I just think this is funny.

This is Noah's writing assignment on a type of fungus. He actually did do a plain, basic paragraph, but then he couldn't resist letting his creative side show.

Boy Sopranos

I admit it, I (not so secretly) dreamed that Noah would be a boy soprano in a boys' choir. He has a nice voice, and a good ear. Singing's just not really his cup of tea.  So I console myself by watching videos like this on Youtube.

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Smoky Corn Chowder

I spend more time than I should hanging around on a message board for homeschoolers. I like it because the women (and a few men) are so diverse, and I get to hear opinions and experiences I might not hear from people I see regularly. And, sometimes, I get great recipes there!

Here's one I made a few weeks ago for a friend's family, to welcome their new baby. I made a double batch, and froze half. We had it tonight, with some cornbread (Trader Joe's). Mmmm. Very satisfying.

1 pkg. frozen sweet corn
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 Tbsp butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup each, chopped celery, carrot and red bell pepper (I omitted the celery, because I forgot to buy it)
1 TBsp thyme
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
3 large potatoes,peeled, cut into bite-size pieces (I actually left the peels on)
28 oz. chicken broth
1/2-3/4 cup half-and-half

Cook bacon until crisp. Remove bacon to paper towels to cook and then crumble. Melt butter in pot and and add onion, celery, carrot and pepper. Cook until tender, about 10 min. Stir in thyme, cumin, salt and pepper. Add potatoes, chicken broth, water, and corn. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer. Stir as needed. Use a blender to puree mixture for 2 minutes and then add half-and-half and remove from heat. Crumble bacon bits on top and serve with corn bread...

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So true!

Funny Blogs

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Snow in the mountains!

This dusting of snow on Agassiz Peak is the first hint of winter. Eventually, there will be enough snow for sledding and skiing! I can't wait! I am going to be much more careful when I go sledding this year; no hurtling over ramps. I'm too old for that.

Weekly Report (well, not exactly weekly, I guess)

Here's what we've been up to at The Shire Academy:

Music: Reading about and listening to Baroque composers Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach. (Noah's opinion on Bach's "Brandenburg Concertos": "That's pretty good music!")

Writing: Still working on key word outlines. Once he has the outline done, his writing is fine. It's just that doing the outline is like pulling teeth.

History: More sad tales. Slavery in the south, and the Cherokee Trail of Tears. We did watch a really good DVD from the History Channel about the Underground Railroad, which prompted a discussion about what we would have done if we had lived then. (I like to think I'd have been a station master on the underground railroad, but would I have let fear of arrest get the best of me?)

Math: Decided to try a free month's trial of the online math program, ALEKS.

Latin: Doing some review of the first three chapters.

Logic: I think the Mind Benders book has been very helpful. At first, Noah struggled with some of the deductive thinking required, but now he's doing great! He's almost done with the first book.

Science: He's still feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work required in his new junior high science class at co-op, but I think he'll be fine when he gets used to it. He's learning about the sun, the stars, the planets, etc. We're hoping to attend an outdoor stargazing event soon, hosted by a group who brings along their high-powered telescopes and expertise to share with the public. We haven't done anything like that in awhile, and we're looking forward to it.

Big news: Noah's computer class is going to be taking a field trip to the Apple Store!

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Book List

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

The Rules:
 

1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.
 

**1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
**2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
**3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
**5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

**6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
*13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
**14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
*15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
**16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
*19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
%20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
%21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
*22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
%24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
**25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
%26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
*27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
%30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
**31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
**32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
**34 Emma - Jane Austen
**35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis -
%37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (have it from the library, but haven't started it yet)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
*40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
*41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
%45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
**46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (pretty heavy propaganda)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
*50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert
%53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
**54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
**57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
*59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
%67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
*68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
*71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
*72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
**73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
*74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
%77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
*79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
*84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
*87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
%91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
%94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
%95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
*98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
**99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
**100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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Can't get this song out of my head!

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Noah is studying the sun in science this week. We can't get this song out of our heads. Enjoy.

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The Tucson Herpetological Society

Noah is having trouble getting his work done, since we are at the library sitting by the floor-to-ceiling windows, and there are numerous Sonoran Tiger Whiptails running around outside. They are pretty cool.

The Tucson Herpetological Society

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Facebook is fun!

GraphJam: Music and Pop Culture in Charts and Graphs. Let us explain them.

I've been having so much fun on Facebook, catching up with old friends and keeping in touch with those I don't get to see as often as I'd like. You should try it!

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Hope Deferred

I am really struggling right now with disappointment, disillusionment, discouragement, and a lot of other dis- words. (Disgruntled? Dysfunctional?)

We are having to deal with some serious issues that, a year ago, we thought were on the wane. This means our adoption dream is put on hold, indefinitely.

This feels like a kick in the stomach. I am struggling with those old feelings of, "Of course you're not going to adopt. Why would God bless you? He doesn't really like you that much. Basically, you need to just get used to pain and disappointment and stop thinking that any of your dreams will ever come true." Not Biblical, and not true. But that's how I'm feeling these days.

Has anyone else ever felt that way?

Apple - iPod touch

Apple - iPod touch

Noah and I went to the new Apple store in the mall to play with the new toys. I have been wanting an iPod Touch for awhile now, and they just made it BETTER and CHEAPER!! I will be able to listen to music and audiobooks, watch videos, check and send email, surf the web, sync my calendar and contacts instantly with my laptop at home, even play games, etc. Such a cool thing!

So here's my plan: Save up my money, ask for Apple gift cards for Christmas, and then sell my current iPod.

