The Diosa Dotada Endeavor

So I’m going to whip up an update post here for those of you who wait for and enjoy these. (I’ve convinced myself there are bajillions of you, but mostly know this is to keep family updated on our adventures.) Why the super quick update?

Well- every member of the Maximus household has the sniffles and the juciy spring cough that’s going around not helped by the quickly rising tree pollen. So we haven’t actually been up to much except keeping tissue manufacturers in business the past week or so.

Plus- the Texas State Board of Education is losing the last of the rare marbles it had left and my congested head is obsessed with the issue. More to come at the Muddlehood hopefully later today or tomorrow. Also, I know owe the blogosphere and Smrt Mama a Secular Thursday post, as well. I’m going to try to get that done today as well. I’ve got a secular science curriculum/resource recommendation to share, so I want to do that one justice.

Now, back to the matter at hand and our update. Let’s see. We enjoyed another stellar History Club get together complete with a discussion about the Ancient/Medieval Chinese and their invention of wood block printing followed by the opportunity for the kids to create linoleum block prints. They used the proper tool for the job and carved their blocks with lino cutters. Then they printed with black ink and red ink. The prints from the whole History Club, ages 3 to 15 were absolutely breathtaking. Artemis and Apollo’s blocks were really reminiscent of a bamboo forest. Apollo’s growing more and more self confident as an artist, I think. He printed in both colors with overlapping prints on the same paper and a mix of both black and red very confidently and deliberately. The result is gorgeous. Athena even carved print backwards. It was a fantastic project all the way around! We’ve spent large chunks of time with the Byzantines and then the Medieval Islamic Empire, so while we are normally running ahead of History Club, we’re now dead even. In light of that, it will hopefully be onto the Franks, Clovis and Karl (you probably know him by a different name) next week if we’re all less phlegmy.

We also got together with our co-op to begin our venture into physics. At home, Athena and I have been discussing some very general physics concepts and she’s expressed interest in getting deeper next year but doesn’t want to let go of chemistry either so I’m looking to expand her chemistry work and also parallel some physics study too. Last night she watched part of a History channel documentary about Einstein, so I’d say her curiosity is primed for more physics study. Having our theme of the month at co-op fit into these discussions is a great homeschooling synchronicity. We had a sort of physics themed play day with eight stations to explore a few basic physics concepts in a low key hands on sort of way. The kids made paper airplanes, built marshmallow and toothpick structures, toyed with magnets, crafted pinwheels, assembled homemade lava lamps, created funky marble runs, raced various vehicles down assorted ramps and engineered shell protecting egg drop containers. And generally had a smashing good time! I’m looking forward to taking the entire Triad of Chaos to Texas A&M’s Physics Festival at the end of the month.

Outside of that we read lots together, cooked together, watched a lot of television while laying on various pieces of furniture or the floor and coughing. Hopefully, we’re all on the mend since we have a Girl Scout camping trip and other assorted fun on the calendar for next week.

So, I know I promised a fun-filled follow-up post on the craziness that was Athena’s first Odyssey of the Mind Tournament, but this one is going to be a regular old boring weekly update post. I’m saving that other entertaining post for a new venture I’m going to try out called Secular Thursday hosted by Srmt Mama. It’s just too terribly appropriate for that venture. The writer in me can’t help but tailor the story to the perfect presentation. So. A few more days to wait for that one.

In the meantime, we had a great week leading up to the tournament. We were actually able to not leave the house for two days in a row. While I am (as some of you may already have deduced) a raving extrovert, it is occasionally downright blissful to spend two, back-to-back days at home, just us. It’s amazing what gets done for one thing. Athena finished her latest math book and we’ve moved on to the next level. She also read bunches. We’ve started playing this game where I leave her written clues all over the house and they lead her to various things. We watched a program on the arabesque style of Islamic art together and reviewed the foundation and rise of Islam for this coming week’s History Club meeting. She began adding Alkali Metals to the giant Periodic Table she’s building on the wall in the playroom and we both cackled hysterically watching these videos from University of Nottingham’s Chemistry Department. We mostly watched the Alkali Metals videos over and over again. Athena pointed out that it seems to her that the only sane and safety conscious person working in the lab at that university is the woman. Interesting observation there, kid!

Thursday, our co-op had a good ole’ fashioned field day. They got the chance to have sack races and three-legged races and play tug-o-war and hula hoop and play kickball and all that good stuff. Artemis was an outstanding spoon/egg racer and can get around in a sack/pillowcase awfully well. Apollo mostly stuck with the bubble station and playing on the playground. Athena, on the other hand, was completely enamored with the hula hoop. That girl went hooping crazy! So much so that we actually got her a hula hoop of her very own as a congratulations gift for her performance at the tournament and then took her to a Hooper Stahs get together at a park downtown on Sunday. The child hooped so much that she got a bona fide hooping injury. She has a hoop-width bruise on her left hip! But that didn’t stop her from emphatically suggesting hula hooping at today’s Girl Scout troop camp planning session for our upcoming troop camp out later this month.

