Homeschool Distractions

Snowmageddon 2012

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:48:00 +0000

We waited for the anticipated snow with hesitation. So often the forecasted snow turns out to be little more than a dusting, a couple inches at most.

Tuesday brought exactly that...2 inches of snow everywhere but our yard. You see, we have about a dozen tall fir trees beside and behind our house sheltering our yard. While our neighbors' yards were covered in the beautiful white stuff, our yard was almost entire green with grass. Still we bundled up to go play in the street. Happily, we were invited to enjoy the snow in our neighbor's yard.

We built in a small snowman with strawberry eyes, a baby carrot nose, and fir cone mouth; it stood for a hour or two.

Tuesday night and Wednesday was expected to bring the most snow. We all climbed into bed with high hopes, and we weren't disappointed. We awoke to find 13 inches of snow covering our yard; I didn't measure elsewhere, but I know other yards must have had at least 15 inches given the differences from the day before. We were ecstatic. No one cared much that we couldn't drive out to find a hill to sled on. Sam and I walked a mile to Cutter's Point Coffee to enjoy hot chocolate and a pastry. When we returned, Mika and Scott headed out for their own trip. Meanwhile, I bundled the littles up and took them out to play. It was an enjoyable day.

Maddie loved the snow. She's yelling at me in this photo that she fell down (and couldn't get back up). I had to get my photos first.

Old Zach turned into a puppy again. He loves the snow! I was riling him up and throwing snow at him.

Gracie, on the other hand, did not like the snow. I brought him out there to see what he thought, and he was freaked out. He didn't seem to know which way to go or if he even could go. I rescued him pretty quickly.

Later Scott took Maddie back outside to play some more. While he was out there, he built a much better snowman than I. It had four balls of snow, was taller than he, and had the cutest big nose and hair.

By evening, it was quiet and peaceful and wonderful out there. Just like a winter postcard.

But then the ice storm hit, leaving a quarter of an inch of ice on top of the snow. We have one tree with thin, light colored branches that was beautiful. Each branch and twig was fully encased in a clear ice tube. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture. Beauty aside, the ice storm brought an end to the delight.

We lost power at 6:30am Thursday morning, when the house was still at overnight temperatures. We weren't worried. We had some wood and some blankets. Our gas stove could be lit manually for hot water and cooking. No big deal. We sat in the darkened house, playing games, using our gadgets until the batteries wore out, and listening to large tree limbs crashing down into the yard or onto the deck periodically. The big kids tried playing a few board games.

I spent a good portion of my time cooking meals and heating water to do the dishes. I took a walk to the store for some food for the day (we had plenty of food but not the kind you can easily prepare in the dark without electricity and only a stove). I brought back hot dogs, chips, and cookies for dinner and a bundle of wood. Later, Scott headed out and brought back another bundle of wood. The house was getting colder so we bundled up and tried keeping everyone in the school room where the fireplace is.

Here's our candlelight hot dog dinner.

After dinner, we pulled out every sleeping bag, comfortable, quilt, blanket, afghan, and throw we owned. Our plan was to camp out by the fire with Scott trying to keep the fire through the night if he awoke. I couldn't get the littles to sleep so we ended up moving to the master bedroom. On the bed we had a sheet, a summer weight quilt, two twin comforters turned sideways, and an open sleeping bag. It felt like we were sleeping under a ton but we were warm. The big kids and Scott each had at least three blankets and the fire but it wasn't enough to keep them warm.

We woke up to no power and the thermostat at 51 degrees. We called the power company and were told to expect at least another day without power (205,000 homes in three counties lost power). We couldn't get the littles to stay under the blankets. We decided it was time to leave. So, we put out a call for shelter and got several offers. After packing a couple of backpacks with underclothing, pjs, technology for keeping the kids busy, some pillows, and Josh's carseat, we hiked four blocks to Safeway where a friend picked us up in two trips.

Our power came on briefly Friday and went out again. It came back on Saturday morning, but we stayed with our friends until after dinner to ensure it would stay on, to give the house time to heat back up, and to help eat the dinner started just before the heat returned (way too much food for their small family).

We were so thankful to come back home Saturday evening. We picked up some of our camp out, enjoyed some dessert, and headed to bed. Sunday we lazed about because we were still rather tired. Today, I headed out to inspect the damage and start clean up. Here's what I found:

Several large branches fell in the front yard. To the right, you'll see a branch arc off the side of the photo. It impaled itself several inches deep. The green patch in the center is large and small branches of fir about a foot deep.

Here's an overview of our backyard. There's a large branch behind me as well.

Here's more of the backyard. It's kind of a mess back there, too.

The deck sustained only minor damage. There are three small splinters/chunks missing from the horizontal rails. The hand rail on one side of stairs is split down the middle as well.

The bad news: Scott lost a week of work and his car is very dead.

The good news: I have great neighbors and friends. My neighbor, John and I, helped another neighbor I hadn't met yet clear her driveway so she could get to work again. Then he came over and helped me with the front yard. He cut the larger branches into firewood I need to stack for seasoning. He also let me use his wheel barrow for hauling the small stuff. He's going to come help me with the back yard also. He also offered to let me borrow his van when I need it, provided insurance is ok. Another neighbor offered me rides to the store or wherever if I need it. Several homeschool moms offered husbands and brothers to help us fix our car (though it is unlikely to be fixed because it has a different kind of transmission that requires computer aided installation and programming.)

Challenges

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:55:00 +0000

I'm trying to get us back onto a routine. It's been challenging for more reasons that just Christmas break and winter blues. The vertigo I suffered from five years ago seems to be back. I'm going to rattle on about that in this post, giving the history, symptoms, and possible causes. It's gonna be long. Obviously, you don't have to read this or any other post; feel free to skip it. If you, too, suffer from vertigo in any form maybe you'll be comforted by the knowledge that you are not alone. If you feel moved to pray for me, I would definitely appreciate that.

I've been susceptible to motion sickness my entire life. Get me in a car for more than an hour, on a hot day, or on windy roads and I'd be sick. I never actually threw up, just wished I could. I'd read in the car just so I could feel sick faster and fall asleep. Put me on a boat and I would throw up. Put me on a plane and I'd feel sick too. Now that I'm driving, I can handle car rides better but I've found that if I start out driving the damage accumulates and I get sick in the passenger seat quite quickly. Fortunately, the discovery of ginger capsules have made car, sea, and air sickness a thing of the past.

Despite the motion sickness issues, I've always loved amusement rides and could ride them all without problems. As an adult, I have an increasing list of rides I cannot go on. Teacups, spinning rides of any kind, are a no go. I have to be careful of rides that put too much force on my neck so if I ride has seats that support the head, I'm more likely to be ok riding it. I'm sure I'll have fewer and fewer ride options as time goes on.

So, getting sick from motion is nothing new. Having the world move on its own accord and getting sick from that is fairly new.

I'll never forget my pregnancy with Joshua. It was the best pregnancy because my morning sickness was well controlled. Then the vertigo hit. I woke up one morning and the world was spinning very fast at a 45 degree angle. I couldn't move. I found that the only thing I could do was lay as still as humanly possible on one side. I could not lay on my stomach, back, or the other side. Any movement, no matter how small, sent the world spinning. As I laid there, I waited as long as possible to go to the restroom because doing so meant I'd other being peeing in the toilet and puking in a bowl, or puking in the toilet and peeing my pants. It lasted for 48 hours. I'd wake up on day three totally fine. Three to six weeks later, the cycle repeated itself.

With recurring vertigo, I went to the doctor and saw my ENT. They did hearing tests and may have done other non-invasive tests. There were some tests that they couldn't do because I was pregnant. We found no answers. I was given meclizine, which didn't help, and sent home.

Towards the end of my pregnancy, the vertigo disappeared just as suddenly as it had come. Over the next four years, I had what I would consider normal dizziness. Sometimes if I turned my head wrong while lying down (lying on my side and turning to look behind me) or getting up too fast, I would have momentary dizziness that immediately went away. Then we moved.

The new house grew mold on the windows during the winter. That is common here in Washington. However, this mold proved to be different. Because all of the blinds were drawn, I didn't notice it. Then I woke up with vertigo one morning. I also somehow noticed that the windows were moldy. I bleached the windows, and the vertigo went away, not to return for three weeks. I woke up dizzy again and found mold in the same staged of growth as before. Bleaching the windows resolved the vertigo for another three weeks.

