When son abandons a project I win yarn!

Sometime around September my son tried his hand at knitting. This was not a random thing but the homeschool teen group decided to start a Sew-cial group that got together and learned some sort of hand craft. Knitting was what they decided on. Dan is one of those who will try pretty much anything and figured why not give knitting a try. So we went and bought him 2 balls of yarn and a pair of needles.

It is hard to see the colors in the picture but they are beautiful, greys, browns, blues and they mix giving a striped effect.

Daniel tried to make a scarf but he was having difficulties and said it was not his "thing". More pain then gain, but he stuck with it for a while. I on the other hand kept eyeing the yarn. I can see a nice pair of mittens or a cute hat. Every time I went in his room I saw the yarn and no progress. I did sent out hints that IF he decided to quit it was okay and I would be happy to take the yarn. There is no true failure if you try, son.

This past week Daniel decided it was time to clean his room. it was way past time, in my opinion. I will hear lots of shuffling up stairs but when ever I peek in the mess looks the same. He claims he has made head way but it must be at the microscopic level because I am just not seeing it.

Sunday he came to me with the yarn bag and asked if I wanted it. How fast can someone say YES!? No sooner then he gave it to me he had rules placed on the yarn, he wanted a scarf. UGH!  I hate making scarves. Then he did the unspeakable...he retracted his offer and I saw him and the yarn disappearing into his room. Nooooooo! I do fast thinking and tell him I would make a cowl instead. Pretty much the same thing as a scarf only more fun to knit. he thinks on it and after yessing and noing he finally says "here". I got the yarn but best of all no strings. It is mine free and clear!!!

No sooner then I had it I knit a cute gauge square. Sadly no matter how loose I try to knit I never can knit at the gauge they say. This yarn says size 5 or 6 needle will yield a 17x20 4 inch square. My size 8 needle yielded a 3.5 inch square. Sigh. I will have to work on that.

The square looked good and I love the way the yarn began to change color. However, the yarn is stiff and kind of rough. Itchy. How am I going to make a garment if it is itchy? I decided to try some wash I bought. After it soaked the recommended 15 mins and dried I now have a soft square. Not baby soft but it will due for a serviceable hat or mittens. I just need to finish the top I am making for Emma before I am allowed to start a new project...a rule I put into place because I knew I would be one to start tons of projects without finishing any. A goal I have is to knit faster so I can knit more things.

Not what I pictured, but...

I wrote a while ago about a Biblical Home Education and I truly wanted one for our schooling. However actually getting it all worked out was difficult and even though most of what we are using is from Christian curriculum companies I just don't feel that the Bible runs through it as I wanted. With that said I am not totally disappointed with what we have going this year. SL has Bible readings for dd to do daily as well as Bible memorization through a Sing the Word CD. We are using Apologia as one of our sciences which incorporated creation science into the lessons. I do believe in a true 6 day creation so it works great for us. One of my favorite finds was the Discover 4 Yourself Bible study by Kay Arthur and Jana Arndt. We are working through the 1st Genesis book God's Amazing Creation and I am wowed by how full the study of Genesis 1 and 2 we will be doing. It will certainly make you look at Genesis with fresh eyes. I am going to learn from this as much as Emma.

The Bible may not be interwoven through everything we are doing this year (as I really wanted) but we are getting more Bible reading and more importantly Bible study in....real study, the get your magnifying glass out and pick it apart word for word study that will take weeks to get through a chapter or two study.

We haven't started Daniel next year curriculum yet so I am not sure how that will look Bible wise, but Emma's stuff has made me pleased with what I picked, or I should say what God lead me to since I prayed about it and had others praying for me in curriculum picking.

Backbone State Park

Not much school happened this week, just 2 days worth, so nothing news worthy there. However, the beginning of the week was fun. We went on a family mini vacation to Backbone State Park in Iowa. It was our first time staying in a cabin and it was the first real vacation Emma has ever had. I will not count the month long evacuation to San Antonia we had to make when Emma was a baby due to Hurricane Katrina or the week long evacuation  to the Smokey Mountains we had to make due to another hurricane when Emma was about 6. This was not hurricane created, We simply had a nice get away.

