Another One Down

Not to be outdone by Matthew's swollen foot, Evan broke his elbow. Broken, as in the bones don't meet. He was "flying" on Daddy's feet last night when he fell. He cried and cried but I thought he was just being his dramatic self. I gave him some ibuprofen and put him to bed. This morning he woke up swollen and sore. So it was off to the urgent care place again. After several waiting rooms, two doctors and two sets of x-rays (I'll probably be glowing green soon since I was present for all the x-rays this week), Evan is now sporting a green cast from his shoulder down to his hand.

Again, no school got done today. Maybe we'll just call this week Spring Break (pun intended).

Can't Keep a Good Man Down

Our day started as normal today. Matthew was bugging us as we tried to do Math so I had Evan and Ryan call him into the other room to play with him. That was working well and I was able to finish math with Adam and start Rye's lesson. Matthew and Evan were still playing in the other room when Matthew started screaming in pain. He and Evan had been climbing on the arm of the couch and jumping off (something Evan has been told numerous times NOT to do). I guess Matthew landed wrong b/c he was crying and wouldn't put any weight on his foot. He continued to cry for almost an hour and his foot was starting so swell. His doctor couldn't see him until late afternoon. In fact, they acted like I was annoying them. I ended up taking him to an urgent care place. They X-rayed his foot and didn't find anything. I can tell he's still in pain and he's walking on his heel but he's getting around enough to take a blue marker down the walls of the hallway!!

When I dropped the older boys off at Grandma's house, I told them to finish their reading. They took their books with them including the tape of our read-aloud. When I went back to get them, they hadn't read any of it!!! They got distracted by Jimmy Neutron. *rolling eyes*

not working

This Friday Playstation thing is really not working. The boys only play Playstation on weekends and I agreed to let the weekend begin at 3pm Friday if all their school work was done. That has led to Ryan's constant worry about Playstation. He's been nagging all day to do school... which you would think is a good thing but I have other stuff happening and Adam isn't quite as motivated. He couldn't concentrate on his Language paper b/c he was so concerned about Playstation. I was trying to help him and he just whined. I asked him if wanted it to be good and he replied, "I just want it to be DONE." Playstation is not such a great motivator.

I'm not in the best of moods anyway. I've got a sinus headache and no medications that won't make me sleepy. I resent the fact that I have to provide ID to buy pseodophedrine. I'm not a criminal and I resent the government keeping track of how much sinus medicine I use! I know it cuts down on the amount of drugs the meth heads can make but at the cost of everyone's personal freedom to buy and take medicine! I bet if you had to register to buy a baseball bat, beating deaths would decrease... or else murderers would just find something else with which to beat their enemies.... just like the druggies are finding new drugs. And I'm still stuck standing in the pharmacy line to tell the government that my sinuses are stuffy!

Evan

Evan is just amazing, annoying at times, but really amazing. We were driving home from church tonight when he said, "I know what 20+10 is... 30!" Then he proceeded to add ten to 30, then to 40, then to 50, all the way up to 100. Then he started adding 100s. 100+200=300, 300+100=400. I asked him what 200+200 equals and it took him only a few seconds to come up with the right answer! He was loving it too! He decided it would be fun game to come up with addition combinations that equal ten. He did them all, 5+5, 6+4, 7+3, etc. I was amazed. Then I was really amazed when he decided to do 20: 10+10, 11+9, 12+8, etc. I don't know where this kid comes up with this stuff. We probably do math once a week, if that much. The kid is a GENIUS! Now if I could just get him to snap his own pants or put on his shoes. @@

He's cute too!

New Books

We finished Freedom Train yesterday. The last few chapters were kind of hard to get through. Today we started Turn Homeward Hannalee and Across Five Aprils. Across Five Aprils is our read aloud so I got it on tape. I'm hoping that will help clear up this cough I've been fighting. Too much reading really dries out your throat! Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy listening to the guy reading the story. And the boys didn't seem to follow it as well as when I read. We'll try it for a couple days but I may end up reading it anyway.

