All Hallows Eve

We've been terribly busy this week. It seems we spent most of our time at Hobby Lobby, picking up another essential item for our homemade Ariel costume. However, it is DONE!!!! Not a moment to spare. It is fragile, though, so I'll be carrying my portable glue stick for emergency purposes only.

I ripped a pillowcase today, so it's now hanging from a tree. We made an impromptu ghost out of it. It has kind of a lumpy head, but it works.

Rainy Days and Fridays

Today was the day of the leak. It started at 2:30 AM when we awoke to the unpleasant sound of steadily dripping water. Turns out the water is leaking into or as a result of a dead valley, whatever that means. You can be sure it means expensive. Oh well. What else were we going to do with our money?

While waiting for the roofer, dd and I traced our outlines on large sheets of butcher paper and used our Body book to fill in most of the internal organs. Hers turned out well; I think we'll color mine and use it for a Halloween decoration. It looks like Igor's shadow.

Since we were tied to the house today, I used this opportunity to encourage her love of dusting and swiffering and just general tidying up. File it under "life skills" and call it a day.

Paging Dr. Scruggs

I haven't been blogging much lately, as we've not had much new and/or exciting news. We're still plugging away on our vowels, but we'll finish up next week and then begin the "real" work of reading. DD tries so hard to read the words on the pages of her books; it frustrates her at times, but I think slow and steady is the way to go. I just hope she'll still let me read to her even after she learns how.

Today she drew a picture and told me "it's what inside your hand that makes it move." Then she drew another picture of her skeleton. She asked if we had some big paper so that we could trace her whole body. Naturally, we went out and bought some STAT! We had to get materials for our Ariel costume (please keep fingers and toes crossed) anyway, so we just put big paper on the list.

We also stopped by the library to rock the vote and pick up a book about the human body so that we can draw all of the inside stuff that makes you fill-in-the-blank. It should be interesting.

Re: Ariel, we found sequins (aka scales), rope, crepe paper and a glue gun, but no inexpensive shells. We'll have to find some of those tomorrow. If I were McGyver, I could pull all of this together with a paper clip, but I fear I will be out at midnight on Oct 30, scouring the city for an Ariel costume.

Snickers

We've had a couple of hectic days. Earlier in the week, I feared we might not make it until the weekend, but Friday has prevailed, the weekend is upon us, and Daddy is home from work. All is right in the world.

We made birdseed feeders yesterday by smearing pine cones with peanut butter and birdseed. Apparently, the birds find this as distasteful as I do, as they have not touched one seed. We also made Halloween cookies yesterday. I've eaten most of them today-precisely why we can never have sweets in the house.

Today we went to the Pow Wow. It was awesome. We listened to an 11-year-old self taught flutist (or flautist, as I've just confirmed) named Totonka Yellowbird. He will be releasing a CD soon. Santa will probably be putting that in someone's stocking for Christmas this year. He was wonderful. We also saw a 9-year-old hoop dancer who made all kinds of shapes from the hoops: bees, butterflies, horses, etc. We danced the Friendship dance and DD did her own dancing, which was one of my favorite memories of today.

My other favorite memory concerns our supper and our neighbor's cat, Snickers. I attempted to make beer can chicken (which is another favorite memory, but it belongs to another blog and another post). You have to place the chicken on the beer can, then stand the whole thing up like a tripod in the grill. As I opened the grill to check on the chicken, DD glanced over and yelled "Snickers!" as in, "You didn't grill Snickers for dinner, mom!!" The best part was that she knew she was making a joke. I realize that I am taking far too long to tell this story and am probably robbing all the greatness from it, but if you know her, you can imagine the tone of voice and the facial expressions. Priceless. Luckily, the economy hasn't gotten us so far down that we have to grill the neighbor's cat for supper.

Stay tuned for next week's adventures when we explore the short-vowel sound of letter O.

PowWow

We visited our local state park again today for Nature Circle. Today's theme was the Native American Pow Wow that will be held this weekend. We learned about the types of Native Americans who settled here, how they lived and what a PowWow is (a big party-excellent). Our teacher happened to be the chief ranger of the park and his guest was a woman who grew up on the Choctaw reservation in Mississippi. She spoke a bit of Choctaw for us and taught the kids to count to 5. As usual, we had a great time. After the program, the ranger fired his rifle-one just like the early pioneers carried.

We played at the park and fed stale bread to the one scary goose (less scary this week) and several wild turkeys. FYI, wild turkeys don't care for goldfish crackers.

We ended up our morning with a trip to the grocery store, a fantastic aisle 4 meltdown and a glorious nap, which I am about to disrupt.

Circle Time

We've had a rough couple of days. Several eruptions have occurred, the like of which I've not seen since Mt. St. Helens. We have been able to complete our lessons, then we skedaddle outside before either of us blows again. There must be something in the air...

