Check out this beautiful song

In case there is anyone out there who reads my blog but doesn't read Magpie Ima, check out this video. I can't figure out how to embed it, so you'll have to click on the link.

Historic Vote

Maybe I'm just caught up in the hype, but it does feel historic. I believe Obama is a thoughtful and intelligent man of integrity. I trust him to think about the implications of his policies and to place a high priority on the effects on regular working people. I understand that he is pragmatic and probably more conservative than I would like on some issues, but I am truly glad I have the chance to vote for him. Now that I look at the mark, I'm a little worried it isn't filled in heavily enough! If I open it back up and make it darker will it look like my ballot was tampered with and risk getting thrown out? Is it maybe the photo that just looks kind of washed out? Hmmmmm.

Latest appraoch to schoolwork

I'm swinging back over to a Charlotte Mason-lite/Sonlite-lite approach to schooling. I made a list of 10:00 chores for the kids to do everyone day that they're home in the morning (just basic stuff--get dressed, comb hair, brush teeth, make beds, pick up rooms.) Then on my work days I'm writing a list of chores on the white board for each of them do that day, usually 1-2 household chores, 2-3 school assignments, and practice for A. Overall, I'm trying to hit math in some form 4-5 days per week for each kid, reading 3-4 days per week for M, writing (freewrite, copywork, dictation, or working on a writing project) 3-4 days per week for A, copywork and spelling for M 1 time per week each. I'm trying have them do a lot of this while I'm at work. For history we're going back through the first _Story of the World_ and I'm having the kids listen to the audio (a couple of chapters each week), and we're using the reading list and study questions from Sonlight Core 5 for read aloud. For variety I'm throwing in a grammar CD for M (basic parts of speech stuff, mostly, set to music), geography and math games on the computer, and board games, some of this done as part of their 10:00 chore list. We chose a composer to focus on this fall, Bartok, and I'm just trying to play something of his every week or so. Also, we still read a bedtime poem every night, and I play folk songs on the piano every night while they brush teeth and get into bed.

I'm trying to make sure we go slowly, just reading one chapter of the read-aloud each day and also doing 15-20 minute from a related history book (not a historic fiction chapter book), so we'll spend plenty of time in a few places in history. I'm trying to incorporate the history stuff in the freewrites occasionally, and I think I'll even do the Charlotte Mason thing of having an exam when we're done. I think the "exam" will actually be lots of fun, and I think the kids will also like the closure and will enjoy seeing how much they have learned. And, I hope it will consolidate what they're learning.

Right now we're going ancient Egypt. We just read _The Golden Goblet_ and a picture book about Tutankahmen. We've been looking through a non-kids book with beautiful photos of stuff from Tutankahmen's tomb, plus other Egyptian antiquities, and I'm planning on reading the chapter in that book about the "curse" on his tomb, since both kids were wanting to hear more about that. We're also going through _Egyptology_ and I found one of those "How to draw..." books on Egyptian gods and figures that I've been assigning them to draw. We're trying to be diligent about looking at the map as we hear about different cities and geographic features in Egypt. After a while I was going to have A draw a map of Egypt, and include major cities and landmarks, and have M fill things in on a blackline map.

The main challenge is stay here in Egypt a little longer, and not move on to Rome fully just yet. We actually already started _Detectives in Togas_, our Rome read-aloud, before I had the idea to slow down and spend more time in Egypt, but I'm drawing it out and I figure by the time we're done with it, I'll call an end to Egypt, have an "exam" day, and then we'll really move into Rome more fully.

Of course the list is long of things we're neglecting (art history, foreign language, nature journal, grammar (not that I'm really sold on grammar) and no doubt more that I'm not thinking of at the moment), but at least this feels manageable for now, and as in all things, I'm a tortoise, not a hare, so it suits me to work steadily away making progress where we can and not fret overly about what is not being covered at the moment.

A Dream Come True

My daughter's wonderful piano teacher has put together two books of simple folk songs that only use two or three chords. Her approach to teaching is to have them learning the finger patterns for the first 5 notes of every scale from the very first lesson. She developed an ingenious manipulative to show them where to put their fingers, and they start out at the piano learning a simple song by ear, and then moving this slider around to anywhere on the piano and playing the song in every key. So, transposing is introduced at the very first lesson.

