Magic and Mayhem

Oh, we’ve been busy!  I’m still sick but quite a lot is going on nonetheless.  Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to.

Maple Syrup Tapping

We took part in an annual tradition of having a big community breakfast and then learning about tapping maple trees at a nearby camp.  The girls know it by heart by now but we always have a ball.  Jack made a new friend and they played together outside.

Microscope Ecology Trek

The kids took part in an activity where they learned the history of microscopes, trekked through the woods collecting cool samples and then looked at their bounty under microscopes.  They drew and identified the goodies.

Prairie Grammar

Daryl made up a bunch of pages of grammar lessons based on Anna’s favorite book series, the Sadie Rose books.  She’s over it, though!  LOL  Anna much prefers to learn organically through writing, reading and doing.

Pirate Grammar

Victoria is still doing the 60 or so pages of pirate grammar that Daryl got for her.  She likes it and always finds a way to make the answers silly.

Computer art

Victoria has gone to town taking pictures, finding images and then creating new images by splicing things together.  She’s doing optical illusions, wacky pictures, you name it.  She created a unicorn with Alex’s head for Anna to use as wallpaper on her computer settings.  Anna and Jack have started doing computer art of their own with special effects like oil painting looks.  They’re already able to do things Daryl and I can’t.

Testing

Still plodding away at the tests.  Yesterday was too busy but Victoria did the reading comprehension test this morning.  I’m planning on doing one or two sections with each girl later today.  They like to gleefully point out how ridiculously easy it is.  Snort.  Show offs. 

Reading

I am reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler to Anna as a bedtime book.  Victoria just finished the next Molly Moon novel and is impatiently waiting for the next to arrive via interlibrary loan.  She loves that series.  Jack just gets piles of picture books read to him.  One current favorite is No Matter What.  (I am reading Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn and discussing it online, along with a pile of decorating books and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, which is not nearly as fun.)

100 Birds

Daryl set a goal for seeing/identifying 100 birds this season.  He has started a list and we already have a good number of interesting birds on it, from bald eagle to grackle to kestrel.  Victoria is enjoying helping him look new specimens up in the bird book.

Snow and mud

We’ve had spring mood swings galore over here, with balmy days followed by snowstorms.  The kids have been able to play in snow, mud, slush, grass, ice and gigantic puddles.  My kitchen floor reflects this. 

Money

Jack and Anna have been making money, making stores and trying to do commerce in any way for days.  Annalee is simply destined to go into retail or fundraising.  She just loves to make, buy and sell things and to rack up money.  I’m trying to find new and creative ways to meet that need, since we’re all getting tired of her trying to charge us for art, carnivals, beads, favors and anything else she can think of.  I’m thinking of signing her up for Girl Scouts next year since around here the cookie drive is huge.  That always bugged me but she loves selling things so much (whether she gets the money is secondary) that it might be a good fit.  I was also thinking of some sort of charitable fundraiser or walkathon.

Bird & animal ID

Jack and I looked around the ecology center yesterday while the girls were doing their microscope workshop.  They have a lot of mounted critters like owls, fish, racoons and other native birds and animals.  They had a Great Blue Heron and we looked at it up close and talked about how we’d seen one flying nearby on our drive over.  Then we used their specimen sheets and crayons to draw our own funny bird and animal breeds.  Jack quizzed me on them, saying things like “Okay, which one do you think is the most complicated?”.  <G>

Japanese

The girls didn’t  have Japanese class last week but I bought some neat Japanese books and they’ve been looking at those.  Victoria has been reading a book about the right thing to do in different cultural situations in Japan, and she loves it.  We also got a Japanese picture dictionary and she noticed some disparities between the words Kenai has taught them and ones the book mentions.  We’re bringing the book to ask her about it Friday.

Imaginary numbers

Daryl taught Victoria about the meaning of i and imaginary numbers.   She has started to quiz Jack and Anna about things like the square root of -25 and so she’s now taught them about imaginary numbers.

Math quandaries

We got into a discussion in the car yesterday about why Anna will not always be double Jack’s age.  It was really confusing Victoria that it could only be true sometimes, so we got into a deep discussion of why that was.  We ended up figuring out what ages each of the kids would be double each other’s ages and talking about ratios and such.

And now…

The kids are cleaning the table downstairs so we can do a little art.  We’re going to look at some Picasso and then the kids are going to try their hands at painting in his style.  I also have to put some laundry in, vacuum, clean the front porch and play with a baby.  Maybe not in that order.