Our first three day weekend.

This going to school bit is not too bad.

Keek got 100% on her spelling tests… Yay! I can’t spell so she must’ve inherited that from her dad. 

She learned how to make an origami fortune cookie this week when she had a sub.  Evidently her teacher doesn’t allow them but all the girls have been…

“… Just dying to make them!  I learned from a girl in another fourth grade class.  She taught me at recess.  When the sub said we had free time I taught all the girls in my class and we all had so much fun!  I love substitutes!”

Fish is learning about econimics.  As the student of the day he gets to be in the front of the line, switch lights on and off and open the doors.  So when he was at the beginning of the recess line the boy behind him asked if he would trade hime places…  “He said he’d give me TEN DOLLARS!  But he only gave me two. “

“Did you give him his money back?”

“No, I bought these with it!”  He said while beaming at me with new vampire teeth.

“Who did you buy them from?”  I asked.

“Hailey.  She said she’d give me my money back but I told her it was ok.  She got them out of the treasure box.”

“Oh.”

“And I got her phone number too, it’s xxx-xxxx and she’s coming over this weekend.”

“Oh?”

“Yea, we’re having a bar be que.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.”

“Yea, it’ll be fun!  Bye, mom!” and off he went to play.  So I guess he’s learning networking and pick up lines too?

Well, this pleasent Monday evening I am glad to report the kids are excited about going to school tomorrow.  They want to see friends and Keek wants to show off her new homework folder.  This is the second time in as many weeks that she has had some homework issue.  The first time it was her misunderstnding as to what, “due on Friday” meant.  She’s given weekly reading logs, weekly spelling practice wkst’s and four, one sided math wkst’s.  The first week she didn’t get all the spelling (I think it was) completed beacuse she thought it was just for fun.  “Due on Friday” somehow escaped her.  And on Wednesday of this past week she lost the whole homework folder on the bus.  I don’t know what her teacher will do about it but I suppose we’ll find out.  So now she’s got a pretty rose folder.  Hopefully too pretty to loose! 

Friday night Fish came in from riding his bike with tears streaking his little dusty face.  I asked if he was hurt and he said no, he told me it wasn’t fair.

“What’s not fair?”

“At school everyone listens to me and all my friends do what I say.”

“They do?”

“Yes, it’s like I’m the King.”

Turns out dear sis wasn’t such a loyal subject, nor should she be.  All of a sudden I understood why Fish loves school so much.    After much consoling and smoothing of royal feathers he went back out to play with his princess sister and understood that if he was of royal lineage then she must be too.  Now when one is high and mighty the other refers to them as either, “King” or “Queen” and gender specific responces insue.  Either the “King” grunts and harumphs until he laughs or the “Queen” pounts, cross armed, until she laughs.  Pretty funny stuff.

Been busy out here at the new place.  Woring on staining the deck, making a path to the mailbox and general moving around of stuff.  Ch and I mowed and weed eated (ate?) yesterday and finished up today.  SO MUCH GRASS!  We were warned by the last lawn slave but didn’t take him as seriously as perhaps we should’ve.  Painted a rug on the linolium laundry room floor… maybe one day I’ll take a pic.  Still have to seal it so laundry is done carefully for a while.  Painted the mailbox too, lovely large black swirls cover it, looking like iron scrolling, with holly and ivy on the door and a rooted tree on the back.  Sealed with three coats of spray poly… should do the trick!

No luck on the van as of yet but soon, I hope!  Can’t wait for the cooling of fall and the onset of firewood and sweeping season.  Have been doing more advertizing but with little luck.  Bid a job but didn’t get it.  Ho hum fall will come.

Still the same on the job front for me… empty promises of, “you’re on the top of the list” and “as soon as I have an opening.”  We did sell the other house though, on payments.  Our buyer is a seemingly reliable, retired, adoptive single mom.  Hope all goes well with her.

Enough of this… I’m off to have some decaf tea.  Ahhhh, herbal refreshment!

More Reading and boring math worksheets!

As the fist cold of the season (and hopefully the last) holds us captive in the house we have all been reading… a lot!!! In addition to math wkst’s and “The Giant Book of Cool Stuff” Keek has delved into more arts and crafts.

