Lord Tennyson Does It Again

Of course, Alfred, Lord Tennyson had numerous fans by the time of his death in 1892, but now he has another: my 9-year-old son, Philip.

A couple of weeks ago in Co-op, as part of our study on the Victorian Era and the Crimean War, we read Lord Tennyson's famous poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" which memorializes a disastrous but courageous charge by the British cavalry in 1854. I had no idea how receptive the kids would be to this rather long poem, but they seemed to enjoy it. They left class that day chanting,

"Half a league, half a league
half a league onward!"

But I never heard another word about it...until today. This afternoon, John Mark and Becca were in the living room finishing their assignments while the three younger ones were in the kitchen. Philip had just finished his spelling test and math corrections, so it was time for some fun, I suppose. The older kids muffled laughs as they heard Philip reciting for his younger brothers (who were now a captive audience) in fine dramatic style:

"HALF a league, HALF a league,
HALF a league ONWARD!!!!!
INTO the VALLEY of DEATH
rode the six hundred....."

When he had finished all six stanzas, Philip, determined that this be an educational experience for his brothers, demanded of his reluctant audience, "What do you remember??" After a long pause, Benjamin finally offered, "Cannons?" And Philip had Ben and Nathanael recite with him:

"CANNONS to RIGHT of them!!
CANNONS to LEFT of them!!!
CANNONS in FRONT of them!!!
Volley'd and Thunder'd!!"

Becca confided, "Mom, he really likes that poem; he says it all the time!" John Mark reminded me that this would make great video. While I sneaked around the corner with the camera, Becca told Philip, "Say it again!" Flattered, he gladly complied. I have video of him at the kitchen table reciting the poem with vigor that would have brought tears to Tennyson's eyes. (I also have the younger brothers taking the opportunity to escape by quietly creeping out the kitchen door, lest they become unwilling participants in the reading again).

Oh, it does a homeschool mother's heart proud.

Worn-Out Wednesday

Today is Wednesday, which means I am worn-out. We have co-op on Wednesdays, and even though things have been going quite smoothly at co-op this year, after school and supper, I am beat. My family has not quite adjusted to our school year yet, partly because we've had company in and out for the past 4 weeks and partly because I am organized enough that the kids are not allowed to be slackers this year. And eighth grade is killing me!

Tonight, however, we will have family time to celebrate knocking out another week. We've been watching "The Shaggy Dog" trailers for months, so tonight we will finally see the movie ( and it appears to be something that everyone can see).

In the meantime, as we wait for John to come home from a late night at work, John Mark is practicing piano and is driving me crazy with Bach's "Minuet in G". Now I know what my parents must have felt like, except they had it worse. They had to listen to all the easy-piano pop music of the day: "Ice Castles"; "Nadia's Theme" (otherwise known as "The Young and the Restless"); Commodores hits like "Still" and "Three Times a Lady"; "You Light Up My Life"; the theme from "Cheers" and probably the worst of the bunch "Tragedy". Yes, the Bee-Gees:

TRAGEDY! (duhn-Duhn!)
When the feelin's gone
and you can't go on,
it's TRAGEDY! (duh-DUHN)...

You can only imagine. So I am thankful that my 8th grade son either is completely not interested in or has not discovered easy piano pop music.

And other small blessings: our first 4-H meeting went very smoothly (mostly due to the fact that we did not have lots of new people like we did last year). If I can just get the current officers to stop trying to fix the new officer elections next month, things will be just fabulous. I have to admit, working with teenagers is keeping me on my toes! But they are a fun bunch of kids. I enjoy the friendships we have with the families of my kids' friends- another one of the blessings of homeschooling.

Three Down... Thirty-Three To Go

In honor of three fairly successful weeks of homeschooling this schoolyear (and in spite of the fact that Benjamin has already lost his handwriting book) here is a meme for homeschoolers:


1) ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED

I have enjoyed "The Well-Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer and I used it quite a bit before I joined our homeschool co-op. It's Classical Education without the intimidation.

2) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN’T BE WITHOUT

I use Tapestry of Grace to teach history at co-op, but even if I didn't have a co-op, I'd be using it as the framework for all of our history, literature, writing, geography, vocabulary, hands-on... everything except math, science and a foreign language! Although it took me a while to become comfortable with using it, I love it!

3) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT

I have to admit, I'm pretty good at buying only what I need now, so it's been a long time since I've made a big boo-boo. Switched on Schoolhouse did not work out for us at all, and it was expensive! Fortunately, I only bought four CDs. Whew! Other things that have not worked well for us are "Spelling Workout" and the Lyric Language "French" and "German" videos. What was I thinking... I had no intention of ever teaching French or German!

4) ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR

History Pockets, Moving West, Grades 4-6 (History Pockets)

I love history pockets! It's probably something to do with the fact that I still love to cut and paste, but you get to make the neatest notebooks! Actually, "Moving West" is not my favorite History Pockets book, but it's the one we used last year when we were studying Pioneers.

5) ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING THIS YEAR

I never ever in my wildest dreams imagined that I would like this, but I do. It's the Homeschool Minder that allows me to keep all my homeschool records fairly painlessly. I have found it easy to use and now that I'm close to high school transcripts, I am delighted to have found something that is functional and gives me professional-looking reports. I don't use all of the available features, but I like the ones I use. I never would have tried it, but I got it free with my HSLDA registration. The downside is that you have to pay for it by the year, which I find irksome but will probably end up paying for anyhow. Yes, they sucked me in.

6) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY

I have to admit, I am blessed to have a husband who allows me to get whatever I feel I need to teach. Sure, I could make a dream list that would include a school-only room, rather than the kitchen table, a new computer, more bookshelves and so on... but in reality, I am content. I have what I need this year and that is the point when I put away all the catalogs so I am not tempted to purchase more than what we need or could even use. (Frankly, I already have more stuff than I need or can even use!)

7) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED

Rosie the Maid from "The Jetsons".

Or self-grading papers.

8) ONE HOMESCHOOL CATALOG YOU ENJOY READING

Hands-down, Rainbow Resource. I also enjoy Veritas Press and Sonlight, though I don't order from them (please don't tell them!)

9) ONE HOMESCHOOLING WEBSITE YOU USE REGULARLY

Hmmm... it would have to be Tapestry of Grace. They have links for supplemental material for almost every subject and chapter, plus great discussion forums (which I rarely have time to visit.) When I need to buy or sell used curricula, I hang out at Vegsource.

10) YOUR TURN!

Saturday Cinquains

This semester, Becca and Philip are studying poetry in their co-op writing class. I've enjoyed reading their imaginative efforts! This past week, they worked on cinquains. A cinquain is a five line poem or stanza which follows a specific pattern. The cinquains they wrote are 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, 4 words, 1 word. Some lines are supposed to be adjectives, other lines are verbs, and so on. Here is a cinquain by Philip:

Pig
Fat, Short
Eating, Playing, Snorting
Lying in the mud
Bacon

And one by Becca:

Doll
Pretty, Cute
Dressing, Combing, Playing
Fun to collect
American Girls

And just for fun, I wrote one too! I followed the 2-4-6-8-2 syllable pattern, but in its strictest form, the cinquain is supposed to be:

1 word title (noun)- 2 syllables
2 descriptive words (adjectives) - 4 syllables
3 words that express action- 6 syllables
4 words that express feeling- 8 syllables
1 word (synonyms or reference to title in line 1)- 2 syllables

I didn't do that- too much work! My cinquain is in honor of the day's task:

Laundry
Mountains of Clothes
Sorting, Washing, Drying
Folding, Sorting, Hanging, Ironing
Endless

And the Guys' Weekend...

We women had a fabulous weekend in Chicago (as described in my previous post) but I neglected to tell you about the Guys' Weekend. One would expect a Guy's Weekend to include lots of pizza and football, and apparently, they came through on both of those counts. But the real story of the weekend was the fishing trip.

The men decided that since the girls were having such a fab time doing "girl stuff" that they would take this opportunity to spend the day fishing. They rented a pontoon boat at the lake and spent the afternoon swimming, driving around the lake like maniacs, and, of course, fishing. All the children wore life jackets- well and good- but beyond that, there were some... safety issues. With no women around to ensure that proper safety precautions were observed (i.e, we do not throw fishing tackle at each other) things went quickly downhill. During one unfortunate toss of the needlenose pliers, John's hand was punctured in the tendon below his middle finger. Since there were no women to see that he received proper medical care, and due to the convenient fact that his finger immediately went numb, he kept fishing. But later that night, things got bad.

