Timeline

We finally have a timeline!  Thanks to Jules for the inspiration and to my husband for measuring the tape and affixing it to the wall in a straight manner.

Timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods.

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Oh Well

I wanted very much to be kayaking on the lake last night, but, ALAS, I had other responsibilities.

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Pumpkin Patch

Today we made our annual visit to the pumpkin patch.  Because of the rainy weather and the possibility of cancellation, I didn’t tell the kids about our field trip until about 15 minutes before we had to leave, so it ended up being a pleasant surprise for them.  Temps were in the mid-50’s, which wasn’t uncomfortable; however, I did have to scramble this morning trying to find hats, coats and boots.  Margie is wearing a jacket that belongs to Junior, but you see it fits her quite well.

Oh, and there’s one word that comes to mind as I view these pictures of my kids . . . HAMS.  I’m giving up on getting decent pictures of them.

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Community Resources

We’re on our last week of studying Ancient Egypt, and, thanks to my sister, we had a guest speaker this afternoon who just returned from a visit to Egypt a couple weeks ago.  Mrs. J. dressed in modern Egyptian attire, and spent an hour talking to the kids about her recent trip, bringing with her a box full of souvenirs for them to look at and touch.  We all enjoyed ourselves very much!  Thanks, Froggy for the idea, and thanks, Mrs. J., for spending your time with us this afternoon!

Today I was reminded that I’m often asked, “How can you teach your kids everything they need to know?”  The answer is, “I can’t, and I don’t.”  That’s why we make use of community resources as often as we find them.  We’re very thankful for people in the community who are willing to invest time in the lives of our children.

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Why My Family Shouldn’t Own Macs

My family had an impromptu birthday party for my aunt on Thursday night.  We scare outsiders.

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We’re Back to School

Technically we were back to school a week ago, but if you’ve been reading my blog you know why I didn’t get around to our back-to-school post until today.

This year I’m outnumbered by my students for the first time, as Margie enters kindergarten.  I’d wondered how juggling two students would complicate our schedule, but so far it’s going quite well.  In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that Margie’s formal schooling takes less than half an hour every day.  Yeah, I’m still in the minor leagues.

We’re back at Tapestry of Grace, working our way through Year 1, which covers ancient history.  A special bonus this year is having a few families in the area using TOG and going at roughly the same pace we are.  That means we’ve been able to schedule a co-op class once a week, mostly to accomplish hands-on activities.  Last week my sister brought her kids over to work on salt maps of Egypt:

Baba’s in 3rd grade this year and carrying a heavier work load.  We’ve found a few new winners in the curriculum department:

Handwriting Without Tears – Up to this point we haven’t used a handwriting curriculum; however, I haven’t been satisfied with Baba’s letter formation and didn’t want to attempt cursive without some assistance.  HWT has been a great fit for us!  Margie loves the hands-on activities (blocks and a slate chalkboard), and Baba’s already writing a few words in cursive and looking forward to his lessons each day.

Easy Grammar – We tried Total Language Plus for a few months last year, and Baba hated it.  Although it’s a great program (we’ll probably return to it at some point when Baba’s writing skills are better developed), I decided to search for separate grammar and spelling programs (TOG includes a built-in writing curriculum, so we’ve got that covered).  TOG recommends Easy Grammar, so I decided to give it a shot.  We have a winner!  Lessons are short–about 10 minutes–and require very little prep time on my part.  Baba enjoys this curriculum and seems to be learning quite a bit.

Sequential Spelling – TOG recommends Spelling Power, but I’ve read several reviews which mention this curriculum works best for natural spellers, which Baba is not.  My friend Jules alerted me to Sequential Spelling, and it sounded like it would be a better fit for us.  Thanks, Jules!  Baba is finally starting to understand spelling, and, once again, lessons are taking about 10 minutes.  Short and sweet works for me.

Anyone else using a new curriculum you’d like to share?

The Ulcer-Maker

And here’s why wallpaper will never touch these walls again as long as I live in this house:

With apologies to my mother-in-law, in case your heart stopped beating upon viewing this.

The Wallpaper Thing

Some of my fellow Facebook members have been asking about the wallpaper removal of which I’ve been grousing, and last night I promised a friend I’d give an explanation on my blog.  Here’s the story . . .

