This morning, I decided to add a phys. ed. class to our homeschool day.  The kids and I went for a bike ride.  It was a beautiful morning.  The sky was a clear, bright blue.  The sunshine was bright and friendly, not so hot yet that it made us uncomfortable.  The trees were in late summer green with a few leaves turning scarlet or yellow to remind us that fall is around the corner.  The air was sweet with the spice of nature, ripe with all its fruit.   

Sam rode in his little trailer behind me, taking in the scenery and humming snatches of a made-up tune as we sped along.  The other kids vascillated between joy in riding their bikes and whining about how tired their legs were.  You know, the usual. 

We rode past the kids in school at recess and, I don't know about my kids, but I was thankful that we have the right and the privilege to homeschool on such a beautiful day. 

Over a week since my last post already?  Well.  Time flies when you don't take time to breathe!

Among other things, we've been working hard in school. 

Home Ec is an integral part of any homeschool curriculum! 

As is "Occupy Little Brother So Mom Can Get Something Done!"

Each homeschool day is fraught with its little dramas, as on this day when writing the lower case letter "j" was simply an impossible task.  "I can't do it!" wailed the little scholar.

When it became painfully obvious that nothing fun was going to happen until the lower case letter "j" was fully exercised, the little scholar somehow found the strength to complete her Herculean task. 

And, oblivious to the fray, the littlest scholar sits and colors.  This day he was making "snakes" and "LarryBob."  Coloring is currently Sam's favorite pastime.  His other full-time mania is Thomas the Tank Engine. 

So, now, you've had a little glimpse into the tears and triumphs of a typical homeschool morning at the Shaw School for the Sort-of Gifted and Fairly Talented. 

Here is my tentative plan for an "ordinary" day.  Seems like we don't have too many of those, but this can be our default mode.   What do you think?

I adapted this from another blog but I can't remember which blog, so I apologize to whoever the original author may be! 

This post reveals the key to my most successful days of housekeeping, parenting and homeschooling.  It’s something I intend to read every time I’m tempted to over-complicate anything as a diversion from the job at hand. 

Don’t talk about it, don’t write about it, don’t think about it more and more and more… you’ve done that already.  Just DO it.

Don’t make a schedule, don’t find a workshop, don’t make more lists.  Just DO it.

No more excuses.  No more procrastination.  No more diversions.  Just DO it.

Talking won’t help, thinking won’t finish, whining won’t work.  Just DO it.

A building isn’t functional while it is still on paper.  An arrow looks lovely in a quiver but is useless unless you aim and shoot it.  Just DO it.

The time you waste not doing it can never be regained.  Just DO it.

I know you can’t fail if you don’t attempt but you can’t SUCCEED either.  Just DO it.

Your kids are growing up.  They aren’t waiting for you to grow up before they do.  Just DO it.

Throw away the charts.  Toss aside the schedules.  Eradicate the formulas and JUST DO IT.

Well, here it is, the middle of the first week of school and I'm still coherent enough to type full sentences with real words...sfiw elasoi hglaf ...well, mostly.  My tiredness on Monday (our first day of school) was compounded by our annual family trip to "The Great Minnesota Sweat-Together," aka the state fair.  The weather was, in fact, perfect, and we had a good time.  By the time we left, though, my entire body ached with exhaustion and I'm not sure I've recovered yet!

As for school, though, so far, so good.  My lesson plans are already way off of my original plans because, wowie, does time fly in there!  I have from 1:20 to 2:45 to do grammar, writing and literature and sure, that sounds like a long time, but when it takes some of them five full minutes to write a single sentence, what I think will take 20 minutes ends up taking 40!  I haven't even started the grammar yet! 

Classroom management is okay.  Mrs. Smith, the other teacher, has some great systems in place and I just ride her coattails there.  But I think I've been too friendly so far.  *sigh*  I'm going to have to hand out some "cards" to get the attention of a few of them.  I don't want to get too 'drill sargeant' on them, though, because a few of them, the new ones in particular, still look like wide-eyed lambs and I'm afraid of scaring them off completely! 

