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May 31, 2008

Did I say I was excited?

Because now I'm not so sure...Yesterday Jacob decided to write a letter to our local Christian radio station for a contest. Gabriel wanted to write a letter too, but Gabriel isn't old enough to win a week at camp. He was upset about being too young and insisting that he could write a letter, so I told him that he could go ahead and write to the lady but he wouldn't be able to enter the contest.

A few minutes later, Gabe brought me a letter that said "I want too go to teh ranc when I am littl." I told that was really good, and that I would send it later - but reinforced that he was not old enough to win the contest. I continued on with dinner preparations until Jacob came in announcing that Gabriel had written a mean letter. Now, I had just read his letter and thought that it was perfectly nice... "Leave him alone, there is nothing wrong with his letter" I said to Jacob. But Jacob insisted, "He said it says he will kill the lady, and it does - I just read it."

I called for the letter, which Gabriel brought to me again. And sure enough, it had been edited to include "or I will kill you"! I stood there, somewhere between horrified and very amused wondering how to proceed. I explained to Gabriel how unkind it was to say such things. His defense was that he wanted to go and the lady deserves to die if she doesn't let him (perfectly logical in his mind)... I guess he was trying to use strong language to sway the argument in his favor. But I insisted that he write a different letter as I would not send the death threat. He quickly complied and came back something to the effect of "Let me go to the ranch when I am little so I don't kill you." Much better, right?

After another lengthy explanation about the use of threats to manipulate a situation (not to mention the wrongness of killing!!!) an acceptable, yet still a little demanding, letter was drafted and signed. I guess now that he sees writing as useful and valuable he has fully embraced it. Maybe he has a future as a speech writer for a terrorist organization....

May 30, 2008

I'm so excited!

Gabriel is writing his name! All by himself! He just did it twice and it looked pretty good! I have not really pushed writing with him yet, since is just barely 4. And until a week or two ago he seemed more or less opposed to the idea of writing. I didn't really know what to do because it was obvious to me that he possessed the skills to write - he just didn't want to do it. And isn't that okay, because he is so young? But on the other hand, he is reading on at least a 2nd grade level and grasping most (if not all) kindergarten concepts.



I kept going back and forth on whether or not to push him. I have a 1st grade phonics book that Jake brought home from public school with most of the pages intact. I have been giving Gabe one or two pages from it each day. This gives him a little bit of writing at a time and he enjoys the work (beginning sounds and end sounds). I haven't made a big deal about how to form the letters on the work he does by himself. But I usually help him write his name the right way.



On one of his pages yesterday he was supposed to draw a picture and write a sentence telling about the picture. I told him to draw the picture, but not worry about the sentence. He drew and wrote. His sentence wasn't written on the lines, but I could clearly read "with Jon and my brother" (brother was spelled wrong, but I could tell what it said!)

May 28, 2008

Learning to observe

We launched into science yesterday! And the first thing we are learning is how to observe. Well, I guess before that Jacob has to learn to keep the words "observation" and "hypothesis" straight, cause it will be confusing for everybody if I tell him to observe something and he is trying to form a hypothesis about it...

Since our work load is very light right now, I decided to take the kids to Beaver Lake this morning for some observing in the woods. It is a beautiful day, but as soon as we stepped into the woods it was cold! There was a very cool breeze blowing off the lake, and even though I brought jackets that made it a little hard for the kids to enjoy themselves. We walked through one and half trails despite the cold.

We learned how wild grapes can cause clearings in the woods and why that is an important part of the wooded community. The kids were very excited when they found one of those clearings on their own. Unfortunately, we didn't see any animals - Jacob blames that on the big noisy group of kids who were there on a field trip. He was more than a little irritated that those kids didn't know how to be quiet. Imagine, Jacob mad at someone for making noise!

May 26, 2008

What did you do?