From what we packed you would have thought we would be gone longer then a few days. Doubt riddled the ranks about getting it to all fit in the van. With great finesse and using my puzzle skills I was able to squeeze it all in with room to spare (a tiny bit of room, but still room). The weather was also an unknown. Reports of thunderstorms or cloudy skies depending on the source and the time of day were making us uneasy. We finally decided to pack ponchos and make the best of it....even if it meant relaxing in the cabin listening to rain. Happily the weather cooperated with just light sprinkles on Monday evening and overcast skies but dry on Tuesday (the ride home was under clear blue skies).

Backbone State park was beautiful. The landscape is hilly with lots of rocky out croppings. A river snakes through the whole park. Our cabin overlooked the river where Canadian Geese were calling to each other every now and then. We managed to do 4 hikes, 2 the first day...one in the dark, misty night...and 2 the next day. Emma, Dan, and I had to climb the rocks where ever possible and it turns out Bella is a climbing dog.

Neat rock formations, wild flowers, and bones are things we saw along the trails.

Monday evening we all rested in the cabin and Tuesday morning we had powdered donuts for desserts.

Luckily we brought food and there was an oven/stove in the cabin because we are not fire makers. Our poor attempt at a fire had even Smokey the Bear laughing. We did manage to get one but it was pathetic and the only thing making the actual flames were piles of leaves we kept adding to the smoldering logs. Since it rained the day before our fire was extremely smokey. BUT even with the poor fire and smoke we managed to roast a few wienies and marshmallows. Poor Glenn lost his first wienie in the fire but he tried again and declared the hot dog pretty tasty.

Even with the non-sunny weather and the poor fire, we all agreed this was a great trip. Something we will definitely be doing again.

Here is a pic of our poor pooped out pooch. She is not use to climbing rock formations all day long.

"I'm in 3rd grade"

This is what Emma would tell anyone she met this week. I would also hear, "I'm a 3rd grader so I can cook/spell/work on my own" or some form of that. Obviously 3rd grade has some magical properties associated with it in Emma's mind that now that she is in it she will be able to do countless things she did not have the skills to do as a mere 2nd grader. Normally we would be starting summer break, but Emma was already bored. We decided to go ahead and start the next school year but only do 3 days a week and at natural breaking points take a week off. She has been eager to get into the new curriculum anyway (and so have I) that she was excited about this idea.
I would love for this blog to contain weekly posts about her 3rd grade year but I am also realistic and be happy I am getting this one done.
The biggest thing Emma is excited about is having her own schedule. Guess that is a sign of being big. There will still be a schedule we do together but I have one for her that has the things she can do without me. It also contains questions she needs to answer in her Zoology Journal.

The numbers on the side tell what order to do the work in and when to break. The schedule that has the work we will do together also has numbers. Even with the two schedules, Emma decided she would be in charge and would let me know what is next on the schedules.

This year we will be studying American History up to the Westward Expansion  using books from Sonlight Core D, Time Traveler CDs , and the Welcome to Kaya/Felicity/etc World books. So far everything seems to be a big hit. Emma loves the reader she is working through (A Lion to Guard Us) also the history reader (Pedro's Journal) and read aloud (Walk the World's Rim) I am reading her. There were groans of "read more" when I finished the first days reading. Hopefully she will enjoy all the books this much. We will also be creating several lap books associated with the Time Traveler work. The first one is on Explorers and should take about 4 weeks to finish.

The first day was fun because in the middle of the day we made cookies. Well, we began the cookie making process. The dough had to sit for 2 hours, but by the end of the school day we were ready to cut them and bake them. They were spice cookies and went with one of the reasons for exploring...looking for spices. When it came time to actually cut the cookies I was extremely nervous because the"3rd grader" wanted to do the cutting which ment using the BIG knife.

She still has all her fingers and the spice cookies came out delicious, especially with whip cream added to the warm cookies.
Another day had her working on knot tying. She tried several knots using a shoe lace. She practiced them a few times and thought some were more trouble them worth.