Many people have asked how William feels about having his mom hanging out at his school.  I'm happy to say that he's still young enough to enjoy the minor celebrity it brings him.  And, hopefully, he and I have a good enough relationship that he doesn't mind having me around.  In fact, yesterday, I was sitting in the classroom doing some work while all of the students were going to lunch.  Wm came back up and asked if I had eaten my lunch yet.  I replied that I had not but would probably just eat in the classroom.  He said, "Well, I wanted to eat lunch with you."  Of course, I quickly retrieved my lunch and sat with him and his friends during lunchtime.  I know that it won't be long before he'd rather die than have his mom sit with him and a group of his friends at lunch, so I am enjoying my boy while he's still young enough to think I'm cool. 

I'm off, now, to adjust lesson plans and prepare for tomorrow. 

No comments?  Really?  All those cute pictures of Sam and no comments? 

Remember this?"Cheeeeeese"  Okay, well, anyway...

I'll give y'all an update on our various pursuits in the world of academia.

Last week, I had three days of teacher meetings at Liberty.  Lots of it was quite mundane - procedures, etc., but some of it was teaching methods, etc. that make classical education distinctive and that was fun stuff.  It was also fun to get to know the other teachers and spend some time feeling like a part of the faculty. 

Last night was Back to School night where all of the parents and students come and we talk about the upcoming school year.  It all went well, I think.  This year, we will have eighteen boys and three girls!  Oh, my. 

William thinks it's cool to be a fifth grader.  Not only does he have the prestige of being one of the oldest students in the Lower School, but this year he's not all new to the school so he knows teachers and students, classroom and procedures.  He's on his own turf.  And, of course, he thinks it's cool that there are seventeen other boys in his class.   

Of course, Back to School night was preceded by many days of cleaning, sorting, moving, and even painting, in our classroom.  On Monday, Wm and I painted one wall of the classroom a beautiful sage green and it looks great, if I do say so myself.  It was worth the three days of sore muscles and stiff neck afterward! 

Now if there were such an easy solution to the inordinate amount of heat in our classroom, all would be well.  The classroom gets the sun in the windows all day long and by afternoon and evening, it is a sauna.  I can't wait to find out what it smells like in the afternoons after recess and gym class! 

So, with Back to School night over, we now set our sights on the First Day of School. 

The Shaw School for the Gifted and Talented will not start until after the first week of school at Liberty.  My pupils have kept in practice pretty well over the summer - amazing how school work so easily fills those long summer mornings.  I do need to do a bit more organizing and planning before the year starts, but I have all the books and feel relatively prepared to tackle our homeschool. 

If you are so inclined, please pray for us all in our educational pursuits, especially over these first several weeks as a new schedule always requires many adjustments and lots of patience from everyone involved.  And we're not always long on patience around here.

As it turns out, I will not be sharing any photos from our trip. 

Last night, I sat down to download pictures, but couldn't find the right cord at the moment, so decided to put it off until after the church ice cream social/game night.  Of course, afterward, I was too tired to do anything useful and went to bed.

This morning, while I was gone to book study at church, Sam got ahold of my camera and in the excitement of being chased down by his siblings, threw the camera and somehow managed to erase over 200 pictures. 

So, unless a niece or nephew is kind and e-mails me some pictures (hint, hint) I will just have to paint verbal pictures for you and hope you have a good imagination. 

Here's a shot of the perp from several weeks ago.  Don't let the big brown eyes fool you.  He's dangerous, especially around high tech equipment.

Maybe worse than the pictures being erased, my camera now tells me that it can only hold 15 pictures at a time, and it currently holds three pictures I took about six months ago.  I have a hope tormenting me that if I only knew how, I could retrieve the lost pictures from some far recess of my camera's memory.  Being a technical dunce has its drawbacks as I have no clue how that might happen.  What do you think?  Should I abandon hope or seek out some camera whiz who might find the magic button and get me my pictures back?   

Apparently, I can't stand to have one school year be exactly like the next.  The only time I have ever done anything even remotely similar from one year to the next was when John was in seminary and I was working at Geneva.  That was the first time I had ever taught any course more than once and William was in the same school two years in a row...although Micah was added in to the school business for the second year.  Anyway, we're changin' it up once again. 

