Bird's-eye View of the Week: From Ballet to Bugs to Australia

Degas never envisioned this.

   So I'm sitting in a small classroom overflowing with estrogen effusing from the pores (if that is possible) of almost two dozen young teen girls. They are waiting their turns to be on-stage for their respective dances in the romantic-comedic ballet, "Copellia" or the second act, "Let's Go to the Movies."

     There is really nothing cuter or funnier or more ironic than the antics that occur in the dressing room of a ballet performance. The lithesome beauties you see floating in synchrony across the stage in swirls of pastel evanescence devolve backstage into bowls full of giggling jello, generously dosed with bursts of purposeless energy, with punctuations of loud announcements of sudden crises ("I've LOST my BLACK RIBBON!!!!!!") Currently, while clouds of lemon yellow tulle await the call to the stage, they have decided that doing improv in a British/Aussie accent is the epitome of cleverness. Ten hours of confinement might do that to a twelve-year-old. Others are simply making the air unbreathe-able either with hairspray or their own body odors. While looking like they stepped out of Mozart's Baroque Germany in their Easter egg velvet and sequins, they are texting or posting on their phones, or simply demonstrating their ability to burp on command. Such loveliness.

Grace in false eyelashes: Mei as a Pink Lady in "Grease"

Such grace.
   
   Our week has been dominated by fretful shopping trips for false eyelashes and flaming red lipstick, school on theater floors, and  hair gel. Lots of hair gel. And fast food. yuck. Glad we've got that behind us. But we'll miss the costumes, music, and yes, the giggles. Ah, well. Nutcracker auditions will be here in three months.   
   
   There WERE other happenings this week that didn't involve theatrics. Mei made progress on her American History scrapbook. I'm pushing to get through the Revolution, or at least 1776, in advance of our trip to Philly in two weeks. She really enjoys working on it with all the papers, tools, and pens. But it also is successfully showcasing her knowledge of events in a way that is much more Charlotte Mason and much less standardized testing.

Stowaway by Karen Hesse

   I added in an Australia lapbook as well. The Land Down Under was a geographical focal point for our year coinciding with our reading of  "Stowaway," an account of Captain Cook's voyage through the eyes of a 12-year-old crewman. I settled on the Australia lapbook by "A Journey Through Learning.com". It covered

No rules. Just-right type lapbook.

all the key points (geography, climate, people groups, languages, foods, customs, holidays, etc.), but doable in about 2-3 weeks, just what we have left. There were plenty of other good lapbook choices, but our time was limited. Should I have planned better and started earlier? Yeah, lesson learned. Even after 10 years of homeschooling.

   I made a few slight adjustments. I printed a better map from Uncle Josh's Outline Map Book and had Mei label it.  Enchanted Learning.com provided the labeling key along with a coloring page for the flag. In addition, they had an Australia tab-book that I printed in booklet format to slip into a pocket we'll add to the lapbook. The  tab book ("tab" as in subject tab) covered a lot of subjects in detail and included a page on the Great Barrier Reef, something that A Journey Through Learning shockingly left out! I've kept a paid account at Enchanted Learning for five years now and have never regretted it.

    We also were delighted with the hatching of our Preying Mantis egg case! And the best part was being there when it happened!! It was sitting on the table in our school/sunroom where it had been soaking up rays for a few weeks now. I had begun to wonder if it was maybe an old, empty case. While reviewing the schedule for the day, I stopped in mid-sentence, exclaimed "OH" quite loudly, enough to alarm Mei, and dropped everything for the next two hours. In the end, over 100 little mantids were hatched. I agreed to keeping a couple of them, and the rest were sprinkled over the hedges where we tried to avoid as many spider webs as we could. Mei researched the challenge of feeding an insect that is smaller than your fingernail, and since then, we have lost one to cannibalism, and one to drowning, but the remaining one enjoys gazing out the bay window waiting for his/her  half-dozen ants and juvenile earwigs to drop in.