Fish is working on linear addition and subtraction as opposed to vertical and visiting favorite old books all on his own.  We cleared a shelf in the living room for some of the kids books.  It has really increased their reading.  I am still pleasantly surprised!

I’ve been reading too, but nothing of childhood educational interest!   Ohhhhh, I can’t wait until we feel better.  blehhhhh…

Until then I don’t think I’ll blog.  We don’t expect to be under the weather for more than a week but you know how that goes.  Fish has been teatering on the edge of an asthma attack and even Keek has been heezy wheezy a couple of nights.  We’ve been eating lots of soup and drinking lots of hot chocolate plus a daily dose of lemon tea.  Hopefully it’ll do the trick!  Fish is looking better four days after the initial onset.  Keek is a day behind him, I’m a day behind her and DH is a day behind me.  So in three or four more days we should all be back on top of things!  Until then… TTFN!

Two more weeks of School…almost

Wow!  Halloween has taken hold, and how!

We’ve been working on our math daily, and I have seen marked improvement with Keeker.  Occasionally she hits a brick wall but she can usually find her way around it without too much trouble.  We got her an additional workbook called, “Multiplication Made Easy.”  She does 2 pages a day for now.  Once they get past the easy ones we’ll probably slow back down to a page a day.  She’s plugging away and staying relatively motivated.

Fish is back in Story Problem mode.  I switched him because the words didn’t match the pictures.  His reading wasn’t going to be able to pick up the slack quite yet.  Now his reading has improved so we switched back.  But it was like I was playing a cruel joke or something.  He skimmed the word problems for key words like, “all together” or “left” and decided to add or subtract the numbers based on those words alone.  Well, it turns out the pictures didn’t give him the right numbers to add and subtract.  Just because the picture was of three hats and two scarves didn’t mean he was too subtract one from the other.  The question was:

There are seven scarves and four hats in the closet.  How many more scarves are in the closet than hats?

Because of the picture presented and the word “more” in the word problem Fish answered 3 + 2 = 5.  Yes his arithmetic was correct but the problem was all wrong!  It took us a couple of days to get past that hurdle but I think it’ll really improve his reading comprehension.

Keek has been re-reading her fairy tales and looking for others online.  I think she’s ready for the rainbow of fairy tale books in the “grown up” section of the library.  Thing is we don’t have those classics at our library.  Grrr… we’ll have to make a trip to the big town for that!  Fish has been avoiding reading all together.  I can’t say that I blame him… I wasn’t a reader as a child either.  He likes to be read to so I guess I’ll just back off and give him some more time to come to it on his own.  I am comfortable in his ability to read enough to get by.  If he were of age I’m sure he could fill out a job app and probably even vote.  He just doesn’t like to read! At six I give the kids there email addresses but Fish has no interest.  He said, “Eh, I’ll just call somebody if I want to talk to them.”  Shocker!

The kids have both been active on clubpenguin.com; which has cool new Halloween decorum by the way. Fish just got a Webkinz!  YAY!  He loves it, of course and has been even more of a computer junkie lately!  Keeker has been playing around at pbskids.org/zoom again and really enjoys the “did you know?” section.

We finally finished decorating the house, it was spooktacular!  Fish helped Dad lay tiles in the back area and Keek helped with more spooky spiderwebs festooning the living room.  The costumes were ready and the invites were out.  The Big Birthday Bash was looming large on the calender and excitement sizzled in the air!

The night before the party a whole group of us went downtown to our little village celebration where Dh and I won the costume contest.  The kids got plenty of candy and the grown ups got plenty of pictures.  Talk about fun!

When the big day arrived we could hardly contain ourselves!  The party started at just the right time and lasted much longer than was anticipated… but with wonderful results!  The food everyone brought was delicious.  The cousins came over and all kids had a blast!  The presents were all big hits.  Fish plays with the awesome shotgun and kooky alien creating machine every day!  They’ve watched Scooby Doo 2 I don’t know how many times and *ahem* Fish’s aim with the bow and arrow set has greatly improved. teeheehee

Another Week of School!

More reading!  More math!  More learning!  We had a busy week.  We went to visit our ‘long lost’ friends and really enjoyed their company on Friday.  Had a blast, as usual. Went to the eye Dr. and even went camping!