For this coming academic year, I will be team teaching with Mrs. Smith in her combined 4/5 classroom - William's classroom.  I will do two hours in the afternoon, teaching literature, grammar and writing.  It will be new for me to teach 4th and 5th grades, although I have done it in homeschool co-ops before and survived, but I am excited, literature, grammar and writing being right up my alley.  For literature, we're doing good stuff, like Caddie Woodlawn, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Family Under the Bridge, Across Five Aprils, Number the Stars, and one other yet to be determined.  In history, they'll cover 1750 to the present, so the literature books were chosen to roughly coincide with that. 

I'm trying to decide on the that last literature selection, and thought about something having to do with the Revolutionary War.  There's Johnny Tremain, of course, although I'm concerned that it might be a little too much for the fourth graders.  I've heard Carry On, Mr. Bowditch highly recommended and it might do fine, although it's not technically about the war.  I really enjoyed April Morning by Howard Fast when I was in middle school, but it's been so long since I read it, I can't be certain that it was as good as my muddled middle school brain thought it was.  Then there's Little Women, anything by Lloyd Alexander, The Hobbit, on and on I could go.  Help!  Do you have any recommendations?  They can relate to the American Revolution or not.  There is so much good literature to choose from that it's hard to narrow down to THE best one for our purposes.  What do you think?

I will still homeschool Micah and Johanna in the mornings, and then leave John to crack the whip over them until they finish whatever they dawdled over in the morning.  This will be something new for all of us and I have moments of trepidation, wondering how we'll all do with mom working out of the home again, but we've adapted before, and God is always faithful. 

Happy Anniversary to my parents!  They have been married...well...let's see...my brother was born in October of '69, so it was at least nine months before that, so...quite a while.    Congratulations, you two crazy kids!   

Today, I took advantage of the absolutely gorgeous weather we had and planted our garden and two planters.  The garden now has three different kinds of tomatoes (Marion heirloom, cherry, and Golden Jubilee), basil, lavender, feverfew (aka chamomile), mint (leftover from last year), and, as an experiment, sweet potatoes.  The kids got in on the action as well, joyfully digging in the dirt beside me.  Sam's self-appointed job was to come along behind me and fill in my newly-dug holes before I could get the plants in.  It certainly made what could have been a very dull job more...uh...challenging. 

One of the planters has flat leaf parsley, chives and spicy basil.  I am hoping that in the fall, those plants will be doing well enough that I can bring them inside and have fresh herbs all winter.  I tend to kill houseplants, though, so I am none too confident of that particular plan.  They should be fine outside for the summer, though.  The other planter is on the front porch and has blue flowers and sperengi (?) fern, and some kind of green and white ivy.  I have already thrown out the little plastic labels for all of them; otherwise, I could give you the detailed technical names which I'm sure would fascinate you.  Remember, here at this blog, we aim to educate.  Although, I guess today we fall short of that mark.  Oh, well.  At least I did include both names for the feverfew/chamomile.  

At long last, we had our big performance last night.  It was the best the students had ever done.  It's amazing what an audience full of parents and family members can do for the adrenaline levels of young actors! 

These pictures were taken during a dress rehearsal.  Last night, Mrs. Smith, the usual classroom teacher for 4/5, came in and did makeup and hair for everyone.  So they looked really good as well as doing a good job.

Here's the full cast, plus the director.  William is on the far right, in the friar's costume.

And here's the requisite goofy picture.  Apparently William doesn't get "goofy?"  Me?  I'm way too mature for that sort of thing. 

Well!  I was in a mood the other night!  Not sure how elephants and enemas made it past the copy editors. 

Last night, John and I watched the new Tim Burton/Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter version of Sweeney Todd.  The music, by Stephen Sondheim, was wonderful, of course, and Johnny Depp could even sing!  Carter was suitably creepy, but, certainly no Angela Lansbury (for whom the role was written).  I have never seen the stage production, but I think that this production was even darker than the stage version.  Of course, the subtitle for the show is "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," so it's no bit of fluff, but Burton, being a fan of "slasher" movies, played up the demonic element to an almost unlikeable degree.  And the amount of stage blood could have filled an Olympic-sized swimming pool!  So, the performances were good, but I certainly don't count this movie among those that I hope to see again.  (Sorry, Lauren!)

