Week in Review

This week we've done our usual 'lessons.' I call them lessons but they're totally optional, and Colwyn gets to choose which ones he does on any given day. His motivation, other than his natural enjoyment in doing these activities, is time on the Wii. I'd been hesitant to buy a Wii because I'm worried that the kids will spend too much time playing on it. But the boys were more than willing to make a deal that in order to play video games, Colwyn has to do two 'lessons' and Lachlann has to do one. Lachlann's lesson can count as observing or helping with Colwyn's, depending on what it is. They can choose between math, reading, social studies, and history.

For math, we're still working with the Singapore workbooks in addition to real life experience. Colwyn is about halfway through 1B and Lachlann is halfway through 1A. They're not expensive workbooks, but they'll add up over time and multiple children, so we use a page protector and a dry erase marker so they'll hopefully last for all the kids. They both have been breezing through them, doing at least five or six pages at a time. They did math on Tuesday and Friday; on Friday, Colwyn was up to learning about even and odd numbers, and skip counting.

For reading, we've been using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
. It's not the most fun, but it gets the job done and Colwyn likes that each lesson takes under 10 minutes. He's consistently able to sound out easy words. Lachlann has even showed some interested and on Thursday, I did the first lesson with him. He did the second on Friday and enjoyed it, even asking for more (though unfortunately, Fiona woke up before we could go onto the third).

We signed up for a great program through Highlights that teaches social studies. It's called Top Secret Adventures and because it's meant for kids 7-12, I have to help him with it quite a bit. Mainly, he needs help with reading.. the puzzles he can solve on his own when I give him directions. The first package was for Australia and we finished that on Thursday. Then We started the next one, which features Mexico.

We're using The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor for history, supplemented by lots of books from the library. For the prehistory section, we used Stone Age Boy and Everyday Life in Prehistory, among others. For the second chapter on early Egypt, which we just started this week, we checked Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Ancient Egypt and How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt out from the library, among others.

This is all in addition to the regular stuff we do, like art, science, literature, etc, which are done more loosely as the kids feel like it and as topics come up.

Our homeschool group was comparitively inactive this week, with only a park day that we attended on Thursday. We went to Lynch and had a picnic, and the kids enjoyed playing on the playground equipment. We saw Alex and Mila, Simon and Satchel, and two new friends, Morgaine and Ronan.

The kids also spent quite a bit of time helping me in the garden, which not only makes my job easier, but teaches them about agriculture and life cycles of plants, and the niches that bugs and other critters fill in our local ecology.

Digging in the Dirt

It was almost a month ago that we started those seeds, and to be perfectly honest, it hasn't gone so well. I gave up on the lettuce, spinach, and romaine because it got too leggy. I accidentally left the peas outside too long when I was trying to get them used to the sun, and they totally wilted. The squashes, watermelon, and cucumber are doing well, though, and the tomatoes are so-so. I think that starting next weekend I can start hardening them off, then they'll go out into the garden. Two weeks ago we transfered them into bigger pots and the boys were pretty impressed with their extensive root systems. They really enjoyed helping out with that, too, and we made a giant muddy mess on the dining room table.

We got a lot of work done outside this weekend. It was gorgeous so we did lots of raking, pruning, and general picking up. I'd also spent a lot of time working in the garden beds earlier this week and finished it all up this weekend. I've got (what will be) 40 lettuce plants, 32 romaine, 108 spinach, 128 carrots, and 12 peas. I've been watering the plots and hopefully we should see some seedlings emerge this week. The boys have had a lot of fun playing in the backyard and helping me when they feel like it - they dig with their trowels, they drop seeds into the holes I make, and they love to water. My strawberry plants did pretty well over the winter, too, so hopefully those will start producing in another two months or so.

This week coming up is supposed to be super nice, as well, so hopefully we can finish off cleaning up the backyard. We're also finally feeling healthy again (after two very long, miserable weeks), and our library books are way past due, so we'll have to at least drop them off tomorrow, and hopefully make a trip to get new ones quite soon. We may be meeting up with Jen and her boys tomorrow, and we'll try to get together with some other friends this week, too.

Gardening and Growing Tadpoles

Our garden is growing like crazy. We started everything from seeds except the strawberry plants, and I'm just happy that things are sprouting. :) We have a total of 40 square feet. Six of the square feet have to remain fallow for the big vining plants, but pretty much everything else is full. I have three squares that I can put something in and I just need to decide what I want to put in there. So far we're growing pole beans, cucumbers, acorn squash, yellow summer squash, zucchini, romaine, spinach, mesclun, onion, garlic, broccoli, carrots, and peas. The peas are in pots on our deck because I ran out of room, and the strawberry plants are in front of our deck. I also have four big pots that are roughly a square foot and at least a foot deep, so I'll probably get some tomato and pepper transplants for those.

