The King of Ireland's Son, part II

Actually, we are at the end of week 1 (of 3) and this is the most schoolish we've been all year. There is so much work to get through for him of the type that he dreads and isn't really that hard for him but it looks like a lot and therefore is The Meanest Thing I've Ever Made Him Do. 2 chalkboard drawings a day plus writing. After Saints and Heroes, which was 2 chalkboard drawings a week...

But he's made so much progress...

The King of Ireland's Son, part I

So I've mainly been twittering until I figure how to sync up my new phone with the computer (our computer is old and every time we try to update it, it crashes, so we have gotten a new laptop for Hanukkah) But we started a new Main Lesson Block this morning - The King of Ireland's Son. And Z has stunned me with the beauty of his work on this today. The artwork and the handwriting were way beyond his usual work. I am so pleased with how he settled into doing it and did it with joy (And only a few mistakes).

Some Acorn Math

We're working on place value around these parts - mostly solidifying that when you are doing stacked math, you are really subtracting a ones, tens and hundreds column instead of all ones lined up. To help us understand that a bit, I made 20(!) origami paper boxes to represent our tens, got 2 box tops to represent hundreds (because 10 of the little boxes fit in them nicely) and of course acorns for the ones. What you see here represents 148 acorns 1 box top (filled with 10 origami boxes of 10 acorns each), 4 origami boxes of 10 acorns each and 8 acorns on their lonesome. This was the starting setup for 148-52:

The solution, as you are aware I'm sure, is 9 origami boxes with 10 acorns each and 6 acorns.

Fall Dyeing

So we are finally getting around to removing the blossoms from the Mexican Marigold bush and preparing the fiber (in this case cotton yarn and a little wool as well) so that we can do some plant dyeing.

Here are the boys helping me to do some of the blossom picking. B especially enjoys burying his hands in the giant pile of flower petals. Can you blame him?

This is a giant bowl full of the petals and still the bush is only half picked over.



Marigolds simmering on the stove. Can I tell you how odd the smell of simmering flowers is? Last time I did this outside, so the smell wasn't obvious. It isn't bad, just different. I wouldn't go so far as good though. BTW, while all pictures lately will be taken on my crummy cell phone camera until I get my new phone, this one is clearly the worst. Lack of flash really does make for a tough shot. I did get photos on my regular camera though.

The color isn't reading well, but the cotton yarn came out a greenish yellow and the wool came out a soft yellow. We're off to hike this morning and more marigolds this afternoon. Well there's more yarn...

Edited to change yarn pictures because this one is much closer to the actual color.

Aunt and the boys

Playing Lego. Big big fun! :)

Back (mostly...)

So I have this camera full of photos of our last month, but I have no way of getting them off of the camera. The card reader and the laptop are down now and so I am down waiting until the memory card is full and switching it out. No good can come of this.

But we have been so busy over the last month with holidays, sukkah building, fall break, fall nature block and now starting up Math Block III. Hopefully we'll iron out the photo issue soon and there will be photos of our progress.

Right now we are in the throes of dealing with mobile phones. DH finally succumbed and bought a Wing used because he lost his cell phone and had taken to carrying mine around until he figured things out. But he feels bad because I am still carrying around the same crummy phone we got almost 3 years ago free with our contract renewal. One he won't use because he hates it so very very much. So now I have to decide what it is that I want in a phone and if the G1 is best for me or the iPhone. What I want is a camera, an mp3 player, internet access and relative ease of use. The downside to the G1 is that data service is required and we would need to renew our contract (we are on a month-to-month with them right now)

I'd love opinions if anyone has any.

Eat Local Challenge

I signed up for the Eat Local Challenge again this year. I suspect this was a mistake as I believe I will spend the next month beating myself up for my lack of follow through on something I should likely have not signed up for in the 1st place! It is hard to get to the Farmer's market this year. Homeschooling takes up our mornings and if I skip a morning once a week for that then our rhythm is off all week. It certainly is for that day as I can't seem to get any work out of Z if we fall out of rhythm.

This week is a great example of that. 2 days of Rosh Hashanah smack in the middle of the week with one day (Monday) set aside for preparations and one day of recovery and post-holiday cleaning and then a field trip today for apple picking (fun!)

Next week we have one day of holiday (Yom Kippur next Thursday) but 3 days in a row of school time. Bring on the rhythm. I missed it!

On the upside - holidays! We had a wonderful holiday with visits from family, Daddy home with us, a bit of shul, and lots of special meals and family time. Happy New Year!

Michaelmas Dragon bread

Dragon bread 2
Originally uploaded by woolfairy

We joined up with some friends to celebrate Michaelmas (one day before celebrating Rosh Hashanah. Am I crazy?) And here is the dragon bread made for the occasion. A fantastic time was had by all with stories, verses, delicious soup and bread, wooden sword fighting and a great obstacle course designed by the 9 yo son of my friend. And we finished it all off with sunset at the beach watching the sea lions and dolphins swimming and playing.

Michaelmas Obstacle course - the horse

Obstacle course the horse
Originally uploaded by woolfairy

Back to Normal and Saints and Heroes

Finn MacCool MLB Page
Originally uploaded by woolfairy

Camping was fun and exhausting and dirty and very very buggy. I officially hate biting flies now. I never had an opinion on them before, but Wow! did they make their presence known on this trip. The 3 of us are still itchy almost a week later.