(*Some spoilers ahead*)  The show itself is an interesting tale of loss, revenge, madness, obsession, and a little true love thrown in for contrast.  Very chiaroscuro.  I think that we are always fascinated with characters who are blinded to human compassion by their own obsessions, although, I personally would be loathe to meet such an one.  And Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett are so charming when they are coooking up their scheme (hardeehar) to dispose of the bodies from the barber shop.  The song they sing is light-hearted and almost masks the sheer horror of what they are proposing; the contrast becomes comical.  They justify their actions by asserting that every man deserves to die, anyway, and that man feeds on man in one way or another, so why not literally?  And, of course, the theme of revenge courses through the tale, until his revenge leads Todd to a terrible mistake.  Todd's revenge is a far cry from the famous revenge of the Count of Monte Cristo.  That gentleman seems to learn something from his path of revenge, and, we hope, is a changed man.  Todd has no such chance for redemption, and, indeed, seems beyond redemption by the end of the movie. 

Burton's choice of how to end the movie reveals something about his world view.  It ends with a long shot of dead bodies and no mention of the young lovers who have presumably escaped the horror for happier days, although Joanna does say that the ghosts never leave, so we have no very great hope for them.  Still, a final shot of the young lovers would somehow draw out a small ray of light in a dark and bloody movie.  But I'm not sure that Burton has much hope, so the ending is fitting for him. 

So, if you can stomach multiple graphic murders, spurting blood, cannibalism, and a 19th century London which is darker and more depraved than even Dickens wrote, Sweeney Todd is the movie for you.  And just so you don't think I'm being unfairly hard, I will say again that the acting was very good, and there is much to appreciate about the artistry of the production.  And, of course, the music is wonderful, so if you like good music...read a synopsis of the show and get the soundtrack.  The one with Angela Lansbury.

I apologize for leaving that picture at the top of my blog for so long.  It was never my intention to let you face that every time you came to visit, after all, I wouldn't let you physically into my kitchen if it looked like that!  But, live intervenes and, what do you get, but a disastrous kitchen and an abandoned blog?! 

One of the things which intervened was the MACHE Conference in Duluth.  Yes, Duluth.  Where ice still covers the lakes and the temperature is usually at least twenty degrees below what it is in the Twin Cities.  Despite these drawbacks, we enjoyed Duluth, or, at least, the hotel and convention center. 

The main speaker was Dr. Jeff Myer, a communications professor at Bryan College (among other things), and a homeschooling dad to four.  His presentations were wonderful for any parents, homeschooling or otherwise.  His talks were about raising kids to be responsible in an age of irresponsibility, raising them to engage the culture and transform it for Christ, to be light in a "crooked and depraved generation."  He used some very funny examples from his own children and from his students at Bryan College, and was an enjoyable speaker. 

Two of the featured speakers were Steve and Terri Maxwell, who have eight children, three of whom have graduated now.  They have quite a following in the homeschool community, and I looked forward to their talks.  I found, though, that they and I have very different philosophies of how life may be lived to the glory of God.  For instance, they advocate having the family together at all times; this means no outside activities or ministries which the family cannot do together.  I am all for family time together and think that many families are needlessly torn apart by over-scheduling and having a low priority on time spent together.  However, I must say, I don't see a problem with a few outside things, like a Bible study for mom or a team sport for the kids.  But, hey, man, that's cool.  You do what works for your family, just don't tell me how to run my family.  So, I am sure that the Maxwells have helped many and I am glad that they have found a system that works for their family, but I don't think I'll be subscribing to their daily e-mails.

By contrast, I have been reading (slowly, for almost a year now) a book by Vickie and Jayme Farris, called "A Mom Just Like You," and this mom (Vickie) admits to using textbooks (rather than coming up with her own fabulously creative lesson plans) and to allowing her children to play team sports and to sending her husband and daughters to the store for last minute ingredients for supper.  Wow.  I think I like this lady.  The book was recommended by another homeschool mom with the same down-to-earth, realistic approach to life I am seeing in the book.  But, anyway...back to the conference.

That vendor hall is a dangerous place!  One could easily spend a lot of money.  But it is good to be able to see the curriculum and talk to folks who know about it and be able to compare things in hand.

I left the conference feeling re-inspired and re-invigorated to parent my children with more reliance upon the Lord and with a renewed vision of what I want for our family.  I am always sorely aware of where I fail, but the conference helped me to see those failures and then re-focus on where I need to put my efforts.  And, as always, I was reminded that I must fall on my knees and ask the Lord for his blessing on my own efforts and on my family, both husband and children. 

