End of Year Events

We have had a huge slew of end-of-year events, which I mostly failed to capture on camera, unfortunately. For the sake of documentation, though, I'm going to run through the highlights. 

Here is a picture from the triumphant performance of _Tales of the Tangled Tresses_. Unfortunately I don't have the girls in costume, but this pictures shows at least part of seven of the eight performers. Prior to the performance we had never made a complete run-through, and at the dress rehearsal the day before they were dropping lines all over the place. Plus, we had never practiced outdoors, which was where we were performing it. I was a wee bit uncertain about how it would go. Fortunately it turned out beautifully. There were a couple of dropped lines, which they easily recovered from, and at one point I sent one of the actors out a minute early and kind of wrecked her entrance, but they did a fabulous job and for the most part were wonderfully poised and funny and managed to speak loud enough to be heard.

Other events of great import were the end of year gymnastics show and piano recital. A played her solo piece at the recital, plus duets with two of her friends, all of which went beautifully. A bunch of A's friends take lessons from the incomparable Gaye Rumsey-Riggs and various combinations of kids played duets, plus I played cello with a few of them. For a surprise, the whole gang (including me) worked up a 12-hands, 2-piano plus cello version of Pacabel's Cannon that Gaye had the kids play last year ("Taco Bell Cannon," actually). We played it for her at the recital rehearsal and by some miracle managed to stay together without my screaming out "1-and-2-and-" the whole time. 

The gymnastics show was the only event at which M was also a performer. Everyone did a lovely job, including a very fun dance number to Michael Jackson's Thriller. They actually did the dance twice--once for each of the two shows they put on. (They have too many kids to fit into one show). The kids were delighted with their plaques and were quite happy with how it went.

Lastly, we had our end-of-year camping trip with the homeschool gang. As always, it was incredibly fun and actually relaxing for me. The kids play non-stop, and we grownups hang around and knit and read and visit and nap and every once in a while made a sandwich or two for the kids. 

Whew, so many events, and now next weekend is M's birthday (and his first ever big birthday party), and then a big multi-day family reunion of D's cousins and their families. There will be tons of relatives we've never even met who live all over the U.S. here in town. Should be lots of fun.

Reading Triumph

M's reading is really improving, but he is not yet a fluent reader and usually doesn't spend more than a few minutes reading any particular book. The only exception is, of all things, _The Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook_ and the related Monster Manual. He often pours over these books in bed before falling to sleep, calling out to A and I to tell him what f-o-r-t-i-t-u-d-e and p-a-l-a-d-i-n and s-h-a-d-o-w-s-t-r-i-k-e spell. The same kid who stumbles over parts of Nate the Great just ran downstairs and read aloud with great dramatic inflection "As you open your mouth with a roar, the deadly power of your draconic kin blasts forth to engulf your foes." Though "reading primer" does not leap to mind when you see these books, I bet he isn't the first kid to learn to read from them.

Math Triumph

The kids are in a nice space lately. A is so enjoying all of her activities these days, and spent the car ride to chess club today thinking up historic events she wanted to memorize the dates of. She said "My favorite subject is history, but I also love writing and math and geography. The only thing I'm not that interested in is science, and even that is pretty interesting sometimes." She loves math!!! 

We've been going really slowly in math lately. It only took us 2-3 months to get through _Life of Fred: Fractions_, but _Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents_ has been quite a bit more challenging. We made it through the first 12 or so chapters when I realized that we had gone too fast. We started over, and again started to bog down, this time around chapter 15 or so. 

The chapters are short, and end with 5-8 problems that go over the concepts covered in that chapter and review one or two concepts from previous chapters or from the fractions book. Then, every fifth chapter there is a "bridge" of 10 problems covering everything that has been introduced so far, and you have to get 9 out of 10 correct before moving on to the next chapter. You get five tries to cross each bridge--i.e., there are 5 different sets of problems--and as soon as you get 9 out of 10 on a set you move on to the next chapter. A had a hard time passing the previous bridge and was really not enjoying math at all. 

Once she finally passed that bridge, we mostly set _Life of Fred_ aside and did a variety of stuff for math. She worked on Singapore's _Challenging Word Problems_,  math puzzles I found on the internet, and the Building Thinking Skills_ Figural workbook. Plus, we did a bit of pool (as in billiards) geometry and a fair amount of "trampoline math," where I threw random math problems at her while she was jumping on the trampoline. I did a mixture in multiplication and division facts; formulae for area and perimeter of a circle, rectangle, and triangle; conversion of decimals to fractions; conversion of decimals to percents; and multiplication and division of decimals by powers of 10. We did these for about 2 months, along with the next 5 chapters of Fred: decimals. Then it was time for another bridge. Which she was dreading. But which she passed! Yesterday we did a very triumphant victory lap, a.k.a. Chapter 26.

