We’ve been slowly getting back into the swing of things.   I’ve put a list together of things I’m going to order next week, but we’ve been doing math, First Language Lessons and we started SOTW on Monday.   Alex hasn’t started his Singapore 2a yet, we’ve just been reviewing and practicing some addition stuff.   Jordan has started her Mastering Mathematics, and though I really don’t like it (it focuses on repitition and rote memorization), she is really having success with it.  It is designed to repeat certain sections until she passes a section.   I think it will work out well as long as I continue to supplement with the montessori stuff and the http://www.livingmath.net/ .  

We are doing lots of mad libs—great hit though I have to encourage them to move beyond potty talk.  The First Language Lessons starts with learning what a noun is.     They get noun pretty good, but I’m surprised at how difficult the other parts of speech are when we get to the mad libs.  

 The First Language Lessons also has a poem to memorize, and at first I was going to skip this part, but Jordan really enjoyed mastering the poem and since the PTB (Powers That Be—that would be the school district testing people) say she has short term memory problems I thought this would be a great exercise.   She seems to pick up anything done in a rhyme or singing fashion really quickly.  Alex is having to memorize things for an upcoming taekwondo belt test and I’m really re-thinking my aversion to just memorizing stuff for the sake of memorizing.  How schooly of me.

Our big gap is writing.   Jordan does it anyway because she likes to, but Alex hates hates hates it and I’ve been just waiting till he seems more ready, but I’m thinking a bit of practice to get him over the hump is going to be required.  I’m thinking I will work in some short narration type stuff from the SOTW to practice writing.

 Aubrey has dug into Elementary Algebra and is working through a critical thinking book (like I need to develop her ability to argue–what was I thinking???).   Our local library system has just purchased the online Rosetta Stone so she is going to be able to start Spanish soon for free.  In the fall she is planning on doing a biology class through MU’s distant learning and she will pick Writing Strands back up.  I will offer a variety of reading selections, but that will be about it.

We’ve been listening to Rascal by Sterling North on audio book (read by J. Weiss–great tape!) and as in many of the books depicting children from previous eras, all of us were amazed at the freedom the main character had to roam and how independent and industrius he was.   It always makes me wonder if protecting our kids from every bump and scrape (ok, obviously I’ve failed at that) does them any good.  Then, of course, I remember the casual reference in the book to the main character becoming wheelchair bound three years after this story takes place and the undercurrent of concern because his brother was overseas fighting in World War 1 and it reminds me that bygone days weren’t all sunny and innocence. 

So, where is that balance in between protecting our children so much that they can’t “spread their wings” and giving them adequate opportunities to practice independence.   Although I’m sure Public School disciples would say that keeping them home shelters them more, I’d be willing to bet that the opposite is true.  

This dilemma runs through my head a lot as I parent.  Obviously I want competent children who will one day be able to go out into the world on their own—but of course I’d prefer they do so with all their limbs intact.   So, rather than leave them at a homestead for a few months to survive on their own (Sign of the Beaver–another great audiobook), I give them little opportunities such as going away to camp, going up to adults in a store on their own, the freedom to explore our 2 acres fully, cooking and housekeeping duties…. Although they’ve been coached on “stranger danger”, I don’t instill a fear in them of every person they don’t know.   But, every time one of them asks to do something that makes my heart race I have to really think–is this something that they should be able to do and is my hesitation rational or not?   

 And of course, as in all parenting choices, there are other parents who have seemed shocked at what I will allow my kids to do and others who think I’m amazingly stifling. 

I’m almost back from the brink of death.  Well, that may be exagerating a bit, but I’ve been pretty sick.  Mom’s don’t get sick has always been my motto but apparently some germy out there didn’t get that memo.   Last week when my fever hit 104.6 I told dh he’d have to take off work to help with the kids and get me some medical intervention.   My low was puking on the nurse when she tried to do a throat swab.    They thought strep, but it came back negative so they sucked some blood out and said they thought it might be mono.  Four days later and I’m running at about 70% of peak efficiency and I still don’t have the results back telling me what the heck I had.  Guess it doesn’t matter much now.  

