The Sinister Scribe

and the older I get the weirder I feel. *sigh*

Prepare for rant…

Growing up as an ‘artist’ I’d always been seen as ‘weird.’ But that is a good thing. As an artist, I WANTED to be weird. Now, as an adult homeschooling her kids for non-religious reasons, I am again seen as ‘weird.’ Ok, fine. I can deal with that. But now, I think I am freaking people out within the local homeschooling group because I use curricula, prepare lesson plans and want to understand the state educational expectations at any given grade level. So again, I am weird.

This third weird-feather in my cap bothers me. It is really frustrating… and isolating. I cannot discuss methodology with anyone locally. My use of preprinted curricula is looked down upon. My schedules are met with smirks. My curiosity into state grade level expectations causes insult!
Not that I’m going to stop the way I’m doing it just because they don’t approve. But sometimes it does make me wonder if I should even be homeschooling. If I am THAT different…. *sigh*

Guess now is a really bad time to want to ‘fit in.’

No, I am not going to give up just because of this. The only thing that will make me change course is if I see that my kids are not getting a good education. Whether they are in public school or not, the kids in public school are my kids peers… educationally. Right? So, my kids need to know what those kids know… at least. Right? So, how do I know that my kids know that those kids know if I don’t know what the state wants them to know. You know?

ROTFLMAO! OK. That last line is funny. Sorry. I am way too worked up over this. Me and my feathers-of-weirdness are going to work on spelling lessons now.

• Tofu Apple Spring Rolls
• peanut sauce
• Asian asparagus
• Fruit Spring Rolls
• Ham Spring Rolls
• Ham & Cheese Sandwiches on home-made bread

Help! I seem to be channeling my inner Martha, or maybe Betty. Somethin. Yesterday I made egg rolls too. Those were well received by all but Jessie.
As I told the family, I am so glad they didn’t like the tofu apple spring rolls with peanut sauce. Soooo Yummmyyyyy! And I have lunch for me for the next 2 days too. Those recipes came from the Vegan Lunchbox cookbook.
I’ve never had, much less made, baked tofu. OMG! It was soo good in those spring rolls. And the asparagus too. Mmmmmmm. And I feel full but not stuffed. Very satisfied.

I made the fruit and ham spring rolls to entice the family to try them.  Dad ate his ham one (ham, scallions, apple slices & nappa cabbage). Sam ate half of his  ham, cabbage & cheese one before saying the rice wrapper tasted funny. He liked the nappa cabbage though and wants to know if we can use it instead of lettuce for salads! Jessie dumped the fruit out of her spring roll. I even drizzled honey over the fruit spring rolls. *sigh* Jessie asked me if the wrappers were made out of gummy bears. Of course I said yes. She took a couple more bites but that was it.

Oh, well. I tried. Can’t wait to have more tomorrow and Monday too! Hopefully Monday will be nice and we can finally use our bento lunchboxes.

Have you seen these? They seem pretty cool. If you google, lap book or lapbook you’ll find lots of links.
Hands of a Child, that I stumbled across today, has many ready to go ebooks where all you need to do is print the appropriate parts on colored stock and go for it! Directions and reproducibles are all included as is some reading information. They also have a supporting email group.
For life science next year, we are going to do their human body project pack. I think it might be a good supplement for what we are already doing with our binders a-la-Well-Trained-Mind. After looking over the PDF file I think my only gripe so far is the wasted space. On the printables, this may be to facilitate printing on different colored stock. But for the activity descriptions with 4 lines on the whole page, I think they could have combined them and referenced printables later on in the ebook.
I could easily see me going overboard with this concept but I like crafty things. Sam is warming to crafts so I think he’ll go for this. Still, I don’t want to do this for every subject we cover. But maybe for those he’s really excited about or that need some excitement a lap book would be just the thing. Hmmm… maybe Sam could design one himself for Japan? He says he still wants to study Japan. When I asked him specifically what about Japan and he said he wanted to learn to speak Japanese. *sigh*

On the home front, dad is very sick. The timing couldn’t be worse as he was supposed to run a 10k (in the snow) tomorrow. I think the kids had a touch of it last week. They’ve both been complaining of tummy aches. That reminds me… I’d better go take some more echinacea. ;))

It was supposed to be. However it is 11:41 and I’m just now getting tired.
I should have been working on lesson plans but here is what I did…

• Looked up reviews on digital voice recorders and the Olympus WS 100 seems like a good deal
• Found some cool bento boxes on eBay. Wish I’d have looked there first!
• Thanks to the Vegan Lunch box, found some really neat bento accessories there. This too.
  
• Found This place that almost makes me wish I had to drive more. But not really.
• Learned 4 ways to pronounce latin. (pdf)

I think that is enough for today. Tomorrow will be here in 10 minutes! G’Night.

Two areas I really didn’t delve deeply into during our first year of homeschooling, nor have I planned to next year. He is drawing what strikes his fancy and occasionally I point out ways to improve. Music has been learning to play the tin whistle. Neither too in depth but they were easy for me to get him started in.

Its funny that I’m an art major but have a hard time doing art stuff with him. I tried using Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad this year and there wasn’t much excitement. Maybe I’ll try it again next year and plan it out better. But then that doesn’t cover “art appreciation.” Do I really need to though?

Today I found, Harmony Fine Arts at Home. It is an arts and music appreciation outline. The creator has homeschooled for 11 years and has a blog here. Her program has options, book and supply lists and calendars. The four year packs are $60. Or you can buy each year individually for $20. The outline is organized exactly like what we are using from The Well-Trained Mind.
Could I create my own art and music appreciation program, sure. Do I really wanna? No. Am I gonna buy it? *shrug* I don’t want to reinvent the wheel but I don’t want to spend money if I don’t have to so I will think on it a while.