She finally told me the short-vowel sound of the letter E today. Success!! Being patient (I can be patient. Sometimes.) has paid off. There's a lesson in that. We made a macaroni letter E and we made a drum from a metal can, a balloon and duct tape. Take that, McGyver!

We spent some time caring for Goldie, v5. I considered it a huge success because I a) was able to capture him, thereby making the cleaning of the entire tank a reality and b) did not kill him as a result of thoroughly cleaning his tank. Whew! Also, I prevented DD from tipping the cup that Goldie was vacationing in. Disaster averted.

We also made a drum for no particular reason. I checked out a book called Nifty Thrifty Music Crafts and we happened to have the materials on hand. Luckily, I hadn't taken our recycling yet. Later, she composed a great little song. Here are some of the lyrics:

Hey Kids!
Listen to me.
When I was a baby
I ate spaghetti from a tree

I am not making this up. I'm not talented enough. So maybe she will be a singer/songwriter/YouTube star next year. This year, she just wants to be Ariel.

Bringing Home a Little Bacon

This is the first week where homeschooling and "working" have overlapped. So far, so good. DH took care of DD all weekend so I had plenty of uninterrupted work time, which was very helpful. Also, the project came in on Friday, which was psychologically better for me. I was through the bulk of it by Sunday night, so I knew I had a pretty light week of it.

We are still plugging away with the letter E. Today I drew an elephant and asked her what animal this was, to which she replied "giraffe." I knew my drawing was bad, but I had no idea HOW bad. I quickly pointed out the trunk so that we could get back on track.

We went to the library this morning to avoid another painful DVD late charge the like of which we haven't seen since 2007. We actually stood in line, waiting for the library to open. I don't like to think what this says about me. Anyway, I found a pretty interesting book by Jane Moncure that we're going to use tomorrow. It's called Word Bird Makes Words with Hen. I can hear all of you stampeding to the library to get your very own copy. I flipped through it and it should work nicely for our purposes. She is now singing both the letter a and e short sounds, so we're definitely making progress. When she does learn to read, I'll probably send the word out to CNN.

I'm reading two interesting books now: Honey for the Heart and The Last Child in the Woods. HforH is a guide to books for children. The author is a proponent of family read aloud time, a la Pa Ingalls reading the Bible to Ma and the girls. Somehow I can't see DH reading a little Dickens to the family after supper. I may save that for 2009's pet project. However, I love it when I stumble across a like-minded author. She includes a great deal of fantasy and fairy tales in her suggestions. She recommended the Wrinkle in Time series, which I loved as a child and was dismayed to find on the banned books list.

Last Child is a more dour take on how children don't get outside and play enough and how the green spaces are being decimated by urban sprawl. So far, I'm still in the problem phase. I'm interested to read his solutions. He does have a point, though. The morning we spent at the state park was so relaxing and enjoyable (except for the scary goose) that I wanted to go back ASAP with the whole family. I wanted to check this book out because it seems to dovetail with Charlotte Mason and her belief that children need unfettered, unsupervised time out in the natural world. I wonder how much of my fear as a parent is legitimate and how much has been stoked up by the media. I'm still figuring out how much rope to give her.

We had another cactus incident today. We lost more dirt. I almost took a picture of the bathroom where she tried to wash the dirt from Hello Kitty and Brother Bear, but I figured I had a limited amount of time for the 10-second tidy, so I hopped to it. I'm sure you can imagine for yourselves.

E, Glorious E

We FINALLY started on letter E today. She actually wrote a letter E, and I plan to scan into the computer and post it on the slideshow. Someday. Soon.

She's also steadily improving her narration skills. We do this more as practice for the future, as narration features prominently in both Charlotte Mason and AWTM. Today's story was approximately 1.5 pages, and I stopped in the middle to ask what she remembered so far. This worked well. She was able to tell me 4 events from the story. Of course, I'm prompting more than I should be, but I'll think about that tomorrow...

We read Hop on Pop again; this time listening for the short sound that E makes. She is now following the words in her stories with her finger and will sometimes point to each word as she is saying it. This is of course due to the frequency that she hears these stories, but I like to think the connection is being made.

Today's adventure consisted of a trip to our closest state park and the nature circle event. Today's topic was otters. DD loves the teacher and sits as close as possible during storytime. We heard two stories today: one factual and scientific, one fictional. Then, she made a really cool craft that must be seen to be believed (or described, at least). I'll post it to the slideshow as well.

We spent the rest of the morning exploring the park. They have a pirate ship park for the kids; then we went down to the lake to throw rocks in the water (I'm sure this is educational, but I haven't figured out just how) and throw goldfish to a scary goose. We had lunch on the dock and watched a heron catch his lunch. We walked a few hundred yards down a trail and saw a deer calmly eating whatever it is that a deer eats. I'll have to look that up. Or, some superintelligent reader could post the answer in a comment and win my undying gratitude, dude.

