Colorful Language

Or, Why Language Arts lessons with creative kids sometimes take a while.

Our Kindergarten Graduate!

Congratulations, Little Man! We are so proud of you!

A Random Sampling

Here are a few random pictures from the last few weeks:

Feeling a sheep's lungs inflating on a ventilator. Look at that face - what a good sport!

Going to the zoo with friends

Working on our anatomy studies. It would seem that some of us cannot simply color the stomach. The stomach must be invaded. Supply lines cut off, troops sent in... you get the picture.

Reading Shakespeare at lunch. Listen, if this happened every day, I wouldn't have taken a picture of it.

"Mom, can I fly it?"

Turning six! Happy Birthday, Little Man!!

Making milk carton homes for the much-loved collection of plastic frogs.

Basketball!

Getting by with a little help from our friends.

We're still here!

Please forgive the very long blog break! Here's a quick look at what we've been up to:

Skiing! Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa!!

Post-Christmas Lego building. We're thinking of trying out the weekly LEGO Quest Kids building challenge too. Looks like lots of fun!

Wow - playing with our new iPad. Thank you, Grandma!

Winding up another fun season of fantasy football.

Upwards Basketball! We LOVE this organization. Both boys are playing this year and having a wonderful time. We almost don't mind leaving the house at 7:30 every Saturday morning.

On the academic front:

• Continuing with anatomy studies - I'll try to post soon on this.
• We're loving TruthQuest History - we're studying pioneers at the moment.
• Chalk pastels using the tutorials here - messy, but fun!
• Institute for Excellence in Writing - Z-Man still balks, but I see a marked improvement in his writing so we'll continue.

Thanks for stopping by!

First Snow!

Remember that post I wrote three days ago, with the temperatures up in the sixties? Well, today it snowed.

It started like this.

It quickly progressed to this.

Naturally, even two or three flakes in the air makes it all but impossible to concentrate on writing one's letters and numbers.

Ah, now that's better.

Notice those lovely, yellow leaves still obstinately hanging on the tree? Their companions have long since been raked to the curb and swept up by the city trucks.

Ah well, maybe in the spring.

The beautiful Adirondacks!

We are so blessed to live near the Adirondack Park!

The view of Fourth Lake from the top of Rocky Mountain.

Us at the top, having a snack.

The boys climb like mountain goats but they scare me sometimes.

Back in the town, a lovely moon rise to end a perfect Autumn day!

Good Reads

We do quite a bit of reading in our homeschool. We read books all together in the morning - FIAR, science, history, biographies, books on whatever we happen to be studying. Then, in the afternoon, while Little Man takes a short quiet time, Z-Man and I read more advanced books (or "books without pictures" according to LM) from our TruthQuest History guide. Z-Man usually has something he's reading on his own as well.

In my planning notebook, I keep a list of all the books we read throughout the year. Recently, I came across Goodreads.com, a more high-tech version that I can keep online, complete with pictures of each book. There are many other features that we haven't used yet, such as to-be-read lists and even an option to email interested friends and family each time you finish a book.

Z-Man has his own account, but I sign in and enter the books for him because they advertise books on the main page and also show what others are reading. There have been a couple of times that there were some inappropriate images there. Once you get into your own list, though, there are no ads or other images and he can scroll through all the pictures of the books he's read, rate them with one to five stars and even write a review. I think he was kind of surprised to see how much we've covered this year.

Now if I could just get to my own reading...

Summer, maybe?

Little Man is the octopus

Little Man is The Octopus. Remember Paul the oracle octopus that accurately predicted the World Cup soccer games last summer? Here is Little Man filling out his NCAA basketball tournament bracket.

The octopus worked very diligently on this for about half an hour. Since the lines were a little too small for him to write the whole team name, he wrote the first two letters of his picks. As of 8:45 Saturday evening, the octopus has picked completely accurately for three out of the four regions. The rest of us have not been so successful. I suppose more than one psychic invertebrate mollusk per family is too much to hope for.

In case you're wondering, our five year old says Duke is going all the way.

The Sub

Mark stood in as substitute teacher yesterday and today while I battled the stomach flu.

He and the boys read about the liberty bell, King Solomon's temple and did a Mark Kistler art lesson. They also learned all about March Madness and filled out their brackets for the NCAA tournament. Right now, they're getting a propane tank so we can start boiling our sap to make maple syrup. (We have two trees.)

He's such a fun sub that I'm worried they'll be disappointed that I'm feeling better!

But I am very, very grateful.