We moved out of there two and a half months ago. Almost immediately, my normally congested nose felt better. (The other house was also very dusty.) But in December, I got hit with vertigo pretty hard. On day three, it was so bad that I drove myself to the doctor as soon as I was upright and safe to drive. While there, I tried to lay down, which caused a horrible spin, quickly followed by puking, which lead to a shot of phenagren and having to call my husband to come pick us up. The doctor gave me prescriptions for meclizine and valium and sent me home with a tentative diagnosis of Meniere's Disease (not good!). Three days later, I was finally back to normal with the help of meclizine to help me out of bed.

Dizziness visited me again this week...for eight days. It's been mild compared to previous bouts. Meclizine has been my friend. Usually I've needed it first thing in the morning (take it and stay in bed for half an hour waiting for it to work) and sometimes again in the afternoon. But I've been partially functional in that I'm up and can make a meal or two. This week was different, though, in that I also had a moderately bad headache all week, as well. And I think the trigger was the ocular migraine I gave myself on Sunday by not eating lunch before 2pm (guaranteed ocular migraine trigger).

Yesterday and today have been better. I'm not 100% but I'm definitely better.

So, all this has given me the motivation to make major changes. If the doctor is right and I have Meniere's Disease, the vertigo will likely get worse and I'll likely lose at least some of my hearing in the affected ear (my right). I'm not sure he is right, though, because I don't have any hearing loss that I'm aware of and I pass hearing tests just fine to the amazement of my ENT (my ear drums are in horrible shape from ear infections). It is possible not to have hearing loss in the beginning stages though so it is possible.

Another possibility I've stumbled upon is vestibular migraines, also know as migraine associated vertigo. Apparently, migraines can come in the form of vertigo with or without headaches. They can also have tinnitus (I've had for many years), aural fullness, and other symptoms. In other words, they look a lot like Meniere's. the difference is that migraines are MUCH more common than Meniere's. I think this is more likely my issue, in part, because I had classic migraines as a teen and into my early 20's. They are triggered by stress. As those reduced in frequency, I started having ocular migraines. Low blood sugar is the primary trigger for those. It makes sense that my migraines might have morphed into vestibular ones as well. It's certainly a possibility.

Finally, mold. There is water damage under the wood floor by the front door. We didn't notice until after we moved it though it is very obvious. Who'd of thought you need to inspect the floor? We found out after the first big rain that it was an ongoing issue. Interestingly, that first big rain occurred three weeks before my vertigo started (see how long it took for me to get dizzy after bleaching the windows in the previous house). We have no idea if there is mold under that floor. I do believe it is definitely possible that mold is an issue in and of itself or is a trigger for vestibular migraines.

Now I keep saying it is possible. I don't know how long it will take to figure out the true problem. It could be years. One challenge in all this is that I am unable to go through the usual testing done for people with vertigo. I don't have the doctor's help in figuring this out. Without medical insurance, it is just too expensive. So, I'm on my own to research and try to figure it out on my own.

I'm starting with dietary possibilities. We were going dairy free at least temporarily for other reasons. Because a considerable number of people with Meniere's and vestibular migraines are helped by gluten free diets, we're dropping that as well. I might be a factor in the reasons we are going dairy free so it won't hurt to give it a try. We're already mostly soy free (soybean oil and soy lethicin have not been a concern). The hardest part will be outside food; there's food at church every week, for instance. I'm also looking at homeopathic and natural supplements. I'm working on behavior; it's time for me to get exercise, lose weight, and get our family on a more consistent routine. Finally, I'll be putting together a home binder (like Flylady's) and teaching my older two kids more cooking so that they can take on more responsibility on days I'm not functioning.

So, there it is. If you read all that, you're awesome. If you want to pray that I find a cause and suitable treatment, that would be awesome too.

Yes, I'm still here

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:50:00 +0000

The month of December always gets away from me, and this year was no exception. In addition to the usual insanity of the month, I lost almost an entire week to vertigo. Life ceases when the world spins wildly with every move you make!

So, anyway...

We spent the first two weeks of December wrapping up school work: finishing up chapters so we wouldn't end mid-chapter or lesson and finishing up two big projects.

The big kids finished the volcano they were building. It looked great. They added Monopoly houses and Life people. They even had a guy fishing in a lake on the bottom of the mountain. We erupted the volcano which, unfortunately, took out the fisherman and slid his car along with the flow. It was great fun.

Mikaela finished her continent. I think it looks great! Sam finished all but the ocean. He ran out of colored pencil and had to wait until replacements arrived. He'll be picking it back up to finish now that school is back in session.

I also did some Christmas crafts with the littles, which I already shared in a previous post.

We made some ornaments. The snowmen were really cute. The swirled colored balls did not work out well at all. Over time, the paint inside all slid to the bottom leaving a lot of the bulb uncolored/see-through. I don't know if it was because we used plastic instead of glass bulbs, but it was really disappointing. We scattered the cinnamon applesauce ornaments throughout the house and cars hoping they'd make everything smell nice. They only affected the scent in the cars, so that was kind of disappointing.

Then I spent a week dizzy. I ended up taking myself to the doctor on morning when I was steady enough to drive. Unfortunately, while I was there, I was so tired from lack of sleep that I tried to lay down and sent myself whirling again. After a shot to stop my vomiting, I had to call my husband to come get us, stranding his car in another city from where we live. A friend came and spent the next day with my kids because I wasn't sure if I would be functional. Meclizine got me through the next few days until I finally recovered completely.

Finally, there was the mad rush to finish Christmas shopping and handmade Christmas gifts. I got everything done, just barely in time.

I spent a lot of my evenings working on this Ood ski mask for Sam. He loved it. An ood is an alien from Doctor Who.

My dad visited for a few days and then there was the mad dash to get ready for Sam's birthday party, which went off well with the exception that I forgot to give out party favors.

And now it is time for school again despite the fact that I never got around to finishing grading for December or planning. We're kind of winging it for now.

How did your December go?

Our New Pet

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:08:00 +0000

Living among the trees, we have a new pet...not really...but we enjoy feeding and watching a new critter.

This is a Douglas Squirrel. He's smaller than the abundant Eastern Gray Squirrels that we have around here. His coloring is quite a bit different from the gray we are used to seeing.

As you can see, he and his gray friends (not really...the big gray squirrels chase him away) make quite a mess with the food we put out for them. When I went out to try to get pictures of the squirrel, there were at least half a dozen small birds enjoying a meal also. If you look very closely, you can see a black circle almost dead center...that's a bird.

If you don't have a zoom lens and very quietly and slowly try to get closer to get a good photo of him, he takes off up the tree. He stops part way up to chew you out, too. It's a cute "chirr, chirr, chirr" sound. He's noisier than most birds, in fact.

We like our new outdoor pet. Even Josh likes the squirrels enough to specifically request that I buy more food for them.

Book Review: Ed Emberley's Fingerprint Drawing Book

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:25:00 +0000

I found Ed Emberley's Fingerprint Drawing Book on the library shelves today. I taught myself how to draw when I was a child using Ed Emberley books. I've always loved them. And this book is just as wonderful.

Unfortunately, my kids haven't responded to Ed Emberley with the same enthusiasm that I hold for his books. I expected Mikaela and Samuel to say it was too babyish and silly. That was ok with me because I'd enjoy it without them...or maybe try helping Josh and Maddie to enjoy it. I was wrong. They thought the drawings were cute and jumped right in with me.

Here is Sam's page of random drawings.

Mika tried telling a little story with hers.

I really love the frog, alligator, and train that I drew.

All the fun led us to thinking about making more themed pictures or cards. Here's a Christmas card I did up really quick.

Unfortunately, this is what your hands will look like after you spend an hour or so drawing. I wasn't able to get all of it off either.

We're super psyched about this book and can't wait to pick up more ink. We didn't have all of the colors we needed, which is why Santa's reindeer are purple. While I'm at it, I'm considering looking for this other book because it contains this book and another. More drawing ideas can't be anything but good!

Tot Christmas School

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:56:00 +0000

I'm trying to do more with the littles. I find it really difficult to fit doing things with them into my day. I'm busy with teaching the bigs, grading, cooking, cleaning, unpacking, etc. In order to find more time, I've banned myself from Facebook and The Well-Trained Mind forums during school hours. It's helping a little.