It was a lovely, perfect morning. Then we came home and played more (you guessed it) Cinderella. This time, I had to play the recorder so she could dance at the ball. It sounded alot like the scary goose.

A Weed is a Seed

It's true: today was another great day. I woke up first, which is always a plus. Then, I was serenaded about an hour later (I had time to luxuriate in the shower--sorry Al Gore) to the tune of The Red Red Robin. We had a good breakfast in spite of the overcooked bacon. I have failed to master the delicate art of microwaving bacon. We made muffins, which definitely called for some calculations, as we lost about half the mix to an unfortunate using scissors to cut the top without holding on to the bottom incident. Therefore, we had to recalculate the amount of milk to use. However, no harm done. We still had enough muffins to share with our friends who came to play after school, of course.

Something is definitely sinking in because she was coming up with all sorts of words that included the a sound: can, wagon, etc. Monday we'll review letter A and start letter E.

We also worked with Anno's Magic Seeds today. We got out the small round chips, or manipulatives, and used them to count the number of seeds in the book. It's a neat story, but pretty involved for a four-year-old, so we only worked through the first 1/3 of the book. It just makes me feel better to touch on some basic science and math concepts at least once per week. It will be good practice when we start first grade in two years.

Something of a Friday tradition is going out to eat with Daddy. We picked him up at his office, which is near a small park. We played a less successful game of Pooh Sticks today because the water is low, but we did bring home a leaf and a seed to identify by using our field guides (I had to put that off until tomorrow). We also heard some of the geese by the pond start to honk, then we heard some other geese faintly honking, then closer and closer until another flock of geese landed in the pond right in front of us. It was the kind of the scene I probably had the opportunity to witness hundreds of times in my life and never did, but something about being with dd makes everything fresh and new. Sometimes she's impressed; sometimes she couldn't care less, but I think we're making some wonderful memories. For me at any rate.

We've Been to the Zoo Zoo Zoo

For those of you not in the know (ie not forced to listen to the same cd until you hope your eardrums will bleed), today's title comes from The Nelds All Together Singing in the Kitchen album. It's a catchy little tune. So catchy that, in my case, I find myself humming it all hours of the day and night. All hours, people. Anyway, in a case of life imitating art, we went to the zoo, zoo, zoo today. As promised, the monkeys whooped it up as soon as they realized dd was on the premises. Actually, it was a lovely cool fall day, so most of the animals were feeling energetic, esp. the monkeys, who spent alot of time in the tops of the sycamore trees, singing and carrying on. We had more good luck, as the giraffes were right up near the fence eating lunch and the meerkats were hanging out near the tube where you can squeeze yourself in for an up-close look. Even the koi fish swam right up to her today. It was our lucky day.

Of course, we finished our schoolwork before we goofed off at the zoo. I ignored the temptation to start working with letter E today and instead decided to finish the week devoted to letter A, as originally planned. This girl knows the letter A--absolutely. I even had her glue pieces of pasta in the shape of an A. Tomorrow we'll probably fingerpaint, which should end the week with a bang. To reinforce the letter of the week, we read The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, which is one of her favorites. It's not one of mine, but the story grew on me a bit today. Perhaps I really am losing it. Perhaps I have been and am only now realizing it. Is that a sign of sanity or insanity. It's probably best not to pursue this line of thought.

Once Upon a Time

She wrote a freehand letter A today, her first. She also dictated a couple of stories and I was actually able to scrabble most of the plot down. We worked for awhile on making a book, but she quickly lost interest in illustrating her story. She wanted to illustrate the story of Sleeping Beauty. Can anyone tell me how long the princess phase will last?

Today she asked me to dress as the Stepsister for Halloween. Oh dear. I definitely have the clothes for Cinderella (pre-fairy godmother), but nothing fancy for the stepsisters. We'll have to work on this. Of course, she has planned five or six different costumes for Halloween already, so I'm sure she'll have decided on something completely different by October 31.

As far as our lessons go, they are progressing nicely, although she's having difficulty with the narration portion. I read a short story to her, about 1.5 pages, and ask her to tell it to me in her own words. She has been able to repeat 1-2 key points, but lately she can't (or won't?) tell me anything that relates to the story. Lately, Ariel or Sleeping Beauty has figured prominently in her retelling.

I've been using board games to reinforce counting. She likes to play Chutes & Ladders, but our success with numbers varies wildly between morning and afternoon. It's all good in the morning. The witching hour starts at about 3:30 and lasts until 5:00. I've been trying to get dinner started earlier so that we can get her to bed earlier. So far, we're still hitting 8:30 PM as bedtime. We'll see how tonight goes. Of course, she just came in to tell me that her hair hurts, so tonight should be interesting.