Here's a Shutterfly album with all the pictures:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8Absm7ho0bNmG_

Our other big (new) project is tadpole-raising. Mary had mentioned in an email that she and Charlotte had found tons of tadpoles in the pond at Patton Park, so yesterday afternoon we headed there to see if we could catch any. We only had Colwyn's little bug jar, but after a half hour, Doug managed to get one. We brought it home and got it settled in a makeshift home (a giant tupperware container). This morning I took the kids to PetCo and we got a much bigger terrarium and some floating lilypads. I'll add some rocks for it to perch on as well, but it doesn't have legs yet. When I went to get more pond water (tap water is bad for tadpoles, oops), I ended up catching another one quite easily with the net I had brought along. So we have two tadpoles, and Colwyn has decided that he wants to call them both Bob. These things are HUGE.. their bodies are at least an inch long and their tails are another two inches or so.

Right now we're feeding them boiled lettuce but as they grow, we'll have to get them little buggies. When they're grown, we'll release them back into the pond where we got them. It'll be a nice lesson in biology, animal husbandry, and environmental responsibilty. I'm really looking forward to finding out what kind of frogs these things will turn into.. I think it'll be neat looking them up with Colwyn in our field guide.

Here's a Shutterfly album with pictures of the tadpole:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8Absm7ho0bNmHI

Happy Beltaine!

Today is Beltaine for us pagans, so we decided to do some work in the garden. We went to the grocery store first thing this morning to get milk and sushi for lunch, and also picked up two potted plants for our altar, a hanging plant for the deck, a pack of marigolds, and some broccoli seeds.

When we got home, we turned the compost, then started gathering sticks for a fairy house. I figured we'd dedicate one square foot to the Fey, so we made a ring of sticks, with an opening for a doorway. I still don't know what we'll use for a roof (if we make one at all). Here are the boys helping:





And this is the fairy house after I planted the marigolds and Colwyn added some straw for a bed:



I'd like to try to find a way to rig up one of our wind chimes nearby. It would also be nice to add a dish for water or milk.. I'll have to see if I have one small enough. After we finished the fairy house, we planted broccoli seeds in two of the squares. In another two weeks, I'll plant another square or two with broccoli, and another one with carrots. One of the benefits of SFG is staggering your plantings so you have more of a continuous harvest, rather than everything maturing all at once.

The seeds that we started a week ago are doing pretty well. All of the spinach has sprouted, but still nothing on the peas. Here are the boys watering them:



Our big 4'x8' bed is only half full of soil.. I need to wait for Doug to help me mix up another batch of the special mix. When that's done, I can plant some more salad greens, and in another week or so I can plant the rest of the seeds.

The boys have been enjoying the warm weather and the opportunity to play with the sand table. Here's a quick picture of them getting all sandy:

Nature Studies

I've been having a really good time with the kids lately. The weather has been nice, so we've been spending a lot of time outdoors, and I think I'm always a better mom when we're outside.

We took a walk to Norwood Pond the other day to look for tadpoles, but couldn't find any. Instead, we got to see Maddy's instincts at work as she jumped into the water to try to catch some geese that had swam over to us. Then later, when I invited her to jump onto a huge tree that had fallen across a nasty algae covered inlet, she jumped up onto the tree and then into the nastiest patch of algae. Gross. We did spend a lot of time looking closely at the water and examining the patches of grass and other green stuff that was starting to grow.

When we were sitting on our front steps the other day, we spent a good deal of time watching a few birds go in and out of our birdhouses up in the tree. We talked about what they might be doing, and when we came in, we tried to identify them online (we couldn't.. I need to dig up one of our old Audubon guides).

As I mentioned in my other blog, we've started working on our garden. Last weekend Colwyn helped me plant spinach and pea seeds into peat containers (I just love the idea of planting the containers directly into the soil, rather than pulling the baby seedlings out). We talked about how the little seeds will grow into food that we can eat, an idea which was made easier by the pea seeds which look like, well, peas. He's enjoyed watering them, though I have to supervise him closely since he tends to pour all the water into one container.

Colwyn also helps me with the compost, although he was rather distressed at first that we were putting our old food in there. I don't think he quite got that it was only food that was too old for us to eat, as he kept saying, "But no, Mommy, I love our food!" While I turn the compost, I show him the bits of food that are still decomposing, and the foods that haven't started yet, and the nice black compost that our old food and grass clippings and other stuff has turned into. We talked about how when all our food has turned into compost, we'll use it to feed our growing plants, and that then our plants will feed us. And what we don't eat will go right back into the compost bin.

