Day 115--What's That Candy Like?

Yesterday, Rachel went to a Valentine's Day dinner with other 16-18 year olds at church. It was pretty cute. They all made little boxes and brought Valentine cards for each other like in second grade, remember? I haven't been to school in a very long time, so I didn't know that everyone includes candy with their Valentines now. We printed hearts on a couple sheets of paper and taped them to an oatmeal box, then we just printed little hearts that said, "Happy Valentine's Day, from Rachel." We're not crafty.

Anyway, she came home with the thing full of candy--none of which any of us can eat. So today, they wanted to unwrap and break apart all the candy to see what it was like. We've had food allergies and sensitivities for a very long time. It's been 13 years since Rachel ate processed sugar and almost as many years for the rest of us. So Sam and Sarah especially have no idea what candy is like. We thought the Nerds Rope was pretty fun. Nerds stuck to some kind of gooey jelly-bean type stringy thing. I've never seen one, but we told Wilson about it and he said he's had them. I'd think that's pretty yummy. I remember liking Nerds. They thought the chocolate smelled awful. None of them have ever had any of that at all. We stopped eating chocolate way before we stopped sugar. I think it's been 19 years since I had chocolate.


They melted a BlowPop to see the gum inside, and Sam said, "Why would you chew on something you aren't going to swallow?" To which Sarah added, "What a waste of time!" We spend a lot of time on food around here; we don't want to waste any on non-food chewables!

Sarah decided to do her paper on how the barometric pressure correlates to how people feel--migraines, sluggishness, sadness, etc. It should be interesting. All I know is that when the pressure is changing, I'm miserable. I just wish there was something we could do about it.

See you tomorrow!

Day 114

Sarah had a fun science experiment today, but I'm pretty sure we didn't totally figure out the math with it. She had to drop an object from the ceiling and use a stop watch to time it. She had to drop it ten times and find the average time it took to fall to the floor. She just used a ball; it took .5 or .6 seconds each time. So the average was .54 seconds. She was supposed to find the height of the ceiling just by having the time it took for the ball to fall. It's pretty cool, but we came up with half of what the height really was each time. The math isn't that complicated, and I usually understand it pretty well. So I'm not sure what to do about it. We even found a youtube video explaining it, and that guy did it in a way that would have come out right with our calculations. Usually our science book is right, but I guess I'm not sure about it this time.

Rachel has been looking at international real estate for at least a couple years now. She says if you study real estate in a country, you can learn a lot about the place. Anyway, we realized how much more US money is worth in some places sometimes, so we thought it would be fun to buy a small piece of land in Peru or somewhere and donate it to our church there for a garden. Our church has congregations all over the world, and Kamille's parents know someone that's in Lima for a few years; so we thought we'd get them to help us find and buy the land. We even thought it would be fun to have a fund raiser for it by selling personal pizzas to people we know at church. I hope we can get it all organized soon.

Well, we have another delay on our house closing. I really think it might not happen. I guess the buyers messed around with the money in their bank account--taking it out and putting some in--while the bank was checking on their balance to be sure they had a certain amount in there or something. So now, we have to wait for a few more weeks so the bank can check again and again. I can't believe I have to trust them to be able to leave it alone and have it approved. The realtor said she told them, but maybe they didn't understand. We told her we're not sure we're going to extend the time again for them to get it done. It's been "pending" for a LONG time and we're feeling like we just need to have it available for people to start looking at again. Frustrating.

We decided to separate Sam and Sarah for the research report. Jeff said he thought they should each do their own. I told Sam I wanted him to pick something observable, but he doesn't want to do a science report. I think he would enjoy doing something about the way muscles work and studying his exercises as part of it. He loves exercising. He does all of it at night after everyone goes to bed. Wilson used to do that too. I'd find him doing push ups in the den at 11:00 at night. I thought that would keep him from falling asleep. Maybe it did; he used to fall asleep pretty late. I think Sam goes right to sleep though, so I guess it's ok.

See you tomorrow!

Day 113--Julie Bogart's 6 C's of Connection

I wrote this blog post a while ago and hadn't published it. Considering the migraine I've had for a few days (you noticed Rachel wrote yesterday's post), I thought this was a good day to put it here.

At the Brave Writer retreat this summer, Julie gave a talk called “The Invisible Education,” about how the feeling in our homes effects our kids’ education. She gave us the six C’s of Connection. Six ways we can foster connection in our families, because connection is the key to learning together.

First, compassion. Compassion at my house looks like letting Sam play with legos before school and not asking him to write more than he can stand with his own hand. It’s not calling Sarah in for math when she’s playing the piano for the 14^th time that day, and asking Rachel to clean the living room instead of doing dishes when her hands are dry and cracked. I like to look for ways they’re showing me compassion too. It makes me feel loved.

Next is Collaboration. We love collaborating. When one of us has something important going on, the others are all there cheering. When we’re doing a project together, each one is aware of what the others are doing. Like when we make pizza; we all have our usual jobs. Sam makes the sauce, Sarah sautees the vegetables, and Rachel and I do crust and cheese. It’s so much more fun than making pizza alone. Faster too. We do almost everything together, but even when they’re working on something separately, they tell each other all about it. They each have their own science book, and they’re always talking about what they’re reading. Most of the time they’re telling each other how much the other will love it when it’s their turn to do that book.

Communication is next. Oh, this is our favorite. All we do is talk all day. Some days I ask them what we’ve done that I can put in this blog, and talking all day is always on the list. I love that about our family, because we’re not afraid to say anything to each other. We might even say too much, but I’d rather do that than not say enough. All this conversation leads to tons of laughter. Tonight we were talking about how we know what each other is thinking without even saying anything. I guess we don’t need to talk because we talk so much. That makes us laugh too--mindreading. We’ll have to do one of our comedy sketches about it.

The fourth C is Creativity. I’m not creative in a crafty way or drawing or anything visual, but I’ve always been a dreamer. The best advice I’ve ever gotten was, “Don’t be afraid to do things other people wouldn’t do.” I may have taken it too far, because I’m not sure I do anything other people would do but it’s fun that way. As far as homeschool goes, I try to see the educational value in the things that interest my kids instead of thinking they always have to learn academic things from school-type activities. Like opening the etsy shop to sell photos they’ve taken, self-publishing that book on Amazon, making lego stop-action videos, or coming up with comedy sketch ideas. How are those things educationally inferior to writing a boring book report on a boring book they never wanted to read in the first place or filling in blanks in a workbook? Clearly they’re not.

Cognition is the next C. The online dictionary says that cognition is the “process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.” What a fun definition! Thinking, doing, taking it all in. This is how we do everything. I don’t mean that I set up experiments or activities or that we have contrived experiences designed to lead to a specific outcome. Yuk. We just do what we do and learn from it little by little. I like to give the kids plenty of space to do this. It takes a long time to see progress, but it happens no matter what I do about it.

The last C is Consistency. I have to laugh at myself here. We get up around 8:00, Sam sits in the recliner waking up while I jog on my trampoline and the girls eat breakfast. I know what’s going to happen every day. We have a predictable pattern and it feels good. We usually don’t start school until after lunch, but we have so much to do in the morning: eating, studying scriptures individually and together, creating something cool with legos, checking email, talking and laughing, watching videos of Eliza learning to crawl. We’re busy.

Julie says, “The priority of home is connection.” And I agree wholeheartedly

See you next week!

Day 112--No Boring Narration!

This is Rachel. Mom has a migraine, so I'm writing today. She had one last weekend and thought she was getting over it, but I guess she wasn't.

I got to work with Sam and Sarah on their math. They were learning how to convert between Fahrenheit and celsius. I loved doing that when I learned how, but I don't think it's really anything I'll use very often. Maybe if I get to travel someday, which I would love!

I love formulas, and I was trying to help Sam get used to taking a formula and plugging the numbers in. Sam does not like writing math down as he does it. It's so important to write down the steps you're taking, especially when you get into Algebra and Chemistry, but he can't see that yet. I can't blame him. I didn't realize it before, but I had to write everything down. If I can't see the math on paper I can't do it.

But Sam is an amazing math genius! He converted between Fahrenheit and celsius in seconds while I was still working through it on paper. I had him do most of them on paper even though he told me the answer before writing it. I wanted him to see how his answers came to be. Sarah is like me. She has to write everything down too.

Dad read to Sam about gorillas from the encyclopedia. Dad is so funny! He likes to read to us, repeating what the book says, and then asking us to tell him what we learned at the end of each paragraph. It's funny, but it's always been hard for us to tell back what was just read to us. I think it's hard because we all just heard it! Why would we tell him that baby gorillas play ball when he just read, "Baby gorillas play ball?"

It's most fun to tell someone something they didn't just tell you, right? When Mom came in the room after Dad tried to get Sam to tell him about baby gorillas Sam turned around and told her all about it. That's the best narration. The kind that comes from wanting to share something interesting with someone else.

Hopefully Mom will see you tomorrow!

Day 111--So Tired!

Baby Eliza is 8 months old today! She's starting to get a tooth and wants to share things she puts in her mouth with her mommy and daddy! Isn't she thoughtful? She was so excited to Skype last night. She talked to us the whole time. I wonder what she was saying. I can't wait to get her in my arms again!

I mentioned Sam being sick on Friday, but most of the rest of us were feeling terrible over the weekend too. I had a migraine and some kind of stomach pain. Sarah had been having her stomach hurt for a few days too, but I thought it was stress. Maybe we had a bug, because it seemed like the same kind of strange feeling. Then Rachel told us she had been having it too, but she hadn't said anything. Thankfully, Sam didn't have that on top of his cold. He's not coughing right now, so I hope he can get some sleep. He's been so tired; so have we all. Jeff wanted to disinfect the recliner today before he sat in it!

It was so hard to think today because of tiredness, but we gave it a shot. Sam and Jeff studied for Sam's science test which he'll take tomorrow--partially open book, although I don't think he needs the book. Sarah could not think at all about her science today. She was introduced to an acceleration formula. More math. She's reading about Albert Einstein and Sam's reading about Ronald Reagan. I don't think they read too much of their books today. I read quite a bit of Streams to the River; River to the Sea. I'm never sure I'm getting the name right unless I look at the book. I don't have it with me. I think we liked it a little better today, but still it's not our favorite. Tonight Sarah told Jeff she wanted us to read something good as a family. I guess we're still in that rut.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. See you then!

Day110--How Many Sheep and Hogs?

We were doing some math problems from Ray's Higher Arithmetic yesterday, and one of them was about a man buying sheep and hogs. He bought the same number of sheep as hogs. The sheep were each $7 and the hogs each $6. The total amount of money he spent was $1482. So how many sheep and hogs did he buy? I always want to set up a problem algebraically, but logic will do too right? Rachel decided she'd just divide $1482 by 6 1/2 and then by 2. Logical.

I never even thought of that though. First I tried 7S + 6H = 1482, but I knew something was wrong with that. Then I realized that since the number of sheep equalled the number of hogs, they could be the same variable. So I ended up with 7S + 6S = 1482. That worked, but how important is it that people set it up that way? I mean adults that aren't in school.

I texted the problem to Kamille, and she divided 1482 by 6 then by 7 and found the average of those numbers and divided by two. So why do we have a fit when our kids can't (or don't want) to set up an equation? Do most of us do that to solve actual problems? Well ok, I do; but that may be because I've been teaching my kids math for years. I'm not sure I would have otherwise. Sure, they need to learn to do it for school, but maybe we should praise their ability to be logical about it too. After all, that will serve them well in adulthood. And if we get excited that they can do it logically, they might just get more excited about trying it the way we want them to.

Sam's been sick today. He's got a cold, and sat around in the recliner all day without getting up. And my head hurts. Lovely day huh? The girls were tired too, so we didn't have school. We watched Johnny Tremain and CNN10 for students. Also, the girls and I sewed and stuffed 18 fabric hearts that we volunteered to help with for a church activity. Plus we watched  a Hallmark movie and some Dick Van Dyke Show episodes. Thank goodness I made tons of chicken and dumplings for dinner last night. We had it for breakfast and dinner today. Cake for lunch!

See you next week!

Day 109

Rachel and I edited for a while today. We cut and cut and cut. I think we cut out about six pages worth of stuff. And we're only on page nine. Well, it's nine now. I don't know what page that stuff was on when we started. Actually some of what we cut was alternative beginnings. She had tried out two or three ways to start off, but I think we're happy with the way it is now. It jumps right into the middle of the story now.

Rachel settled on her research topic too. She's going to do a project about how writing affects your health. Wilson's actually doing the same project at college this semester for a research credit. Rachel didn't know that when she chose what to do. Aren't they cute? Picking the same thing. So I had him send her his proposal for the project so she can see what that looks like for a college student. Also, he sent her some articles about it. It should be fun. We're excited. Now Sam and Sarah need to choose what they're doing exactly.

I started reading Streams to the River, River to the Sea yesterday. It started out kind of violent and gross, but I think it's going to be interesting. We'll see how everyone likes it. As you know, we haven't had too much luck with liking the books I've picked this year.

I've been trying to get up a little earlier this week, so we can get something more done before lunch. It's been ok so far, but that usually doesn't last me long. After not many days, I normally need to sleep in. I've been trying not to stay up too late though, so maybe that'll help. But I'm not feeling like going to sleep tonight. Second shift hours would be good for me; they just aren't good for anyone else. Maybe I can nudge back the time that my brain comes to life. Maybe I can get it to be before 10:30pm!

See you tomorrow!