Besides her own schedule, she has her own science besides the Apologia Flying Creatures of the 5th Day. I bought her SL Science D to do on her own (but I am available if need be). She reads and answers a few questions on a work page, watches a DVD when indicated, and a CD to listen to. This week the CD song was on the Scientific Method and she enjoyed it so much she has much of it memorized.  In a few weeks she will learn about Water, and I ordered a Myth Buster's Kit to go along with it (but she does not know about it yet).
I was kind of worried the 2 sciences and all the American History I have for her to do would be too much, especially alongside all the other subjects...Math, Bible, Language, and 2 art programs...but she never complained once this week. Maybe it is because she has a whole day of rest in between or it is all new stuff or she was able to use her own schedule AND write in pen. Don't really care as long as she is enjoying what we are doing then she will learn just that much more.
To top the week off, we found an electric typewriter at the Crowded Closet for just $2.50. She wanted it so she can write a book. I tried to explain the computer was better for writing but she has it in her mind to write a book one needs to do it the old fashioned way...with a typewriter. If spending $2.50 gets her to write more (not that she ever had a lack of interest in writing) and learn the keyboard then it was worth it. She has already written the first page to Emma's Diary including pictures (think Diary of Wimpy Kid style) and is working on a letter to her grandfather.

It was a great week and she is happy with being in 3rd grade...just ask anyone who lives near here, she has told them all.

The Stream

Emma's geology lesson today was studying the parts of a river. My initial plans were to read the Usborne Encyclopedia of the World page on rivers and create a notebook page by drawing a river and labeling it's parts. However Spring Fever has hit. We have been spending more time outside and less time doing actual written schoolwork (we are on half days now with just math, science, and reading). I decided this lesson would be better suited for hands on learning. We headed over to the Woodpecker Trail to find the little stream that has a waterfall right near the crossing bridge. It was a fun hike there but the trail was wet and muddy, but as Emma so eloquently put it, "We are adventurers, so a little mud just adds to the fun". A neat find was a whole side of the inlet bank was still snow covered...Emma begged to walk all over it (she cannot stand to see snow without foot prints), but it was not an easy place to get to and someone had to stay focused...this was a school trip for the study of rivers not snow.

We finally found the stream...it was not at the place I thought but twice as far. I decided we would hike up the stream and find a nice secluded spot to read and study the parts of the stream (which is a small river). It was a messy hike. The mud would suck our boots in and make a sucking sound when we pulled them out. Giggling and splashing we finally came to a fallen tree which made a perfect sitting spot to study our book. Now the hard part, keeping Emma focused on the lesson and not playing in the water. A few times I had to call her back to focus on the page and not the mud under her boots.

With the lesson finished we now wandered around the stream bed finding all the different parts we studied. We were able to find several curves in the stream which showed the water cutting into the bank on the outer side and depositing sand/mud on the inner side. Several little tributaries. Rocks that diverted the water or where the water was deeper on one side and shallow on the other. We dammed up a small tributary and watched it pool behind it. Found large ice sheets still there where the water disappeared under it and emerged a few yards down. We had fun floating leaved and watching them pop out on the other side of the ice shelf. As we played we used our new vocabulary as we chatted. It was fun watching Emma explore the stream where her play was intermingled with learning about the properties of water as well as how streams/rivers work.

We made our way back down the stream slowly because Emma had to keep stopping to play with rocks or mud and because I had to watch my steps, very slippery and if I wasn't careful I would be sucked into mud knee deep (it is extremely hard to pull your boot out of sucking mud when it was just covering the top of my boot, deeper mud needed me to use my hands to pull along with my leg). I think Emma is part water sprite or some wood fairy because she just fluttered on down the stream, never getting stuck in the mud. At one point I whispered for her to stop and turn very slowly around. There, on the bank, was a very large deer just watching us play. It did not seem concerned but watched and as it slowly walked along the bank. Every now and then nibbling on new growth. It was beautiful.

Before leaving the stream we stopped at the little waterfall (just about 3 feet in it's fall)to try and clean off the sticky mud. My poor boots were caked with the stuff. Emma continued to play and wander down stream....somehow she managed to stay clean and dry. The water was cold and was just coming out from an ice shelf here, but the sun was bright and it felt good. Emma explored the ice shelf and we saw neat flow patterns or area we could not figure out haw it got sculpted....an extremely cool column of ice with a hole through the top. The we made ice flows with broken off chunks and we watched them float down the stream. So much fun alongside learning. This was definitely better then creating a notebook page. There are some science topics that are better studied hands on and in the field.Our next topic of study is seashores. Wonder where we can go for that?