The walls in our new house are/were covered in acres of wallpaper, and not just any wallpaper.  This is country style wallpaper, which is entirely not. my. style.  I do not choose my decor from books entitled "Baskets & Berries" and "Buttonville" . . . I just don’t.  So James talked to our realtor who recommended a Jack-of-All-Trades who would bring a steamer to the house and remove the offending hunter green plaid and twining ivy vines in less time than it takes to mutter "A Cup of Sunshine".  The price was right, so we struck the bait.

This job was supposed to be finished last week while I was drowning camping in the Boundary Waters, but "Jack" hurt his back and didn’t make it to the house during my absence.  On Saturday he showed up on our doorstep, sans steamer, with a 30-year-old hairdryer dangling from his fingers.  He’d decided the steamer put out too much water for our walls so the heat from the hairdryer would have to do the trick.  At the end of several hours of work, he’d managed to peel the top layer of wallpaper from the entryway (those of you who have been to the house know the pitiful square footage that represents in the grand scheme of things).

When James came home from his parents’ cabin that evening I explained the events of the day, and out of curiosity he tried peeling a bit of the wallpaper himself.  To his delight most of the top layer peeled off in one neat sheet.  My dear husband then spent the rest of the weekend pulling wallpaper off the walls in our kitchen, hallway, and basement.  When Jack returned on Monday, half of his job was finished for him (and without the aid of a Jurassic hair-styling appliance).

Jack stopped by for a couple hours on Monday.  He scraped the wallpaper residue from the hallway, but mostly he spent his time shooting the breeze with me as I was attempting to start our first day of school.  Try doing your job while a man in the next room chatters on about his father-in-law’s cremation.  Or the toilet he had to replace that morning.  Or the price of tea in China.

Tuesday brought no appearance from Jack, but he rang the doorbell at 9:00 on Wednesday morning.  More school interruptions, as he chiseled at the wallpaper above our kitchen cupboards and gave a running commentary on every speck of dust he found and pointed out the location of the half-dozen outlets above the cupboards and rambled on about the above-cupboard light fixtures he’s installed in his own kitchen, which change color with every passing season and holiday.  He left at lunchtime with a promise to return, but we saw no sign of him until . . .

Thursday morning I stepped out of the shower and walked out into my (open-doored) bedroom . . . then froze as I heard the sound of a strange man’s voice talking to Baba in the basement.  Jack showed up an hour earlier than expected, grinning as he mentioned that he didn’t start sponging down the walls because he wanted to abstain from using water while I was in the shower.  How thoughtful.  Finding a stranger in the house post-shower is kinda the last straw for me, so I packed our schoolbooks into a plastic tub, loaded the kids into the van, and headed south to my parents’ house for the morning (but not before Jack gave me a 10-minute overview of every move he planned to make in my absence).  He’d finished the kitchen by the time I returned at 1:30 that afternoon.  As he walked out the door, he promised to come back after lunch and then again by 8:30 this (Friday) morning in order to work on the stairway and basement.

You guessed it . . . we’ve not seen nor heard from Jack since 1:30 yesterday afternoon.  And now you know why I’m climbing the semi-wallpaperless walls.

We Christened Our Canoe “The Ark”

Last week Ringmaster and I took a moms-only trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota.  We headed north with a tinge of disappointment in the air because drought conditions made our campfire dreams illegal . . . but by the time we headed home the fire ban had lifted.  The rain started falling Thursday morning as we were away from camp on a day trip:
   

The irony of the above video is almost delicious, as we had no idea just what kind of heavy rain was in store for us later in the day.  The fact that we called that hard rain had us laughing a few hours later:

   

Sheets of water stopped falling from the sky sometime early Friday morning (we’d both passed out from exhaustion by then, but until that point we’d been timing thunderstorms the way laboring mothers count contractions–there were at least five in as many hours).  All told, we heard reports of between six and ten inches of rain in less than 24 hours.  I tend to believe the 10-inch number, myself.  Thankfully, we were well-prepared to keep our clothing dry, and two much-appreciated Thermarest pads kept a comfortable percentage our sleeping bags out of the pools of water which had collected in the bottom of the tent by Friday morning.

Our journey back to the put-in on Friday took eight hours, including 4-1/2 miles worth of portage (some of it vertical).  There’s nothing like a few days of wilderness camping to make home look sweet.

Pictures from the adventure:

Fixin’ To Scream

I promised more posts, and I’m working on it–I’ve been working on it a good share of the afternoon–but unfortunately during my sabbatical the video hosting service I use decided to make "improvements" which are causing me headaches in the blogging media department.  Stay tuned.