Well, Jack didn’t exactly change his grade – he pretended to be ME and commented on his first draft.

He might have gotten away with it had he used my signature RED INK.  But alas, he’s busted.

My Barngirl (14) just finished a “letter writing” assignment in accordance with her IEW instruction, Student Writing Intensive Continuation Course.  It’s so clever and well-done, I thought I’d post it.

Hopefully you’ll get a kick out of it even if you’re unfamiliar with IEW instruction.  And if you’re wondering what IEW is all about, this letter should shed some light.

Thanks for stopping by and indulging a proud mama.

Dear Alyssa,

[1]This letter will be unlike any other letter I have ever written to you before. [6]Are you intrigued?  [3]Undeniably, this is the most organized and proper letter I have ever written, especially to you.  [4]Reaching the end of this letter, you will find that I give an explanation of why I am writing so strangely.  [1]I also intend to narrate to you an incident that happened the other day involving Grady, my annoying goofball of a dog.  [2]In addition, I will inform you of how I met a girl at Fuel who is homeschooled as well.  [5]As you read this letter, please keep in mind that it took me almost a week to complete it.  [3]Hopefully you can look past the dreadful formality and simply appreciate, or more likely enjoy, the agony I went through while composing this letter.

[1]First of all, I would like to tell you about a girl that I met recently.  [2]At Fuel a few weeks ago, I was sitting with Meredith and two other girls.  [4]Seated two chairs away from me, there was a girl I had never seen before.  [3]Interestingly, she had a Veggie Tales bible with her.  [5]Since she obviously didn’t know anyone, I introduced myself to her.  [6]I asked for her name.  [1]She replied that it was Martha.  [2]At least, I think it was Martha.  [2]In order to hear anything over the blaring music, we had to scream.  [3]Surprisingly, she informed me that she was from Kentucky, and had traveled down here because her sister, living in Charleston, was having a baby.  [1]The following Wednesday, I was waiting for Fuel to start, when who should show up but Martha!  [6]Elated, I greeted her.  [4]Making small talk, I asked her how old she was.  [1]She responded that she was seventeen.  [4]Using my phenomenal skills of deduction, I concluded that since she was seventeen and still brought her Veggie Tales bible to church, she was most likely homeschooled.  [6]My conclusion proved correct.  She stated that she’s homeschooled.  The coincidence astonished me. I am delighted to have met and befriended someone so sweet, who goes to the same school as I.

[2]Concerning Grady, he did something that made me quite mad the other day.  [2]After co-op, Mom purchased pizza from Famulari’s.  [1]I was in my room when Mom came in and informed me that she was taking Jack to a friend’s house.  [3]Approximately three minutes later, I heard a ripping sound.  [4]Thinking more about what I was doing than about this odd noise, I ignored it.  [3]Suddenly, realizing that there was no one in the house who could be making the noise, it occurred to me that it must be Grady.  [6]I remembered the pizza boxes.  [4]Bolting from my room, I yelled the mischievous mutt’s name.  [5]Although he was sitting innocently on Mom and Dad’s bed, the pizza box, mangled and chewed, laying in the living room, proved him to be guilty.  [1]Grady had retrieved it from behind the trashcan and dragged it into the living room where he had ripped it apart as though it were his prey. [1]Dad, of course, was not angry at Grady because he didn’t have to clean up the shredded pizza box.