To commemorate Memorial Day? How did you remember the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for our freedom? We went to see Prince Caspian. We originally planned to do that tomorrow (Todd took it off), but realized that it might be easier done today. As we were pulling into the mall, I thought about it. I felt disappointed in myself for reducing the day to just another day off. My own father fought in Vietnam and later died from injuries sustained in the war. I want to remember. I want to teach my children to remember.
Regardless of how one feels about the conflicts our country has engaged in, we owe our freedom to men and women who were willing to die for it. After naps, we sat down with the kids and looked at some books that I bought recently (on a discount shelf at Border's). They offer the history of our various wars in pictures. We talked about what the soldiers would have been thinking or feeling and what life would have been like for them. We looked at the piles of causalities from the Civil War, and the men burying their dead the day after a battle. So, we remembered and stopped to appreciate the freedoms that we have.

May 22, 2008

We finished!

Today we finished our "core" (Sunlight Condensed World History) curriculum! We ended world history with a very brief overview of WWII. I'm thinking it would be appropriate to talk about Memorial Day tomorrow. We also finished Language 3 (ABeka) today. Jacob supposedly knows how to diagram a sentence and indentify basic parts of speech now (although Gabe has a better grasp on nouns and verbs than Jake does...)

I think we will do 4th grade science over the summer since I am always bad abut getting science done. Jacob is so happy to be done!

May 19, 2008

Monday Blahs

First off, let me mention that Super Todd found the math book! When Jake was cleaning his room he was making piles that go other places (garbage, downstairs, etc) but decided to keep the piles separate by putting them in bags. Then we were having company and someone took the bags off the bedroom floor and stuck them in the closet. The math book was in one of those bags and daddy was smart enough to figure that out (I think he may have been the one to put said bag in closet).

I seem to have a case of the Monday blahs. Or maybe just the general blahs. I feel like I need a few more days of weekend, I really want to get out and do something fun. That doesn't make any sense to me since in the last week we have gone out to eat, gone on a field trip to Fort Stanwix and gone to the movies - Horton Hears a Who. I feel like I need a vacation!!! It isn't that I mind homeschooling, I've been enjoying that a lot lately.





Perhaps I am feeling bored and purposeless now that my class is done. I'm reading three different books right now (Some of My Best Friends are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers, Finding God at Harvard, and Bonhoffer's Letters and Papers from Prison), but I find that reading for the sake of reading isn't stimulating enough. I need a project or a purpose.





We're headed to library shortly to look for books about Abe Lincoln - Gabe announced at dinner the other day "When I grow up to be president, I want to be Abraham Lincoln!" He figured since Mr. Lincoln is dead, his identity is free for the taking. When we explained he will have to be president Gabriel Young and he can't be President Lincoln he settled on getting books out to read about his favorite president so that he can learn to be good president someday too. (He decided he would like to be president when he was about 2 and Todd explained to him about someone who was "running for office")


Ladies and gentlemen, your future president...

and lets not leave out his big brother...
These are pictures from their AWANA awards ceremony last weekend(Jacob is in a borrowed shirt)

May 15, 2008

Where did it go?

I need to vent...I am so sick of asking "Where did it go?" I could scream (and perhaps I already have). A few weeks ago Jacob lost his AWANA shirt, which caused lots of stress 'cause he was supposed to have for the awards night last weekend. It still hasn't turned up. Around the same time he also lost his ruler which is also still missing. Last week, the math book up and disapeared. Seven days and several hunts later, no sign of said book! Where the @#$% is this stuff going? It isn't just that he can't find it (with his less than excellent finding skills) Todd and I searched the whole house more than once and the stuff is gone.

I thought maybe he lost the math book on purpose, but he enjoys math WAY more than he enjoys looking for stuff he lost. He is getting pretty sick of looking but I am way past sick of having missing stuff. I'm starting to think I will need to buy another math book.