    Although we're still getting an inordinate ratio of dreary, gray days to sunny ones, we're finally enjoying coatless-ness and green-ness. Summer's American start-date comes this weekend (Memorial Day) and we're ready. Thanks be to God for leading us to the end of another school year!

Got Summer Plans? Got Preying Mantis advice? Tell Mother All About It!

Enjoy more end-of-the-week antics at the following homeschool hang-outs: Collage Friday,  Homeschool Mother's Journal, and Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Thanks for hosting, ladies!

Bird's-Eye View of the Week: Co-ops, Red Tape, and Cicadas

We'll be seeing a LOT of these. Credit www.northjersey.com

The end is in sight! 

We've reached May. AND the sun has been shining as much as two whole days in a row! And I even have turned off the heat (most of the time)! This is sooooo un-Maryland. IOW, it's usually nicer, even hot at times. But, it HAS helped delay the emergence of the 17-Year Cicadas! So, I'll kwitmibitchen.


Some mile-markers this week! After the two straight days of rain and Dad out of town, putting on street clothes and heading to the orthodontist sounded like a party. And turns out, it kind of was! The doc put a 'hold' on rubber bands already after only a couple of months. (Doc: "Wow, her teeth are really responsive!" Me: "So do we get a rebate for less services required?" Doc: "Hahahaha.")

It's Official!

Bigger and better was Mei's American name being officially entered into the government record books. Changing her name was not something we just recently decided on; her American name was chosen before she came home 11 years ago. But just last year, through a fluke, we discovered that the INS never noted it when she arrived in the States, so as far as the US government was concerned, our daughter didn't exist, at least not by what we call her. Tell that to Social Security, however, who gladly issued her an ID card in 2002. Under the American name. Hmmm. Anyway, the event gave us an excuse to eat cake!


Our co-op days are winding down. The Thursday group is finished already and the Friday group has just one more week. On Thursdays, Mei participated in a good introductory writing course similar to IEW. After two years, she has gained a lot of confidence in her writing, but more importantly, in taking constructive criticism. For her, that is H-U-G-E! She will now be equipped to take on the next level offered on Fridays. Thursdays this year also offered art and speech. I was really impressed with how well the kids responded to the speech topic and was glad they had this exposure to something not normally taught to ones so young. Art was taught by yours truly and used the "Meet the Masters" program. I've been dying to write a review of it here; maybe when the chalkdust settles. For now I'll just say that all the kids gave it a thumbs up and so did this teacher!

Board games class for an only child. Perfect!

 Fridays have given Mei exposure to cake decorating, cooperative board games, health, and P.E. Mom has assisted in the cake class (:-D !! ), a sewing class, and her best hour of the week, Study Hall. ("SSShh! I'm trying to write a blog post!")

Both of these co-ops have enriched our studies, but more importantly, our interactions with other Christian parents and kids. It's been especially wonderful for our school-of-one, and I recommend it.

American History Scrapbook

For this final stretch, I've given Mei the option of creating an American History scrapbook to showcase all that she's covered in the last two years, 1600-1800. Basically, it's a ramped up lapbook. She is super-excited to work on it, and I'm going to give her all the time she wants. I was going to write about it here, but it was getting a little long, so I'm detailing that in a separate post.  I'll share my sources and stuff there. Take a look if you want some ideas! 

The end would be NOW if I went by counting school days alone. I was shocked to see we had completed 180 in APRIL! But when you don't take off for Rosh Hashanah, a week for Easter, or Staff Development Days, they stack up. Add in some school on weekends (educational trips), and woah! Nonetheless, we haven't met all our objectives yet, so I'll hide Mei's eyes from this post and keep the cat IN the bag (wink).

How about you?

Got the end in your sights? Done already? Or do you school year-round? Tell Mother All About It!

Linking up with other incredibly gifted and equally humble homeschool bloggers at Hammock Tracks "Homeschool Review", Homegrown Learners "Collage Friday,", iHomeschool Network's "The Homeschool Mother's Journal", and Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers "Weekly Wrap-up". Thanks for hosting, ladies!
 

