Pi - In the Face

14 March 2012

I watched Elisa's two younger kids for her briefly this morning while she dropped off her two older ones at school and ran to the store real fast. When she got back I went straight from her house to my brother's house because my sister-in-law was called in for jury duty and they couldn't find anyone else to watch their kids. Now mind you they live an hour away, which is fine. And they have seven kids, which is also fine because most of them were at school. So I didn't get much accomplished in the way of myself today. I was babysitting from about 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. when my brother and his wife both got home.

Because it was Pi Day today I made Shepherd's Pie for dinner, but that is all I was able to do. Oh well, there is a Pi Day every year, so plenty of time to do all of those fun Pi Day activities I would like to.

My brother has been my idol in the realms of art for as long as I can remember. My friends tell me I am a great artist, but that is because they have never seen my brother at work! He can do anything her puts his mind to. Drawing, painting, sculpting, graphic design, advertising, logos, anything! A few years ago he even helped my other brother add light sabers to a film he had made with his boy scouts. Pretty neat.

Well a package had arrived for him while he was out and when he got home and opened it he was as giddy as a schoolboy. He showed me that it was software for Adobe Aftereffects. Then he showed me all the cool things you could do and they more he showed me and the more he explained, the more I felt like crying.

You see, all day yesterday I had worked on designing those bookmarks for Elisa. I was using Microsoft Paint, because my Adobe CS5 doesn't work on my old, slow computer. All the cool stuff he was doing was so out of my league right now I felt like everything I had spent so much time on and was so proud of yesterday was like preschool scribbling in comparison to what he was working with.

I know he is the oldest of the six kids in our family and I am the youngest, but I was so envious, and have been for a while, of all the tools he has at his disposal. I don't even want to try art right now because I feel so inadequately equipped for it. I doodle and sketch, but in this digital world, if you can't get your art onto the computer to be sent by email then it may as well not exist. Rather depressing considering I feel this way about so many subjects. Math and science and language. But at the same time it burns a fire of hunger. I want to know more, to do more and be more for myself and my kids. I can do it, I just need to stop wasting time being idle during the day and get to work!

We ended up spending the night here too because it was really late by the time my brother had finished showing me all the cool things he has been doing that I was not in spirits for the long drive home. It has been a very long week away from home. I plan on going home tomorrow and not leaving for a couple days at least!

Schedules, Hats, and German

20 February 2012

I managed to get my week planned out at about 1:30 a.m. last night/this morning. It includes basic ideas and guidelines for each of my three older kids in each subject, (reading, history, math, writing, science, art/music, German). This was no small task. I hope this gets easier as time goes on because it took me nearly all day yesterday to get this figured out and written up. It is well worth the effort, but I just hope it isn't always going to be such an enormous task.

Our day today was planned as such:

Ra-
Reading- A book of choice (read by self or by momma)
Writing- Notebook entry; penmanship
Arithmetic- Principles of Numeration #2
History- Ask Ra what history she wants to know.
Science- Review the Scientific Method.
Art/Music- Drawing with momma.
German- Review "nein, ja, bitte, etc."

El-
Reading- I See Sam book 9
Writing- Notebook entry
Arithmetic- Count to 100. Principles of Numeration #2 (with Ra)
History- Ask El what history he wants to know.

Science- Introduce the Scientific Method.
Art/Music- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
German- Review "nein, ja"

Ca-
Reading- "A, a"
Writing-Learn to hold a pencil; write name in capitals
Arithmetic- Counting to 10.
Art/Music- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

This morning we ran out the door at 9:00 a.m. thinking we had some things to take care of at the bank this morning and as we pulled up we had to bury our faces in our hands and say "What is all our planning worth if we don't remember holidays!?" Being Presidents Day the bank was of course, closed.

We had another errand to run which required us to drive an hour to get there and an hour to get back. Ra had brought a book with her that she had started reading while we were getting ready to leave. The book was Do You Have a Hat? by Eileen Spinelli. She almost finished it but had to stop because she was getting motion sick.

 I did not ask her to read a book and so this is a new development for her. I have only been reading to her and haven't been asking her to read anything. The reason for this is that she had been told too often that she is a slow reader in public school and so she hates reading. I have been reading stories to her though, and not just simple kids books.I read her chapter books so she can understand why a person would want to read such a long book by experiencing it without having to go through the effort herself. This will hopefully spark that desire to know what is on the next page. I believe the fruits of this effort are beginning to show forth by this act of reading a book on her own today. I am so excited!

While Ra was recovering from her motion sickness I used the time to ask her and El if there is anything in history that they are interested in or want to know more about. El isn't familiar with most any history at the moment but Ra said she wants to learn about the Statue of Liberty, Abraham Lincoln, Johnny Appleseed, and China. Since Ra is getting into the Love of Learning phase I think I will just have El listen in on our discussion and what not so that he can start to pick up on things he will be interested in pursuing in a couple years.

We reviewed skip counting by 5's and 10's while in the car as well, but mostly my husband and I talked while the boys teased each other in the back seat and Ra kept asking us to turn up the German music we had in the CD player.

After we returned home not much was done by way of the kids education until my husband left at 3:30 p.m. But while he was there I introduced him to LiveMocha, a language learning website that I found. I am going to use it as a primary resource for learning German. We told the kids that when they learn German well enough to hold a conversation we would take them to Germany. Of course, that means we need to learn it too! I think this is an excellent example for the kids of self driven learning. If you want to know something, search it out, don't wait for a teacher to hand it to you covered in worksheets and quizzes. 

For about an hour after the hubby left I let the kids watch some of the learning song/videos from Have Fun Teaching. They spent the rest of the day as they liked while I made dinner and took care of Em until 7:00p.m. when we read in Genesis of the KJV Bible and we read 3 chapters in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. We are 6 chapters from the end and have made a goal to read 3 chapters a night so we can be finished in 2 days to be able to have a discussion about the book with Nana Lori via Skype.

So I didn't get to everything on my schedule today, but tomorrow is another day and hopefully with less distractions. It is computer day, and I have at least planned for that and planned my "lessons" around this event!