Rushing the season

There are no signs of spring outside yet so we've been forced to buy some spring and bring it inside. I thought I'd share it with you all in case you need some spring as much as I do.

The groundhog did promise an early spring... I'm sure it's right around the corner!

Oh well. At least it's something to count.

I would love to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count next week (Feb 18-21.) Really, I would. When there are birds at our feeder, we love watching them. We have bird guides and binoculars right on the window sill at all times. Unfortunately, there hasn't been too much to look at lately, let alone count.

They all come back occasionally, all on the same day. And then they're gone again. Now what does that sound like to you? I'll tell you what it sounds like. Like someone else in the neighborhood is feeding our birds! Caviar, no doubt, or whatever it is that they like better than sunflower seeds. Or maybe their feeder isn't six inches from their kitchen window.

Anyway, we were so wishing for little creatures to look at that we let this guy feast for awhile yesterday:

We have named him bat squirrel, for obvious reasons. Either he is an unusual species with a strong, prehensile tail or he was literally hanging by his toenails. Either way, we felt he had worked hard enough to deserve a little snack. It's not like the birds will miss it.

A Winter Wonderland

I wish my camera could capture just how beautiful it is out there; the snow on every branch makes the woods look like delicate lace. It really is awe-inspiring.

I'm not sure the birds would agree with me. We did chip the ice off for them so the feeder would look a little less like a prison.

Have a fun Superbowl Sunday, everyone!

Baseball Camp!

Things don't always go according to plan. The plan this summer was to have multiple sports-themed camps but here we are in August and, well... we've done tons of fun things but the camps just kept getting pushed back. This past week, the calendar was somewhat emptier and we finally had baseball camp! I'm happy to tell you that it was a great success!

Every day at breakfast there were announcements about what was going on that day - batting practice, catching practice, field trips, arts and crafts, etc. Then all campers did their K.P. chores and reported for morning service.

I found a little league coach who put up videos of himself giving baseball-related Bible lessons! I love the internet.

We also did a lesson on obedience where everyone got to be first and third base coach and tell the runner what to do. We talked about the fact that the runner can't be looking around to see what's happening, he just has to run as hard as he can. He listens to the base coach who can see what's happening on the field. Likewise, we don't know what's going to happen in our lives or even five minutes from now, but we can listen to God who does know and to our parents to whom He gives wisdom and discernment.

After morning service each day, we had baseball class. Here are some of the things we used:

Baseball Basics - many, many short little videos on every aspect of baseball. What is an inning, what are the defensive positions, what's an RBI, etc. Warning: there are commercials before the videos start - some were funny Geico ads but one was a very inappropriate beer commercial. Just so you know.

How to Play Baseball - by Goofy. This is old Disney - maybe from the 1940's - my kids loved it.

Baseball Poetry - you know we had to read Casey at the Bat and Casey's Revenge!

Baseball Music - listen to thousands of Cardinals fans sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game!"

Who's On First? - Abbott and Costello. Gotta love it.

Interactive Baseball Math Game! - This is just brilliant. You can do addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. If your answer is right, you get a hit. The difficulty of the problem determines if it's a single, double, triple or home run. If you're wrong, you're out and the game ends after three outs.

Intro. to Sabermetrics (Baseball Stats) - My goodness. There are stats for everything in baseball.

Then on to Arts and Crafts - we did some pretty basic crafts - sand art and such but the first day we named our cabins (rooms) and made signs for them.

Outside for batting and catching practice, preceded by warm-up exercises, of course.

Cabin Clean-Up! It has to be a competition, you understand. The Camp Director (Mark) picks the cleanest cabin and they win a prize at the end of the week. Usually it's ice cream but this year it may be nerf guns. We'll see.

And, of course, we had to have a field trip! Unfortunately, there was a rain delay but it turned out to be really cool. We got to watch the ground crew roll out the huge tarp to cover the infield and everyone cheered when it stopped raining (pouring, actually) and they rolled it back up and continued the game.

All in all, a great week of baseball camp!

Water guns and watermelon

The warriors

The attack

The ambush

And watermelon juice running all down the front

What's better than being a kid in the summer?

Most handsome ring bearer ever!

We now take a short break from homeschooling info to bring you pictures of the most handsome ring bearer ever. Z-Man was concerned that he was a little too old to be a ring bearer at the ripe old age of 8, but all went well and he was very dapper.

The lover:

and the fighter:

Wedding, schmedding. Can I play on the iPod?

Congratulations, Cassie and Jeremiah!