May 12, 2008

Mother's Day Music

My family all came over to my house for a Mother's Day get together. It was nice to have my sister and her family up for the weekend. After dinner, one of the dads started trying to make the glasses sing. And once they got it to happen, everyone wanted to join in. It probably provided a half hour of entertainment. It was a fun evening. we broke out the Wii after we finished making music, and I finally got to beat up my big sister.

May 8, 2008

Just when I managed to calm him down...

It seems that a good nights sleep was just what Jacob needed today. We were going through our morning work with the greatest of ease (except for the usual 2 or 3 trips to timeout for inappropriate, animal like behavior before we really settle into working), he totally rocked his subtraction time test today, clocking in at 4min 20sec for 100 problems. He was focused throughout math and history. He enjoyed our new spelling program (Spelling Power) a lot.

Other than the fact that Cadence took a Sharpie to the walls upstairs, I was thinking this is a pretty good day. And if your wondering, the Sharpie people are serious when they those markers are PERMANENT. I have found a few ways to get it off the wall, but they all seem to take my sunshiny yellow paint off with the marker.

The kids wanted to eat lunch outside, and I agreed to it in spite of the fact that it is a little on the cool side today. Gabe and Cadence were nearly done with their sandwiches when I came to the realization that eating outside today was not the best of ideas. Jacob had been in time out and so he had not started eating yet. And I'm thinking "Great! He managed the stress of the bike thief and the accident fairly well, but how is going to respond when I tell him that he can't eat his lunch outside cuz there is a black bear on the loose in Geddes?"

Yeah, seriously. My neighbor of questionable character shared this info with me, and I thought he pulling my leg. But it is all over the news. The 6' bear was spotted almost 3 miles from my house. We'll see how Jake does on his Lang. test today well craining his neck to see look out the window for a black bear...

May 7, 2008

Adventures in Kellyland

What a crazy couple of days we have had! Todd's bike got stolen in the middle of the day, but a few hours later he saw a kid ride right past our house on it - so he chased him. We were a little surprised by how young the perp was (he looked to be 12 at the most) and Todd was moved to have compassion on him. He talked the kid into giving the bike back and gave him a ride back to our house - he was going to take the kid to the Thrifty Shopper to buy him a bike of his own. But I was concerned that we could end up in trouble if we stuck this kid in our van and took him to Liverpool unbenownst to his parents. So I told Todd to call the parents. Talk of parents made the kid scared and he took off running. That made me mad, so I ran after him - for over a mile. Every so often he would stop and hide then I would find him, and he would sit there and wait till I was close before he started to run again. Twice I had given up and turned around to go home when he stood out in plain sight and yelled to me that I couldn't get him. All said and done, I talked to the cops 5 times and we never found the kid, but Todd got his bike back.

There was some discussion when I got home, because Todd felt like I was second-guessing his approach (he thought I was just mad and wanted the kid to be in trouble) but I explained that I was concerned about staying "above reproach" and the cop agreed that Todd could have gotten in a lot of trouble in a situation like that. But Todd (and I) had been hoping to give this kid some sort of positive interaction with adults who care, and the kid just couldn't accept that.

Today I was still thinking a lot about that kid and what Todd and I learned about communicating with (and trusting) each other. I went to the credit union to make our van payment and as I was leaving, I wrecked our van. I was turning left when a pickup truck appeared out of nowhere coming straight at me. I know the guy was going fast, but I must have just not seen him coming... The kids were terrified, but they are all okay, as am I (but my back is hurting a little). This makes two accidents in as many months for us. I didn't get ticketed, and neither did Todd, but we have a suspicious feeling that our insurance rates will skyrocket soon.

And now it 6:30 and I am frustrated with Jacob who is frustrated with math. I know that he can't remember how to borrow because he doesn't process stress well, but somehow that doesn't make it any less stressful for me. I wanted to drop it, but I'm always afraid that he will figure out he can act like he doesn't know anything to get out of doing his work. I had him take a little break and then come back to it (for the 3rd time!!!) and hopefully he will get it right this time.