Bird's-Eye View of the Week: Blessings From Chaos

Some days have more hours in them than others. 

I don't mean that we get more hours in our day to accomplish things by being super-organized or having uber-reponsible, self-motivated kids. I'm talking about when life seems to throw more at you in ONE day than 24 hours should hold.

Well, this was a WEEK that had more DAYS in it than it should. Boy, am I ready to "wrap it up!"

Let's start with:
Monday

Just as I was finishing a devotional at Proverbs 31 Ministries and feeling refreshed and in control (God's so funny), Father R, who is on his way to a job interview, calls. 

He's wrecked the car. 

He is almost an hour away and needs to be rescued. At least we are organized enough (today) that we can grab the school books, we have a full tank of gas (today), and we have  nothing on the calendar like, oh.. I don't know...a three hour ortho appointment.

Pick him up. Drive to the repair shop. Woah! Looked like a car ER ward. And some were pronounced DOA!

Then he says, non-chalantly, "I found a message from your Dad. Probably has a tax question. I'll call him while you entertain yourself in the only Container Store in the state of Maryland." (I guess the company has found an inordinate number of hopeless hoarders here and pretty much given up. )

Loaded down with new plastic stuff, I return to the car. My mom must Go Directly to the Emergency Room, Do Not Pass Through The Doctor's Office. We are not exactly comforted that they need to keep her overnight. 

Tuesday. Still no satisfaction for the doctors, but it's looking like the prelude to a heart attack. Another night in the hospital.

At dinner, Father R gets the anticipated insurance call to tell him how much they'll cover for the repairs. "Surprise! Your car is totaled!"

Mom gets the green light and we, rather than my dad,  have chosen to be the taxi home tomorrow. 

It is my sweet, thoughtful little girl with the light-bulb moment that suggests making some meals for her. (I've only been making meals for the needy at my church for twenty years, but I didn't think of it myself.) 

Wednesday
So we pull some off the freezer shelf and create some more with less than 24 hours notice, thanks to the wonderful pre-planning  provided by 5Dinners-in-1Hour.com. We make three fresh loaves of bread in the machine. We get them together just in time to pick her up at discharge time.  We spend the rest of that afternoon cleaning out her frig and settling her down. Then the hour-and-a-half drive through rush hour home.  

Thursday
My hubster quits his job.

Friday
TGIF 


It is at this point that I want to say: Hooray for a few textbooks, and some co-op classes (did I mention that I teach two days?)  to keep the week from being a total loss school-wise. 

But I also want to say, in the middle of all the chaos, that God--not me--WAS in control. Father R wasn't hurt, Mom didn't die, we'll get enough value for the car to go a long way toward a replacement, and Father got the job.  Most importantly, we were blessed to be a blessing, and Mei was a part of that.  

You can always find something to be thankful for even if you have to be thankful for an awful lot in one day. Or week. 

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. 

James 1:1-3. The Message

Got a TGIF story? Tell Mother All About It!

Linking up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, The Homeschool Mother's Journal, Hammock Tracks, Collage Friday, and Beautiful Family Friday. Bless you, gals!

Bird's-Eye View of the Week: Meet the Artists

If we're not getting ripped off by our government in these parts, it's the Weather Shamans.

It was dubbed "Snowquestration" as a play on the recent Congressional stab at balancing a budget that has put so many--including our fledged "robin"---on a work diet through forced unpaid days off. The shamans made lots of promises of monumental adverse conditions--icing, downed power lines, bread and toilet paper shortages. But just like Congressional tactics, it didn't work out as planned.

I was stunned though by how many of my friends were pumped by the vision of a foot of snow dumped on us even as our daffodils have emerged. Seems we're so snow-day deprived that we'll accept it at almost any cost. Most of them sounded like what they really wanted was some weather-imposed family time. Funny. And sad. Needless to say, their kids are educated in the Red Brick Building.

Ginevra de' Benci.  The only Da Vinci in North America.