So, this week, I've been Googling "Preschool Christmas Crafts" or "Preschool ______________ Crafts" with the blank being filled in with the topic I want. Topics I'm looking for are things like snowman, Christmas tree, snowflake, ornament, etc. My goal is to do one a day with them. They are really enjoying doing crafts with me.

Yesterday, we did a Christmas bear that I found at First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts. They came out really cute.

Josh did his craft almost entirely on his own. First I got out watercolor paper and told him to make a tree with no leaves. Then I put some of the blue liquid watercolor in a bowl and really watered it down. I gave him a large brush and told him to cover the entire page. When he was done, I let him sprinkle salt on the still wet paint. While we waited for it to dry, I cut out the bear pieces for him because he doesn't have the scissors skills to do that himself. He used a glue stick to put the bear together. Once the paint was dry, I showed him how to glue cotton balls for snow on the ground, his tree, and snow clouds. Then I used a roll of masking tape to tape the bear on; this made it stick up from the page a bit. I wrote "Ho, Ho, Ho" on the little tag, and he copied it in red marker.

Maddie followed the same procedure but had more help. She did the painting and salt. I applied glue to the bear pieces and she put them together. For the snow, I unrolled the cotton balls and she placed them on the glue. She really loved it.

Today's craft, from the same website, incorporated some math and letters. Yay!

Today I used blue construction paper and had the kids put cotton balls down for snow. I cut out the tree and snowflakes. The tree had squares with the numbers 1-10 on them. Each snowflake was also numbered. Josh was able to glue the snowflakes in place on his own. Then he glued on the snowman. I made a little pipe cleaner scarf, pipe cleaner nose, and paper hat for him to put on his snowman. The eyes are plastic pony beads. Then he decorated his tree with dots of glue covered in glitter (done very carefully on his own). I placed the foam letters down on the paper, and he picked up each one, removed the backing, and stuck them back down one at a time.

Again, Maddie had more help with gluing but she placed each thing on the glue herself. She was able to place the snowflakes by matching the letters. I worked on number recognition by naming them for her. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Ok, get another snowflake.

Maddie: Picks up a snowflake.

Me: Which number is that?

Madde: Eight.

Me: No, that's a five. Where's the five on the tree?

Maddie: Points to the seven.

Me: No, that's a seven. Where's the five? Look at the snowflake; find the same number.

Maddie: Points to the five.

Me: Good, that's right!

I apply glue and she sticks it on. About half of them, she chose the correct number the first time and half of them she required two tries. She opted to decorate her tree with stick on foam hearts, and she wanted glitter stars in her sky.

I've really been impressed with how careful Josh has been in doing his crafts. Normally, he's loud and won't be still for anything. The fact that he's doing such a careful job tells me that he really wants to do these crafts. I'll keep working on having more for him to do.

Our Christmas Village

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:51:00 +0000

Way back before we had kids, Scott and I started painting ceramic Christmas village houses. We found it an enjoyable Christmas activity and got several pieces completed. Over the years, we added a few minor elements: a giant town tree, a train, a snowman trio, and a sledding Linus. Our village, though it hasn't been added to for many years, is well loved.

Here's an overview. It isn't as grand as I once envisioned it, but it is special to us.

To the left of the tree is town. There's a department store, an unfinished coffee shop, a gas station, and a gorgeous hospital. the latter is one of my favorite pieces.

This table top tree has been around for about a dozen years. A couple years, it served as our only Christmas tree. It is decorated with a stranded of white lights, a garland of gold foil stars, and miniature ornaments. The ornaments are red cardinals, multi-color light bulbs, snowmen, gold stars, and clear angels. The train track has been around since before I was married. I got it from Burger King 14 years ago for $3 and a value meal purchase. It was from the cartoon movie Anastasia, and it used to actually run around the track. Snow caught in the wheels killed the motor years ago.

Next to the tree is an old church, angel, and Victorian home. The church was the first piece painted by Scott. The poor thing has survived two steeple breaks. The angel was also painted by Scott. The kitten was painted to resemble our first cat, Kitty, whom we still miss. He was the most awesome cat ever. The Victorian hasn't been finished yet.

And here is the neighborhood. The house is my other favorite piece. A decorated barn stands in the distance. I added the snowmen one year. I love snowmen and don't care that they are the size of the house. Linus sleds down the hill. He's part of my ornament collection but goes so well with the village that he never gets hung on the tree anymore.

We have about half a dozen houses sitting in the box waiting to be painted. We haven't painted in years because we found it just too difficult with little ones running around. With Madelynn getting older, maybe we can finish the partially completed houses, touch up the others where they've suffered damage over the years, and paint the rest.

Our house doesn't feel decorated until the village gets put up.

What's your favorite Christmas decor?

Geodes

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:36:00 +0000

I decided to break out the geodes this week. The kids really enjoyed cracking them open, though they were much harder to crack than I expected. It turned out that most of ours weren't hollow, which explains why they were so hard to break. Still it was a good excuse to go outside on one of the few non-rainy days and hit something.

The kids were thrilled to have a reason to don their goggles. The littles love that I got them their own pairs.

Bang, bang, bang. The towels we used to ensure pieces didn't go flying were totally destroyed by the time we were done with them.

Sam's was the first one to break. It wasn't hollow, but he thought it was cool anyway.

Here I'm holding the pieces of one geode together so the kids can see how it would have looked inside. This one was the most hollow one and had a funky bump inside.

This one split in many little pieces after not wanting to break at all. We all though the colors were nice. If you look at them closely under a magnifier, they had some neat crystalization.

This one had some neat color changes. It reminds me of the big ones you can buy that are professionally cut.

We passed around magnifiers and inspected various pieces inside.

Here's a close up of that hollow one with the funky bump inside.

The kids really enjoyed breaking these open. I want to see if the library has some books to follow up with and maybe take a trip to a gift shop that sells the really pretty geodes.

Projects

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:40:00 +0000

We haven't done a ton of school in the last few weeks. Mostly, I've been concentrating on unpacking, going on my semiannual retreat, and now preparing for Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I've had the kids working on three some major projects.

Project 1: Research Biography

We've been working on this research paper since the beginning of the year, taking it one minuscule step at a time because it is their first research paper. They are working on final edits. Mika is having a particularly difficult time because she picked a person with fewer sources to work with and topics that are harder to transition between. She's working on it, and it is improving.

Project 2: Map

Several weeks ago, I gave the kids an assignment to create an imaginary continent complete with a long list of landforms. They had to first learn about the landforms. Then they had to brainstorm ideas of how to put it all together. Then they had to draw it on poster board, color it, and name everything. They are working on the final coloring before labeling their drawings with the continent's name, the names of major landforms, compass, scale, and legend.

This is Sam's map so far. He's being quite colorful with it, making up different colors of grass that thrive on certain gases and/or minerals. He's having to color darkly (which takes significantly more time and effort) because he left his map and the pencils out on the table unguarded. Maddie decided to assist his coloring efforts, which he is now trying to hide under darker colors.

This is Mikaela's map so far. It's coming along nicely. She'll be darkening some of the details to help them show up better.

Project 3: Volcano

As a follow up to our visit to the Ape Caves, a lava tube on Mt. Saint Helens, we are learning more about volcanoes. They are reading several library books about volcanoes in general. A couple other books cover Mt. Saint Helens specifically. In addition to that, we've decided to build our own volcano to erupt at home. We've done a very simple one before, so they are enjoying making one a bit more detailed. In the spring, we'll visit Johnston Ridge Observatory.

Mikaela and Sam are working together to lay down the first layer of paper mache. We started with salt dough, which proved difficult to work with. They enjoy paper mache more and are getting better results.

Here's the volcano so far. It is sitting on our school table as I write this being air dried by the ceiling fan. After they are done with the paper mache, they'll paint it, add Monopoly houses and Life people, and erupt it.

Kennedy Creek Salmon Tour

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:19:00 +0000

Yesterday, we went on a docent-led tour of Kennedy Creek. This trip was planned months ago as it fills up with school tours. It can be hard to plan ahead as the salmon don't return in the same numbers on the exact same days each year. We scheduled our trip for the week most likely to have some salmon. Fortunately, there were some salmon in the river! They weren't in the high numbers but they were there.