[2]At this point, you are probably wondering why I am composing this letter in such a strange way.  [6]Allow me to explain.  [2]For writing this week, I had to write a five paragraph letter to someone.  [3]Obviously, I chose you.  [1]There is a checklist that I have to follow when writing an essay, a report, or in this case, a letter.  [1]There are six sentence openers, six dress-ups, and one decoration that I must use in each paragraph.  [5]Since you are most likely confused, I will do my best to explain them to you.  [2]Throughout my letter I have been starting sentences five different ways: with a subject, a preposition, an adverb ending in “ly,” a verb ending in “ing” or “ed,” and with the words “when,” “while,” “where,” “as,” “if,” “since,” “although,” “whereas,” “unless,” and “because” (“www.asia.wub” for short).  [5]When a sentence doesn’t begin any of those ways, it must always be between two and five words, which is called a v.s.s (very short sentence).  [3]Unfortunately, in addition to all those sentence openers, I also have to use at least six stylish words, called dress-ups, in each paragraph.  [1]These dress-ups are:  an “ly” adverb, a who/which clause, a strong verb (such as “devoured” or “slaughtered” instead of “ate” or “killed”), a quality adjective (such as “satisfactory” or “corrupt” instead of “good” or “bad”), an adverbial clause (www.asia.wub), and an “invisible” who/which (for example: instead of “six stylish words, which are called dress-ups” I removed the “which are” and wrote “six stylish words, called dress-ups”).  [5]As if that is not enough, I also have to use one decoration in each paragraph.  [1]I have six to choose from: a question, three v.s.s in a row, a dramatic opening and closing sentence, an alliteration or assonance, a simile or metaphor, and a quotation.  [1]Do you understand all that? [3]Hopefully you do understand.  [1]Believe it or not, I have been slavishly following this list in every paragraph of this letter.  [5]If you want, you can try to find all of the items on the list in this letter.  [1]So, that is why this letter seemed so odd and repulsive at first, although I am sure that you are adequately impressed.

[2]At last, I’m finished with this letter!  [5]Although it didn’t take me long to write it out, I have written several drafts since it was for school.  [1]I began writing on Friday, January 28, and finished my final draft on the following Wednesday, which is today.  [4]Knowing you, I am sure you are laughing at my pain.  [6]I do not blame you.  [5]If it were you composing a letter to me and it took you a week to write it, I am sure I would find it thoroughly amusing.  [3]Hopefully you enjoyed reading about my new friend Martha and my exasperating yet lovable dog Grady.  [5]If you did not however, then at least pretend that you did.  [6]That’s what friends are for.  [1]Most importantly however, I hope the explanation I gave helped you understand why this letter is so frighteningly formal and fatiguing. [1]You can be certain that I will not write another letter to you as long, stiff, or tiresome as this one.   [2]Without a doubt, my next letter to you will be silly, grammatically incorrect, and filled with sentence fragments.  [5]As usual.

Sincerely yours,

Barngirl

Here’s a key of “Sentence Openers” for those of you playing at home:

[1] Subject opener

[2] Prepositional opener

[3] “ly” adverb opener

[4] “ing or “ed” opener

[5] Clausal opener

[6] v.s.s. – very short sentence opener

We accidentally fell into IEW Unit V this week.  See, generally speaking, my kids aren’t allowed to watch TV or play video games during the week.  They have a list of mom-approved, study-time activities.  ONE of these is watching the IEW videos.  So my son, Gameboy (10), was looking for some electronic-time, and resorted to the only video available:  Mr. Pudewa (or P-dawg, as he’s referred to in our house).  So, though I hadn’t planned to introduce Unit V, Writing from Pictures, this week, I seized the moment.  After watching the video, my kids tried their hands at writing an outline, and then a story, from a set of three pictures.

Sorry these pictures are blurry, but you get the basic idea.  Look at the pictures and figure out a story to explain it.  And if you know anything about IEW, you add “dress-ups” to make your writing display good STYLE, as well as structure.  Well, Gameboy used his dress-up checklist for strong verbs, quality adjectives and sentence openers to the extreme….with hilarious results.

Don’t believe me?  Check out his first (uncorrected) paragraph:

“Edna is cooking soup.  Since it is banana soup, which is Grandma’s favorite, it takes a long time to make.  Everything is going well, and the beautiful recipe is almost done.  All she needs to do is put in the bananas.  She has to leave for a minute to go to the bathroom, she hopes Buford wouldn’t uncontrollably cause any more disrespectful trouble today.  Apparently she didn’t know his plan.”