I am thankful that I had the opportunity to go.  We'll see how thankful John is when he gets the credit card bill.  But, I'll just remind him that a weekend in Duluth is a whole lot cheaper than a month in the looney bin!

Today, I signed up to attend the MACHE (Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators) conference in April.  It will be in Duluth, so a few other homeschool moms and I will drive up there and spend Friday and Saturday filling our brains with ideas and emptying our wallets of cash - two of my favorite activities. 

Now comes the really tough part, though.  I have to decide which workshops to attend.  There is only one of me and several good workshop options at any given time.  It will probably take me all of the four weeks between now and the conference to figure out what I want to hear, and even then, I'll keep second-guessing myself. 

Let me give you a few options and see if you can help me:

Rescuing Your Children from the Culture of Irresponsibility with Dr. Jeff Myers

Managers of Their Homes with Teri Maxwell (yes, Teri Maxwell!)

Nifty Notebooking 

Art - It's Essential 

Teaching the Passionate Writer 

Those are all in the 9:00 hour on Friday morning!  Any one of those would be great.  Some of them are offered again, later in the day or on Saturday, but then there are other workshops offered at the same time which sound fascinating.  What's a girl to do? 

So, when you attend a conference, homeschooling or otherwise, do you choose randomly or do you have a guiding principle to help you choose?  My dear and loving husband's solution is, "You probably just shouldn't go."  But I suspect that that is the panic setting in as he realizes that I will be gone from home, thereby leaving him alone with the children, for two full days and one night.  The poor dear.  Anyone who wants to borrow four rambunctious but lovable children for a night should speak to John immediately.  But, I digress.  That's his problem.  My problem is figuring out which speakers to hear!  What do you think?

Update: We actually have an offer from our friends, the new Mr. and Mrs. Chouravong, to "borrow" our kids for a while that weekend!  The probability of John's sermons getting done that week just went up dramatically.

William (the one who goes away to school!) is home on spring break for two weeks!  It seems a bit extreme to me since we just got back from Christmas break, but okay.  Some of his classmates are doing exciting things over break, like visiting Taos, New Mexico, or staying overnight with grandparents who let them "stay up as late as they want."  What does William get to do?  He gets to sit at the kitchen table and do school with his siblings!  Woohoo!  Thankfully, he's young enough and unjaded enough to do it with a happy spirit and even some excitement.  His presence was a bit of a distraction to his highly distractable siblings, but we made it through, and even had some fun.  I thought about having our own spring break, but decided that since our Christmas break stretched well into January and sometimes we get a day off for "Psychological Rest" or "Ack, where did the morning go and we're headed out the door now!", we'd better keep nose firmly to grindstone. 

For history, we're reading Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World.  I really like her style and the bite-sized chunks the entries provide.  After each reading, the kids draw a picture and create a sentence to help solidify what they heard, and, hopefully, provide a record which they can read back through and enjoy.  Micah, in particular, loves to draw and has some pretty intricate depictions of the historical events.  Both kids enjoy the drawing part and tolerate the writing part (Johanna and I come up with her sentence and I write it for her; Micah is mostly independent on that, although I sometimes help him in creating the sentence).  Trouble is, that method has worked so well that I'm in a rut.  I have the workbook which comes with SOTW but it sits in the cupboard, lonely and unused.  I need to get it out and work in some of the suggestions there, but if anyone has any good ideas for spicing up our history lesson, please share!  I know that William's class does drama in their history class, so maybe, while we have a third cast member, we should try that.  I'm a little afraid of the chaos which might ensue!  But sometimes chaos engenders learning that we could never have anticipated! 

Here are some samples from the history notebooks.  From Micah's: This one is a personal favorite of mine.  The emotion is so finely etched on the man's visage.This one is Micah's personal favorite because "Tariq," the Muslim leader standing on the Rock of Gibraltar, looks like a cartoon character.  I have no idea if this child will remember anything about history, but he certainly knows about drawing cartoon characters.  Here's one from Johanna's notebook.  That is Clovis, king of the Franks.  On this one, I allowed her a little poetic licence since we did read about Vikings, but nowhere were a Viking queen or prince mentioned, let alone ones who supposedly discovered Iceland.  Well, she's in Kindergarten; I think she'll get it sorted out before she goes to college.