Keek has been reading scary spooky Halloween stories to fish all week.  So far they’ve finished one (Spooky America by Lori Haskins) and started another (Ghost Town by Joan Lowery Nixon).  It’s the Halloween spirit… bites us all!

Keek has also been reading the American Girl series.  At the moment she’s quite taken with Felicity, a girl from 1774.

The books include art projects at the end.  Keek has made a pair of Lorgnettes now and loves to look through them when she plays dress up! She’s also been playing more with her math flash cards and is progressing steadily.

Fish is reading daily but doesn’t look forward to it.  I think we’ll try the, “Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons.” book again.  He was so opposed to it last time we tried… but now I think he’ll find it much easier.  He checked out two Dr. Seuss books from the library and a Naruto comic book.  He was tickled with the reverse fomat and enjoyed starting, ‘in the end!’  He had been using addition flash cards when Keek uses her multiplication set.  He enjoys doing the same kind of work as she is.  I suppose it makes him feel like a bigger boy.

We’ve picked up interest in health and the food pyramid… especially caloric consumption.  Keek read the book, “The Monster Health Book” by Edward Miller and was shocked that she and Fish should be consuming about the same calories daily, being that she is, “so much,” older than him.  Her questions led to an explanation of metabolic rate.  Which made Fishee’s day because men (and boys) typically have a faster rate than women (and girls).  We three also discussed bone and muscle density which led to evolution and early human life.  With a discussion of gender roles both then and now.  What wonderful connections they make!

School update

Keek’s continued with the workbooks but switched to multiplication review.  She’s started flash card games, too.  She lays them out like a multiplication chart and reads through them every couple of days or so. She also practiced cursive today. Letter S. She’s started listening to, “The Graveyard Story” by Dave McKean.  Pretty cool!  The author read a chapter at a time and the recorded readings are on all together on the blog.  Good Stuff!

Fish is still adding and subtracting in his math wkbk.  He’s continued with the phonics and reading wkbs too, but they are getting boring. He’s just not a reader!  He can read and comprehend but doesn’t enjoy it. So much energy in that busy boy!

We’ve been making more Halloween decorations.  Keek made a heart with a spiderweb and a bloody hand.  Fish put up more spiderwebs and window clings.  Kids took Dad down the Halloween Isle and the store and picked out a deviil costume and more face makeup than we’ll ever use!  Fun stuff!

I read on my friends blog about a weekly challange that sent me to this blog.  I think we’ll try to make plastic bag clothing:  New! Ongoing challenge three!  Sounds fun and we’ve got the bags to do it!

Club Penguin Fair!

We are big fans of Club Penguin.  Not moderate fans but BIG BIG fans.  For the past week, or so, the kids have been playing classic fair games at the Club Penguin Fall Fair.  They really enjoy it…

We missed the State Fair this year but who cares!  With the ring toss, ring the bell, grab and spin (until it was deleted) and Puffle Paddle we’re not missing a thing!  They even have a friendly alternative to Whack-A-Mole called Feed-A-Puffle.  Such fun!

and this goes here and that goes there

Kids brought all the dvd’s and vhs tapes out then arranged them by rating on the living room rug.  Not really sure what got into them.  weird!  When they finished they called me over to see the teatering towers and mused over the fact that their G rated tower is much taller than the little bitty R rated tower.  Oh ho ho…

Early Bird and Night Owl

I had always read that children are most attentive and sharpest in morning hours.  I also believed that the more mundane subjects (math) should be tackled during these peak hours.  I was taught to do the most difficult tasks first, “when you’re fresh.”  So I’ve been teaching my children the same thing.  When we wake up we eat, then attack out math worksheets.

Just to insure a smooth transition I put the math books on the table before breakfast is finished, except for yesterday.  Yesterday the math books stayed hidden in the hallway on the shelf.  I was reading email (or something) and not paying attention.  Breakfast was eaten in record time and both kids vacated the premises as quickly as possible.  I’m not one to interrupt quiet play so I let them be.

Lunch came and went.

About four in the afternoon I said, “Hey we haven’t done any math today.  Let’s do it now.”  Keek and Fish went to the bookshelf and grabbed their books, sat down and set to work.  5 minutes later Fish was tapping his pen on the side of his head.  I asked if he would mind finishing his math instead of playing pen-head.  He laughed.  2 minutes later Keek said, “DONE!” and brought me her math before skittering outside to jump on the trampoline.  She was finished and did them all in record time!  I checked her work and she had completed all the problems correctly.