We made it to the art museum after hooping in the park and were able to bring Patris Maximus along as well. We worked with colored pencils and oil pastels, as well as, a bit of collage to create still lifes that reflected the era in which we live. We also spent a bit of time sketching in one of the Impressionist galleries. I’m beginning to really get a lot out of these sessions at the art museum, myself. The children have a good time and Artemis is really in her element. But I can feel and see my own artistic sensibilities reawakening. It feels wonderful. I was really happy with my own work this week as opposed to merely setting an example for the kids.

This coming week, we are kicking off our physics month with our co-op. We’re starting with a simple machines unit. We also have History Club on Friday. I have college friends in town next weekend, but at some point soon, I’ll start spilling a few new resources and some plans that are already beginning to take shape for next school year. Also, keep an eye out for my contribution to the Secular Thursday venture. At this rate, I might be posting here twice a week at least.

We’ve had a very laid back two weeks and it has been nice to take a chance to catch my breath a bit. I realized as I was sort of outlining this update post in my head though, that our laid back may not be other folks’ laid back. But isn’t that what this is all about? Setting the pace that jives for your children and your family. Another on the lengthy list of reasons we all subject ourselves to this special brand of insanity, right? Right?

Last week we enjoyed a chemistry club get together to chat about ionic bonding and rearrange some molecular structures for the fun of it. First, I demonstrated the ole’ food coloring bleach solution trick with the help of a kitchen full of side seat chemists in training. Then, the kids rearranged sodium and chlorine atoms with a little help from a glass of water, a plate and a hair dryer. That project grew on us and went from re-crystalizing salt from a salt water solution to examining salt crystal structure under the microscope. It was one of those days when the kids took the plan and really ran with it. Of course, by the time they finished that up, they had no interest in the last activity. So we skipped it and called it a session well done.

We also had yet another fantastic workshop at the art museum with a really great presentation on African art, a poetry writing exercise which Athena really got into and two art projects inspired by Kente cloth designs. One of the projects was a book-making venture. I must say that I love with separate threads of our learning ventures weave together so smoothly; homeschooling synchronicity, if you will. Apollo preferred the book related project, while Artemis dove into the Kente-inspired paper collage task and didn’t come up for air until we had exhausted our studio time.

Later that week we made it to the children’s museum with friends and spent hours tinkering in their Invention Convention exhibit which consists of all sorts of project stations, invention tasks, test facilities and recycled materials. It’s a physics/simple machines wonderland in there. And amazingly unpopulated the entire time we were there. Athena and I spent some time chatting about next school year (I can hear several of you hollering “Already, woman?” I can’t help it really. It’s some sort of planning disorder I have.) The main topic she wanted to make clear was her ideas for science studies– a continued study of further chemistry topics and the addition of physics study. Well, okay then. I’ll get on that.

We had open gym time at a gymnastics center with our co-op and the kids had a great time for the most part. So did I. Turns out I can still mess around on a trampoline and I can manage a few simple tumbling tricks. I took a long hot soak that night though. Artemis has begun manifesting possession by the same perfectionism monster that her big sister is plagued by. She accidentally called one of the coaches at open gym by the wrong name and was mortified when he let her know that wasn’t his name. Mor-ti-fied. It took me almost five minutes just to get her to tell me for sure that she wasn’t hurt, she was embarrassed. This wasn’t a big issue for Athena until just before she turned five, if I’m remembering correctly. But I seem to observe that there is something about younger siblings and accelerating these things sometimes so here we are with a perfectionist three and a half year old. At least I know what it is this time.

My sister and her husband rolled (flew technically, but whatever) into town last weekend and we all checked out The Lightening Thief together since we had all read the books. They trashed the plot line as badly as I had expected they would, but the thing that caught me off guard was the cheese factor. The acting, even the big name acting, was totally coated in that yellow sticky processed cheese product that begins with a V. We bought bargain matinee tickets, so Patris Maximus managed to handle it. Athena pointed out all the ways they had adulterated the plot line, including many points all the adults missed, but said that since she knew the movie would be different than the books, she still enjoyed it. Far better attitude than I, there.

While she was in town, Athena’s aunt also came with us on our Girl Scout troop’s tour of the SPCA shelter, which is an impressive facility actually. They have a surprisingly high volume of animals come through there and not just dogs and cats. They have a large horse rescue and adoption program, have had custody of a monkey before and are currently attempting to re-home a bear. Yes, a bear. The volunteer guide told us about Animal Cop Houston which airs on Animal Planet and Athena insisted we watch an episode as soon as we could find one. Seeing a place on television that she’s actually been was very exciting. She also spent about a half a day bemoaning the injustice of the fact that one has to be 8 years old before one can attend the SPCA’s Critter Camp and volunteer at the facility. I reassured her that her time will come if that’s what she still wants to do two summers from now.