Okay, now I feel justified in being on Homeschoolblogger.

The word of the day yesterday, which, incidentally, was not even a word, was Pele's hair.  So, I'm thinking, "Hm, that's odd.  What's so special about Pele's hair that it qualifies for Word of the Day?"

Turns out it was a different Pele.

Pele's hair (PAY-lays hair) noun

   Thin strands of volcanic glass, formed when lava is thrown into
   the air by the explosion of a volcano.

[After Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes.]

Oooooooh.  Not the soccer Pele.  That makes more sense.  I still don't think I'll be able to throw it into casual conversation, though.  In fact, as unlikely as I am to talk about Pele, the famous soccer player (and that is pretty unlikely), I am even less likely to talk about thin strands of volcanic glass, formed when lava is thrown into the air by the explosion of a volcano.  But, believe me, when the next avid geologist comes my way, I'll be ready, armed with my word of the day.  Stranger things have happened.

Last week, William and his class finished up a study of Greek gods and goddesses with a party. This was no pizza and pop party. This was a working party, really, where each student came dressed as a different god or goddess and gave a report on said god or goddess. William chose Prometheus. You will remember, of course, that Prometheus is the one who created man and then gave him the fire of the gods which earned him Zeus' wrath, and Zeus, being very creative in his wrath, chained Prometheus to a rock and ordered an eagle to come every day and eat poor, sad P.'s liver.  We asked William why he had chosen Prometheus for the project and his reasoning was quite logical. For a ten-year-old boy. He said that Prometheus was the last male god left on the list who did not have a wife. Okay. Good enough. So, then we were left with the challenge of finding fire and an eagle for our young god to take to school. Here's what we came up with. The look on his face, William told me, says, "Please don't eat my liver!" Any of you who have used The Story of the World, Vol. 2, may recognize that eagle. It is supposed to be mounted atop a Roman legion's pole, but in an emergency, we robbed Peter to pay Paul. So to speak. William's report was a great success, or so I am told, and just yesterday, I dug his costume out of the lost and found at school. The bird and the flame never did make it home.

I suppose, in a few years, he'll be dressing up as Prometheus Unbound for a literature party.

My 200th blog post! 

I recently finished the book "Becoming Jane Austen," a biography of the legendary authoress.  The author was a consultant for the movie "Becoming Jane," and the book itself was supposedly the inspiration for the film.  I am not usually very good at following through on my non-fiction book choices (witness: the Wilberforce biography that has been in my stack for almost a year now), but somehow, this one was lively enough to keep my easily distracted attention all the way through.  It may have helped that I have read her major works and that someone with less experience of her would feel differently; I don't know.  But I know I enjoyed it.  That being said, I read a Jane Austen purist who reported several times throwing the book against the wall in frustration.  The author did make some extraordinary claims of connection between Jane's work and her everyday life, but I was able to take them with a grain of salt, knowing that all of these facts are open to interpretation.  If he wants to think that every word Jane wrote after she knew Tom Lefroy was inspired by him, he can think so.  It in no way diminishes the power and the genius of what she wrote. 

For the record, I was on the Jane Austen bandwagon, singing "My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair," before it was fashionable to be on said wagon.  Now, everyone writes about dear Jane, and that's fine; everyone deserves to have Jane in their lives.  But I try to stay out of the mainstream maelstrom to a certain extent.  So, recently, for reasons unknown even to myself, I have turned my attention to Prussia, the now dead and gone country of my ancestors, home of Frederick the Great and of his niece-in-law, Louise, Queen of Prussia.  I am engrossed in a biography of her at the moment.  The biography is not as readable as "Becoming Jane Austen," but the subject similarly fascinating.  She was breathtakingly beautiful (even Madame de Stael reported being "struck dumb" upon first seeing the queen), kind-hearted, and intelligent.  Napoleon called her "my beautiful enemy."  She was even blessed with one of those rare royal marriages which is truly happy; she and Frederick William III were in love when they married, and remained so.  In love, that is, as well as married.  Quite unusual.  I'm guessing that most of what has been written about Louise is in German, but I hope that I may find some more information in English as I don't think my interest will be satisfied even when I finish the book.  Years ago, when we were on choir tour in Europe, after a concert, we all walked over to this big house called Sans Souci and had our picture taken on the steps.  I wish now that I had taken more interest in it as it was the home of Frederick the Great, and Louise visited there.  At the time, I was too interested in my boyfriend and standing in the cold wind and, you know, all those important things that make college students so perceptive and deep.  My parents knew very well where we were and the importance of it, but, having long experience with college students, knew better than to try to impress us too much with that "Humanities-type-stuff."  Ah, well.  Perhaps someday I'll get back there.  For now, I have some children calling me back from Prussian flights of fancy to the solid world of kitchen tables and school books.