In our Yellow-Sided Homeschool, the weather PRIOR to the non-event was ideal to field trip to the National Gallery of Art on the Mall in Washington. (THE Mall. No "Five Belows" here.) Our goal was to see as many of the paintings that we had discussed in our co-op art appreciation class that uses "Meet The Masters."  It's such a privilege to be able to easily access originals of some of the world's greatest works of art. And it never fails to impress students to stand in front of the very work they have only seen in books or slides. To be able to see the brushstrokes and sometimes--as in the Da Vinci portait "Ginevra de' Benci"--the actual fingerprint of the artist.

Clockwise from top left: Entering the East Building through the "Multiverse" or as C.K. called it "The Tunnel of Awesomeness"; Calder over homeschoolers; Handy art.

Meet the Masters doesn't limit itself to earlier periods, but brings us artists right to the present day. Fortunately, the Gallery does too in its East Wing building which is devoted to modern art. We had fun  acting out some of the works as you can see!

Clockwise from top left: Marilyn by Warhol vs Mei by God; Waltz of the Georgia O'Keeffe Flowers; "La Scienza della fiacca" ("The Science of Laziness") by Frank Stella and kids who are NOT.

We tried to exit the city ahead of the usual rush (which normally starts as early as 3:30), but alas, everyone ELSE was in a hurry to exit the city ahead of the usual rush which meant that we all still stood in traffic. And just to be the first for bread, milk, and toilet paper.

So Winter Storm "Saturn" was all hot air like its namesake, but I still let Mei have a "snow day." I took on some more bread-baking projects and ended up with two fantastic baguettes and a sourdough boule!  On a sloppy night, it went perfectly with the slow-cooked minestrone from 5 Dinners-in-1 Hour.com.

My First Sourdough Bread.Not my last.

Mei jumped into the first week of her new spelling workbook by Evan-Moor Publishing, Building Spelling Skills. While I was afraid the Charlotte Mason police would be after me for using a workbook, I think they might let me off with this one. It encourages creating a visual in the mind of the word, instructs to spell aloud while touching the letters of the word (multi-sensory), and even uses dictation! And it's not twaddley. OK, so Mei only got a 78, but I have confidence!

While I'm having fun helping little girls learn something I've loved my whole adult life, SEWING, Mei spends an hour in her co-op's Learning Through Games class. She's uber-duber disappointed that she's not taking sewing (she didn't know I was a helper),  but God had it all worked out. While I can teach her sewing any old time (and already have), homeschooling an only child leaves us with limited choices for game-playing.    So far she has played Quirkle and Set. I hope I get some leads on winners (haha) that we can invest in for home.

After Father R and I recover from Mei's hyper  lively friend sleeping over, we can look forward to some spring-like weather for riding lessons. It will be a welcome change. And just think: the farm could have been buried in snow. We'll forgive ya' this time, Shamans!

Got Snow, Saturn, Sequestration or Sourdough? Tell Mother All About It!
Linking up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers , Homeschool Mother's Journal, Collage Friday, Beautiful Family Friday and Hammock Tracks. Thanks, guys!

Bird's-Eye View of the Week: TGINF (Thank Goodness It's NOT February)

I hate February. 
(so glad it's over.)

By this, the middle of the school year and the middle of another cold, dreary, perpetually cloudy, neither-snow-nor-sun, Mid-Atlantic winter, I always feel our school is stale, lifeless, and boring.  (I even develop a comma addiction.)

What, not you? You live in California, I bet.

Typical weather, but at least we're outside.

Sometimes what it takes is some new curriculum. For instance, try as I might to get Simply Charlotte Mason's "Spelling Wisdom" to work for us, I just can't. Don't get me wrong. It is a wonderful book. We both love the rich quotes. Mei has even run across some a couple of years later in their original works and remembered them. 
 
But it's just too much "me" work--dictating, discussing, dictating again. I find it slipping through the cracks too often to the point that we are on the first book after three years. (There are six.) 