Our docent asked the kids questions to give them an opportunity to show off what they knew. She explained the importance of the tributaries, riparian forests, good logging practices (the site is funding by a logging company), and taking care of the area.

We walked over a bridge that overlooked this tributary stream. It was only a couple inches deep, but when it rains the salmon will actually come up this tiny stream too. It seems impossible!

One of the things she had to show the kids was a set of tubes showing the early salmon life cycle. It had eggs, newly hatched salmon, and salmon at different stages for the first 120 days. She also had polarized glasses which make it easier to view the fish in the water.

You could see the salmon a little better than my camera could capture them. But in some areas, you can see their fins and tails sticking out of the water, splashing around when they defended their territory or dug their redds.

This poor fish was tired and getting dragged downstream by the current. It wasn't dead yet though. We did see a couple of dead fish, but it is still early in the season.

We also got to see this replica of the native Indian salmon fishing tool. There were some interpretive signs for the trail in it as well.

Mount St. Helens: Ape Caves

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:29:00 +0000

We had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Ape Caves with a geologist in the lead. We also stopped by the Trail of Two Forests and the Lahar Viewpoint. It was a long, but good day.

On the way up to our meeting point, I saw this beautiful viewpoint overlooking Yale Lake and stopped to grab a picture.

We arrived at the Trail of Two Forests and waited for the rest of our party. We had lunch and explored the area immediately around the picnic benches. Then our guide said a few words about volcanoes, explaining the types of eruptions we'd be seeing, the kind of volcano St. Helens is, and a few other interesting facts.

We got to see samples of vesicular basalt (aka lava with air bubbles).

The exciting thing about this part of the trip were the tree casts. A lava flow from long ago wrapped about the trees in the area and hardened. The trees either burned up or eventually decayed leaving behind hollow areas in the hardened lava rock. We got to explore one of them.

One tree cast had a ladder heading down into it. From there, you could crawl long a horizontal cast to an exit approximately 50 feet away. It's small (hands and knees crawling on not-so-smooth rock), dark (need head lamps), and wet down there. I know because I went through it. Some of the kids loved it, and a few brave adults went through as well.

This is what the inside of the tree cast looks like from the exit.

After exploring the area, we headed back to our cars and drive a few miles up to the Ape Caves. The Ape Caves are long tunnels running roughly parallel to the surface that were formed by lava moving underground. There are two sections: the larger but more difficult upper tube and the easier lower tube. We walked the lower tube. The caves are pitch black, and the floor is uneven. Multiple sources of good light are required to explore the tubes.

I knew Sam would love the Ape Caves, but he really loved them. He was asking me to form another trip through them before we were even out of them. Mika even enjoyed them; she ended up helping a couple of the younger kids through most of the walk. (They just love her.)

Don't be fooled by the light picture! I had my camera set on night portrait mode, and it does a very good job taking photos in the dark on that mode (still many of the photos have blurring and ghosting from the slow shutter speed). This was on of the smoother, easier to walk in parts.

Other parts were rocky like this section.

This part is called the railroad tracks. The raised tracks go on like this for quiet a while.

The rock overhead is called "Meatball". It was apparently a block of cooled lava that fell from the ceiling while lava was still flowing through the tube. It was carried downstream until it got wedged in a narrow space.

And this is the end of the 3/4 mile tube. The floor becomes sandy. The floor and ceiling gradually slope together until it dead ends. At this point, there's nothing to do but go back the way you came.

After the Ape Caves, we drove 9 miles to the Lahar Viewpoint. I was surprised to find snow on the roads (but it wasn't too bad), and the kids were thrilled.

When around snow, one must make a snow ball, right?

And throw it at someone.

It was sunset as we were driving back down the mountain. After 9 1/2 hours, we finally walked back through our front door. The kids loved it and want to go back.

Cats and Moving

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 15:21:00 +0000

We moved into our new home yesterday. We even managed to get all three cats here on the same day. Watching how they've adjusted, or not, to the new house has been interesting.

Gracie, being the needy cat that he is, was the easiest to catch. He hated the car ride but survived it fine. He's adjusted the easiest. His stuff is here. His people are here. All good in the world.

Abby has been freaked out since the first box appeared in the old house, or so it seems. She did NOT like the car ride. In fact, she spent the entire ride trying to rip open the box she was placed in. She has spent most of her time in the new house in hiding, and when she comes out to explore she's rather jumpy. Overall, though, she is handling this move better than the last.

Pandro wasn't around when we picked up the other cats, so Scott went back for a second try. We figured he'd be ready for his nightly let-me-in-let-me-out-let-me-back-in-ad-nauseam routine. We were right. He didn't sound happy in the box when they arrived. He's been ok, though super needy (you better pet me NOW!) all night and this morning.

Remember Abby? Ever since her son, Pandro, arrived at the new house, she has made it clear that she's displeased to find he made the trip as well. That boy refuses to obey his mama and find his own home!

Week 8 and 9

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:16:00 +0000

What a crazy, busy two weeks! We're moving on Saturday...35 hours from now.

Last week, Mikaela and Samuel completed almost all of their normal school load. There were a couple of assignments that were dropped but not many. I didn't manage to get any photos, nor will I have a chance to write out any details.

I did manage to spend some time with Josh and Maddie as well. I printed off parts of a pumpkin unit study for younger kids, and we did some of it. I cut out jack-o-lantern parts for them to glue together, than Josh wrote "jack-o-lantern" under it. He also did some measuring with a pumpkin ruler, which he loved. I have library books on apples and pumpkins, but Josh hasn't had much interest in being read to lately. Maddie loves the books, though. Here's their jack-o-lanterns:

This week, we have focused more on getting our move done. Mikaela and Samuel still completed some school. They worked on their introduction and conclusion paragraphs for their writing assignment (that never ends). They did some math. They completed a chapter of history and did their usual three sessions of Rosetta Stone. We managed to get one astronomy lab and one geology lab completed. We were able to get Sam to two of his taekwondo classes, and both kids will be at their flag football lesson tomorrow morning.

We were also told on Monday, that we had to take care of the cleaning of the new house. Thanks for the last minute notice! Either we could clean it ourselves and bill them or hire a cleaning service and get reimbursed. We opted to do the cleaning ourselves. Sam and I have been going over their each morning to work on it for an hour or two. He's earning money by helping me out. While he doesn't clean as fast as I do, he is still working hard, and we are getting more done than I would do alone. Mika has been helping out with the littles while we clean.

While we're home, I've been bouncing around between packing, helping with school, doing laundry, cooking, and spending a few minutes here and there with the littles. Today, I also cleaned inside and outside of cabinets and drawers as I emptied them and got the oven looking new again. Whew!

Here's Maddie's contribution to our work this week:

I have no idea what happened with the photos to cause that weird back-lighting. Mikaela took the last photo.

Our New Digs

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 04:34:00 +0000

We're moving next week. Our new home is totally different from anything I've lived in so it will take some getting used to. I'm looking forward to having a school room again and having a laundry room for the first time. I'm worried about the size of the kids' rooms, but we can get bunk beds if we really need them.

Scott and I were there today. I took my camera long. They still need to get in there to clean and do a few repairs we noticed. I hope they get it done before we move in so we don't have to continue to bother then like we did this house.

Anyway, here's the new digs:

Here it is. The front yard is landscaped and lovely. We love the large parking pad; it should fit 7 cars, so parking won't be a problem if we want to have a party. I'm hoping to find a freestanding basketball hoop for the kids. The area is wooded, and there's a small pond across the street. We heard frogs today!

This is the view from the front door. There's a narrow entry that leads to the dining room at the back of the photo. The carpeted area at the bottom left is the living room. The opening just behind it leads to the kitchen, family room (school room) and laundry. That little window way back on the left is a pass through window from the kitchen to the dining room. On the right, you can see the hallway.

Here's the living room. You may have noticed in the previous photo that it is a "sunken living room." I have no idea why you would want to sink the living room.