I have a library dilemma. I try to request our books a few weeks in advance so I'll be sure to have them when we're ready. Our next book is Shades of Gray and I've had it for a couple weeks but we still won't start it for at least another week and a half. I went on-line to renew it last night and they wouldn't let me. It's been requested by another patron. I feel bad not turning it in when someone is waiting for it but mostly I'm annoyed that they won't let me request any additional books when I have an overdue item! I'm going to need our next book as soon as we finish Shades of Gray but I won't be able to reserve it until I turn in Shades of Gray. What to do? What to do? I'm thinking it may be time to get a pin number for Adam's library card so HE can reserve books on line.

Matthew is really messing with our schedule today. He seems to sense right when we're about to start Spelling. I try to do it while he's napping since it's a totally teacher directed subject and he's a total teacher distractor! But today I waited too late and he woke up just as we were starting. He wanted mommy and was not going to be deterred. We ended up doing Spelling over the sounds of a fussy baby and we skipped Language altogether. We haven't done math yet today and we haven't done Science all week. I guess I should get off the computer and turn off SpongeBob.

President's Day

The boys wanted to celebrate President's Day by playing Playstation. HA! I assured them that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln never played video games and therefore, that was not an appropriate way to celebrate their birthdays. While I'm not positive about George Washington, I know Abraham Lincoln was homeschooled! And Washington was probably at least partially schooled at home. So what do you think would be a good way to honor their birthdays??? Hmmmm.....

So we did a full day of school, hee hee hee. Jeff was home but he pretty much stayed out of the way. He did harass, um, I mean HELP Ryan with a math problem. He was trying to get Rye to show all the steps but he didn't even know all the steps himself. He knew how to get the answer but he didn't know all those itty bitty steps that A Beka uses. So when Ryan started doing the steps, Jeff was the one confused. LOL

For Sale

We were leaving Wal-Mart the other day when this conversation happened...

Evan: How much is Wal-Mart?
Me (confused): Huh?
Evan (louder): How much is Wal-Mart?
Me (still confused): What do you mean? Different stuff costs different prices.
Evan: NO, the sign says 'low price' so how much is it?
Me: Huh?

I looked up and yep, there it was in three foot letters over the door... low prices. The amazing thing is that EVAN READ THAT. We haven't covered anything about /ow/ making a long /o/ sound. How did he know that? I admit to hardly ever doing anything bookish with him and yet he's reading anyway.

This and That

Yesterday was co-op. It's been moved to Tuesdays now. The preschoolers were surprisingly calm. I didn't have to pull out any of my hair. ;) However, I do find myself in some pain today. My quadriceps are aching and I can only blame the up and down of Ring Around the Rosie. We didn't even fall down that many times before the little angels started rolling around kicking each other. Ring Around the Rosie should not cause sore muscles (unless you get kicked by an over excited three year old)!!!

I'm watching an auction on eBay. I'd like to tell you about it but then you'd rush over there and outbid me. Nah, it's getting pretty high anyway. I'm eyeballing Apologia Exploring Creation with Astronomy. But it's getting so high I may as well just buy a new copy from Vegsource. I never get good deals on eBay and yet, when I sell, no one wants to pay me the big bucks that these other people are getting.

Both Adam and Ryan did two math lessons today. I'm beginning to think A Beka is a little repetitive. I really like the review they include in every lesson. And I like that they break everything down into itty bitty steps. But lately we just don't need those itty bitty steps. We can do two lessons, combining two itty bitty steps, and just do the review on one of those pages. It's more interesting for all of us and gets us closer to the end of the book. ;) I pulled out some of those free math manipulatives today. Ryan was learning fractional parts of groups so we used the frog counters to find halves and thirds. He didnt' really need the frogs but I wanted to use them b/c they're so very cute! LOL Matthew liked them too. He can't resist colorful choking hazards.

