Insipration

The kids had a fantastic time in Chicago with their Nana. Aiden bought a Venus flytrap plant, which he has been talking about nonstop since returning home. Unfortunately, the dog found it and wondered what it would taste like. Apparently, the answer is not very good, because we found the plant almost whole on the living room floor. I'm still not sure if it survived being in a dog's mouth, but we're trying desperately to nurse it back to health. Fortunately, Nana found a place to order more carnivorous plants and ordered some. So even if it doesn't live, we'll have some new ones to replace it with.

I spent Friday at the Home school expo. Though the curriculum available to look at and the seminar I went to were worthless for our family, it was still worth the $20 fee to feel some reassurance for the route we're taking. I seem to have stumbled upon the perfect curriculum for the kids on the first try, and I got the feeling that I'm WAY more prepared for educating the kids than some other families.

The other thing that has been fantastic is I've found another family in the area that's homeschooling for the same reasons. Heather and I were actually in Moms club together, but I haven't seen her for years. If it weren't for facebook and this blog, I don't think we would have even discovered we were taking the same route. We have some plans to do some lessons together and maybe even have the kids form their own equations team. Two of her children are virtually the same age as Zoë and Aiden, and they're both in JET as well. What's even better is that Heather is a former teacher, so she's full of fantastic ideas! Thanks, Marnie for calling her to let her know we were homeschooling too!

I've decided that next year I'm going to have the kids do the same curriculum for everything except math. Since they're only 16 months apart, there's no reason I should have to split them apart. Also, I need to have Aiden doing less math problems (or at least fewer of the same kind of problems). His ability to grasp the concepts happens so quickly, and he doesn't need the constant repetition. From now on I'm going to do about 5 problems per page. As long as he gets them all right, he can move on to the next concept. Hopefully, this will address some of his boredom.

Plasma...it's not just a fancy TV

After much anticipation we spent the day today studying plasma, dark matter and Bose-Einstein condensate. Yeah, I didn't know what they were either!! Leave it to Aiden to ask questions that require a lot of research. He told me that his books kept mentioning plasma, but didn't tell him what it was. This was nothing short of torture to a precocious 6 year old. So after several Science Friday podcasts, wikipedia pages, and google searches, we discovered what the 3 other phases of matter are. Ask Aiden or do the research yourself if you're interested. Maybe we should get him a summer internship at CERN! Honestly, the hardest part was understanding the research enough myself to put it in terms that he would get. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that we have never discussed protons, neutrons and electrons.

Our day also included a trip to the doctors office. Aiden just wasn't getting any better despite the fact that his fever disappeared. Turns out he has strep throat and an ear infection. The doctor told me with a smile "he must have a high tolerance for pain. I bet it runs in the family." He's probably right. All I could think of was 21 hours of labor with a nearly 10 pound baby and no drugs. Some might call that a high pain tolerance!

Zoë has been going stir crazy with no one to play with. She has spent a couple afternoons helping her grandma in the yard just to find something to do. Sometimes I forget how much fun she is to hang out with. Her wit constantly makes me laugh. I'm glad I've had a lot of time this week to spend with just her. Her intelligence is so much more subtle, that it can be easy to forget how brilliant she is!

I was reminded today that we need to do another family newsletter. I'll whip the troops into line and put one together for everyone. There's certainly no shortage of items to include these days!

Is it really only Wednesday?

I can't believe it's only Wednesday. This has been a very long week. Aiden has been sick since Sunday (though he's on the mend now) with a fever. I'm guessing he got whatever I had. On Monday I just did lessons with Zoë while Aiden slept on the couch. I haven't been able to get much done in the afternoons since I've been taking care of Aiden (this obviously includes blog posts), and things are starting to pile up around the house. Yesterday, we found out that one of Tom's fraternity brothers, Brian, lost his battle with cancer, so we're dealing with those emotions and scrambling to make arrangements to attend the funeral. The one bright spot is that we've been able to have class outside on the deck all week since the weather has been so great.

School today was very busy. Zoë is starting an experiment to find out what water pollution does to plants. We also pretended to be Native Americans and foraged for food outside, made headdresses to wear and read about the Nashau River. Aiden worked on making an alternative ending to Bartholomew and the Ooblek, made our own ooblek out of cornstarch and water (that stuff is weird!), and tried to decide whether ooblek was a solid or a liquid. It's liquid until you apply pressure to it, then it becomes a solid. Strange stuff!

I managed to lose my mother of the year status by completely forgetting the kids were supposed to go to a homeschool program at the science center yesterday. Somehow the date didn't make it onto my google calendar, and things were so crazy with finding out all the news about Brian that it slipped my mind. They were both really mad at me, but I apologized and told them there was always next month.