John's finger began throbbing painfully, causing my generally anti-drug husband to begin digging in drawers for the unused Vicodin from a surgery a couple of years ago. He also needed a splint to protect his finger from movement, but it was late and he was tired. He devised a plan. After looking in the freezer and finding two popsicles left in the box, he made a deal with Nathanael and Ben, who were lucky enough to be underfoot at that moment: You can each have a popsicle if you don't tell the others and if you give me the sticks when you're done! Well, sure, dad! They quickly and quietly wolfed down their treats and John, in typical male-can-do fashion, created a splint out of popsicle sticks and duct tape.

The next day, Sunday, he went to the pharmacy and purchased a real splint, which he had to jerry-rig to fit his now swollen hand. After church, he spent the rest of the afternoon in front of the TV in a Vicodin-induced fog. When we returned home late that evening, he was o-u-t.

The next day I tried to convince him to go to the doctor and finally, after doing research on the internet and finding that if he wanted continued use of his right hand he ought to see a doctor, to the doctor he went. The doctor told him that since it was a punctured tendon, rather than a sliced tendon, it would have to heal on its own. He did prescribe a new super-antibiotic though, since the real danger from this wound was infection from all the nasty lake-and-fish germs. If the wound became infected, it would require surgery and other unpleasant things. SO, although his hand has been in pretty much constant pain this week, it is improving. The swelling has gone down significantly and he has much better movement. He hopes to be back to normal early next week.

And the moral of this story? Depends on who you ask. Ask me and I'll tell you that this is proof that men need their wives around to keep them from killing themselves. Ask my husband and he'll tell you that it's true... duct tape does it all.

Girls' Weekend Out

Oh what a week... or two! It has been crazy around here! The kids had a great time at Holiday World with their grandparents and I thorougly enjoyed the quiet of the house, in spite of having to clean. John's parents returned the kids on Tuesday night and then stayed the night with us. John grilled sausage, steak, hotdogs, brats and vegetable kebabs... definitely not a heart-healthy meal, though it was delicious. The next morning his parents headed off to Memphis for a vacation and we had co-op. My parents came in after we returned in the late afternoon. I gave blood for the first time at the blood drive at church that evening (seems like I was always pregnant or had lots of small children with me at past blood drives). My stepdad spent the next day doing odd jobs around the house that never seem to make John's priority list and I herded the kids through their schoolwork for the day. And on Friday, we were off: Girls' Weekend Out!

My mom has been buying Becca American Girl dolls each Christmas since she was about six, and she wanted to take her to American Girl Place in Chicago before Becca got too old. And they invited me! We took the Illini train from Carbondale to Chicago and arrived about 9:30 Friday evening. Mom had found an "American Girl Package" at the Wyndham, so we were delighted to receive a gift box for Becca with a plush robe for Kaya (the lucky doll who got to make the trip) that matched the robe hanging in the room. They were also out of the rooms with the two double beds which mom had requested- Darn! We were upgraded to a very large suite which was almost as big as the upstairs in my house! It was very plush and we were quite pleased with our good fortune.

We spent the next day at American Girl Place- you've never seen so many mothers, grandmothers, girls and dolls! Every little girl had a doll with her. We ate lunch at the American Girl Cafe, had Becca's "magazine" photo taken with her doll, attended the "American Girl Revue" and then had tea with Kaya back at the cafe, because it was her special day. The Cafe even had little chairs that clipped onto the table for the dolls, and the waitress brought a cup for dolls to have a "tea" too! I think even Becca might have been overwhelmed at the whole thing, but she was the perfect age. (One of the benefits of homeschooling is that they don't grow up too fast!)

Because American Girl Place is on Chicago's "Magnificent Mile" (the strip with the very expensive designer shops like Tiffany and Armani) we took the opportunity to run into Neiman-Marcus. Of course, people like me who do the bulk of their shopping at yard sales are not going to purchase anything inside Neiman-Marcus, but it was still something we needed to do. Becca didn't know she was supposed to be impressed with the Prada, Versace and Gucci items that were on display. We made our way to the department with her size clothes and I whispered, "Let's see how much these jeans are..." She gasped when she saw the $188 price tag. She ran to the the lingerie section across the aisle and found a bra for $380. Inspired, she ran back to us: "The person who finds the most expensive thing WINS!" Well, I won, but then, I also cheated by going to the jewelry counter.