Early Start

Evan started school early this morning, at 8:42 to be exact. That's when he came into my room and asked if he could get up. I invited him to snuggle for a bit and told him we would get up at 9:00. Unfortunately, he had a great view of the clock so the countdown began! "Eight-forty-three, seventeen more minutes. Eight-forty-four, sixteen more minutes, Eight-forty-five, fifteen more minutes..." This did lead to an enlightening discussion on seconds, minutes, and hours,how many seconds are in a minute, and how many minutes are in an hour. So I missed out on the extra seventeen minutes of sleep I was hoping to get. But I did decide to count that as Math! Later he did two pages from his A Beka K math book which we haven't had out since before Christmas. That's not to say we haven't done math since Christmas. We just haven't done workbook math. Math happens all the time... even at 8:42am when Mommy is trying to sleep!

I really dislike Sonlight Science. It's B-O-R-I-N-G. It's mostly just reading books and answering questions in the Science notebook. That was alright when the reading was about animals and therefore interesting. But now we're reading about energy, conduction, convection, radiation... stuff that we do not find interesting. I try to lighten it up with some simple experiments but even the fun of spilling blue water all over the kitchen can not make up for the mind numbing reading of The Usborne Science Encyclopedia. We were trying to read about radiation today but the stupid book jumps all over the place. I already knew we wouldn't be doing Sonlight Science next year but now I'm not so sure we can make it through this year.

Feel the Music

We're not an extremely musical family. We love to sing along with the radio and dance in the kitchen. Jeff and I were both band geeks in Jr. High and High School (back before it was called "middle school" LOL). In fact, we met in the band room at the high school. I actually took a lot of music classes in high school, if only to avoid taking "real" classes. So I know a little about a lot of different instruments but not enough about any of them to call myself a musician.

So you can see we value music. I want my kids to know how to read music, not scratch their heads when someone says "treble clef." To that end, we've started music lessons.

Ryan became obsessed with drums after watching a praise and worship band at Bible school a couple years ago. We bought him a drum pad and sticks and I found some beginner books at a yard sale. Jeff is the drummer in our family and he was going to give Ryan lessons. We were all set. It languished for a while. But since he started his new job, Jeff has been more regular with the lessons and Ryan has even practiced on his own.

You may remember me posting about our free piano. Adam has really taken a liking to this musical behemouth. We put off starting lessons until after the holidays and then the possibility of selling the house got in the way (house didn't sell). But I did get some beginner books from my beautiful sister (who also happens to be my twin ;)). I've been refreshing my limited skills from that one semester of high school piano and Adam is just a few lessons behind me. It turns out his sunday school teacher gives piano lessons, so we're going to start that soon. He's really looking forward to lessons and I'm looking forward to him surpassing my limited skills so he can teach me!

Evan and Matthew are still just dancing with me in the kitchen. But I can see they love music and someday soon, they'll want to make their own.

It's been a slow week here at least with regards to school. I think we got a full day in on Monday. The rest of the week was hit with one distraction after another.

Adam had a dental check-up on Tuesday. It was a quick afternoon appointment but anything out of the ordinary really throws off our routine. We could have finished school in the morning but with everyone having to get dressed, well.... Oh dear, I know that is a pitiful excuse! LOL By the time we got back from the dentist, the snow was falling... and falling... and falling.

We had a field trip scheduled for Wednesday. I was really looking forward to this play about Paul Revere. But, alas, the snow just kept falling. The play was cancelled due to weather and we took a snow day on Wednesday. We did manage to squeeze in a couple subjects but mostly, the kids played in the snow. We went to church/Awana that evening.

Thursday was another field trip. This one was to a fire station. I thought Evan would enjoy this one since I don't think he's ever visited a fire station. He wasn't overly impressed. LOL But everyone had fun visiting with friends.

Afterwards, we went over to Stephanie's house to visit. My boys have just recently been introduced to Monopoly (real Monopoly; they've been playing Monopoly Jr. for years). They badger me constantly to play this amazing time eater. They played Monopoly while visiting so I hope that fix will hold them for a while! LOL

We left Ryan there to spend the night. He's never slept away from home except at Grandma's house. I thought I would worry about him all night but I was fine... and, as far as I know, he was fine too. I've got to go get him when Matthew wakes from his nap.