After our house guests left, our co-op had a yoga unit facilitated by a few of our own that the entire Triad of Chaos gave rave reviews and Athena’s Odyssey team held its second to last meeting before tournament time. Their entire project is ironically coming together. The detailed analysis of the irony of their presentation will be a post-tournament blog entry. It will come with a warning because you may pee your pants laughing and reading about my internal struggle to not influence their creative process whatsoever. I have been amazingly good and have not uttered one peep about the content of their presentation. I have stuck strictly to being Generically Supportive and Encouraging Mommy. It’s a great story, so stay tuned. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Many of you will feel my pain. Or analyze my karma. Whatever.

We also clocked in a few playgroups and romps at the park and totally threw art co-op out the window in favor of an impromptu “whatcha got in your fridge today?” sort of barbecue with friends. We have amazingly tasty fridge inventory, by the way.

The last two weeks finished up with a really great Thinking Day experience yesterday. Despite the tumultuous juvenile estrogen-laden hoopla our Service Unit has been through in the past year, Thinking Day came together really well. They went out on a limb and tried a totally new location that really worked well. Our girls’ presentation on Girl Guiding in India all fell into place and I waged a successful caffeinated campaign against a looming migraine. It turned out to be a totally lovely way to spend a Saturday morning. It also reminded me once again why I really adore the unique chemistry between the girls and the parents of our troop.

I’m spending this weekend getting super reorganized and we are actually at home for the first half of next week. I’ve taken notes on requests for several activities from the kids which we should be able to get to before a good old fashioned Field Day with co-op on Thursday, our last OM meeting, the art co-op lesson that got preempted by the urge to party and possibly a meet up with a fledgling homeschool group at the end of the week. Despite the yo-yo weather, we’re making it through February in style and will be capping off the month with the OM Tournament next weekend. You may get that angsty, satire-ridden blog post by Saturday night, since I wont have to hold it in any longer after that!

The past week, the entire Maximus household has been valiantly battling the February Funk. Until a day or two ago, we were enduring an extended period with a severe lack of sunshine and everyone was feeling the effects. Cold is one thing. Cold and wet is another. But cold, wet and dreary is tough to do for a week and a half. Several of our group activities were also affected and the energy at those activities just felt off. I’m happy to report though, that the sun made a reappearance this weekend and everyone is doing much better now.

Our visit to the Museum of Printing History was lovely. It fit in well with history topics we’ve been discussing at home and with the co-op’s theme for the month of authorship and book making. Our tour was conducted by Charles Criner, the Artist-in-Residence at the museum. He was one of those rare people who seems to understand and connect with kids, even when the group contains everything from three to ten year olds. The kids got to work a Columbian iron press and print their own copies of the Declaration of Independence. Athena and I also got a peek at some Mesopotamian cylinder scrolls, an ancient Asian moveable type set, a Hindu palm leaf book, and a replica of the Book of Kells and a Gutenberg press and Bible. We finished up our study of Robert Rauschenberg and the kids and I have decided that Charles Criner will be our February Artist of the Month! Huzzah for inspiration!

Athena and I have also been digging deeper into the history of the Byzantine Empire and are listening to Lars Brownworth’s work on this area and time period. We’re using his highly popular podcast called 12 Byzantine Rulers (available online and through iTunes for free) and we’ve checked out his book, Lost to the West as an audiobook. I have known about the Byzantines and about the biggest names like Constantine, Justinian, Theodora, Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia. But there is so much more to know about those key topics and more. Lars Brownworth is an outstanding historian and story-teller, so we highly recommend his work. History Club this week involved a chapter about early Byzantine history, so Athena took a look at this mosaic, rummaged around in the dress up box and came up with a costume fit for an Empress. Dressing as the strong female leader she is currently researching has become a theme in her history studies. I was duly impressed actually. She managed to find a brown satin-ish shawl that looked remarkable similar to the mosaic. I’m a bit ahead of her in my study of the Byzantines in a vain effort to keep up with her requests for information, so I can’t wait for her to get a load of Empress Irene who played such a pivotal role in Charlemagne’s rise to power!

The entire Triad seemed awfully taken with Emily Dickinson’s nature poetry last week, so I requested some titles from the library and we were all equally delighted to turn up some new treasures. A wonderful little book, The Mouse of Amherst by Elizabeth Spires has been a huge hit. The book is about a tiny white mouse named Emmaline who moves into Emily Dickinson’s house and the fictional friendship that develops between the two kindred poets. Incorporating details from the poet’s life and some of her work, the story is a wonderful way for young ones to really build a relationship with one of America’s most notable poets.