Wonder if the sub had the kids do anything. Ha Ha.

It seems like several blogs on the dashboard are talking about the new year, so it must be in the air.   We started back up doing a bit of formal work this week.   Monday that didn’t go over so well, but I think we were all stir crazy from Alex being sick and then getting rained in.   We did some math both days.  Jordan has started her new math program Mastering Mathematics.   It is a bit much in the way of rote learning for my tastes, but she is experiencing success with it, so she is digging in so far.   Alex even joined in the games and Jordan has the first set of addition facts memorized.  Alex is working in a Daily 7 math enrichment workbook that is just seven problems a day in 7 different mathematic concepts.   He really likes it.  He also finished up the sections from Singapore 1B that we skipped over last year. 

We’ve been playing tons of games—that is one of my big goals for next year is more play (and more crafts/projects).   It seems like many times as soon as I’m done with the “formal” stuff I’m ready for a break or am needing to give something else my attention.  Jordan made doll house food out of salt dough and painted it.  She made the cutest little cherry pie with an old metal lid as the pie pan. 

 One thing I’m still working through is the varied interest level in different projects.  We read a book called The Ecosystem of a Fallen Tree–lots of great pictures and interesting information.  So, of course afterwards we headed outside with magnifying glasses to check out several of the dead trees in and around our yard.   Jordan had a notebook and wrote down everything we saw and was very involved but Alex was hanging back and kept asking if he could go inside.   I tried to engage him but when it didn’t work I said it was fine for him to go in and Jordan and I had a very pleasant time exploring.  If I’d tried to push (which I’ve done before) then noone ends up having fun.  But he seems particularly difficult to get interested in anything that doesn’t involve sport or screen in some way and it is a delicate balance to know when to pull him along a bit or let him go.  

We also started on First Language Lessons.   It goes a little bit against our style to have formal language lessons, but it seems fairly laid back and we did Mad Libs Jr. (a HUGE hit) to try to reinforce parts of speech.   It is a more difficult concept for them to get than I anticipated.

That is pretty much our first week of the year.   We did reading treasure hunts to practice some reading.   I’m waiting for another month to order new handwriting/phonics, etc. (money, not a master plan) so this will be pretty much it for the next few weeks.

And the squirrells in my yard have no shortage of will.

Fun game, but after playing it 3-4 times a day for the past month, I’m pretty much done for a while.  

This one isn’t even that old.  When I first got it out I thought it was too “young” and that they would get tired of it soon.  Apparently it is just me, as their enthusiasm hasn’t waned yet. 

Anything by Cranium.  It all seems so cool the first time through, but after 20 playings I’m about to swing that Creative Cat by the tail.

Really, I have nothing to complain about.  When Aubrey was little it seemed all we had was Candyland and Hi-Ho Cherrio.   To this day I haven’t been able to play either of these with the youngers.   Alex is sick, so I’ve spent ALL day playing board games and reading to them (when I wasn’t giving extended veg in front of the tv time).   Let’s hope the fever breaks soon…

Aubrey left for camp yesterday.  She was so excited, but of course now I sit and wonder what she’s doing (and if she is being safe).   She is such the daredevil.   She was really excited to go, though a bit sad yesterday as we were finalizing the packing.  She was able to meet up with a camp friend from last year at the bus pick up so I’m sure she had a great ride to camp.  The big ?—will she write this year?   She’s not known for her great camp communication skills.