My experience with art appreciation was dull and uninspiring. (slides in a dark room with a montone-voiced teacher) I certainly don’t wanna recreate that! Music appreciation, I’m sure I had it. Didn’t I?

One of the homeschooling moms in our group was a public school teacher. She’s going to help us sus out what all the state grade expectations mean next month. Maybe if I find I’m not meeting state expectations in music and art, I’ll give Harmony a try. We’re doing so much more next year and doing it a little differently that I don’t want to overwhelm or burn either of us out.

The Harmony Art Mom’s website does drawing prompts on Tuesdays. I think we’ll start incorporating those at least. Here is Sam’s effort on this week’s prompt. I tried the “That’s great! One thing that would make it better is…” approach and he added the cabinet the sink sets in. The red spots in the sink are designs, not blood.

I’m sitting at the computer with 800 mg ibuprofen humming through my veins. Woke up with cramps like I haven’t had in years. I’m feeling rather sorry for my self and what do I see out the window…? My wonderful son taking out the trash for me. He doesn’t know I’m not feeling well. He does these little things for me now and then ‘just because’ he says. I am blessed to have such a caring son.Maybe today won’t be so bad afterall. I think we’ll go out for lunch and just goof off today.

I had some time off today to head up to the scribal symposium in Bellewode. (about an hour-and-a-half away).

It was fun. I got to hang out with Ilaria and Cassandra (and family). Cassandra’s little boy is so adorable. He and Jessie are exactly the same size. Anyway. In Cassandra’s class, I learned to cut a quill pen from a goose feather. OMG! I may never use metal nibs again! And Cassandra said she can keep me in feathers. Woot! Went to two of Ilaria’s classes: Making gesso and Guilding. So now, gesso doesn’t seem quite so intimidating. I can’t wait to make some. There was also a scribal round table where we all talked about the pieces we brought for display. That was fun.
Other than the freshly cut quill pen, I brought back a stack of preprints to do. Oh! And I got two small pieces of vellum for doing a scroll during Tristram’s and Cailin’s reign. I can’t wait to use my quill pen on them (the vellum that is )… and do some raised guilding.
I really missed the family today too. Dunno why I missed them so much. I thought as I got older, it would be easier to be away. Nope, not for me. It has gotten harder. LOL! I am one lucky wife/mom. They are really great. But, I recognize that every so often, I need time to decompress. It helps a lot.

Today brought more than one addition to the booklist. The first was this recommendation from Lynn. (The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number) That one may come in handy some day.
Also today I found, Horrible Books for things like Murderous Maths, Dead Famous and Horrible Histories. Just to name a few. Of course the series is from the UK. But you can find them at the Horrible books link above or on Amazon and Abe.

There are sooooo many! I wonder if the Library carries any…?

My Minimus books arrived today. They seem like a great introduction to Latin… fun and not intimidating. LOL! Of course, now that I’ve got the TM (Teacher’s Manual) I find an email group that share’s the TM (with permission from the author). Finding that sooner woulda saved me $55! Sigh. Oh well, if this first set of lessons go well, I’ll save on the second set. The only caveat at the email group, is that you buy the student manual and CD through the group owners Amazon links so that she gets a little compensation for scanning and uploading all those pages.

So now, I need to get lesson plan detailed out for the 12 sections in the book. That doesn’t sound like much, but there is a lot of activities, history and such for each. I plan on spending a little time each day on latin.

Maybe we’ll start by listening to the CD and following along in the student book. Then talking about pronunciation differences between Latin and English. (no silent ‘e’ for example). That would probably cover the first day’s time allotment. Then maybe the next day could be spent with some vocabulary, review of the pronunciation rules and listening to the CD again. Then, I dunno. LOL! I’m just typing as I think at this point.

As I’d read, Minimus does not go into grammar so far that I can see. Maybe Segundus is different. But for a gentle introduction into Latin, I think it will work well for us. Though Sam is not big into art and craft activities (there are lots of those), I am not sure what I will do about that. Maybe reading stories in Latin?
There are lots of kids books in Latin: Winne Ille Pu, Fabulae Mirabiles and Mater Anserina for example. Perhaps reading more in Latin will appeal more to him. He really likes to read. This may mean reading to him in Latin. I’m going to really have to get cracking on learning it myself over the summer!

Hmmm. A thought just occured to me. When I took spanish in junior high (yes, this is related, stay with me) on the first day of class Srta Colville (ask me why I remember her  name!) had us try to pronounce some sentences in Spanish. She recorded them and t hen at the end of the year, played them back for us to hear.  That could be fun to do…

So, anyone have any recommendations for a decent but not expensive digital voice recorder?
“‘Huh?’ is rude, crude and uncouth and will not be tolerated in Seniorita Colville’s class.” I think I had to write that 150 times at one point.

I think it has been a daily occurrence this week that I have added a book to my wish list. Oddly enough, most are math related. I am sooo not a math person! Recommendations come from email groups, blogs, newsletters, etc. I never knew there were so many cool books out there about math and history and science (and more) for kids. Where were these books when I was in school? I’ve had to split my Amazon wish list into books for me and books for homeschooling. LOL! Guess which one is longer!

And then there is curricula suggestions. No, I’m still not changing what I’ve got set up. But there is some derned cool stuff there too. Using great literature, integrating subjects, using real life information. Inspirational and overwhelming. If I can pass the first feeling on to the kids I’ll be soooooo happy.

So overwhelming are the choices that my brain is feeling a bit overstuffed. Or maybe it is the effect of learning latin at age 39. Hmmm…