Okay, I don’t know if you’re laughing, but that just cracks me up.  Adverb and adjective-orama!  Paragraph #2, where “it all comes down,” as we say in our house, is not bad.   It’s longer, so he has more room to put in his “dress-ups.”  Let me just leave you with the end of his last paragraph, which cracks me up for a different reason altogether.

“Buford walks slowly back to his room.  Because of Buford, Edna has to make a whole new batch of banana soup.  Also, she has to skip going to the mall, and Grandma, who is 93 years old and lives in a cottage behind Radio Shack, will have to wait a day for her beloved banana soup.  Edna would definitely have to have a talk with Buford.  He had just ruined her day…..and her beautiful soup.”

Brings a tear to your eye, no?

What I really need to investigate is…..why does Grandma live behind Radio Shack?  Where did THAT come from?

Our homeschool support group went on a field trip yesterday to the Center for Birds of Prey.

We had a great turnout of over 50 people, even though it was a little bit of a drive for most of us.  Luckily, the Mellow Mushroom was on the way, so we weren’t in danger of starvation.  I had the best calzone EVAH….but I digress.

During the first hour of the tour, we were led to where they house various birds, including vultures, eagles, falcons, kites, hawks….and many more.  We only had time for a few.  I’m always happy to see our kids ask intelligent questions (in fact, I usually make that a requirement for my own kids at field trips…to ask 2-3 intelligent questions.  "Where is the bathroom" doesn’t qualify.  Nor does, "How much longer are we going to be here?").   This particular question turns me into this lady:

Anyway, the kids and parents alike asked great questions, which indicated to me that they were at least mildly interested.

Our instructor, Monty, was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his subject, and told some great stories about the intelligence of crows (though he left out how annoying and creepy they are), the choice of the bald eagle as our national bird (Benjamin Franklin referred to it as a bird of ‘bad moral character,’), and the speed of Peregrine Falcons (the fastest animal on earth, reaching speeds of up to 200 miles per hour!).  Many of the birds in their "collection" are there because they’ve been injured and can never be re-released into the wild. 

My camera is about 87 years old (give or take), so I couldn’t get good pictures of the birds inside their cages.  I did get one decent picture of the Barred Owl:

On a previous field trip to Cypress Gardens, we learned that you can identify the hoot of a Barred Owl, because it sounds like, "Who cooks for you?  Who cooks for you?"  There’s a handy little tip for ya, free of charge. 

The second hour, we were treated to a flight demonstration of various birds.  Stephen, the Director of Education for the center, led this portion of our class.  We were treated to demonstrations of the Red-tailed Hawk, a VERY common hawk in SC:

this was the best "in flight" picture I could get…..oh well…

….the Eurasian Kestrel….

….the Spectacled Owl….

They land so gently….

….and the last demonstration was from the Yellow-billed Kite:


If you look closely, you can see a tiny bell and a radio transmitter tied to his tail feathers.  The bell is so the instructor can hear where the bird is, in case they fly into a tree nearby (which they do), and the transmitter is for locating the bird if they fly FARTHER away than that (which has also happens on occasion).   Isn’t she beautiful?
She was my kids’ favorite.

…..and perhaps the favorite of others as well!
Thanks to everyone at the Center for Birds of Prey, and to all the families of Cathedral LIFE!

Now, when we got home, we were confronted with our own, more domesticated animal life.
Our dog Grady could use a radio transmitter when he bolts out our front door to explore the neighborhood, but more often, this is his activity of choice:

Don’t miss his signature "lip droop."

Clearly, it’s a jungle out there.

Gameboy and I read his history lesson today about Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain.  He chose for his "enrichment" activity to make a cup of Mexican hot chocolate.

After heating the milk and water, we poured it into the cup with the other ingredients.

But, he was willing to give it a whirl…..

Wait…..did you say CHILI POWDER???????

Nahhhh.  He was just hamming it up for the camera.  He said it was okay, but it smelled WAY better than it tasted.

So I got to drink it.  Can I tell you?  It was DELICIOUS!!!!!!
Rotten, unsophisticated kid.  All that peanut butter and jelly with Doritos has seared his palate.