Yesterday, Micah, Johanna, and I, along with our friends from homeschool co-op, went to tour The Octagon House in Hudson, WI.  It was built in the 1850's as part of a building fad for octagon-shaped houses.  They were supposedly more healthful than traditional styles as light and air could come in from more angles.  It was owned by the same family until the 1960s when it was given to the Historical Society.  It is currently decorated for Christmas, so that was a special bonus.  I have toured quite a few historical houses in my day, but I still learned a couple of new things.  Some things made quite an impression on the kids, like the way men had to shave with a straight blade, the strop used for sharpening the blade and for spanking wayward children, a moustache brush made of hog bristles, the daughter of the house who was blinded by a snowball to the eye and had to have a glass eye, the father of the family who had a wooden leg after a childhood wood-cutting accident, etc.  We topped off the visit with a pop-gun for Micah (which, I think, has already been confiscated for mis-use) and a fairy sticker book from the gift shop. 

If you are wondering where Sam was all this time, he was spending a lovely afternoon with Miss P and Miss K.  They have cool toys and nothing to break that is of as much value as the Phipps family Limoges china (which was designed especially for them by Mr. Haviland).  So thanks, Miss P and Miss K!   

William's excitement yesterday came in the evening with his school's Christmas concert.  He was nervous, but his class did very well with "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "Joyful, Joyful" on the recorder, and "The First Noel."  After the concert, a couple of the classes (well, the moms, really) had set out cookies and juice for everyone, so we hung out there until Sam got hysterical over not being allowed a third cookie (it may have had something to do with being well past bedtime).  So, we came home, read our advent reading and hit the hay.  The concert did not improve my headache (the jr. hi. band 'bout did me in!), but it was a good evening.  It was fun to see Wm laughing with his friends and having fun.      

I am ridiculously excited about these Thanksgiving lapbooks.  I hope they give you even a fraction of the thrill I get from looking at them!   A word of warning to those of you who will see us within the next month or two: you may want to skim this entry because you will be seeing these live.  Oh, and be prepared to ooh and aah over them in person.  :)

Cover of Johanna'sLeft to right: What I'm Thankful For list, Abe Lincoln (in pink coat) T Day Proclamation 1863, turkey book (inside reads "Turkeys are yummy"), "Squanto helped the pilgrims,"  The First Thanksgiving - incl. facts on When? "Wher?" What? Who? Why?Some stuff opened up.  The back has a large, colorful turkey, colored by the author of this lapbook.  Micah's lapbookMuch the same content but with a little more original artwork.The blurb about Squanto reads: Squanto tot the pilgrims how to feed the groud too hav beter plants.  The sentence on the right about what the pilgrims ate at the first Thanksgiving reads: They ate popcorn, turkey, wild geese, deer, lobsters, fish, and all that yummy stuff.Here is Micah's list of things for which to be thankful.  John laughed when he saw the TV - obviously we don't have a fancy TV.  Or cable.  We still rely on our rabbit ears for what reception we do get.  Poor deprived children.  ;-) 

These lapbooks are so much more interesting to keep than workbook pages! 

Okay, I'm back to the kitchen to clean up from today's baking frenzy and to prepare for tomorrow's onslaught! 

Meet our new pet, William's science project - Lolly the Lazy Loser Atlantic Lobster (William and I came up with the name.  Pretty catchy, eh?  Well, we thought it was funny at the time.) 

Id'n he cute?

So, what caption should this one have?  "Please don't eat me!"  "Here's lookin' at you, kid."  What can you come up with?  There's no physical prize if you enter a winning caption, but just think of the prestige you will earn.  You can't measure that with Master Card.