In the week to come, I am hopeful for a bit more sunshine to soak in and some delightful outings to the art museum’s next homeschool workshop and a co-op field trip to a gymnastics center before my sister arrives and Percy Jackson explodes onto the big screen.

While I was intending on writing our weekly updates at the ends of our weeks, I keep finding myself composing them in the middle.  Wednesdays seem to be a good day for me to take a breath, organize myself, review and plan.  We pick up organic food at a co-op every other Wednesday, but beyond that, this day has typically been our relaxed at-home day for almost two years now.  So here I am clickity-clacking another Wednesday update post.

Our small homeschooling co-op had what I thought was a fantastic session last week.  Everyone; kids, parents, and parents who were facilitating that day, just really seemed to be in the zone.  Everything looked to me as if it was flowing so nicely.  Apollo and Artemis explored the concept that stories have a beginning, middle and end.  Their facilitator used The Itsy, Bitsy Spider to illustrate the concept.  Then they became author-illustrators themselves and bound and created their own foam-covered and laced books.  Athena’s group discussed the history of book binding and printing.  They created balsam wood plates to make printings and also took a stab at the role of the author-illustrator.  Athena wrote her own version of The Adventures of Cinderella and enjoyed looking at the variety of examples of book binding her facilitators brought.

Our fantabulous history club got going again, venturing into the beginnings of medieval history.  Learning about and embracing the Celtic warrior ethos was beyond popular with Athena.   She’s a early Celtic warrior, not the late Celts we were studying about, but Athena is a huge fan of Boudiccia.  So painting her hair and face blue, using blue fabric markers to cover a blue t-shirt with Celtic symbols and crafting her own cardboard battle axe was as close to the perfect Friday as Athena could get!  At home we’re a few chapters ahead of the history club, so the activities work well as a review and a chance for me to gauge how much she’s retaining.  Which is plenty!

She recently asked me some questions about Beowulf and when she saw me doing some research for her, asked if we could read a little bit of the actual version instead of the kid versions.  So let me take this opportunity to say that I think Seamus Heaney’s translation just plain rocks!  Given her love of Epic of Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, and the Iliad , I haven’t been too shocked that Athena’s found another epic poem to sink her brain into.  I’m looking forward to more medieval literary adventures with her the rest of this year because I have a passionate love of Arthurian legend myself.

Besides our usual language arts work, we began Michael Clay Thompson’s entry level poetry book The Music of the Hemispheres this week.  We read the pages that talk about phonics in an supremely more romantic way than any other material I’ve ever come across.  From the viewpoint of a poet, the phonetic sounds of our native tongue are identical to how a composer views musical notes.  They are sounds to be crafted into a musical masterpiece of words.  We’ve been indulging in the nature poetry of Emily Dickenson to examine how she used the sounds of the words she chose to paint pictures of the images and emotions she was writing about.  ”The Snake” is Athena’s favorite so far with it’s plethora of Ss sounds slithering through it.  She pointed out to me in the car yesterday that songs are like poems and the sounds of the words in songs work the same way.  Yes.  Yes, they do.  I listened to the radio for the rest of the day in a new light after that.

The other new addition to our adventures has been Mango Languages.  Patris Maximus occasionally brings up investing in Rosetta Stone, but I’m hesitant to do that because I’m not convinced Athena is ready to commit to a particular language given the expense involved.  At first she adored Spanish.  Then there was the Arabic phase.  And now she wants to learn Mandarin Chinese.  Awesome, kid.  Do your thing.  But not for hundreds of dollars per language.  Here’s where our public library system has ridden to the rescue.  We can access Mango for free through our library’s collection of database subscriptions and she can dig into any number of languages.  So this week, she and I have been exploring Mango Basic in Mandarin and it’s working well so far.  So if you’re looking for a language resource, check with your library and see if they have Mango.  If not, ask them to look into it and check out the demos.