Another thing she introduces early is how to play the I, IV, and V chords to accompany a song, which are also transposed everywhere on the piano. These folk song books provide the words and the chords, and the kids play the accompaniment and sing along, transposing them into all different keys.

This has been an amazing boon to us, as my son has become interested in playing the cello (yay!) which has open strings that amount to the I, IV, and V notes for the keys of G and D. This means that we can play any of the songs in A's folk song books, with A on piano playing the accompaniment in the keys of G and D, me on violin or cello playing the melody line, and M on cello playing the bass line. This is what I have been dreaming of from the moment I got pregnant! It is so much fun, and it actually sounds really great. M asks to play music almost every day, and A always want to join in also.  And, now I've figured out that we can also play out of fiddle books, which have lots of songs that can be played using the notes C, G, D, and A in the bass line. They tend to be longer and harder to remember for M (who isn't reading any music or notation), but we've got the "A" parts worked out for a couple of them, and they sound great!

This is truly a great way to start the cello. For one thing, the cello we have is too big for M (we have a 3/4 size and he needs a 1/2 size), so I don't really want him to start fingering just yet, since he'll have to use poor finger positioning in order to get in tune. It is kind of iffy even to bow open strings on a too-big cello, but I just have him use the part of the bow that is right for his arm length, and set the end pen low so he's bowing at the right height (but there is no way to make both the left and right hands hit at the right height at the same time with this too-big cello). And, even if we had a right-sized cello for him, it is better to work on each hand separately, since there is so much going on in each hand, and they are doing completely different tasks. It is too much to try to do them both at the same time to start out. When you're just playing by yourself, it quickly gets quite boring to just play open strings. But as a member of a string band, a kid can be happy for quite a while with open strings. 

Reading Slump

Remember when you used to end each day by snuggling into bed with a great book? How enriching and relaxing this ritual was? Some of you may still do this, but, alas, I've joined the bleary, red-eyed ranks of those who go down only after exhaustion overcomes the pain of jabbing earbuds. What have I become?!

True, I'm up on Anderson Cooper's take on the stock market roller coaster and I know how to handle a bear attack, being caught on an erupting volcano, how to spot Lion tracks, and how to catch piranhas, if I'm ever desperate enough to want to eat one (and in a jungle). I've learned how to make an LED fan sign, to convert a hot glue gun to a web-making machine, to make an amplifier from an Altoid tin, and a gigantic smoke ring machine from a garbage can. I've learned all about the amazing Science Museum they've been building in San Francisco and caught every Wired Science podcast in the past month, but I'm only about 40 pages into my book that I've been reading for at least 2 weeks.

I think part of the problem is my approach to finding books--that is, randomly picking books of the fiction shelves whose titles or book covers grab me. I've thought that I just wasn't fiction mode, but it occurs to me that maybe I'm just not reading great fiction. I've found some great memoirs on the New Arrivals shelf, but there hasn't been anything new there for a while that has really appealed to me. So I'm turning over a new leaf. Tonight, thanks to Worducopia and Wacky Mommy I have 15 books on hold at the library. Adult fiction, young adult fiction, memoirs, biographies. Surely something will grab me and help me tame the electronic monster that has taken over my bedtime ritual!

Yikes!

I'm traveling to Maryland for work in November, as I do occasionally, but it turns out that rather than tag along after my boss while she does all the presenting and paying for taxis I'm going to have to go all by myself! Make two fairly large presentations without her! Figure out how much to tip the taxi drivers! Figure out how to use the hotel iron without it spraying water all over my shirt! 

OK, I'm a big girl, I can handle this. I'll just have to find some kind of polyester shirt that won't wrinkle.

Hoyt Arboretum Tour

We went on a third walking tour with the incomparable Peter Chausse this week, and this one was just as great as the others. I've lived in this city all my life and been to the Arboretum literally hundreds of times, yet I learned and saw all sorts of new things on Tuesday. He covered wildlife, history, and art along the way, and even got the whole group to be silent and listen to the sounds around us for a little while. Not an easy task with 13 kids holding plastic bags in a graveled area. 

Check out the amazing root system on this tree. The picture doesn't do it justice, unfortunately.

And the bark on several of the trees we saw was just beautiful.