And the sadder goodbye, the stable Jordan rides at called me this week and said they have to be out of the barn they were leasing by the end of the month and they are trying to find homes for all the horses and are basically shutting down.  This was a therapy riding program and their fees were really low and they just weren’t getting enough in to keep going I guess.   I’m really sad–it was a great low stress place for Jordan to ride.   I had an insane moment where I thought about trying to buy one of the two horses Jordan usally rides (and has really bonded with), but dh said NO WAY.   We don’t have enough land or the facilities to keep a horse and are not in a position to take on fees for boarding a horse.  sigh.   I hate the thought of trying to find a new place that is reasonably priced, reasonably convenient and has instructors who are patient and understanding.   They’ve cancelled Jordan’s lessons and are going to call me if they are able to do one last lesson–which I’m hoping is possible because change is really hard for Jordan and it is important for her to have closure and be able to really say goodbye.

We try to maintain a fairly harmonious relationship with the wildlife that visits our little pocket of wilderness.  I don’t get incredibly bent out of shape when the birds eat all the raspberries or the deer eat my sunflowers.  So, initially when the moles moved in I thought our yard was big enough to share.  Ha, that was before there were tunnels winding through a huge chunk of our yard, complete with large mounds of dirt they’d kicked out.  This weekend Dh officially declared war on the little varmints.  He went out armed with a hose and proceeded to flood as many of their tunnels as he could find to try to oust the little critters.   My mild mannered hubby turned into a driven, crazed mole hunter.  Here he is looking quite red neck, but in triumphant victory over at least one of them—he ran out of the hole when it became flooded.  Of course, his gentle nature took back over and he couldn’t clobber the beast so we captured him in a box, observed him for a while and then drove him to a wooded area a few miles from our house where (hopefully) he can dig without bothering anyone. 

The kids wanted to keep him as a pet, but I said no—as much as I was unwilling to kill the little beastie I really wanted him gone.   We put him in a container with dirt and witnessed how amazingly strong his front legs are–he could tunnel under in a matter of seconds.  Aubrey did some research and found out they can tunnel up to 16 feet deep—and the amount of water we flooded into the tunnels was a testament to how big of an area they can cover.     When we released him into the “mole sanctuary” he burrowed into the hard ground there before we had a chance to complete our goodbyes. 

This morning, there was a new mound for dh to tackle.   Apparently our mole has a friend.

Today was the day for us to do the observations for the Personality Profile for the Birdhouse Network.

 The experiment was to determine if the birds would react differently to a novel item vs. a non-novel item placed on their nestbox.  We were to tack a leaf to the nest box and observe their reaction and then do the same with a black and white checkered bow.  
Our hypothesis was that they would react much stronger to the bow than to the leaf and that they would attack the bow and mostly ignore the leaf. 

 First we had to establish a home base—a place to observe where our actions would not effect the feeding behavior of the birds.   We chose our dining room.   We started observing at 8:47 and observed the birds entering the nest box at 8:50.

At 8:53 we put the leaf on the nest box.   Both the male and the female approached fairly quickly but did not enter.  They fluttered around and attacked the leaf several times.  We tallied 6 approaches by the male and 3 by the female before the female entered at 9:01.  The male entered at 9:03 and therefore this portion of the observation was complete.

at 9:06 we put the black and white checkered bow on the nest box.  They did not attack it as much initially.   They approached a couple of times before the female entered the nest box at 9:11.  She stayed in the nest box with her head poking out occasionally pecking at the bow for the duration of the observation.  We tallied 11 approaches by the male, some in which he obviously had food, but he did not enter the nest box and the female did not move from the entrance hole.   The parameters of the experiment required us to stop after 30 minutes even if both parents had not entered the nest box in order to not disrupt their feeding schedules too significantly.   They seemed clearly stressed and we were glad it was time to stop because based on their behavior we did not anticipate them resuming their normal schedule with the checkered bow still there.

We observed after removing the objects and they resumed feeding normally.

Conclusion:  though we were correct that they reacted more to the novel object, they reacted differently than we expected.  We expected more aggressive behavior towards the bow but instead the female took up a protective position and refused to move.  They appeared more stressed by the bow than we anticipated, as they never resumed normal feeding while it was there.