This is Z's page from the Finn MacCool story. I think he did an amazing job with a difficult drawing. I can't believe we are halfway through this main lesson block already. I have really enjoyed it and I'm even ready to start veering off the proscribed path just a little bit. Judah Maccabee was next, but honestly, the time of year is wrong and the story just wasn't doing it for me this time. But, with the High Holidays around the corner, I decided that we would do the story of Hillel. More on that later.

A day or so off

Today Daddy flew across the country to see our brand new nephew (and cousin!) who was born last week. The boys were very into planes today as a result and we spent the day in plane related activities right up until we followed along with his plane landing.

Add to that getting ready to go on the all-school campout tomorrow and you are looking at a day without any previously planned activities. I am dreading camping alone with 2 boys, but it can't be helped and they love it too much to miss it!

Rabia in her cave

Rabia in her cave
Originally uploaded by woolfairy

This is from today's final main lesson featuring Rabia of Basra. I think Z really enjoyed the clay work today. He's having a tough time with this block though because he perceives the artwork to be too difficult, although I think once he actually does it, it is lovely. And so does he.

Now onto Nandanar and Lord Shiva...

This morning, partially through the despicable fault of hormones, I totally lost my temper at my poor mischievous children who locked me out of the house while holding a rotten tomato from my Brandywine plant. I was gingerly carrying it back to the kitchen to dispose of and tried to open the door because the membrane on said tomato was barely holding. Needless to say, the very long delay of the locked door caused said tomato to lose all holding power and slide right through the skin onto the ground and my foot. So so disgusting. Seriously disgusting. I realized that I needed to remove myself only after yelling like a fishwife at my kids. I also sent them out to clean it up while I went in to recover my senses and leave DH to mitigate my temper tantrum.

Luckily it is Friday. So I realized that we needed to get out of the house and into nature and so we headed up the coast to do some hiking and letterboxing. We hiked up to a lovely spot with a picnic table (we knew it was there) and a view of the ocean. Normally I would have taken a photo, but it was much too overcast today to see anything in a photo. Although honestly I love these grey overcast days here. We found our letterbox and used the cover of our lunch spread all over the table to leisurely stamp in, etc. Of course the cover was unnecessary as no one came by. We saw a few new birds for our life list and collected more acorns and followed some little tiny lizards a bit.

Then back home to play with friends.

The infamous drawings!

Mysteriously, today this was no issue at all. Strange how that happens.



We did wet-on-wet watercolor paintings to go with this lesson. So here are our renditions of Genevieve. We both learned a new tool today on our painting. It was fun.

Here's mine:



Here's Z's



Don't forget B!

Tough day

As I was preparing today's board to illustrate the Genevieve story, I remarked to my DH that this was going to cause a fuss in Z. It is a tough one for him with 3 people and a house and a full sentence with an unfamiliar word to write twice. And boy was I right. Very very right. This one caused full scale meltdown. So I tried to help him to focus on the steps that were doable and I insisted on the background and the border being done right then on the sentence page and we would return to it after lunch and our other obligations. I made it clear to him that this was today's lesson and that real progress needed to be made on it. So after much fuss, he settled down and did it.

So we ate something, headed out to a meeting for the ISP (Independent Study Program), a dentist appointment and then a little play with a friend for an hour and it was back to work to finish the writing while I finished up dinner. This time there were no arguments at all. None. He just did it. Hopefully tomorrow goes as smoothly as this evening.

Settling in

We are getting into the swing of things around here. We got really busy towards the end of last week and, although I have taken photos, I haven't gotten them off of the camera yet. We got to odd and even numbers and the rules for adding them, plus a little form drawing, some handwork and of course a fantastic park day where we met some lovely people and saw some old friends as well.

This week we moved into the 1st language arts block of the year with Saints and Heroes. We headed off to a local park where a letterbox had been planted recently and, for walk, we followed the clues for a bit of orienteering, stamped in and replaced the box. Scootered for a bit of exercise and then settled down to hear the story of Genevieve of Paris. All the while, of course, the song from Camelot is dancing around in my head!

For math today we played a little Dominoes, but Z wasn't happy at first about playing 5s because he never wins (says he.) So we played a cooperative version where we all laid our dominoes out and helped each other figure out multiples of 5 to get the most points together as a team. He liked the new version so much that we played it 3 times! And added the numbers cumulatively up to 420. Big stuff.

Week 2, Day 1

Morning math practice (after a rousing 4 or 5 renditions of 10 in the bed)



Handling division requires standing!



And into the MLB



Can't forget form drawing review!

2nd grade day 4

I am battling a cold that has sapped me of my energy. So tree trunk math was about all I could manage. I wanted to get to form drawing, but that requires more focus and intention then I can bring right now. But Z was glad to get something concrete today. We did lots of practice on chalkboards before bringing it to the main lesson book.

2nd grade day 3

We visited with the math squirrels again today.



Here is Z's version of the chalkboard drawing.



We have been working on this project from Living Crafts magazine. First on Monday we wet felted and then Kool Aid dyed the felt. Tuesday we rinsed the dye out a bit and today we cut out the fish according to the pattern and sewed them and stuffed them.



And here is B's lapboard work. And hand. Cute!

1st day of 2nd grade!

So here are some pictures from our first day of 2nd grade. Today we went for a walk through the neighborhood and collected the seasons 1st acorns. The we came home and created a weather wheel. During music we practiced some songs for recorder and later in the day we did some wet felting a Kool-Aid dying. It was a busy and wonderful day!