The Sinister Scribe

Here we are at the end of the first quarter. I really can’t believe how fast time has flown.

We did a lot of wrap up this week. I’m ashamed of how little I did with the Vikings segment. I had such grand plans! Thursday evening I stayed up late to get together one last craft… Viking longships. Got them to the point that there was only adornment and minor assembly to do. While the kids worked on it, I read from Beowulf. I didn’t have Sam do any dictation from it. We discussed what had happened previously before I read and then what happened this time afterwards.

Math went really, really well this week. Sam flew through several sections on Mathscore.com

Science… we headed out to the driveway and made a line model represented the distance between planets using a scaled down “AU.” The next day we used those tic marks to draw circular orbits and place rocks in the asteroid belt.

Pennywhistle… he’s getting really good with “Hunting the Hare” Can’t wait for the performance/test

Thursday was the book discussion at the library for “Lightening Thief.” Sam had a great time. Jessie and I hung out at the Library and had fun too.

Friday we went Iceskating with friends and had a great time.

Behind again. Or is it still? LOL! Week 7 was full of activity and learning. Most of it however was not according to plan.

Tuesday had some drop dead gorgeous weather so we played hookey by eating out (at a restaurant I thought had WF pasta), rode our bikes on the Katy trail, and had ice cream. It was a lot of fun.

Friday night and Saturday was BioBlitz. What fun! Again we got to hold those really cool bat-o-meters (or whatever you call ‘em). Mr. Corben (their inventor) was a part of the expedition. We were even quoted in the Missourian (again). I can’t tell you how many times Sam exclaimed ” This is so cool!” during the bat walk. (everyone laughed at these little punctuations in the night).

Saturday we tagged along and looked in streams for little critters, ate ice cream and decorated Tshirts.

In between those two events there was math (that went quite well), Japanese, Latin, History (more vikings), Science (asteroids and stuff), etc.

The viking crafts are being met with indifference even though he picked this one out. Meh. We didn’t get to dictation because of the BioBlitz. Which is just fine.

There’s more but I can’t remember it just now. Wanted to get this posted before it was another week late.

G’Nite.

Today was our second KOMU trip with two dogs from the local Humane Society. What a great couple of dogs! Honey, a beagle mix, was so gentle that Jessie could walk her with no problems. The other one is Alpine, a pointer of some sort. He thinks he’s a lap dog and is unbelievably soft.

Sam even got into the TV action this morning. Unfortunately that segment doesn’t seem to have been archived.

Oh! Creamsicle, from our first trip, has found a home and Lady Macbeth is in foster care now. Woot!

Community Service: This week saw our first volunteering for the Local Humane Society. We transported two dogs to KOMU. The picture is of Sam with Creamsicle, a basset/lab mix. If we didn’t alredy have a dog OR if we had a fenced yard… well, you know. Creamsicle was so adorable and well behaved at the TV studio in the midst of a bunch of kids there. You’d think he did it every day. I really hope someone adopts this guy. Here’s a link if you’re interested!

Math: Fell into the usual pattern… Monday was full of frustration but by the end of the week we were cruising again. He is now finished with the “fast division” section (whew!) and into the fast addition.

History: Vikings… we’ve watched a couple TV episodes ( gotta love iTunes) on the subject. Tried to start an art project that he chose. Gluing yarn down to cardboard is fiddly so we tried just drawing the designs with white glue. That hasn’t worked so well so we got some dimensional paint to try out next week.

Science: Studying outer planets, comets and meteoroids. This week at the library, we just went to the section in the kids area where we knew we could find books for this and he picked out a couple. I think we’ll keep doing that in the future because I really do think the books he was choosing by catalog search (from upstairs) really were too much beyond his level (and would require weeks and weeks to read… yes, its that completion issue I have again)

Literature/Dictation: Didn’t get to this.

Music Appreciation: A mix of everything we’ve covered so far.

Art Appreciation: I’d printed out a picture of a Viking weather vane but we didn’t really talk about it so I’ll leave it up for next week.