This is the nicest kitchen I've ever had. There are tons of cabinets and drawers. Some of them are pretty cool. The one over the fridge is really deep; I have no idea what to store of there. To the left of the gas stove (haven't cooked on a gas stove in 19 years), is a pull out spice rack thingy. To the left of that is a corner cabinet with a spinning rack. The kids thought that was cool. The kitchen sink is deep with a pull down faucet. The kids are also excited to have a fridge with ice and water in the door...assuming it is hooked up. I'll need a step stool, I think, because I can't reach the top shelf of any cabinet.

The family room has a wood-burning fireplace. The doorway at the back is the laundry room. The slider leads to the backyard, of course. The entrance to the garage is also in here. We'll be using this room as our school room.

This is the laundry room. I haven't had one since I left home. I won't need all of that cabinet space for just laundry soap. I wonder what I can store up there.

This is the hallway off to the right of the entry way. That first door on the right is a coat closet. Then the boys' room, followed by the girls' room, are on the right. To the left is a bathroom and then the master bedroom. The small door at the end is a linen closet.

This is the main bathroom. It has a tub/shower behind the door. I love that each kid will have their own drawer.

The master bedroom is smaller than any we've had. It will fit our bedroom stuff just fine, though I don't know if my craft table will fit.

We'll have a master bathroom to ourselves with tons of storage.

Here's one of the kids' bedrooms. It's small. It may not fit two beds and a dresser. Maddie doesn't have her own bed yet, but we may have to buy bunk beds rather than buying her a bed. The boys will probably be able to squeeze into their room by putting Josh's bed perpendicular and under Sam's loft bed. A bunk bed would probably be better as soon as we can make it happen.

Outside that sliding room in the family room is a very large deck with built in seating.

Here's the rest of the deck. That area up the three steps just screams, "Perfect place for a nice grill" to me. We hope to finally buy a grill before next summer. Then there's a little bridge leading to another deck area that used to have a jacuzzi. They took it out and filled in the deck. There is also a large shed on the side of the house. We're thrilled that the garage will be less crowded. The backyard is natural (read: mostly dirt, pine needles, and weeds).

We also found a ton of cool-looking mushrooms in our front yard. Maybe we should do some mycology soon.

Tot School - Week 7

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:10:00 +0000

I tried something new last week with great results.

It's silly, really, but I repurposed some baskets I have into workboxes for Maddie and Josh. My hope was that it would help organize me in coming up for things he could do, but it has really worked wonders on him. Where he fought me with doing any activity I tried to do with him (for the most part), he now wants to work through the boxes. The funny thing is I'm putting things in them that he resisted doing before. I've even discovered this week that toys that he's never shown any interest in are enthusiastically played with when put into a workbox. Silly, huh?

Here's his workboxes:

I'll make nicer labels after we move, but they are working for now. I haven't been filling box 6 since we dont' usually get that far anyway, but he's been begging me to put something in it anyway. I might see if I can do away with it when we move so I don't have a box on top like I do now.

I used the letter A theme from Confessions of a Homeschooler to come up with some simple activities for him to do. In addition to sorting apple pictures by size, putting together apple puzzles, we've done some art activites, some phonics, and some math worksheets. I insert the latter two and calendar between baskets as I can.

Here's Josh doing some apple prints. They didn't come out as well as I had hoped. I don't know if that's just they way they come out or if it is the fact we were using very old, low quality, tempura paints.

We also did some potato stamping. I cut a rough circle, star, the letter A, and a square in to bits of potato. They really liked them.

I also had Josh draw and picture and asked him to tell me a story about his picture. It's all about moving, which has been difficult for him to embrace. He doesn't want to move again.

Week 7

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 04:57:00 +0000

I'm so late posting week 7 that it is nearly time to post week 8! Oh, well. I've been busy, of course, with packing and getting ready to move. It certainly makes for busy days. So far, though, we've been able to keep almost our full schedule for school.

Language Arts

Mikaeala's grammar covered the grammatical information found in most dictionaries. She began the third section of the book about phrases and has covered prepositional, appositive, and gerund phrases. In vocabulary, she started a new lesson with another 25 stems. She seems to like vocabulary this year and is doing well in it. In poetry, she read in-depth analysis of "Afton Water" by Robert Burns and learned more about trochaic feet. She finished her notes and fused outline for her third topic of her American Revolutionary figure report. We sure are taking this one slow; it feels like it will never be finished.

Sam has continued to insist on doing two sentences a day with his grammar practice. He does well on most of them, but occasionally comes across a sentence that really throws him. He finished lesson 7 in vocabulary which covered five more stems. In poetry, he has been learning about all kinds of meter. He also finished his notes and fused outline for his report.

Math

Mikaela learned about multiplying with negative numbers. She didn't have any trouble with it.

Samuel and I have been going over his first chapter in Art of Problem Solving's Pre-Algebra book. He already worked on this chapter last week, but looking over his work, I could see that he was missing the point of some of it. It's so different from what he is used to. I love this book so far and will have to find time to sit down and review it in detail on the blog.

History

This week's history topic was the rise of Napoleon. The kids have also been working on a geography assignment I gave them to create an imaginary continent that includes a whole list of required landforms. They have really been enjoying this assignment. They put their first drafts down on typing paper; it will be transferred to poster board and finished later.

This is Mikaela's continent so far.

Sam has really been putting a lot into his map already.

Science

Mikaela finished a chapter on Mercury while Sam and I have been trudging through his chapter on light and telescopes. We've spent way too much time on this chapter but it is so very full of detailed technical information about the electromagnetic spectrum, how it is measured, how telescopes work, different types of telescopes and what they are used for, the world's largest telescopes and how they are used, and so much more. It has 28 sections in it; I can't wait to move on from this chapter.

Here's my white board after going through just one section of astronomy with Sam.

I opted not to do a TOPS astronomy lab this week.

The kids finished the atmosphere section of Jetstream and took the review quiz.

For geology, they rubbed granite rocks together to see the resulting topsoil and how the rocks looked at the site of the mechanical weathering.

Foreign Language

Somehow both kids managed to get through the week without doing all three sessions of Rosetta Stone. I have them doing three half-hour sessions per week. This week, Mikaela only did two, and Sam only did one.

Fine Arts

We completed a drawing of a wooden bucket from Draw Squad this week. The hardest part, I think, was drawing the guidelines that determined the direction the top edge of the boards would go.

This is Mikaela's bucket.

Here is Sam's bucket.

We also took Friday off from school to go to Woodland Park Zoo. We were blessed with some really good viewing.

A Critter Kind of Day

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 06:14:00 +0000

We took the day off formal academics to visit Woodland Park Zoo with Columbia Virtual Academy. It was an almost perfect day for it; it was cool, which is great for animal viewing, but not cold or wet. We generally had a good day, though Maddie seemed to be having trouble walking and tripped and fell numerous times.

Our critter kind of day started with Mikaela finding a black cricket in our garage. She came running to ask if our bug magnifier was still unpacked. Unfortunately, it's packed up so she ended up catching it in a glass.

Birds weren't our focus today, but we all love this Victorian Crowned Pigeon. It's head feathers are so pretty.

Mikaela loves this Urania Moth. She found it in display about tropical rain forests.

About the only thing cooler than being inches away from jaguars would be getting to meet them face-to-face and pet them. I'm rather partial of pretty kitties, big and small.

The littles especially enjoyed the penguins, many of which were swimming through the water at eye level. These little guys are fast swimmers and super cute...though smelly. Josh kept crouching down to pretend he was underwater with them.

The river otters are always fun to watch. They were active today. I got lucky to catch a picture of one out of the water and several pictures of just their head above water. They are so quick, it is hard to get a good focused photo.

We met this dad (baby behind him is his) who had a very old camera. It was made in the 1960s. It didn't even have a built in light meter. That gadget on the step between them is a light meter; it tells him how much light there is, and has a circular gadget that he can determine aperture and shutter speed based on the light level. Then it has the old split center focus. He explained all this to Sam and then let him try focusing the camera, which Sam said was really heavy.

About that time, the zookeepers decided it was feeding time for the bears. That was really cool because it brought them close to the viewing area.

They also fed these fish in the bear exhibit. They swim in a small pool immediately against the glass and went absolute berserk when the pellets were through in the water. It looked like a typically Hollywood piranha feeding frenzy.

Walking around, we happened upon this hawk's training session. We learned that he can't be placed back into the wild because of a wing injury; he can fly but not well enough to take care of himself in the wild. He is trained with a whistle and treats at both ends of his flight. He has a strap attached to his legs that is attached to a long rope that is attached to a gallon jug of water. That keeps him from flying away before he is fully trained.