Fish, however,  was laying on his chair with his feet in the air, using pens like drumsticks on his feet. He spent three hours, poor dear, in that chair playing and trying to focus on the work at hand.  At seven I said, “I think you’re done for today.”

***Then It Hit Me***

Fish is an early bird as Keek is a night owl.

Those of you familiar with with Keek’s math woes know how she had labored over the pages and crumpled under the thought of math.  If only I had thought to apply common sense to the issue.  Keek wasn’t having problems with the math… she was having problems with the time of day.

As a parent I knew she was never a morning person.  Since her birth she’s slept in until at least 10:00.  As a colicky baby she cried non-stop from 11pm to 3am.  As a toddler, with a new baby brother, she would be cranky when he startled in the morning but fine anytime during the night.

Fish is the flip side of the coin.  In utero he would wake me up at 6am like clockwork.  I would be starving if I slept in until 7:00.  As a toddler he would wake up, at the slightest noise and be wide awake any time after 4am.  Up ’till four months (or so) ago he’s always woken at seven (or earlier) and come to our room to cuddle.  Now he gets up early and turns on the computer or plays a dvd quietly until the rest of us are out of bed.  By ten pm he’s wound down and, although he’s never sleepy *wink-wink* he’s ready to cuddle again.

Homeschooling allows my children to be their best.  Keek is not bound to struggle with math every morning because she can do it in the afternoon.  Fish is not stuck with afternoon assignments because he can always do his work in the morning.  If only I had realized this earlier!  Instead I listened to society… a society that doesn’t know my kids at all!  Another reason, I’m so glad, I homeschool!

School week 4

Keek and Fish both did their five pages of math and read daily.  Keek continued with Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.  She also read, “Zzz…” by Trudee Romanek.  Fish read “Mr. Brown Can Moo.  Can You?” three days in a row!  On Thursday and Friday he switched and read Richard Scarry’s “The Best Mistake Ever and Other Stories.” Fish also completed five spelling worksheets and five more word puzzle worksheets.

Both kids started a painting after we looked through a stack of old Smithsonian magazines.  They identified three main differences between realistic and abstract paintings.  We discussed the difference between foreground and background and spoke briefly about composition.  They caught on quickly and could identify the triangle compositions in many paintings.  They each made their own paintings and have finished the background and blocking for the foreground.  When they’ve completed their pictures I’ll scan them in and post!

Keek and I went bikeriding in the cemetery every other day and then we all went to the bike trail.

I think I could remove the training wheels, what do you think?          ♥

Week 3

This week has flown by!  I’m in a hurry so this will be a quick post…

Keek:  five pages math… multiplication and early division… but I’ll tell you what, the division is not going smoothly so we’re going to stick with multiplication for a while… probably until Feburary…

Reading:  Spiderwick five… almost finished!

Computer learning skills:  I’ve noticed, as I peek over her shoulder, that she now types with four fingers… index and middle fingers, on both hands.  She is one step closer to “traditional placement” and all this, on her own!  We had to purchase a USB keyboard for the laptop (I’ll come back to this) so we went with the split keyboard.  It’s not two seperate sections but a curvy setup with elongated T,Y,G,H,B and N keys.  The setup lends itself to “proper placement” typing.

Science:  Keek has been really interested in the molecular structure of everyday items.  She watched atomic videos and looked at molecular models online.  When she’s studying the building blocks I can see the gears turning.

Fish: 5 pages math, word problems… addition and subtraction

Reading: lots of Little Golden Books… plus 5 pages (level one) spelling and 5 pages word puzzles.  He hasn’t complained about the word puzzles once this week… must have just been that specific page last week.

History: Enjoys history stories on the History Channel and any eye witness accounts of the past.  With special interest to wars and battles.

Computer skills:  Broke the laptop while playing a firing game.  The space bar was the fire button and in his over eagerness he broke it.  So we had to buy a new laptop and all, space bar firing games are against the rules.    He is now an official spy on club penguin and loves to solve the mystery’s… over…and…over…again…

Science:  Fish has been pondering life.  He is formulating his opinions of it.  Is a tree alive?  Is a blade of grass alive?  Can they feel?  What it means to be alive… and other such questions have been mine to field.  We’ve had some interesting discussion!