After American Girls, we went to Borders for fresh reading material for the trip home, dropped off our stuff at the hotel, and headed to the Navy Pier. It was such nice weather- I wore a sweater all day long in perfect comfort. The evening was beautiful too. We stopped and watched the magician and comedy acts, rode the giant ferris wheel and ended the evening at Bubba Gumps. Becca almost fell asleep in her chowder.

We didn't have any plans for the next day, other than to get to the train on time, so we headed back down the Magnificent Mile to Filene's Basement, where the other overpriced stores send their unsold designer merchandise. Here you could find "normally" priced items, so we each found some things to make the outing a success. We wandered through the upscale stores at Water Tower Place and then headed back to the hotel and to Union Station, where we caught the train home. It was a great weekend.

My parents are off again visiting some friends, but they plan to return next week. In the meantime, life here is returning to some semblance of normal. We had a 4-H officers meeting yesterday, and co-op again today (John Mark and I received a 100 on "our" Emerson paper (grin). Tomorrow, piano and the first Children's Chorus practice. Boyscouts here on Saturday morning and 4-H is on Monday. And that's normal, I suppose.

School, Friends & Fun

I am discovering one not-so-great thing about this schoolyear: we can either do housework or we can do schoolwork, but we cannot do both. My house is in chaos and this would be a challenge for even Flylady. We manage to do enough cleaning each morning to make life tolerable (i.e. we get the big chunks) but the grandparents are going to get a taste of "real life" at my house when they drop in later this week!

The kids have been frantically working the past two days, today (and tomorrow!) trying to get their schoolwork done so they can go with John's parents to Holiday World on Monday and Tuesday. This has been a huge challenge for all of us, but I have to admit, Holiday World is a pretty good carrot! They are beside themselves with anticipation. And normally I would eagerly anticipate the "alone time"... but it looks like I'm going to have a very messy house to clean. Sigh.
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We had our Co-op Cookout this evening- lots of fun! The Baileys grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and the kids swam and ran around the yard (and the teenagers moved around in clumps) while the parents sat and chatted. We moms see each other all the time, but the dads don't get to be a part of our group very often so it was fun to get to know them a little better.
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I have to brag about my friend Teddie. John and I went to church with Teddie and her husband Dan in Baton Rouge, and Dan and I were at LSU together. Teddie was (is?) a home economics teacher and sews beautifully. When I was in college, she taught a sewing class to the ladies at church which was my first introduction to sewing... wouldn't I love to take that class now! Anyway, her work was featured in a couple of Southern Living publications recently... how cool is that?!

In Girl Scouts we used to sing, "Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold." Friends old and new, near and far... what a blessing!

First Date and First Day of School

Becca had her first date tonight, and the lucky guy was her dad! The Jr. Ambassador program that Becca and John Mark participated in this summer sponsored their 2nd Annual Father-Daughter Purity Dance. Our friends Christina and Victoria came over to do Becca's hair for her, and we ordered her her first corsage. (Becca was impressed: "Is it really real?? )
As each couple was introduced at the banquet, each girl received a white silk rose and the dad received a boutonniere. During the evening, the dads crowned their daughters with tiaras and had an opportunity to speak a blessing over their daughters. Each couple was prayed over and the dads and daughters received purity pledges to sign together. They shared a dance, and of course there was lots of time to cut loose on the dance floor too. They had a great time and I hope Becca has wonderful memories of this special date for years to come.
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The first day of co-op went pretty smoothly. After much preparation and anticipation in our home, it was still absolute chaos as we tried to get out of the house in the morning- no happy mom waving the kids off to the schoolbus here! But we all made it. The kids were happy to be reunited with their friends.

John Mark is in 8th grade has a couple of really tough courses this year- literature and high-school level Latin. He received an "A" on his first Latin test, so he (and I!) know he can do it. The two of us sat down to analyze Emerson's poem, "Concord Hymn" today so he can write a paper on it. His work load is making last year's look like a walk in the park! It's gonna be a tough year.

Unlike John Mark, Rebecca, the new middle-schooler, Philip, 4th grade, and Benjamin, 2nd grade are all excited about their new classes. Kindergartener Nathanael is working hard on making "F's" and "E's". He has a lot to do before attaining his goal of writing his name! And on the bright side, after a summer of catch-up math, everyone is starting the school year exactly on track. Whew! We won't be getting behind in math again! It's been a chaotic week, with another to come, but so far... the school year is looking pretty good.