I also have to mention that Athena really pushed herself at art co-op last week.  She loves art and loves to create, but has little respect for non-representational art a la Jackson Pollack (among others.)  I mean, if you want to see what I call her “stink face” just ask her how she feels about his work.  You’ll get an earful.  Well, last week we were looking at non-representational art like Pollack’s, Rothko’s and Kandinsky’s (Kandinsky is the only artist in this style she’s ever shown any toleration for!)  We were discussing how the artists used color to evoke a mood or feeling with their art.  The kids were then to choose three colors and paint their own non-representational work to express a feeling.  Athena chose boredom.  No, really.  She said she was feeling bored so she was going to paint boredom.  She got herself some red, yellow and white paint and set about to being the grumpiest artist I have ever seen.  She set her chair so it faced a (boring) wooden fence and went about flicking her paintbrush back and forth with disdain, punctuated by the occasional sigh (of boredom, I’m assuming.)  If she had said: “I don’t want to do this.” I would have told her that was fine.  I don’t force her to do the activities if she really has no interest.  But she wanted to paint.  If she had decided to ignore the assignment and paint totally representational art, I wouldn’t have said a thing.  That would have been up to her as the artist.  But she didn’t.  She chose to tackle the assignment and push herself to dive into non-representational art.  About halfway through the project time, she stopped, cocked her head to one side and told me to be quiet.  (I had been chatting nearby with another mother!  Busted!)  When I stopped and listened, I heard what she heard.  Of all things, in the middle of the afternoon, she had heard an owl!  The owl continued to call to her for a few more moments and then was quiet again.  Athena knows her blog name is Athena, so I said to her jokingly, “Your patron Goddess is talking to you!”  And she said to me, “I know.  She says stop being bored and be happy.  I’m going to paint happy on top of boredom.”  To which I said what I always say in situations like that.  I said, “Rock on with your bad self!”  And she did.  Her painting is lovely and even more importantly, she is really proud of it; proud of the painting and the process she went through as an artist.  She didn’t walk away.  She challenged herself and created something uniquely her.  This is a big step for her and her perfectionist streak.  I was delighted.  But much more importantly, so was she!

In addition to all of that craziness, we also dove back into Grammar Island, used ketchup to trigger the release of electrons from aluminum atoms, reviewed two column addition and subtraction, completed the yellow wedge of our color wheel project, spent hours creating story problems with plastic frogs on a log, played computer games, watched Disney’s Robin Hood and The Sword in the Stone, rode bikes with friends and hit an afternoon story time at the library.

The rest of this week entails a trip to the Museum of Printing History, art co-op, chemistry experiments involving metals, playing with conjunctions, and reading the ninety some odd books we came home from the library with yesterday!  See you next Wednesday at the latest, I guess.

We made it through a week without Patris Maximus fairly smoothly.  Sleep schedules were a bit wonky, but the kids handled his absence without trauma or drama and I was grateful for that.  We got together with our tiny chemistry group and the kids played a board game exploring valence numbers.  After that, they got started on the exciting project of creating Periodic Table pillowcases.  Using fabric markers, the moms traced the outline of the table on their pillowcases and they colored the spaces in, color-coding the various families as they went.  Athena still has to write in the atomic symbols and numbers for each element, but her table is fully color coded.  She’s very excited to finish it up, heat set it and get it on her pillow post haste.

We returned to MFAH for one of their homeschool workshops, this time focusing on Korean art.  The kids watched a short slide presentation on Korea, went a toured the ancient Korean gallery and then returned to the contemporary Korean art exhibit we visited on Free First Sunday.  Athena and Artemis were very excited about getting to see Fallen Star 1/5 again.  On the drive in to the museum, Athena asked me what the significance of the 1/5 part of the piece’s title was.  She wanted to know whether it was a fraction or a date or something different altogether.  We asked the museum staff and found out that it is sort of a fraction.  Fallen Star is the first of five installation pieces, so it is one of five works.  All four of us completed the sculpture project inspired by the contemporary exhibit before sharing lunch at the museum restaurant and heading home.

We hosted a read-in for our co-op on Wednesday and I was incredibly pleased how that played out, especially considering that almost all the kids attending were not independent readers.  There was a really great ebb and flow to the period of different parents reading different books aloud, kids exploring books on their own, snack breaks, ring around the rosey breaks, visiting together and general reading goodness!  We capped the day off with a mom/kid potluck dinner for a few other families whose husbands were out of town or working late that day.  Why eat, drink and clean up alone?

We got a fair amount of our standard school work done in and around various activities and Friday night, we headed out to a friend’s parents’ beach house.  There are advantages to living in southeast Texas sometimes.  The kids had a wonderful time romping around the house and the beach.  It was a nice break from the everyday and a great way to spend the weekend with friends.  We left there Sunday afternoon and drove straight to the airport to retrieve Patris Maximus.  The entire Triad of Chaos had about a bazillion things to tell him on the drive home.  We were all happy to get home, get the car unloaded and crash.

This week we’ve taken the first half of the week to rest and had several low key days at home.  All three kids are now on the backside of small colds, so it has been good to rest them before our end of the week activities.  We have co-op and Odyssey of the Mind tomorrow, followed by history club and art co-op on Friday.   Then I’m looking forward to a relaxed weekend as a family.

I’m also hoping to get another advocacy related post up here later this week addressing the situation in the United Kingdom that a few UK readers mentioned in their comments to my posts on the West article.  Their struggle (and to a lesser extent, what is going on in New Hampshire for the third year in a row)  is a major motivating factor in my responses to Robin West.  So keep an eye out for that post sometime this weekend, if not before.