So that’s all for this installment!  More later!

Week 1

One week of recorded schooling under our belt and no complaining to speak of!  Yay!!!

After five days of ’school’ I consider myself (and the kids) back in the swing of things.  I’m really glad I decided to go with the weekly piece of mind sheets and printed the first semester’s pages ahead of  time.  The daily block size is perfect for recording their activities.  It seems (so far) that I have more time for myself this year.  They are recording the weather daily and studying soil samples under the heading of Science.  We haven’t done any History anything so far!  Maybe next week.

Keek has really benefited from the math worbook.  She is in the middle of a third grade book and just starting simple division.  Her multiplication tables are not memorized (mine either, for that matter) but her figuring skills have gotten quicker.  She freezes up when asked an unexpected math question but how often does that happen in the real world?!

Fish learned more about reading this summer than I could have imagined. He can read most of the little kid books in his room, unassisted, on the first try.  He is eager to move on to the bigger books but gets easily frustrated by longer, compound, contraction or non-phonetic words. Beyond all that I am so impressed how much he picked up on his own.   That’s when kids really learn… when no one is watching!

Both of the kids have frequented brain pop dot com and enjoy the easy learning they do there. Keek was sucked into the land of atomic particles and Fish revisited Olympic history.  Both wanted to take the following quizzes, which surprised me.  I suppose when one hasn’t been exposed to the stigma of test taking the stigma doesn’t exist!  Keek opted for a graded test and Fish chose to take the review.  Both had fun and that’s the most important requirement for long term recall of information.

Keek read, “The Hundred Penny Box” by Sharon Bell Mathis then wrote her own book report.  She prefers to write on copy paper then transcribe over to lined paper.  She did great!

Fish and I read, “A Kitchen Knight” by Barbara Schiller together.  By far, his favorite place was, the Castle Dangerous! He also read a (PD Eastman or Dr Seuss) book to me daily.  His favorite book at the moment is, “I Stink!” by Kate McMullan.  It’s an energetic story of a New York City dump truck told in first person narrative with one nasty alphabet soup recipe!

Hopefully the other 35 weeks will be just as fun and easy going as this one was!

Talk the talk

My Aunt had told me Fish had a unique name for omlettes but she couldn’t remember so I asked,  “Do you remember when you spent the night at the Hotel with your Aunt L?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what you had for breakfast?”

“I had a mallet and my own little box of loopy fruit cereal with the bird on it.”

***and then*** (another kid-ism I hear all the time!)

Today we were out in the rain, digging soil samples from the park and the yard.  As we were leaving the house Fish said, “Ohhh nnno, it’s raining.”  I responded, “It’s just drizzling honey… we’ll be ok.” On the way back in I said, “Let’s go inside.” He was enjoying the sprinkles and said, “It’s just dribbling mom!”

For those not fluent in kid speak:::  mallet = omelet and dribbling = drizzling

I love kid talk!

Tattoos! only not really

With the exposed summer skin comes the inevitable request for body art.  The kids have always been fans of face paint and temporary tattoos.  So as per their requests… tattoo’s were painstakingly drawn on the most perfect of canvases.  Even Uncle K got in on the action!

*** Wings befitting the most magical of fairies. ***

*** Skull and crossbones capable of striking fear into the hearts of the most vicious of pirates. ***

*** Celtic sword of protection in tribal bramble. ***

*** Theif of hearts in Latin. ***

Summer Fun

We always have so much fun when we visit feebeeglee and the little glees too!  The birthday party went just swimmingly… a summer time success!

Bouncing Baby Boy

This week my nephews spent a couple of nights with us. The boys are 3.5 years and 22 months.

They’re great company and my two kids love to have them over. We had just finished apple snacks and were listing to some blues. The older kids were playing with puzzles when 22 month old brought me a large bouncy ball and said, “Yucky!” As I looked at the ball I noticed a small bite missing. Containing my laughter I said, “I bet!”

Brings a whole new meaning to “Bouncing Baby Boy” doesn’t it?!