No trip to Woodland Park Zoo is complete without climbing this structure.

I found this beautiful tiny flower outside the Komodo Dragon exhibit. I'd love to know what it is, but my searches are proving futile. It sure is pretty though.

I love to giraffes and will never forget the time we got to see them from about 10 feet away. The zookeepers were moving them from their exhibit to another pen-like area. It required gating off the walkway to let the giraffes through. We were just on the other side of the gate watching them walk by. It was the coolest thing! They are much taller up close than they seem to be when looking at them from a distance in their exhibit.

The kids wanted to play in the habitat exploration loop, and we went through the family farm exhibit to get there. This play area is called Warm CRAWL. Notice that Josh is not crawling.

We also hit the bug exhibit. Isn't she cute? Yeah, only when on the other side of glass. Spiders are cool and creepy as long as they aren't in my home and definitely not on me.

I've actually handled a couple of these before.

After playing in the habitat area for a while, we headed back through the family farm to get to the exit. I couldn't resist taking photos of these flowers. I love daisies. I love gerbera daisies. I love daisy-like flowers. I love close up photography of flowers. Add in a bug, and it's even cooler.

On the way home, we stopped at Dairy Queen to try their Pumpkin Pie blizzards. Yum!

When we got home, we were greeted with another kind of critter. Meet Abby. She's still angry that her son never left home.

Week 6

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:18:00 +0000

It was a pretty standard week for the big kids. I didn't get to do very much with the littles because I was busy trying to get as much packing started as I could.

Language Arts

Mikaela read about subject complements. She completed an end-of-the-section review which included any punctuation, usage, and errors often seen regarding the parts of a sentence. She'll be moving on to part 3 of her grammar book next week. For vocabulary, she finished list 3 and got 100% on her test. She's been enlisting Sam's help in studying with her flashcards; he's going to end up knowing all of he vocabulary for next year before he even starts! Her poetry took a close look at poetic elements used in a couple of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poems, "Cross the Bar" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

This is Mikaela's vocabulary test this week. She had to give the meaning of the stem that is in all capital letters. I goofed and put the same word down twice and missed putting one word on there completely. (I could photocopy the tests, but I find it easier to just type them out.)

Samuel finished his grammar book. After taking a practice test, he took the final test and began analyzing sentences in the practice book. I have him scheduled to complete one sentence a day, but he requested doing two a day, which he has been doing. He completed lesson 6 in vocabulary, learning the words ostentatious, inexorable, doleful, indolent, and alacrity. He loves finding his words in books that he reads. In poetry, he read about different kinds of meter. I also have him practicing reading comprehension from a free download I got from Scholastic's last sale.

This is Sam's final grammar test. It required him to label the part of speech of given words, part of a sentence of given words, type of phrase, and type of sentence.

Math

In math, Mikaela learned subtraction with negative numbers. She's been reading the teacher's manual on her own (since I've been so busy) and doing the worksheets on her own. She's been doing really well with this so far.

Ironically, Sam is learning essentially the same things Mikaela is covering. He just started Art of Problem Solving's Pre-Algebra. Where her book covers adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing with negative numbers over four weeks, his covers all of them in one chapter. Her's mostly tells you what you need to do, while his leads you to discover the rules, shows you why they work, and then uses those rules in advanced problem sets. The explanation of how to do certain types of problems reminds me of geometry proofs. Each step shows you what to do and lists which rule applies. He's doing well. Some of the problems are quite challenging, but he's learning (as am I).

History

In history, the kids read about how China felt they were the center of the universe and didn't need western goods, thereby closing their borders to foreign traders (with the exception of Canton). They read about the rules regarding foreigners. They also learned about the opium trade and opium addiction.

They also worked on a geography project I gave them: create an imaginary continent that has a bunch of required landforms (have to know what they are to include them). Then draw and color it on poster board, label places with their names, add a compass rose, a scale, and a legend. They have been really enthusiastic about this project.

Science

In astronomy, Sam is learning about light and telescopes. Mikaela took her test for the last chapter about the sun and started reading about Mercury. I did not give them a lab.

In meteorology, we learned about the transfer of heat energy and energy balance. We discussed a couple of demonstrations that we couldn't do because of the weather and completed a lab showing the effects of carbon dioxide on air temperature. We thought the lab failed; it just took longer to show results that it was suppose to.

In geology, the kids completed a streak test with brick, chalk, a penny, and different pieces of sand. We had difficulty with this because it can be hard to tell the difference between a streak and a scratch (for us anyway) and hard to pick out quartz, feldspar, and mica from the tiny pieces of sand. But we did the best we could.

Foreign Language

Both kids completed three thirty-minute sessions on their respective Rosetta Stone languages.

Art

Mikaela and Samuel both completed a very simple art project that involved tracing around masking tape to create rings and then erasing appropriate lines to make some rings appear in front of others. Then they colored them.

Field Trips

We took the kids back to Lattin's Country Store and Cider Mill. We were hoping the yellowjackets would be gone; they weren't. After doing a few things there, we headed over to Tumwater Falls to see the salmon running. I posted about it here.

Littles

I didn't get to do much with the littles because I was busy with packing. They did enjoy making bracelets with plastic pony bracelets and pipe cleaners. Maddie wore hers for a couple of days.

Moving Again

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 05:47:00 +0000

This is kind of old news (decided October 3rd) but I haven't gotten around to posting about it here yet.

We're moving again. Scott got a call on his work cell from an unrecognized number a while back. When he returned it, it turned out to be a real estate agent wanting access to our house for a market analysis. Apparently, the homeowners want to list the house for sale...as a short sale...and some of her comments made it sound like they might be defaulting on their mortgage. The results of a sale could be okay for us or bad news depending on who bought the house:

An investor could buy the house. They would be required to honor the rest of our lease (13 more months).

Someone wanted to live in the house could buy the house. They would be required to give us 90 days notice.

If the bank forecloses, they could give us cash for keys, or moving out in a timely manner.

If the bank forecloses, they could honor our lease while they try to sell it. If it sold, we're back to option 1 or 2.

We could just sit tight and see what happens. We could deal with people coming through to look at the house, opening our cabinets and closets, etc. But we don't want to. We don't want to risk being given 90 days notice at some future date and not being able to find a suitable place to live in that time. So, we decided to leave when we found a new place to go, provided the owners let us out of our lease.

Fortunately for us, the property management company, who is no longer an agent for the homeowner, want to keep us as tenants. So, they set out looking for a new place for us. And they found one....

It's only 3 miles away.

It's 300 square feet larger.

It has both a living room and a dining room. We'll use the latter, which is open to the kitchen, as our school room. It also has a fireplace to keep us warm during the day.

It has a real laundry room in the house. I've never had a laundry room.

It's cheaper than what we are paying now.

The neighbors are nice and tell us the neighborhood is quiet.

The owner owns it free and clear so no need to offload it quickly via a short sell.

It'll work. There are some negatives, but nothing is going to be absolutely perfect.

We move on October 29th, a day before we moved last year. We're hoping to continue schooling through the packing, move, and unpacking. I'll be busy!

Fritters, Cider, and Fish

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 06:09:00 +0000

We decided to take the kids out for some fun this morning and headed out to Lattin's Country Story and Cider Mill.

As we were getting Maddie's shoes back on (she always takes them off in the car), Sam found a four-leaf clover. He was so excited. I don't think I've ever seen one, though I remember being his age and looking for them.

Our first stop was the country store for hot apple fritters. They were yummy, but I think I prefer fritters room temperature. We took them outside where we found the yellowjackets were still out in force. They were very interested in our donuts. Josh refused to eat his because of the flying menaces. Sam did very well; at one point he had one perched on his fritter in his hand and he didn't freak. Josh was freaked out, but Scot talked him out of it, and we headed to his favorite part of the farm. Between the two, he was able to calm down and enjoy the morning.

Here comes the animal train! This is Josh's favorite thing at Lattin's. He insisted on me coming with him. It's very tight in those cars with an adult my size and a child his size in one car. He chose the front car, which is the bumpiest too. I made the mistake of lifting him up instead of getting help. (I injured my shoulder a few days ago and doing stupid stuff like lifting 50lb kids isn't helping it heal.)