Guess What This Is

M found this outside the other day, looked at it through the microscope, and took a couple of pictures of it by putting the camera up to the eyepiece and clicking. It worked!

Can you tell what it actually is?

A hummingbird feather.

Thing One and Thing Two

Check out my new babies! Having only hats and wash cloths under my belt, these were a stretch for me, but completely worth it. It is just mind-boggling that you can do a couple little motions with needles and a piece of yarn, and the next thing you know you've woven this net that really does hold together. Then, some amazing person figured out a way to do these same basic stitches and have the fabric curve around in a perfect little heel shape! Incredible!

The whole time I was knitting Sock #1 I worried that it wouldn't be big enough around, so you can imagine my delight as it slid right over my heel with no trouble at all. Until I ran into the end of the sock at about the point where my toes start. Because they were too small I was going to give them to A, but as I worked away on the second sock and fell more in love with every stitch, I couldn't give them up. After I finished the second one, I undid the toe of Sock #1. It took about 30 seconds to undo it back to the point where I was going to pick it back up, and over 3 hours to get all the stitches back on correctly. That's more than 3 minutes per stitch, if anyone is counting. But, I managed to get them all on more-or-less correctly and re-finished Sock #1 this morning. I figured that if I had been paid my hourly wage for my work on these socks, plus needles and yarn, they would have cost me about $450. 

Now that I've worn these babies all day, the thought of going back to my boring old regular socks is bringing me down. I'm casting on Sock #1 of the next pair tonight. 

Second Annual Train Trip to Seattle

Yay, our internet is working again, so I can tell you about our amazingly beautiful sunny and warm day in Seattle today. First we walked up to Pike Street Market and had lunch and checked out the beautiful flowers and other wares. The tulips were absolutely amazing. Them must have a tulip growing area nearby because they were in great abundance and in a multitude of colors and patterns.

Then we walked up to the sculpture garden, which was really cool except that you weren't allowed to touch anything, which was rather a bummer. Here the kids are taking a little rest, far from any actual sculptures they might accidentally bump up against.

I think they were allowed to touch these, which didn't seem to be technically IN the sculpture garden. How often do you get to sit on an eyeball?
The kids didn't know what this object was until I told them:
Right after I snapped this picture a voice boomed out over a loud speaker "PLEASE DON'T TOUCH THE ART IN THE SCULPTURE GARDEN." Yikes! Big Brother is watching us!

Then we walked up to the park around the Space Needle and listened to a lovely band from some Andean country and saw more great sculptures (and climbed on them!). The monorail took us halfway back to the train station, then a quick lemonade stop and back to the station.
We're all exhausted, but it was so much fun, we can't wait until next year's trip.

Plan #438

M: Remember when we used to read from a bunch of different books, instead of just one or two?

A: Yeah, and we actually used to do spelling and look places up on maps when we read about them?

M: And you used to leave little notes for us with stuff to do while you were at work?

Jeez, we've only been off the wagon for a few weeks, really! OK, we got a little busy with the birthday planning and festivities and schoolwork sort of devolved down to Rick Riordon's Percy Jackson series and a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, and some math a few times per week. But isn't it a good thing that my kids are wanting to get back into schoolwork, rather than me having to drag them along? Isn't it funny, the one thing I've been pretty consistent with is math, and that is the thing neither of them want to do now. How can you not like math?

Anyway, we're going to just do math games on the computer for a little while, and concentrate on some other things. Here is our new plan:

1. Pick back up _Our Island Story_ (history of England)

2. Pick back up _Augustus Caesar's World_ (alternate with 1.)

3. Find a D'aulaire picture book biography or something similar to work through a page or so at a time

4. Do regular stories from Fifty Stories Retold and similar books of tales.

5. Pick back up Sequential Spelling

6. Go through this drawing lesson book we have

7. Look up places in books we're reading on maps/globe/atlas

8. Get a steady stream of science online video sites set up.

9. Find a science book to start reading through, or finish the physics one we were reading if we didn't finish it.

10. Print some handwriting practice worksheets for M with science facts on them.

11. Go to the art museum.

M really wants to do more hands-on science, too, and we decided a little while that Singapore was just not right for us. We had the microscope out the other day and that was a big hit, so maybe I could look for some microbiology--grow some molds and get some pond water and stuff like that. We've done more chemistry and physics than biology (other than nature stuff), so that might be a good way to go. I bet I can find a low-tech growing medium on the internet.

A and I are doing another on-line writing class with Bravewriter and for some reason this one has been harder--not more work, but harder to figure out what to write. I think she's hit on an idea she can go with, now, though, so I'm hoping it will be better from here on out.