Today has been an off day since Ryan isn't here. I didn't even try to get Adam or Evan to do any school. We'll catch up next week... or the next.

Science

Convection –noun Physics. the transfer of heat by the circulation or movement of the heated parts of a liquid or gas.

We've been studying heat energy and how it moves using conduction and convection. Here's an experiment we did to illustrate convection. Start with a bottle of really hot water and a bottle of really cold water. Put some food coloring in the hot water so you can see it moving through the cold water. Cover the cold water bottle with a card. Upend the cold water bottle onto the hot water (this is the hard part!). Slide the card out and watch the hot water rush up into the cold water. The boys were suitably impressed (but I doubt they can tell you what convection is. LOL).

We started with blue hot water on the bottom and clear water on top. Here you see the clear water has turned blue.




The boys were impressed with the mixing water so they suggested we use two primary colors so they would mix and make a new color. Here you see the blue on the bottom mixing with yellow on top to make green. You can also see the yellow water that spilled on the counter. I told you it's hard to turn a bottle of water upside down without spilling!


Here's the boys posing with the two bottles after they've mixed further and are both totally green. Yes, two of the three of them are still wearing pajamas. And, yes, Ryan is eating lunch while his brothers are still in their pjs.

Will I Never Learn?

We were driving home the other day when Evan started telling me the "kill rating" on every Top Trump card we own. We own two decks, dinosaurs and predators, so that's a lot of kill ratings! I was suitably impressed with this useless knowledge filling his brain and decided to capitalize on his ability to memorize trivial bits of nothing while playing cards. So today I took out some blank index cards and wrote addition combinations on them. The idea was to match the answers. So, if you had 2+2 and 1+3, that'd be a match. First mistake: It's almost impossible to add on your fingers while holding cards. No wait, the first mistake would be deviating from the workbook/white board lessons. You'd think I would know that by now. But I really thought this would be fun and effective. But I digress... He couldn't add b/c his fingers were filled with cards. He fussed and whined when he didn't get a match. He was taking so long with his turn b/c he had to find the sum for every card. I took some of his cards so he wouldn't have to add so many at once. He still whined. I wrote the answers on his cards. He still whined. I gave up. Normally I would have perservered a while but, even though I hadn't quite learned not to try anything new, I have learned you can't fight with a fussy five year old. Let that be your lesson for the day.

The boys love Playstation but they're only allowed to play on weekends. Adam had what he considered to be a great idea today. If all schoolwork was finished, the weekend should start at 3:oo on Friday! I agreed to consider this proposal. Adam was very excited and went to share this development with Ryan. Ryan, ever the cynic, said, "I'm not hurrying on my schoolwork until she says it's definite." ROFL!!! But he must not be willing to risk it b/c he's reading Seven Alone now without any reminders from me.

We had co-op this morning. I'm teaching the preschool class this year so I can keep Evan in line. Technically, Evan should be in the kindergarten class but I know he'd never go for the sit down, listen to directions and do what everyone else is doing atmosphere. He's a free spirit (to put it nicely). So, he's still in the preK class and I get to be his teacher. Teaching PreK is, um, challenging. Last semester the class was mostly four year olds and that was fun. But this semester, my beloved four year olds have moved up to the K class and been replaced with a ton of three year olds. I love three year olds just as much as you do, but I love them one at a time. Three year olds do not have much of an attention span and they think the whole world belongs to them, not to the other three years olds currently playing with whatever they want. They are cute though... can't deny that! You know... from a distance or one at a time. ;)

Prior to co-op, when I was sane, school was going smoothly.

We've entered a new era in Science. Biology is done for now. I'm skipping the plant lessons until spring. We started a study of energy this week. We're going to explore physics, chemistry, and astronomy for a while. Ryan is not happy with the change. He really likes animals. I think he'll like this too once we get past the introductory lessons. We did a little experiment yesterday with ice water and boiling water to see how long it would take them to reach the same temperature. I'm looking forward to doing more experiments rather than just reading about animals.

We've been working on dictionary skills for Language. They've been alphabetizing their spelling words and looking up homonyms. Ryan hates that too! LOL