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Weekly Report 8/22/08

Our second week of "easing into school" has gone fairly well. We didn't get everything done that was planned, but that's okay. Yesterday was my last day of work at the rabbit rescue; from now on, we will not be in such a rush.

The highlight of this week was our literature selection, Hoggee by Anna Myers. A hoggee was a boy who worked on the Erie Canal, leading the mules along the towpath. (Did you know the boats were pulled by mules who walked alongside the canal?) Good character development, moral lessons, and even information about sign language (the main character meets a "deaf and dumb" girl, and finds out how to help her). I read this book aloud to Noah, and he even asked me to read it one evening instead of our current bedtime read-aloud, The Enchanted Castle. (We LOVE E. Nesbit!)

History and writing this week were about the Erie Canal. In addition, we continued in Megawords, Winston Grammar, our catechism study, and Building Thinking Skills. We also added Mind Benders. His geography work again concerned colonial America. I decided to drop music until September, as we didn't have the time to devote to it this week.

We are really enjoying the songs for learning the catechism. The CD is by Holly Dutton. She's really talented. We are walking around, bursting into, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy-oy Him fo-or-ever!"

Next week will be a "short" week, as we'll be off Thurs. and Friday. I'm not sure if I'll have time to post a weekly report. We'll be studying Andrew Jackson's presidency.

Aren't they cute?

Oreo and Lanah are really snuggling a lot together this afternoon. We even saw Lanah grooming Oreo, which is almost as rare as Halley's Comet!

First Week of School

So, our first week of 6th grade is almost over. It's a "light schedule", since we're still working in the afternoons. In September, we'll start the full schedule (including poetry, Latin, science, civics, and art). Here's the recap:

Bible...We're using Training Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade. This week was catechism question 1: "What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."

Math...We're using manipulatives to work on multiplication facts, a weak area for ds.

History...The Monroe Doctrine. In addition to the worksheet, test, and project, ds read a short biography of Monroe, and filled in a book report sheet. We also listened to several chapters of History of US in the car.

Geography...Physical features (mountains, bays, rivers, coastal plains, plateau) of the original thirteen colonies. This one was frustrating, because our little atlas was no help. I checked out two different atlases from the library yesterday.

Writing...As usual, my creative ds turned a writing assignment into something more. He used powerpoint to create a presentation on the Monroe Doctrine. My favorite part is the page talking about Spain losing Florida. He used a photo of a baby crying, and labeled it "Spain".

Music...Ancient music and the Middle Ages. Today, we'll be looking at some videos of Gregorian chant on youtube.

Grammar...Started Winston Grammar. I think the hands-on and visual aspects will be very helpful.

Vocabulary...Megawords 2. I think this will be fairly easy for him, except spelling the words. I think this will be good for him.

Other...Buiilding Thinking Skills.

Oh, wow! Brand-new bunnies!

Today was a day of surprises at the rabbit rescue. When we arrived, I went to the garage to load up the wagon with litter (Wednesday is Litter Box Day). As I pulled the wagon up to the bunny barn, Noah came out, saying, "Mom, there's something crawling around on the floor; it's creeping me out!" I expected it to be a bug; hopefully not another huge spider (which I still think was a baby tarantula).
What he had found was a little mammal, dusty, squirming on the floor, half under the cabinet where we keep medical supplies. It was gray, about 4" long. At first I thought it might be a squirrel or even a mole. Yes, I was INSIDE a rabbit rescue, but my first thought was NOT "baby rabbit". We weren't aware of any of our rabbits being in the family way; we get them all spayed and neutered ASAP. But as I stooped to pick up the creature, I saw distinctive ears and tail. Sure enough, it was a newborn rabbit!
When Erika got there, a few minutes later, we found another five babies stashed behind the litter box in a cage. She handed the babies to me as she took them out of the cage; one was cold, so she told me to put it inside my shirt, next to my skin. The residents of the cage are two female rabbits who arrived just this week from another shelter. They were scheduled to be spayed tomorrow. Oops.
So Blueberry Muffin is a mommy now! She's a gorgeous and very nice gray and white Rex rabbit, and her babies appear to be some gray, and some gray and white spotted like their mom. (No fur yet, but their skin is spotted.)

Back to School!

It's time to Someone to start sixth grade tomorrow! Woohoo! I spent a lot of time agonizing over curriculum choices, and I'm pretty happy with my plans.

We'll be using:
Veritas Press History
Megawords 2, then Vocabulary from Classical Roots
Phonetic Zoo
Latin for Children
Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization
Training Hearts, Teaching Minds
Winston Grammar
Building Thinking Skills
Young Scholars' Guide to Composers
Artistic Pursuits
Information, Please!
How Government Works
Lyrical Life Science
Read and Understand Poetry
Institute for Excellence in Writing

Whew! It looks like a LOT, but some of those subjects will be done only weekly. We won't be starting a full schedule until Sept. 8th; we're easing into things.

Ridiculous Cuteness!

We have new bunnies at the shelter. They're Harlequin bunnies, four weeks old. So tiny and unbelievably adorable! Don't you agree?

Our Latest Adventure

Well, there's never a dull moment around here! Wednesday, we took ds to the children's hospital for a sleep-deprived EEG. We had to keep him up ALL NIGHT the night before!! Thanks to our dear friends who loaned us a Playstation 3, it wasn't too bad. We should get the results soon.

Sunday afternoon siesta

So I was taking my usual Sunday afternoon siesta in the recliner when Noah decided I needed some rabbits. Tubby and The Princess snuggled in for awhile. Aren't they the cutest? Awww.

(Note that I am wearing the perfect Sunday afternoon laziness ensemble: yoga pants and an oversized "Frodo Lives" t-shirt.)