Returning to a more structured rhythm after December’s festivities is always an interesting experience.  The Triad of Chaos and Patris Maximus usually reach an impasse in their ability to pleasantly spend large quantities of time together at some point towards the end of his vacation time.  All four of them heave a collective sigh of relief that first morning he heads back to the office.  We had a lovely chunk of time together, but everyone was ready to get back to business this week. 

Athena’s Girl Scout troop had our annual cookie sale planning and goal setting session on Monday.  The girls also worked on SWAPs and other ideas for Thinking Day where they will be presenting a booth on scouting in India.  Athena is very excited about the potential of representing India.  She and her fellow scouts had some very interesting ideas about what to include.  After reading about the role of the Ganges River in the Hindu tradition, they proposed the idea of a wading pool that attendees at Thinking Day could release flowers into. 

Our co-op got our next session started on Thursday with a unit on fables and fairy tales.  Artemis and Apollo participated in a unit study about the tale of the Gingerbread Boy, complete with gingerbread cookies for snack.  There’s been lots of “You can’t catch me!” being hollered at high speeds around the house this weekend.  Athena’s unit focused on several fairy tales, including a thoroughly enjoyable crown and magic wand making project.  I actually facilitated the oldest group this week for the first time.  I was a tad nervous about how it would go, but the two ten year olds and the eight year old who joined me seemed decidedly engaged in our discussion about the five basic elements of a story and how they help you think about what you are reading.  We used The Twelve Dancing Princesses as our main fairy tale for the exercises. 

At home, I was amazed at how much language arts and mathematics happened this week.  I was thinking that we’d ease back in with the fun stuff- history, art and science.  But Athena scooped up her Explode the Code workbook and barely put it down all week.  Consonant blends have really clicked for her now.  So has two column addition and subtraction.  Athena tore through the few pages of math I had planned for the week.  Artemis brought me the 1A volume of Winnie Tan’s Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics, the previous version of Singapore Math’s Kindergarten program.  She found it on the section of bookshelves where Athena’s math materials are kept and wanted me to help her with it.  Athena was about the same age when she started that series of workbooks, so I said sure.  She brought it to me every day this week, packed in her backpack when we left the house on Thursday and has finished about half the book in a week.  Apollo spent the week carrying around the magnet kit for the most part.  I informally tested both of them on uppercase letter recognition this week.  Apollo knows more of the letter names than Artemis, but she knows all 26 basic letter sounds.  We also began our study of artist, Robert Rauschenberg, and our color wheel project.  All of the kids really enjoyed filling in their red wedge on their huge mixed media color wheels using paint, soft and oil pastels, crayon, crepe paper streamers, yarn, foil and wrapping paper.  Next week, they’re going to finish their yellow wedges and do a pop culture image collage painting. 

Patris Maximus is on a business trip this coming week, so life will be a little different with the kids and I being on our own.  But we have chemistry club, a workshop at the art museum, a visit to the children’s museum, a good ole’ fashioned read-in (at our house,) a potluck dinner, an Odyssey of the Mind team meeting, a park day and art co-op to keep us occupied while he’s gone.  It feels good to be back in the flow of every day low sugar content life.

Life took off at a radical pace the second half of October and we are just now slowing down a bit and re-grouping.  I’m actually enjoying the fact that we seem to be winding down going into the holiday season instead of the other way around. 

After making it out to College Station for TAMU’s Chemistry Open House, we hit the Renaissance Festival and then the Texas Book Festival in the last week of October.  Both were popular events for Athena.  She is a fan of the joust and loved getting to meet real life authors.  During November, she continued to work her way through the Little Bear books, dove deeper into electron orbitals and continued to focus her history studies on the rise of the Islamic Empire.  I’ve been informed that the mapwork from SOTW  is too easy, so I am on the hunt for ways to punch that up for her a bit. 

We had a very lovely visit to the Children’s Museum which has undergone some wonderful rennovations since we were last there.  Athena discovered an alcove full of Molymods.  Molymods are high quality molecular model building materials.  When we were at TAMU in October, she got to see a huge (like bigger than she is) Molymod model of DNA and loved it.  The Molymods at the museum were smaller scale but more exciting to her since she could get her hands on them.  She made one of each of the molecules from the cards provided except for methane because it was “too simple.”  I was excited to see she was that enthusiastic about the materials because I had put them on the Yuletide wishlist I sent the grandparents for her.  I’m only sad they won’t be here to see her reaction when she opens them.  The entire Triad of Chaos loved the new Kidopolis exhibit and there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when I told them gingerly that we had to head out.  Last year we recieved an annual zoo membership and we were considering renewing it.  But after the trip to the Children’s Museum, I’m tempted to have us allocate the funds there instead this coming year. 