We've talked about a few other odd things this week.. like yesterday, Colwyn asked me about the cracks in the pavement when we were outside. So he got a mini-lesson in how the ground contracts and expands in different weather, and how that causes the cracks. Then he gave me a mini-lesson in which machines the city will use to fix the cracks. :)

We went to the library the other day to pick up some gardening books that we had requested on interlibrary loan. It was a spur of the moment trip, so I hadn't looked up kids' books ahead of time, and thus my expectations were low. But we ended up finding a ton of good books, most notably Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, by Giles Andreae. Huge hit with Colwyn, and Lachlann even enjoys pointing out the dinosaurs ("Dorothy!" he calls them.. well, it's more like "Dorwy!") and roaring at the right moments. While we were there, the boys befriended a 6 or 7 year old girl and had fun building with blocks and then spinning around in the chairs. It was sweet to see them playing with an older kid, a kid who was actually really good with them. Kind of reaffirmed my belief that the boys will get to socialize with people of a wide variety of ages. They also talked to the older librarian about the elephants on display, too.

I've started introducing Colwyn to the idea of learning French. A few times in the past week, we've talked about how people in different parts of the world speak different languages (social studies!), that we speak English, that people in Mexico speak Spanish, that people who are deaf use sign language, that people who live in France speak French. I've demonstrated how we can talk about what Maddy is by using English ("Dog!") or ASL (patting our thigh). Then I told him that if we want to use French, we can say "chien." He repeated it willingly for me a few times, and also attempted "J'aime le chien." We're taking it slowly.. if something is very hard or new, he sometimes avoids it, so I don't want to push him.

I have pictures of Colwyn gardening, but they're still on my camera, so I'll have to post them later. That's all for now!

Spring Thaw

We've had more nice weather these past few days, and I'm making sure we get to spend lots of time outdoors. I'm really looking forward to going on nature walks and catching bugs and fun stuff like that, but for now, just being outside is enough.

We spent about three hours outside yesterday. In the morning we played mostly on the deck while I finished cleaning up out there (Doug had done a lot of it over the weekend while I was at work). The kids enjoyed playing in the sand and in the clubhouse, but they also spent a good half hour dropping chunks of ice and snow over the railing and watching them smash into smithereens on the steps below. Early experiments in gravity and the properties of ice? Hmm. We talked about how water freezes into ice, and then when the air gets warmer out, the ice melts back into water.

In the afternoon, we played out in the backyard. We're planning on growing a nice big veggie garden, so I was trying to figure out where I want to put it. We examined the grass and I showed the boys how it was starting to turn green again. I'm sure it went a bit over Colwyn's head, but I also explained how the spots in the yard that have green grass are the warmest, whereas the parts that are all brown are still too cold for the grass to grow. I opened up our compost bin to see what it was like, and explained how we put the food we don't eat in there, along with grass and leaves, and it all breaks down into dirt. I'm really looking forward to this garden.. I think it'll be a great learning experience for Colwyn. As he gets older, we'll be able to incorporate all sorts of subjects into our gardening (math, science, geography, climate, etc).

We also went on a walk around the block and ended up seeing our neighbors (the elementary school teacher). The kids had a good time running around and Caroline and I got to chat. Homeschooling came up, and she asked when we have to start reporting, and asked, "So, do you have to talk to someone, like, once a week or something?" It was all I could do not to laugh. I explained how the law works, how we'll be reporting our progress, and how should the school department get the crazy idea that I'm not doing a proper job, that it's up to them to prove it, not the other way around. It was a nice conversation, but I thought it was so strange that she thought I'd have to check in so often. Because obviously parents aren't capable of raising their own kids, you know.

Today we went to Cy Tenney with our homeschooling friends. We obviously hadn't been to the park in a while, because as we pulled up, Colwyn shouted gleefully, "Oh! The park! Oh! I love the park!" Poor kid. :) They had a great time running around, but there were a few rude families there, so we ended up leaving after an hour or so. We all went to Papa Gino's for lunch, which was quite an experience. Colwyn thought Miles was a riot running back and forth between the tables, and delighted in calling him a troublemaker (a term of endearment in our house, same as naughty devil).

We haven't been doing a whole lot of real homeschooly stuff. We do art projects every other day or so, and Colwyn constantly requests the eyedroppers. We've been talking about space a bit here and there, and dinosaurs, too, of course. We'll probably go to the library this weekend and get a bunch of new books.. I love our library trips. I'm such a dork, but I get a big kick out looking up books I think the kids will like.