I'm also still not convinced that she is learning to spell. (Sorry, Charlotte.) It does not rely on spelling rules or phonetics, so it becomes just a shot-in-the-dark approach. It presupposes that Mei will remember the words simply by having studied them for a couple of days. Maybe ALL spelling curricula more-or-less end up that way, but I'm not sure. Mei wants to continue to use it for copywork though, her idea. Intriguing since we don't do copywork anymore.

So I have ordered Evan Moor's "Building Spelling Skills Grade 6+". It works along the same 5-day format as their Daily Geography that has been very successful here. Open the book. Do. (It's nice to a have an occasional workbook to rely on. A CM curric does demand a lot of "me." ) If you've got any other ideas, I'm listening.


The Handbook of Nature Study blog's monthly Outdoor Hour Challenge nature study themes have been another Febreeze-for-school that I highly recommend. The focus in February has been birds, my fav topic. (I'm Mother Robin for a reason!)
It's gotten us outdoors, or at least LOOKING outdoors! You can read more of our birding adventures here and here. And you can find info about outfitting YOUR yard for birding here. You can probably guess I take  this subject seriously!! :-)  

She makes braces look good, doesn't she?

And how I could I forget that Mei got new chrome bumpers top and bottom? She's taking it like a trooper. The morning after she casually mentioned that some wire might need trimming as it had cut her finger during the donning of the rubber bands. Now That's Fortitude.

There has been an unexpected sign of spring though. Can you guess what it is? Hint: this is NOT a rose by any other name cuz it will NEVER smell sweet.

Guess what's NOT coming up roses?

Got cabin fever? Got a cure? Tell Mother All About It!

Linking up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Homeschool Mother's Journal.

Bird's-Eye View of the Week: There's Smart , and then There's Smartphone Smart

In my life this week…

There is a strange, round, yellow thing in the sky. We have heard of other parts of the world that see it daily, but it's been hidden behind dark, thick clouds for so long we forget what they call it. 

In some ways I didn't miss it because the rain excused me from weeding. But it's okay. I still have my plantar fasciitis to keep me sitting. (Won't help the way I look in a bathing suit though.) It IS nice to see Father R chasing Mei around the yard in the lawn tractor!

In our homeschool this week…

We are really pushing to complete the Marco Polo and Ancient China lapbooks in time for our homeschool group's Closing Program.  Which is in just 10 days. And we will be spending five of them away celebrating Memorial Weekend. Looks like more School-on-Wheels!

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

Several roadtrips to the lake house to prepare for the summer season.  Therefore, LOTS of School-on-Wheels.  

This Tuesday, we are bidding farewell to Tai as she departs on a four-month domestic deployment to Miami to work with their local law enforcement.  Wasn't too sorry to hear that the Defense Department is nixing the remaining deploys--which could include less scenic places like Afghanistan--due to budget cuts. The government does get SOME things right.

My favorite thing this week was…

Mei finding a nest of robins (how apropos for me!) in her tree house/swingset! They had just hatched! Now to keep her and the cats away. 

My other fav thing was discovering a homeschool group right in my backyard that provides more coops, field trips, enrichment, and support than I thought I would ever find. Can't wait to get involved!

What's working/not working for us...

My new smartphone (the Droid X by Motorola) is definitely working and I'm still mining its applications for productivity in the home and school. It is cutting WAAAAYY down on the amount of books we stuff into the backseat for School on Wheels. Thanks to the many books on the Ambleside Online curriculum list that are free online, I can use my phone to read our daily selections right from the screen while we tool down the highway. Even Father R enjoys listening to something else than radio.
This is a subject I plan to get into deeper in another post. Stay tuned.

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have…

Foreign language next year?  Latin, Spanish, or French? Anything?

And whether declining teaching in our Pioneer Girls Club next year is selfishness or protectiveness. (So much time and energy being taken away from schooling. Wah.)

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

Cutest ugliness you ever saw. 

Got any smartphone ideas to share? Share them! Thanks for stopping by and thanks to The Homeschool Chick for hosting the Homeschool Mother's Journal!