Addle Brained

17, 18, 19 February 2012

My husband came home Friday night and I have neglected to update my blog post. I now do not remember what I did on Friday before my husband came home, save for cleaning house. Ah well. That will teach me for not staying on top of it! As for Saturday we ran a few errands and lazed about the house. Weekends when my husband is home tend to be lazy as far as school work is concerned. I am making an effort to change that but he isn't entirely on board with me for the homeschooling yet.

For Valentine's Day my husband bought me an electric blanket! I am so thrilled because I absolutely hate being cold! I took a nice nap with it Saturday night but I awoke with slight body aches and a sore throat. I still have my wisdom teeth and every time they start moving I get a massive headache, body aches, sore throat and aching jaw. It finally went away this afternoon though my jaw still has a lingering mild ache. Needless to say between that and my kids coughing up a storm we didn't attend church today.

Instead we drove around Antelope Island and did some wildlife watching. We saw coyotes and antelope today! Two more species to cross off our list! So far we have seen: Bison, Mule Deer, Crow, Hawks, Jack Rabbit, Pronghorn Antelope, Coyote, Field Mice, Finches (at least that is what they look like to me), and California Seagulls. That is nearly all of the major species of the island. Only large mammal we haven't seen yet is the Big Horn Sheep and Bobcats.

I had my husband go over some points about the kids education with me today. We went over each child's needs and wants individually and came up with some ideas as to how to best approach their education based on our observations etc. It took a long time but was well worth it and should become faster as we gain familiarity with the process. 

Before bed we watched some NOVA shows with the kids. It meant we didn't do our nightly reading for the first time in almost a month. The kids enjoyed them though and they were good shows so I have no problem with the miss of our reading tonight (especially since my jaw is sore still!

Overall not a bad weekend! Hope yours was well!

Valentine's Day Driving

14 February 2012

Happy Valentine's Day! It was computer day today so I let the kids play for a couple hours after breakfast while I prepared to be driving around all day. I made lunches and snacks, collected all of the cards we would be delivering and phoning relatives for address to mail some of the Valentine's cards to.

From 11:00 am until 4:00 pm we were out delivering cards and spending some time with the cousins. After 4 I took the kids to Denny's as their Valentine's treat. Unfortunately that meant we drove the normally one hour drive home in peak traffic time so it took us nearly twice as long to get there. While in the car we have been listening to the audio recording of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Ra absolutely loves it and has insisted on listening to it instead of music.

Once at home we read from Genesis in the KJV Bible and a few chapters of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read more of The Original Homeschooling Series Volume 1 - Home Education by Charlotte Mason. It is one of those books that hits you over the head with the "Ah ha!" bat just about every other paragraph. It is going to take me quite some time to get through this book and the other five in the series, but it will definitely be worth it.

Valentine Mathematical Symmetry

11 February 2012

Today we made our Valentine's card. It was a fun and super messy but easy to clean up. I started out with having Ra help me figure out if we had enough paper doilies for how many cards we wanted to make. We wrote a list of all the cousins and friends and grandparents we would be making cards for. We agreed that each cousin would only get one card from all four of the kids, the friends would get one card as well. The grandparents however would get one card from each of the kids that could make them on their own, (leaving Em out of the count). The initial count left us with 32 cousins, 6 friends, and 8 grandparents. So our equation looks something like this (32 + 6) + (8 x 3) = 62 . SIXTY TWO! Boy I sure am glad we aren't adding another 60 cards to that with school classes for Ra and El!

I showed Ra the packages of doilies. I had one package of red, one of white and one of pink. There were 16 doilies per package. I asked her to figure out how many doilies we had to make cards with. She added 16 + 16 + 16 and I explained that this was the same thing as 16 x 3. I then asked her if we had enough doilies to use one for every card. She said no, that 48 < 62. I then had her figure out how many more doilies we would need to be able to have one for each card. With an answer of 14 I asked her how many more packages we would need. She answered with one package. We went to the store to get the last needed package.

Finally beginning, we used construction paper, scissors, glue and the doilies to make the cards. I showed the kids how to make a heart by folding the paper in half and cutting half a heart shape around the fold. I used this as an opportunity to explain symmetry. We had fun coming up with other shapes and patterns to cut out using symmetry.  We made hearts, diamonds, rectangles, accordion people, and flowers just to name a few.

We continued the observation of symmetrical objects into dinner time and I plan on continuing to point it out whenever we see it throughout the year.    

Tonight we read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett again. And hey, I even got some reading in of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter.