Over in the gallery.
Not much to say today. Too tired. 
Too scatterbrained too, but when did *that* ever stop me?
Tuesday, February 24, 2004 in I Forgot To Pick A Category
we have pictures!
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Monday, February 23, 2004 in I Forgot To Pick A Category
pictures are forthcoming
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When Mom & Carl showed up for Sunday dinner last night, (a story in itself) Carl produced his cranky camera just for me. We took dozen of shots, and you can see them as soon as he gets them uploaded.
(and this will serve as a reminder, too. Hee hee hee.)
Monday, February 23, 2004 in homeschooling
travelling into the past
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As I’ve stated many times, history is something our family isn’t the biggest fan of, especially compared to things like science or math. The biggest issue, I think, has been trying to make it interesting or at least appeal somehow to their interests. I think we’ve achieved that in some ways, given the overabundance of Discovery specials on Ancient Egypt. (all of which we have seen on TLC 
)
A few years ago, Mom bought the kids The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Large and thick, with many photos and short bites of information, it isn’t something that you would look at and think “school book”. It’s actually very appealing. Meaghan got off to a slow start, and I had assigned her to read (and hopefully write about) 2-4 pages a day. Last week, she got to an interesting part, and sat down and read the whole rest of the book that day. Part of the reason this appealed to her, my “I’ll read if I have to” child, is the many activites on the bottom of every-other 2-page spread.
She made a stone-age hunter’s shelter, cave paintings, a cardboard model of a Greek home, an interior of a Roman room, Greek pancakes one day, and Egyptian rolls another. Actually the Egyptian honey rolls were so good, she’s made them three times.
Really, I think there is such a great abundace of ancient world materials, no wonder our family likes that time frame. I dunno why I think we haven’t covered history enough, they certainly know their ancient world. I wish there was some good, usefull FUN stuff for more recent times. Like after 1700, and non-American. We don’t need to go too in-depth about the American Revolution, do we?
Sunday, February 22, 2004 in I Forgot To Pick A Category
Uh-oh
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I just found out I forgot my grandfather’s 88th birthday.
Whups.
Saturday, February 21, 2004 in I Forgot To Pick A Category
What a day
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“Oh my God,” My mother was teary-eyed and weepy on the other end of the phone. “He’s so romantic! That is so sweet!”
“I know!” I squealed back, “I’m so lucky. How many men are like mine? I mean, I can’t believe it either!” We had to let each other go, it was so.. so… wonderful and romantic, not to mention domestic.
Ron had just told me, late this morning, that we were going to not only buy a closet organizer and fix up our bedroom, we were also going to the fabric store for the second time in three days.
What a man.
So that’s what I’ve been doing all day, shopping for half the afternoon, and cleaning for the rest of it. My room looks fabulous. I wish I had pictures and I wish I had those roman shades finished. Or even started, hmm. But our bedroom looks so cozy.
Details later my back is killing me. (But not as bad as it was before I exercised all the time and lost that 20 pounds. )
Friday, February 20, 2004 in homeschooling
I muse on highschool stuff again
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Every so often, like weekly, I angst over Addison’s high school program nad what we’re doing, what I think we should be doing, what we’ve done, what we coudl do better, and most of it is with the underlying feeling that I should have this figured out by now.
Well. I figured out why I hadn’t! I totally forgot he went to school for two years. Well, I *knew* he went to school, but I totally forgot, in a “forgot to plan” kinda way. Make sense? Let’s recap.
Addison went to public school for two years, grades 6 & 7 (1998-99 & 1999-2000). I concentrated on re-educating myself about what homeschooling is, and deschooled myself and the girls. I planned for them, for right then. When Emma came along, and Addison declared he wanted to come back home for grade 8 (and not grade 9 like we had been discussing) I just concentrated on the “one year at a time” philosophy which had worked up to that point.
And then, with new baby in tow we moved and I was still doing things on the fly. Now that I have stuff figured out, I realize high school is probably better done in a 3 or 4 year chunk, planning-wise. I concentrated on getting the basics covered and what I mostly worry about now is other stuff. Still somewhat essential (like history) but in the end he still knows more and retains more than I ever did. Even if I do feel it is slapped together most of the time.
(Aside: I was going to link to related journal entries, but I still need to upload a couple years in there. Huh.)
So I feel better about that, knowing I never really “got it” because too many other things were happening, and realizing that in a lot of ways I am too hard on myself for thinking I’m not doing it well enough, or covering it in depth enough, or they are not as smart & knowledgeable as I wanted, when at the end of the day, he’s growing up to be a fine, smart young man that I am really proud of.
The up side for the girls, is I’ve figured most of this out, and their high school schedules will be quite similar. The work will have been done.
Until then, I am going to be cleaning out one large whack of books we don’t really use.
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