in pursuit of wild things

Last Friday the boys busied themselves with building a rather poor model of The Spirit of St. Louis. Despite the poor quality of the kit we did finally manage to get the little plane to fly. However, every landing turned out to be a cataclysmic crash and the poor plane had to be reassembled. Oldest remarked that he was glad the Wright brothers didn’t have as many terrible landings with their planes. After working on our science labs Sparkles begged to make a cake. She enjoyed getting to use a hand mixer for the first time. She called it a “girly power tool” and asked if she could have her own in pink. As she carefully followed the directions for making her cake I told her a few ways she could make it extra special by adding cinnamon, vanilla extract,  using milk instead of water, adding colored sprinkles or chocolate chips. While I took Littlest to the potty she added all of the extra special ingredients! Her cake was indeed quite flavorful!

We did not do anything for Valentine’s Day. My husband did bring me a lovely Azalea bush that I’ll plant in the spring (actually…he’ll be the one to plant it). He then made us lunch and his first batch of homemade potato chips. The chips were very tasty! It took him about a month to perfect fried chicken so I’m sure he will soon master the potato chip. His spaghetti, smoked ribs and fried chicken are so good I won’t eat or order anyone else’s. I doubt I’ll be purchasing chips much longer…which is really a good thing. In the mean time the kids and I will enjoy his many potato chip experiments.

Auntie Two and her husband stopped by to deliver Valentine’s to the kids. They were so thrilled with their cards and visit. The older three instructed me to put their valentine’s in their “baby boxes” or keepsake boxes. They happened to stop by during the potato chip experiment and enjoyed a few chips.

We awoke to snow on Monday morning. It snowed all morning and into the early afternoon…nearly nine inches!!! We got a couple more inches of snow later in the week and then bitterly cold temperatures. We are expecting freezing rain tomorrow. Yuck! This is not the sort of weather we are accustomed to in Kentucky especially this late in the season! The current weather is such an anomaly that the Harlan Police Department issued an APB for Queen Elsa! No, I’m not kidding.

The kids enjoyed sledding in the snow this week. They stayed motivated and got their school work done quickly each day so they could go sledding after lunch. All of our outside activities were cancelled for the week. We managed to get our school work and some extra projects done since we didn’t have to go anywhere. Littlest

worked in his Kindergarten workbooks all week since he didn’t have to go to preschool. It was a nice little preview of what teaching three grade levels of school is going to be like. A few challenges need to be worked out. I also plotted the rest of my lessons for this academic year and noticed we are going to finish up earlier than I had planned. I’m not too worried about it. We just need to decide if we want to add some interim coursework or just move on to the next level?

I’ve also spent a few hours this week considering our next year’s courses. We are all very happy with most of the current curriculum and will simply carry on with the next level. We will move on with Christian Light Education (math, language arts, reading and Bible), Beautiful Feet Books (history and includes great

literature and writing assignments as well as geography), The Story of the World (history, geography and writing) and Writing with Skill. I no longer need Writing With Ease as I’ve learned how to fold it into The Story of the World. We will continue with piano and guitar lessons because we love, love, love our teachers and my kids would wither without their music. Music is so important to my crew we have our practice sessions early in the morning. Even Littlest has to have his “compiano time”. I have no idea why he calls it “compiano”.

We are going to start Latin next school term and we will be using Visual Latin. The main reason (other than Mr. Dwane is hilarious!) is that I will not have to be the primary teacher. My Eastern Kentucky accent is awful when trying to teach a foreign language! My horrid little accent seems

to triple when I try to pronounce something foreign. I worked so hard in my younger years to get rid of my accent but it all comes back with foreign language. My husband was highly amused by my accent when we reviewed a Spanish curriculum a couple of years ago when I worked for Mosaic Reviews. My accent was so bad he took over the teaching for the review period! We might even add Mr. Dwane’s vocabulary curriculum since my crew loves studying Latin and Greek root words.

Oldest is begging for Cover Story. He really wants to start this writing curriculum once he finishes Writing with Skill volume One. I already have volume two of Writing with Skill so I am not sure. If I decide to get it for him we will not start it until I’m sure he is ready for such a big project. But maybe I should let his enthusiasm lead the way? I have flip-flopped over this all week.

Some favorite articles this week:

Beautiful Feet Books Blog: Rebecca is referring to another article about the 10 best things we are not doing for our homeschools’. Because of Beautiful Feet Books I read to my kids. My Oldest is crushed when I tell him he has to read a book by himself. I will not give up read aloud time for our entire homeschool years…not ever. I would like to add poetry tea time…think my boys would like it?

Hope By Design: I loved this tongue-in-cheek description of homeschooling methods! I started out classical but embrace more Charlotte Mason methodology every year. I believe my method is…Method? What Method?!

Simple Homeschool: Curriculum is life! I’m on my way to arriving. I wanted to jump up and say “Amen!” but was afraid my kids might think I had gone daft.

Creekside Learning: I have a “reluctant reader”. This article totally shifted my viewpoint! I no longer have a reluctant reader…I just need to honor who he is..where he is…right now.

Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers: What can I say? When I grow up to be the best homeschool mom I can be I want to be just like Kris of Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Steam Powered Classroom: I have to quote her here because she says it best, “If we wish to promote innovation and new discoveries, as educators we must devote ourselves to cultivating quiet spaces and unhurried stretches of time for our learners. We must squelch our impatience and instead applaud childhood tendencies to dawdle.” This has been on my heart the past few months. I am the guardian of my crew’s time and I really believe they need time to play and explore and not have every moment of their time taken up by activities, tv, and video games.

One Man and His Mustang: I’m obsessed with the progress of his car!

Linking up with: Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

building airplane model

Oldest’s map of the Roman Empire

snow, snow, snow

Cardinal in trees

Middle Boy sledding

Sparkles cell project

birds at my dinning room window

Oldest with sled

Middle Boy in motion

Sparkles in the snow

Middle Boy during school time