November 30-December 4....and BEYOND!

Filing!  I really should be filing instead of blogging.  I got behind on filing (school) stuff around the time we went to Disneyland and, much like my e-mail inbox, it has now spiraled completely out of control.  Well, not exactly like my e-mail inbox.  I doubt there are more than 13,000 unfiled papers in there.  I keep resolving to spend 10 minutes filing every night, and then I keep not doing it.  Sigh.  We have a two week break coming up, so maybe it will get done then.  Because there's nothing else to do during Christmas break, right?

Aside from growing more behind on filing, we had a good week.  We took most of  Thanksgiving week off, since Dave was off work and his parents were in town.  But then we hopped right back in the next week and made a good bit of progress toward my goal of being more or less halfway done by Christmas so that we can relax and enjoy our break.  All of our classes are over until after New Year's; we had the last meeting of book club until January and discussed James and the Giant Peach.  Choice quote from one of  the kids (likely one of MY kids) about what Roald Dahl was telling us: "if you don't share, you'll DIE!"  Yes, indeed.  Well, not usually.

Ari had a mini-crisis about Writing with Ease; there was much crying and angry growling.  I posted on the WTM boards about it and got some good ideas.  I think part of the problem is just that he doesn't like history all that much and was on his second week of reading about Paul Revere. He'd read the passage and then not remember anything about it (which I understand, since I've certainly experienced needing to read the same paragraph three times when it's mind-numbingly boring).  This week (jumping ahead, which is what happens when you don't update your blog until Wednesday) I tried some new things, AND we finally finished Paul Revere (and moved on to Homer Price), and things went much more smoothly.  We talked about the passage informally after he read it (instead of using the scripted questions in WWE), and I had him write his narration down himself instead of dictating it to me.  And it was fine!  He did a great job and didn't cry at all.  But he still hates narrations, he tells me.  Of course.

Milo is reading the first Magic Tree House book!  He's doing really well with it, often wanting to keep reading after I tell him he can stop. 

Ari is reading the sixth Harry Potter and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles (by Julie Andrews!  I love Julie Andrews!)  I'm toying with the idea of throwing in some independent history reading for him (right now I read everything aloud to all three (or two, depending on Gus' mood)), but there's no way we'll get through all the books that way.  And Ari can zip through in a couple of days of reading sessions a book it might take me at least a week to read out loud.  I think I'll keep it light this year, though, as I don't want to replace the time he spends reading from the books to read before you're 13 list.  I sent him up with a biography of Helen Keller today just to read for a few minutes.  I suspect his Scholastic Helen Keller biography doesn't talk a lot about socialism...I should go read it and see and then brush up on my Lies My Teacher Told Me.  Because I don't want to be one of those lying teachers.

Our science kits came!  I love science kits.  We're working on the Science in a Nutshell vision and hearing kit right now (we mostly finished the human body in REAL science, so I thought this would be a fun thing to wrap that up with before we move on to plants and animals).  It's so complete it's almost ridiculous.  I mean, seriously, even I could dig up an index card somewhere.  But thanks to Science in a Nutshell, I don't have to!  I think I did have to provide my own plain white paper last week, but I handled it fine.  So I have that and then the Thames and Kosmos genetics and DNA kit to do.  The Thames and Kosmos kit might be a little over Milo's head; we'll see. 

The vision and hearing kit was $39 and comes with an activity guide, 3 activity journals (how convenient...guess I'd better not have any more kids), and all the materials for the 11 activities in the guide.  Most of the activities take around 20-30 minutes.  My plan is to do the activities maybe 2 days a week and then read related books from the library (or our bookshelf) another day.  But plans and I don't always get along so well....

My beautiful science kit:

Today we did the third activity--blind spots.  First Ari put two (included) stickers 7-8 centimeters apart on the (included) index card:

Then he covered his left eye and moved the card forward and backwards, focusing on the left butterfly (the right butterfly disappears at a certain point):

Next, he kept both eyes open and did the same thing...no blind spot!

 

 

And finally, he answered questions about the results in his journal:

Still in pajamas, you'll note.  Milo is sick today, so they're all watching Elf and letting me finish this entry finally!