Tea Time: Huzzah! Jessie joined in today. We didn’t have any flowers for the table so she drew them and we put her artwork in the center. I read short poems line-by-line to her and she said them aloud, looking at Sam each time. Kinda cute. Sam really enjoys reading poetry and would do it for hours. One of these day’s I’ll have to let him do just that.

Japanese: I am going to have him tell me how he’s going to study the information from this weeks class over the next 5 weekdays and write it out on paper.

PE: We started the workout challenge last week. I did the calesthenics portion with him and man am I sore. Thankfully he is not or has very little muscle soreness.We only did a couple things on the Fitness Test (sit ups and push ups). I kinda have a good idea already on how fast he can run a mile. I’m wondering where in the house (or maybe garage) we could put a pull up bar…

Nature Study: nothing formal… we did catch a bluegill for our small fish bowl. It didn’t adapt as well as the bass, so we took it back. But not before he ate the tiny crayfish and the darter, I think.

Writing: Our Narnia News project is languishing. Sam is writing a fanfic of sorts that combines Pokemon and Naruto. There were a couple days this week where he got up early so that he would have time to work on this. (woot!) He has a couple of his friends reading it and offering suggestions. There were some mild language issues I’m hoping are cleared up now. Sigh. I have issues when a child of 10 uses swear words in writing… even free writing assignments. There are just so many more descriptive words out there that he knows how to use.

Other subjects, like vocabulary and pennywhistle, are humming along. I thought I had music lessons lined up (with bartering) but it seems that has fallen through. Next week I think I will have him pick a song he doesn’t know and practice it during the week with a performance (for family) on Friday.

I think I’m going to drop the Librivox idea for the time being, we have so much going on. Shakespeare will happen as soon as we’re done with Vikings. Sewing we WILL get to soon (-er or later).

Notes: Read about this really cool idea shared on Bravewriter’s Blog: Scavenger school. Basically hide the assignment somewhere in the house for them to find. They complete the homework where ever they find it. Not sure if I’ll do clues or just have them seek…

I’m hopeful that the scavenger idea will incite Jessie’s interest. I tried to include her in the Viking craft but she was so resistant… to the point of needing a time out. Is she just not ready to participate yet? I dunno what’s up and I’ve been kinda worried about how I’m going to homeschool them both. How do I slowly pull her in to participation? How am I going to teach this kid?!?

I did however get some validation that she is absorbing some things like letters and their sounds during our quiet reading time. So I feel a little better. I remember Sam learning the same way… while he was doing something else (bathing). Maybe I need to work a little harder at making it interesting for her…?

If you’ve commented recently and your comment no longer shows. My blog got hit with over 500 spam comments last night. In my hurry to get them all deleted I think I deleted a couple real comments.

“Mom, tiger tamers don’t do laundry” –Jessie

“I’ve never had so much fun getting so dirty!” –Sam

LOL! These two keep me going… and guessing.

Because I feel like that’s all I’ve blogged about lately and because other things are going on…. here are a few things I’ve been doing behind-the-scenes:

1. made rabbit breakfast sausage
2. tried smores with ginger snaps. Now I want to try this recipe
3. sold some hand-spun yarn
4. carded lots of llama fiber (the to do pile just seems to keep getting bigger though)
5. rode my bike (with Jessie on her new tow bike behind me)

Ok. I really am going to bed… NOW!!!

This week was technically a “week off” (so I don’t count it in our weekly count) yet we still managed to log a few hours. Our biggest thing was a trip to Devil’s Icebox. We had a close encounter with a mother bat and 2 pups. Eastern Pippestrilles we think. Sam was very excited to have been so close. I enjoyed seeing his enthusiasm. Jessie enjoyed catching the frogs that were all over the cave that day (Pickerels we think).

We did other things but my brain has gone to bed alredy. One thing I didn’t get to this week was planning out the next 5 weeks. Did some of it tonight but now I must get to bed!

G’Nite!