Our small co-op finished up our autumn session with a month devoted to Living Math activities.  Apollo really got into the units we did more than Artemis, but all of them seemed to enjoy the units.  Athena also began building a large Periodic Table on the playroom wall.  She is illustrating cut out squares with something she thinks represents that element.  She puts the symbol and atomic number on it and has me write in whatever other information she wants on it.  So far, she drew what the aftermath of the Hindenburg explosion must have looked like for hydrogen and a bundle of balloons for helium.  She had me cut squares for the Noble Gasses but hasn’t come up with any others yet. 

We pretty much put school work on hold the week of Thanksgiving since my parents were in town.  We all had a lovely visit with them and a fairly relaxing holiday.  This week, we hosted the Winter/Spring planning session for our co-op, attended the free parents’ night at the TAGT conference, had a holiday craft day complete with gingerbread house making and eating for art co-op and Athena met up with her Odyssey of the Mind team to do a little library research. 

Next week, we may finally move forward from the Islamic Empire in history and I have no doubt we will take a look at more chemistry materials.  We are also looking forward to an ice skating outing with Athena’s Girl Scout troop and two classes at the natural science museum.

Oh, and we may even get some snow tomorrow!

We spent last week doing a great deal of chemistry.  We’ve been reading out of two major spines and have found a couple of errors or over-simplifications between them; one thanks to a friend and former chemical engineer and the other as a result of the time honored gum drop and toothpick molecule building activity.  One of the compounds Athena wanted to build was NaCl– sodium chloride or table salt.  Her text had stated that not all molecules are compounds, which we found to be true.  Hydrogen gas is in molecular form consisting of two hydrogen atoms each.  Ozone molecules are made of three oxygen atoms.  They contain more than one atom, hence a molecule.  But they only contain one element or ingredient so they are not compounds.  The text also stated that all compounds are molecules.  Thanks to Athena’s table salt desires, we realized that this is a bit oversimplified as the single molecule concept is much less clear when ionic compounds like NaCl for crystalline structures where the forces between individual molecules are equally strong as they are inside the molecule, creating a lattice.  This happens a lot, where seeking answers to Athena’s series of questions causes us to get a bit ahead of where we are at and cause us to spiral back around through the material later.  Gum drop molecules and compounds, needless to say, were hours of fun last week.  We exhausted two packages of gum drops and I added Molymods to her Yuletide wishlist.  We also made a trip to the library and found a series of books with one volume on each element.  The series doesn’t contain the whole Periodic Table, but has most of the more common elements and a few of the rarer ones.  We’ve been hopping around the table, reading aloud about various elements that have peaked her interest.  Plus our little Chemistry club got together, played element related games and invoked the spirit of Dimitri Mendeleev by getting started on working through a Periodic Table puzzle.  Athena, with her love of patterns, has found a kindred spirit in the man who identified the best patterns to use to organize both the known elements from his time and the predicted elements that would be identified in the future.

We attended our first workshop at the art museum and found it to be far superior to what the zoo is offering homeschoolers.  I only wish I had signed us up for more than three workshops this year.  All three children truly enjoyed the experience, but the one I was blown away by was Artemis.  They offered the children the opportunity to separate into two groups with the three year old and younger crowd going with one staff member and the older children with another.  Athena was a bit nervous at first and asked me to please accompany her.  I agreed and talked with Apollo and Artemis about their options.  Apollo chose to stay with me, but Artemis confidently set off with the younger group all by herself.  Her ferocious independence is breath-taking at times.  I went with Athena and Apollo on the older children’s tour and thoroughly enjoyed it myself.  When we met back up in the classroom for the hands-on project, the staff member who had been with the younger children asked me if I was going to bring Artemis back for another workshop again as she had been so delightful.  They had talked about circles, read a story and then gone on a circle hunt through the galleries.  Artemis, thanks to our little art co-op, also pointed out the squares, triangles, and hearts she found and told the woman that hearts are organic shapes.  All four of us got to do the art project and we all headed home after a wonderful experience.  I’m only sad that we have to wait until January to attend another one.

Friday night we all piled into the car and headed downtown to stalk bats with about twenty of our closest friends.  We have a lesson on bats coming up and our field trip this month was an expedition to a bat bridge colony.  We heard a lecture from a volunteer naturalist, complete with pictures, where we got an earful from the kids about what they already know about bats.  The rest of the crowd was pretty enamored with them as they were very enthusiastic about the bats.  A little after sunset, the bats began to emerge from underneath the bridge.  As one of the children said, like a “tornado of bats” about 350,000 bats came streaming out from underneath the bridge and out into the night to devour at least two and a half tons of insects.  The kids thought it was great.  It was a fantastic and free way to spend a Friday night. 