Trip to the Columbia Gorge

We spent a beautiful couple of days with Aunt Teen and Uncle Carl this weekend in the Columbia Gorge. We hiked around their place on Saturday and then had a nice dinner at their house. After dinner we played a board game and then the kids watched Andy Griffith episodes while the grownups got to hang out and visit. On Sunday we took a short hike near the mouth of the Klikitat River. Apparently you can sometimes see bald eagles during the salmon runs (which are now), but we didn't see any on Sunday. The spot was just beautiful and well worth the trip there even without any bald eagles. The only thing that slowed us down were the burrs.

Foreign language study

Here is M demonstrating his mastery of a rare and complicated dialect. We can thank our strict adherence to Charlotte Mason principles for this brilliant translation effort, no doubt.

Just what the doctor ordered

I have been on vacation this week, and it has been a great relief to everyone in the house to have me home. Like many families, mom is the backbone of the family, and things seem to fall apart when mom is (I am) gone to much over too long a time period. This week everyone has had an outing or two (or three, in the case of dad!) alone with me, and the pent-up need for mom-time seems to be more or less satisfied. At the same time, we've passed around a cold, which has kept us home a little more than usual, which has also been a good thing for getting everyone feeling right with the world again.

I haven't quite met my goal of jogging every day of vacation. In fact, I haven't jogged yet, and don't see it happening in the next few days, but I am very inspired by my brother-in-law's completion of the Portland Marathon last weekend. If I'm remembering correctly, he started jogging in January of this year, lost 50 pounds, and ran two half-marathons and one full marathon by the first weekend of October! He actually had some really good tips for me that I think I can put into action, but not until I'm done with this cold. Nevertheless, it has been lovely, sleeping in until 8:00 or later, getting one-on-one time with everybody, eating some delicious dinners, playing cards, and watching a few more movies than usual. Very lazy and luxurious. Next week I'll get serious about jogging!

Greek Dinner

No, we didn't make it to the Greek Festival this weekend, unfortunately, but managed to celebrate Greece anyway, with some of our homeschool friends. We had an amazing Greek feast, and some of the kids dressed up as their favorite Greek Gods (and these kids really know their Greek mythology, so these are seriously informed choices) and we shared tidbits we'd learned about Greece in the past month or so. The menu wound up being pita bread, hummus, kalmata olives, spanakopita, lamb pastitsio, a lima bean dish whose Greek name escapes me, beet and feta salad, Horiatikia salad (cukes, feta, sweet peppers, etc.), baklava, koulourakia (like sugar cookies), and Greek coffee.  Unfortunately I didn't get pictures until after much of the food was gone, but here are some of the remains:

The kids played scatter and some acting/pretend games and impressed me tremendously with how well this big group of 10 kids ranging in age from 5 to 13 could play together in the tiny space of our upstairs. There was plenty of thumping, exuberant shouting, and swords keeping the enemies on the stairs at bay, but an amazing lack of voices raised in anger or frustration. 

Hike in the Gorge

We went on a beautiful hike to Horsetail Falls a few days ago with our homeschool friends. It has some stretches with big dropoffs near the edge of the trail, which feels quite treacherous with a group of excited kids, but it was just beautiful and so much fun. The highlight of the hike is where the trail goes behind this waterfall: 

Here is part of our gang looking out at it:
And the happy crew towards the end of the hike:
A perfect way to spend a mild fall afternoon.

The next generation of unicylcers

I just imported everything from the camera and came across this picture of my nephew:

Wow! Notice the crutch in the lower left? He figured out how to ride the unicycle by using his crutches (left over from his broken leg last winter) to help him get balanced. I saw him out there with the crutches a week ago or so, but I never saw him go on his own.  Now it looks like he's go it! There is even a video clip of him going for about 10 or 15 feet. My sister and I rode unicylces when we were kids, and we've had some unicyles hanging around our houses which the kids occasionally pull out and try to ride, but this is the furthest anyone has gotten on it. Yay!

The fruits of my labor

My moonlighting job from this summer is now online! For a fascinating tutorial on systematic evidence reviews, follow this link and click on Systematic Review Module. OK, maybe "fascinating" isn't quite the right word, but it looks pretty snazzy, don't you think? (Not that I had any input on how it looks)