This weekend they leave for several days in Chicago with Nana. They have plans to go to the Field museum, Museum of Science and Industry, Addler Planetarium, and the Sears Tower. Nana's going to be exhausted! I plan to take at least one day to do absolutely nothing while they're gone. HA! As if I could possibly lay around and do nothing... Perhaps what I mean is that I'll refuse to do anything that looks like a responsibility. The other three days I'll spend cleaning, organizing and lesson planning.

Things are still going very well with homeschooling. I can't believe how much the children have changed in the last month. The drama, tears and bickering have disappeared. They've been replaced by self-motivated, responsible children! I am so amazed at not only their ability to learn, but how seriously they take it. Since they've been at home only one time have I had to remind them of the time, or chores, or piano practice. These are the same kids that would cry and yell when it was time to start piano, or throw themselves onto the piano bench anytime they made a mistake, or feel sick when it was time to leave for the bus.

Part of me feels really guilty about this. Why didn't we think of this sooner? How much damage has already been done? Was I blind to the problems they were having in school (or maybe just too busy worrying about my sick mom to notice the extent of things)? Then I remember that we were aware. I knew there would be problems before Aiden even started school. We met with teachers, counselors, and the principal the spring before kindergarten began. We had him tested, they moved him up a grade, and he started the gifted program. I asked the school to test Zoë in kindergarten, but they talked me out of it. That I certainly do regret, but in the long run it won't matter. So we were doing things, and I can't beat myself up about not making the choice to homeschool sooner. The fact is we're on the right track now, and maybe we wouldn't even be here if we hadn't tried public school in the first place.

As happy as I am now, I have started to notice that I've slowly been letting myself and my needs be put aside. I need to work a little harder to find some things to do for myself, and not just once a week. I've found that as soon as I start feeling an imbalance in the workload at home, then I need to start doing something for me. I'm sure everyone knows that feeling. It's the thoughts of "why should I put those dishes in the dishwasher? No one else does anything around here!" type of thoughts. It really has nothing to do with other people, and everything to do with needing your own outlet or interests to pursue. So I'm going to start finding those things again and scheduling time for just me.

Where did the week go?!

I can't believe it's already Thursday afternoon. Despite having a terrible head cold for two days, the week really flew by. Yesterday we spent most of our lesson time playing educational games. We all learned how to play senet, an ancient Egyptian game, as well as Totally Gross, and Amuse Amaze. I'm sure someone might roll their eyes at the idea of playing games as part of the curriculum, but it actually worked well. Senet involves a lot of addition and logic skills, and Amuse Amaze requires you to use letters to form words, so they were actually using their brains. Granted, I wouldn't do it everyday, but it was a perfect fit for a teacher with a sinus infection.

Today we learned how to make our own papyrus scrolls. Right now my kitchen counter is covered in drying homemade paper. We talked about how tedious the job was, and the kids thought this was probably the reason there weren't a lot of books around back then. Once the paper is dry, they've decided they're going to use the scrolls to provide clues written in hieroglyphics for a treasure hunt. I guess I should find some "treasures" for them to find.

Monday we've planned a field trip to the Science Center with Dad (hooray!). We're all looking forward to that.

New curriculum

Today we started working with the prepared curriculum I bought. I can't tell whether I like it or not. It's definately different trying to do more than one thing at a time. The kids are working on different things now, so I'm trying to find the balance between helping each of them. There was a little of "why don't I get to do that" this morning, but otherwise it seemed to go well.

They surprised me this morning by being extremely responsible. The puppy had decided to take a stroll around the neighborhood, so at about 8:45 I went out to find him. It took over 20 minutes, but when I came back both of the kids were on the computer working with their typing program. Zoë said they decided that since I wasn't back yet and it was 9:00, they'd start working on their agendas. WOW!! It's good to know that even if the teacher leaves the room, they continue to work.

I spent a while editing the volcano newscast last night. I've uploaded it to youtube if anyone is interested in viewing it. It's actually really cute. While you watch it, keep in mind that the kids wrote their own script. Each person wrote the part they read. They did all the research, decided what things they should talk about, what order they should be presented, and found all the pictures. A few times I helped Aiden form thoughts into a complete sentence, but otherwise I took dictation (since I can type faster than they can). We're still working on how to do the commercials, and I'll upload them when they're finished (if they even decide to do them).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEQ15Q4I9AI

Aiden is working on a unit on Matter and Movement now. The look on the librarian's face while we were checking out books this afternoon was priceless. Aiden was saying to me "you know mom, there are more than 3 kinds of matter. What about plasma? And isn't there dark matter? Are we going to study those too?" I guess I have some research to do, because although there is a brief sentence in the parent manual about plasma, it's not covered in the curriculum.

Zoë has started a unit on change and cultures. She's studying ancient Egypt and the Middle Ages. She got at least 7 books at the library, and finished reading one in the amount of time it took me to drive to Costco and shop. I guess it's a good thing she has 6 more to read!