At Josh's request we headed to this building. He knows there aren't any yellowjackets in there. They enjoyed feeding the goats. This one nearly got Maddie's entire bag in one swoop.

The ducklings were the cutest, I think.

After that, we headed out to say hello to the peacocks and turkeys. Then we found the apple slingshot. We paid for three apples and let Mika, Sam, and Scott each take a shot. Meanwhile, Maddie and Josh were playing with the water pumps. After visiting the little maze we went to say hello to the cows.

This cutie was in a bad mood. She hit the fence when one of the littles got too close for her.

With it being apple festival, they had quite a lot of little games for the kids to play for the price of a $1 ticket. We didn't want to spend a ton of money so we didn't stay long; besides, we had a lot of work to get done at home. But before going home, we had one more stop we wanted to make.

We headed to Tumwater Falls to check on the salmon. They had plenty in the holding tanks at the top of the falls. These fish will be donated to the food bank. There was a Stream Team volunteer there to talk to use about the fish. He also had polarized glasses (like the paper 3D glasses but polarized) for us to borrow to see the fish better.

Then we headed down stream to see if we could see fish in the river. We didn't see any jumping (darn), but we did see some below the lower falls digging their redds for their eggs and chasing off the jacks. While we were down there, the volunteer showed up. We borrowed his polarized glasses again.

Then he pulled out a set of tubes with salmon eggs and babies at different stages of their life cycle.

It was cool to see the stages of development up close.

After we were done watching the salmon, we headed back up to the parking lot. We let the kids play on the cement boat play structures in the park a bit before heading back home.

It was a good morning, though it would have been cooler to see the salmon jumping up the fish ladders.

Tot School - Week 5

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:02:00 +0000

It was a fairly typical week with the littles. Madelynn is almost always more interested in the activities than Josh.

I'm trying to do a police theme over the next couple of weeks. We've been reading picture books about police, and we put together this toilet paper roll craft. Well, he colored the police officer and Maddie scribbled on the robber a little bit. Then I cut them out and put them together because they had lost interest by then. Josh does like the finished product, though.

Josh doesn't know any of his shapes except circle so that's one thing I want to work on. To do that, I created shapes on the kitchen floor with blue painter's tape. He loved the shapes. I have him jump to the shape that I name and then describe. I'll say something like, "Jump to the pentagon. It's the shape with 5 sides." He's an active boy so he likes that. I want to sew a few bean bags for him to toss on the shapes, as well. I got this idea from this blog.

I also made marble game from a free printout and a box. (You can get the printout at this french blog. Just click on the template at the bottom and print it landscape. Then you can color and put it on a box. Finally, cut out the space between the animals' legs.) Josh loved it, and I had marbles everywhere.

Maddie loved it too. In fact, all of the kids loved it. I ended up getting a couple of narrow long pieces of wood out of the garage and creating bumpers to help them be more successful in scoring and contain the marbles better.

I also sent Scott to Costco to buy a large bag of cheap rice. The love playing in it, but clean up is a bear. I end up with rice all over the first floor.

I also took Josh and Maddie to the children's museum to play for a bit one day. They were so good leaving that I told them we can go back again very soon.

Week 5

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 03:59:00 +0000

We made it through another week. It was a busy one with us hosting another math salon on Wednesday and me teaching a class on the water cycle to a small group on Thursday. The weekend was busy for other weekends, so I'm finally getting around to writing last week's report.

Language Arts

Mikaela has moved on to part two of her grammar book and is learning about the parts of the sentence this week. She covered subject, predicate, subject-verb agreement, direct objects and indirect objects. She did one assignment where she had to identify the parts of speech for each word in 21 sentences. Some of them were tricky! She's working on another similar assignment two sentences at a time while reading this next section. In vocabulary, she started her third list of stems. In poetry, she covered two and three syllable feet. We're slowing working through each tiny step of a five paragraph research paper using at least two sources.

Samuel read the sections covering clauses and how to punctuate sentences based on their clauses. He's studying some analysis examples. He's almost done with the book. He worked on lesson 5 in his vocabulary book covering the stems loco, sur, alter, contra, and stell and 100% on his vocabulary test (they are cumulative). In poetry, he read about different types of meter. He's working on the same writing assignment as Mikaela, one small step at a time.

Math

Mikaela started Math-U-See Pre-Algebra this week. The first chapter was on adding with negative numbers. She did very well on it, earning between 90-100% on every worksheet and 100% on her test. Yay! She's getting her confidence back with math, I think.

Samuel had a fun week with math. He spent close to an hour a day watching videos and doing practice at Khan Academy. He loves the website for both the math and astronomy. According to my coach's progress screen, he's viewed 16 videos and is proficient at 45 out of 201 exercises. He's starting Art of Problem Solving's Pre-Algebra this week.

History

Both kids read the SOTW chapter about the invention of the steam engine, cotton gin, and standardization. The chapter also covered coal mining and the dangers miners faced. They also read two extremely easy picture books on turning cotton into t-shirts and jeans (I wanted them to see the process in pictures) and Growing Up in Coal Country. They completed the map page, discussed the review questions with me, and took the chapter test. We also watched a Dirty Jobs episode involving coal mining and noticed that they didn't seem to be taking precautions against black lung. It occurred to me that it would be a good subject for an opinion paper.

Science

In astronomy, Mikaela finished up her sun chapter. Samuel began his second chapter which covers light and telescopes. For our TOPS lab, I put a large newspaper figure on the wall and they had to draw it to scale 10 times smaller, 100 times smaller, and the correct scale to fill up the paper (5 times smaller) and figure out the ratios.

This is the figure I put up on the board.

This is the beginning of Mikaela's work. I'm sorry the picture was taken at a funky angle. We had to talk about her answer to 4a.

For meteorology, we took our work to a library in Tacoma and were joined by four other students. We discussed the water cycle in more detail than you usually see it, completed a demo on condensation, made rain in a jar, tried splitting up the world's water (scaled down to 1000ml) into the correct amounts for each type of water, and played a game moving through the water cycle.

For geology, we tested the relative hardness of chalk, our fingernails, a paperclip, a penny, the rim of a glass jar, and a brick.

Foreign Language

Mikeala and Samuel are both working on Rosetta Stone three times a day for half an hour. I only get progress reports once a month so I don't know how they are doing.

Art

We completed a drawing of a jar of honey out of Draw Squad.

This is Mikaela's drawing. I think she did a great job.

This is Samuel's jar which is great for his abilities.

PE

Samuel continues with his tae kwon do classes a few times a week. He really wants to test for his first stripe this month and for his second dan next June.

Both kids did flag football. I think they worked on formations. I was with the littles and not paying a lot of attention to football.

We also hosted a math salon in which five families attended. Towards the end, a group of boys were gathered around having a ball with Blokus. We had to remind them repeatedly that we were in the library.

Tot School - Week 4

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:50:00 +0000

Week 4 was a little more successful.

Josh and I went over S and M for phonics. I'm using Phonics Pathways, but I did the lessons on the white board instead of reading it out of the book. The book introduces the consonants by teaching them with the vowels (ie. sa, se, si, so, su, ma, me, mi, mo, mu). I wanted to help motivate him so I added a final consonant to each to make a word and helped him sound out the words. At the beginning of the week, he was mostly just copying me, but my the end of the week, we was reading at least half of them. He got so excited when he figured out which word he was sounding out. It went like this: "mmmmmmm aaaaaaaa puh, mmmmaaaaa p, mmmmaaaaap, map! like a treasure map!" His eyes really lit up. He was so excited that he willingly showed both his dad and grandpa his lessons. In fact, when grandpa came to visit, he pulled him directly into the dining room to do it rather than letting him get settled first.

We also did some fine motor skills and sensory play again. I chose chocolate pudding.

Do you see the letter M in the pudding?

In case you didn't know, playing with chocolate pudding is messy.

We also played with bubbles.

And practiced scissor skills with index cards. This is one of Maddie's favorite things to do. She had developed better scissor skills than Josh without any help. Josh made a big jump in ability and no longer uses the scissors to just tear the paper.

I also finally pulled out Josh's Spectum Grade K math workbook. He actually likes doing some of this in small doses. We did two pages where he had to find the item(s) that are different. One page had rows of pictures, and he had to put an X on the thing that was different.

