimum of 500 words (you can cut and paste it here to get a word count).  It can be a paper on basic genetics or something specific that you learned on the site.  Spell check it and use correct punctuation, grammar and capitalization.

I will send it back to you with suggestions for improving it, if needed.  You’ll have Friday to improve it and fix errors and send it back.

Satisfactory papers will be rewarded with chocolate.

Love you.

~Mom

Our new dog has terrible grammar. She’s absolutely fabulous in just about every other way.  She’s loyal, loving, affectionate, playful, gentle, well trained…

But she does not understand the proper usage of the words “lie” and “lay.”

If you tell Layla (how ironically named!) to lie down, she stares at you blankly.  Tell her to lay down and she lies right down.

Ahem.

Only I would actually be bothered enough to correct my dog’s grammar!

I tell her that you lay eggs and you lie down, but she just flat out doesn’t care.

Good thing she’s so good at algebra. 

Want to help the kids know when to say lie, lay, laid and lain? Grammar Monster has an easy page on it.  Grammar Tips has a slightly more sophisticated version (complete with explanations of transitive and intransitive verbs) and this reminder:

Meet Layla, a rescued collie from an Iowa shelter who is 3 years old and a new member of our family. She is very loving, very well trained and very sweet and fun.  The kids are in heaven.

I grew up with dogs and have always wished we could have one.  The kids absolutely love dogs and have begged for years.  We kept saying it wasn’t practical for this reason or that reason to get one.

Sometimes you just have to follow your heart.

…And do lots of research, and talk it out agonizingly with your spouse for days in secret away from the kids, and pore through hundreds of PetFinder listings at dozens of shelters for the right fit…

She has lived with us for just over 24 hours but she has really made herself at home and even the cats have decided she’ll do.

She also acts as if we’ve been hers forever.

We have a dog.

It feels really good to finally say that again after all these years. 

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing that you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.

They invent.                They imagine.             They heal.
They explore.              They create.               They inspire.

They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

– Apple Computer Advertisement

Here’s a fun way to make a presidential timeline to help kids remember when presidents were in office.  The Mailbox magazine says:

Help students study the presidents of the United States with this handy timeline. Divide the class into eight groups and give each group a large sheet of red, white, or blue construction paper. Assign each group a span of years shown. Then have the group program its timeline section with the names and terms of the presidents inaugurated during that time period, along with any other significant historic events. Finally, tape the sections together in order, end to end, to create a large timeline to display in your classroom.

I’m having Daryl pick up some red, white and blue construction paper and putting this on the agenda for sometime soon.

Since everything takes me so much longer to get together, maybe I can figure on it getting accomplished around Memorial Day for some patriotic looking decor?