The next morning we packed up once again and headed out to Texas A&M’s Chemistry Open House for a fun-filled day of all things chemical (and a touch of physics.)  The kids got new Periodic Tables, which are now hanging in their rooms, photo-reactive bead bracelets, stickers and balloons.  Plus the hit every station they could find, popping soap bubbles filled with carbon dioxide, playing with hydrophobic sand, painting with acids and bases, causing polymer based chemical reactions, getting photo-reactive manicures, collecting alloy pennies, testing themselves for radioactivity, checking out molecular modeling software, and watching nitrogen bombs explode in trashcans.  They were exhausted and happy by the time we got back home. 

Athena’s set a few goals for herself for this week including achieving her Book-It goal and digging back into history some more.  Hopefully, we’ll make those goals happen along with a few more things here and there.

All in a typical week of home education, of course.

We spent most of this week out and about, living and learning in the community.  My Daisy Girl Scouts spent Monday making some more forward progress in last year’s Journey project and exploring a fun part of the Girl Scout Law: “I will do my best to be a sister to every Girl Scout.”  They wrote “sister notes” to each other by decorating a piece of colorful stationary and dictating the ending to the sentence “So-and-so is like my sister because:_______.”  Then we put them in envelopes, added stamps and took a short walk to the mailbox.  Athena really enjoyed reading hers when they showed up at home later in the week! 

Tuesday, she tried out her first class at the zoo.  After a brief freak out at the beginning of the class, she resolved to sit in the class but not enjoy it.  That lasted all of maybe 5 minutes.  Despite herself, she enjoyed learning that most tropical birds whose feathers appear blue actually have all black feathers that are structured in such a way that they produce a prismatic effect and appear blue to our eyes based on the light passing through them.  She also got a kick out of shredding kale leaves and orange peel and feeding them to a terrarium full of Madagascar hissing cockroaches.  She did make a point of telling me that she’d prefer to take zoo classes with at least one of her friends in them and not all new people.  I told her I’d see what I could do about that another time.  Since we were already at the zoo, we followed class with a bit of wander around time.

Wednesday we volunteered at our produce co-op where the theme of the pick-up was red.  There were red fruits and veggies everywhere.  Our co-op rewards their volunteers with extra produce and we ended up swimming in Red Delicious apples, along with the red potatos, red grape tomatos, red raddishes, red onions, red plums, well, you get the point.  We also hit the library for a quick drop off and pick up.

Thursday we joined our small co-op for some pumpkin themed fun.  The mother who had planned the activities for Apollo and Artemis’ age group ended up calling in sick, but another mom and I pinch hit for her and had a great time with the kiddos.  We managed pumpkin stories and games, a bit of coloring and a pumpkin dissection complete with an equal amount of “Ewww!” and “Cool!”  Unfortunately, it was awfully windy and we had to send most of the craft projects home with the kids for fear of scattered bits and pieces everywhere.  Athena explored pumpkins with her peers, weighing and measuring and decorating.   We all shared some pumpkin related snacks in there somewhere and followed the unit with a picnic lunch.  After lunch, several of the older kids scrambled to move from the park to our meeting spot for their first Odyssey of the Mind team gathering.  It was a bit of a challenge keeping the younger siblings out of the mix and the parents decided that in addition to rotating who brings snack, we also need to rotate who brings activities for the Apollo, Artemis and company so they don’t feel too left out of the fun.  Our coach said she’s excited to work with the kids as they are bossing her around already.  Um.  Yep.  Those would be our kids.

Friday, we had a few friends over to discuss several versions of Cinderella as a fun introduction to critical thinking about literature and group book discussion.  Once the kids seemed pretty much done with seated discussion, we played a silly shoe game where each child selected a shoe from a pile and tried to decide who it belonged to and who should try it on.  The game quickly degenerated into totally silliness as the girls kept trying to make the boys try on the gold strappy sandal and the boys made the girls try on the beat up running shoes.  But we did manage some good discussion out of them and I’m looking forward to watching the discussion grow as we explore other tales throughout the year. 

Saturday, we headed out to FireFest to see area firefighters in action.  The kids enjoyed seeing the various fire trucks and firefighters in different uniforms and gear.  Athena had questions about the different structures at the training facility and enjoyed seeing the foam used on a simulated bus crash and fire.  Artemis got herself a balloon and was happy for the rest of the day.  And Apollo was bummed he couldn’t go on the bounce castles, but they wanted you to bring them two tickets for that.  After we checked and found that tickets were $1 a piece, we decided not to spend $6 for the kids to bounce on a small bounce castle.  Only Apollo seemed really affected by this act of parental despotism. 

Given the week we had, we did almost nothing of note whatsoever on Sunday.  The coming week promises to be a tad more low key, but not by much.  I’m grateful that we get one complete at-home day in the middle of the week.  It will be good to breathe and undertake some of the home learning projects Athena wanted to do last week, but just ran out of time for including the assorted chemistry related kits she received as birthday gifts.