He started this page, which required him to find things that were the same. Each row had multiple copies of two pictures. He colored all of one picture red and all of the other picture green. It was a lot of work for him, so I didn't make him finish it. He did, however, insist on finishing it after grandpa came. He really wanted to show him. It's also the first time I've seen him color this thoroughly; usually, he just barely puts any color on the page.

He went on to to this page with grandpa, too. He wanted to do more, but grandpa suggested he ask mom if he could do more pages. That distracting him enough to let my dad get settled.

It addition to this, we went on a farm tour of Lattin's Country Cider Mill and Store.

Week 4

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 01:54:00 +0000

What a full week! The official school week is over, but both kids have work to be completed over the weekend because we ran out of time...for good reason. Here's what we did:

Language Arts

Mikaela finished part one covering the parts of speech of her grammar book. She also covered a section covering punctuation, usage, and grammar, covering things like how parts of speech effect punctuation and common usage errors. In vocabulary, she finished the second lesson and passed the cumulative test with a perfect score (actually a perfect score plus an extra credit point). In poetry, she read about meter and foot. In writing, she took notes from two sources for each of her first two topics of her current essay assignment.

Samuel read part three of his grammar book, covering phrases. He read about prepositional, appositive, gerund, infinitive, and participial phrases. He also read about misplaced modifiers and split infinitives. He finished lesson 4 in vocabulary. In poetry, he read about onomatopoeia and meter. In writing, he took notes from two sources for each of his first two topics of his current assignment.

Math

Mikaela finished Math-U-See Zeta with a chapter on different types of angles.

After talking to Sam about it, we made the decision to drop the math I had chosen for him. The new curriculum teaches in a different way than we are used to and does more difficult problem solving type work rather than plugging numbers into formulas. We decided to drop down to the prealgebra curricula because it covers some topics we haven't covered, and the move will allow us a chance to learn the new methods and become more adept at problem solving. So, this week, he enjoyed getting acquainted with Khan Academy's practice and videos.

History

The kids learned about Catherine the Great this week. They read Story of the World and a library book about her. They completed the map, discussed the chapter review questions, and took the test.

Science

Sam began chapter 2 in his science book. He loves this chapter because there's all kinds of math in it. It covers things about light and telescopes; I don't know the details because I haven't looked at it yet.

Here's a page out of his book this week. I caught him working (or trying to work, I'm not sure) equations on the white board.

Mika finished her chapter on the sun and will take a chapter test as soon as I write it up for her.

For our lab this week, they tracked the azimuth and altitude of the sun using shadows. The azimuth was read but reading a shadow across the compass. It took a couple of demonstrations to get them reading it correctly. For altitude, they used their quadrants, which have a straw attached to the top. They lined up their quadrant until the sun's light shown through the straw, making a circle on their other hand. They were then able to measure the correct altitude. They took measurements every hour throughout the day. We learned that both measurements had to be taken from the same location to get correct readings and that obstacles like trees make some of the measurements more difficult. We're waiting for another sunny day to finish up this lab because we need morning measurements before plotting them all on a circle graph.

We totally forgot meteorology this week because I haven't gotten it scheduled into Homeschool Tracker (therefore it wasn't on their assignment sheet).

Geology was kind of neat this week. First, we discussed two ways igneous rock forms and what they are called (plutonic vs. volcanic).

This is our whiteboard from that discussion. It also gives them the parts of our lab.

Then we did the lab, which involved evaporating drops of a saturated salt solution at different rates to see the differences in the crystal sizes.

First, we balanced a pie tin on a beaker. Then we placed a candle under the edge of the tin so that the flame just touched the tin. This required figuring out which combo of items and type of candle would make it the right height. Then we placed drops of salt solution across the tin like Sam is doing above. After the drops were in place, I lit the candle. Then we waited. The first drops evaporated almost instantly, while the ones clear on the opposite side took awhile. I won't tell you which drops how smaller crystals and which had large crystals so you can enjoy the experiment, if you wish (TOPScience Rocks and Minerals Task 4).

While we waited for the lab, we examined basalt and granite samples, looking for the crystal sizes to determine which was plutonic and which was volcanic.

We find that our big 3x magnifying glass works really well for some labs while our little 10x pocket lens works better for other labs. Mika is inspecting basalt under 10x magnification in this photo.

Foreign Language

Mika and Sam are both using Rosetta Stone. Mika is 53% done with Spanish 2, and Sam is 73% done with Korean 1.

Fine Art

We missed doing fine art formally again this week. Again, it's not in Homeschool Tracker so it didn't get on their assignment sheets to remind us. However, Sam drew a couple of illustrations of planets, Mercury and Venus to be exact. Mika made a bracelet for her friend's birthday and a homemade card based off an art project from last year.

This is the bracelet Mika made.

PE

Sam went to tae kwon do like usual. Both kids started flag football today. Sam loved it. Mika was less enthused, but she's great at catching the ball. Below is a slideshow of 9 photos I took today.

Football - slideshow dvd

We also went on a field trip to Lattin's Country Cider Mill and Store which I blogged about, with photos, here.

Lattin's Country Cider Mill and Farm

noreply@blogger.com (JoAnn) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:55:00 +0000

We went on a field trip to Lattin's Country Cider Mill and Farm today. It was our first time there, and the kids enjoyed most of it. We'll definitely go back there, but not until the weather is cooler and wetter.

Normally you wouldn't hear me talking about wanting cooler, wetter weather for an outdoor field trip, but this place is an exception. You see, jellowjackets have taken over. The farm is trying their best to deal with it; there were traps everywhere. That doesn't help Josh. He was recently stung by one and is now terrified by them, so he spent the first hour, maybe, crying, screaming, and demanding to go home. NOW! That part wasn't fun, but I did finally get him calmed down.

While we waited for the group to assemble, the kids played on some coin-operated horses, some spring horses, and some large, cool trikes. We wandered around visiting some birds they had; I spent a good portion in one hen house because there weren't any wasps in there.

Once the group was assembled, we were taken into the store and greeted by the farm's leader. While we were there, we were given dixie cups of cider to taste and freshly made apple cider donuts. They were yummy! Josh was still traumatized so he refused to try any.

We were then herded back outside to pet bunnies and get our sacks of feed (each child was given a free sack of animal feed to share with the animals). Josh calmed down enough to pet a bunny, but was still pretty upset.

Maddie couldn't get enough of the bunnies.

Then we headed to the animals. We saw peacocks:

They had Indian blue peacocks (what you normally see) and some white peacocks, which are Indian peacocks with their coloring bred out of them. They are gorgeous birds. We also saw ducks, chickens, baby chicks, pheasants, and turkeys.

Our guide brought out two recently hatched eggs for the kids to see and lightly touch. The speckled one on the left is a pheasant egg, and the big one on the right is a peacock egg.

He also brought out a newly hatched chick. It was only two hours old.

Then we went to a small play area with water pumps that all of the kids enjoyed. There was a small boat and a small wooden fence maze that was really easy, but fun, for the littles. During this part, I finally got Josh calmed down enough to enjoy most of the rest of our visit.

Josh loved feeding the goats. He started to forget about the wasps and enjoyed himself. Maddie also loved the goats. They had a tall (probably 12 feet) walkway with ramps on both sides. Attached to the ramps were small buckets on pulleys that you could put feed in and pull up to the goats on the walk way. The farm used to have a goat that knew how to pull the buckets up itself. After the goats, we visited a couple more types of birds and the pigs before reaching the animal train.

I think nearly all of the children were hyped about the train. Josh was back to being uncomfortable because there were a few wasps in the area, but I ended up telling him that he could go on the train ('cause I'm going) or he could wait for me. He didn't want to leave my side so he came....and loved it. Maddie sat on Mika's lap for the ride. Sam managed to get two rides.

Finally, my favorite photo of the day. During a pit stop for Josh, I captured this tiny spider headed for these flowers. It was maybe two millimeters long, including legs.

After our trip, we bought some donuts and apple cider to being home. We were going to eat lunch at the farm, but we decided that we'd be happier eating it on the way home in the car. We weren't the only ones who made that decision. We had at least three kids get stung.

If you are interested in going, they are having Apple Festival starting this weekend and every weekend through October. We're considering going...later in October when the wasps are gone (we hope).