Other school topics included continuing our units on Galileo, Newton, John Locke, the Scientific Method, multiplication scrabble, "Farmer Boy" (Ingalls), and Gospel Principles, as always. Been a fun week.
I realized this week that Logan can read pretty darn good. He is reading verses from the scriptures with help for the big words, but basically doing it on his own. He loves his reading program, called Headsprout, and it's reinforcing some great phonics skills.
Natty-bug is getting friendlier and friendlier as each day goes by!
This week I've been doing a lot of research of math curriculum. I think I found the one we'll use with Hannah through middle school. It looks like her style of learning and looks interesting. It's called "Life of Fred". Have you ever heard of a math book like that? :-) Odd name, but I think the program itself will be good. I also have Ray's Arithmetic to supplement. Brynne is using that and it's been pretty good but I don't think it's good enough as a stand-alone in the higher math.
Hannah and I have started planning her birthday party! She's pretty darn excited to be turning 11 in a few weeks. Hannah's piano recital is in 1 week. I think she'll be glad for a summer break from piano. Between school, 4H, piano, and horses (occasionally) she's been far too busy. She needs a real rest from all of that excitement. Right now she's doing a report on the state of Utah, which includes making a salt dough map. I totally remember making mine! It was very fun and I remember that I wanted to keep it forever and my mom didn't think that was a good idea. Now, of course, I can totally see her point. : -)
We're still wondering who Natalie looks like...any ideas? Me? Please say me. I'd like at least one lookalike. It's not fair that the other kids all look like Josh. :-)
Brynne is still working on memorizing her times tables. She has been gobbling up Nancy Drew books in her spare time. She's also a crazy busy worker lately. I've instituted a point system - if the kids earn a minimum number of points they can earn a reward on Saturdays. Just something small. But it's been motivating to Brynne in particular. I like it! If I ask if someone wants to do a job I get people BEGGING me for a turn to help out. Ok...sure...you can clean the bathroom I guess.
Tonight as I type I have 15 people in my living room. From Idaho. Mostly under the age of 15. Yes. Josh's dear brother Jason has come with his daughter Victoria, her schoolmates, and a couple other parents to visit the ocean, the redwoods, and San Francisco this week. And we are hosting them for one night! I already noticed that my downstairs toilet is backed up. Lovely. I think I'll let Jason and Josh handle that one (they are all out getting ice cream right now, so maybe when they get back).
Funny story - the mom asked if we were on water rationing (as Josh's parents are). The answer is no. She was so pleased. She said, "there's a couple of boys that I would LOVE to have shower if you don't mind". Gotta feel sorry for a woman traveling with stinky teenage boys.
Couple of highlights:
Kenna fell and scraped up her upper lip - she looked just like Hitler. Josh took pictures but we think the kids must have accidentally deleted them.
Kenna also got immunized and was totally miserable (meaning, we all were miserable with her) for four days. She reacts so poorly to immunizations. I really didn't think she was getting the DTaP because I had purposely postponed it...but I forgot to remind the nurse that I didn't want her to get that one, because I was so focused on OTHER things that I wanted to talk to the doctor about. So we all suffered.
She's better now.
Logan tried to pet a mouse and surprisingly, the mouse wasn't too pleased. It bit him on the finger. :-)
The story: Logan came screaming into the house saying a "bug" had bitten him. After LOTS of questions I was able to extract that the "bug" was about 3 inches long and brown. Hmmm. This is a bug I have to see. I made him take me outside (he was scared). He showed me where the cat was still very interested in that bug of his. I shooed the cat into the garage (she was not pleased) and was left with an injured little field mouse as the "bug". I asked Logan how the mouse could have possibly bit him. He insisted that it just jumped up and showed me that his finger was no closer than about 12 inches. Oh, yeah. We all know mice love to jump onto people and bite them.
I finally told him he better tell me the truth, and he confessed to trying to pet it. :-) I mentioned that he probably knew now that wasn't such a good idea - but reiterated that we should not be touching wild animals.
Logan recovered. One of my friends said that if he grew a tail and his nose started twitching then we should consider putting him down. Luckily, mouse-ness doesn't seem to be contagious.
This is pretty much turning into a combined posting of last week and this week. But I've been busy.
We have the Pinewood Derby coming up on Saturday. The kids are going to be painting their cars tonight or tomorrow. We love that our cub scout troop invites kids of all ages and gender to participate. They do a scout competition and an open class for the community. It makes a great fundraiser for them, if any scouters out there are reading this. They have a whole big event with climbing wall, catapult, shaved ice stand, exhibits, etc. My girls help run the shaved ice stand and think it's so fun!
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