• Nov. 17, 2009 - Sleeping Out Under the Stars

Tonight the boys will be sleeping out under the stars to see a meteor shower.  According to National Geographic News tonight will be a good night:  "During the 2009 Leonid meteor shower, you may see anywhere from 30 to 300 shooting stars an hour, depending on whether you're in the right place to see Tuesday's showy peak before dawn, experts predict." This picture above is from before our recent furlough.  Tonight we will see if Papa needs to buy a longer trailer.  All the boys have grown so much over the past year.  They really enjoy crazy things like this.  Papa will tow their "bed" out into the middle of the field in front of our house and leave them there for the night.  We leave the front door unlocked in case anyone needs to come in or just decides to get in their real bed instead.  Usually they make it the whole night.  Even though we live in a nice hot tropical kind of place, often at night with the wind blowing it seems cold - hence the covers and coats.  I don't think there will be much of a problem tonight.  We've been sweating all day long! Here's a link to the above mentioned National Geographic News article about the showers: 2009 Leonid Meteor Showers/ National Geographic ***FB friends this is a post from www.homeschoolblogger.com/athaschoolforboys ***Go there to see a picture of the boys in their truck trailer bed!

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• Nov. 12, 2009 - Look What the Cat Drug In!

A 7 cm scorpion!  This is my desk chair in my bedroom.  I brushed by it on my way to my bed with a book as the boys were watching a DVD in another room.  Just as I got comfortable out of the corner of my eye I saw someone run across the top of my chair.  Wow!  When I realized what it was I was shocked.  What in the world was a scorpion doing on top of my chair!  And that big, too!  Seems it must have been on a table which was up against a wall just under a window.  The scorpion must have climbed in waltzed across the table and jumped onto the chair.  Can you imagine my thrill if I'd chosen to sit at my desk for a bit before going to bed? Yikes!  Needless to say I hollared for help!  I wasn't about to get off the bed!  Everyone came with me in my pajamas.  Everyone, husband, sons, houseguest!  They took pictures, measured it, talked about it, and took their own good time trying to decide what to do with it!  What a relief when they, all of them, and the bug were gone and I could get back to my book! Our youngest was bit or stung, I should say, by a slightly smaller scorpion about 3 years ago.  The pain was horrible on the location and his tongue went numb for about an hour.  It was rather scary, but he was fine after a while.  No, there's no where to go to do anything about it, just be happy and do what you can. What fun!  I'm paying more attention to where I step this week! p.s.  We don't have a cat!

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• Nov. 5, 2009 - Island Retreat, October 31 - November 2

Hellooooo, out there!  We have had a hard time recovering from this last retreat on the island.  Byron lost his helper fellow just prior to the retreat with no time to find another, not to mention the WHERE to find another part!  So it was the boys and me to help.  We can do a lot of the tasks involved in running a retreat, but it's hard work!  We took Tuesday off from most school activities getting by with a little handwriting and language.  Yesterday was Math Test day for all which doesn't take too long and we were able to squeeze in most of our regular work.  Today we'll have a full schedule with even a little extra so we can all go to the big city tomorrow for the arrival of our short term guy from the States. Dalton accomplished his archery class with the campers this weekend.  All of them did fair and most were able to at least hit the banana leave bale.  One or two actually hit the target paper!  Only a few shot arrows far and away.  It was a great success with many participants. Have a great weekend!

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• Oct. 26, 2009 - It's Raining!

Typical NE Cowboys They wear leather to protect them from all the cactus and thorns in the semi-arid Caatinga. In the middle of the night it started raining.  Woo Hoo!  We live in the desert Northeast of Brazil where the rain clouds are pretty but usually just that, all fluff and no stuff.  But twice recently we have gotten solid nights of steady rain.  Now all the toads are chirping their little songs.  They hibernate in the dried mud waiting for the rains.  Seems these odd rains are a little early, but we'll take them!  Sometimes our "rainy season" is mostly dry, so beggars can't be choosers. This morning when the boys got up they all proclaimed that surely no one could do school work on such a cloudy, rainy day.  We had to turn on the lights in our house this morning it was so dark.  Usually by 6:00 am it's so light outside that we just open our wooden louvered windows and don't need any artificial lighting.  I played it cool and suggested they take a few extra minutes to play after breakfast while I did the morning dishes.  Then we casually and slowly moved into our normal activities.  I did let up and allowed everyone to skip NC History today and we spent the time doing a little review of our Lyrical Life Science lessons thus far completed and got started on our newest song - Ungulates!  That's hoofed mammals for all you non-scienctifical types. And everyone was happy, well, content.  It was a nice quiet day for the most part, and cool, thanks to the rain!  Our week will be a little short as we have a retreat on the island this weekend.  The boys will be helping with some of the activities on the island:  pellet gun, archery, watching over the kayaks, supervising the zip-line, etc.  Some light school work we'll take along for the downtimes like reading our NC History textbooks and our handwriting copywork books.  In spite of our late start with our arrival from furlough in late August, we aren't too far off schedule.  We'll be using most of December and doing more work in January than usual, but I feel confident that the boys will be fine. Be back sometime next week with some pics of the retreat and reports on any fish caught!

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• Oct. 23, 2009 - Why We Do the Things We Do

Last week's note was about the whining and complaining of homeschooled boys.  Mothers who homeschool never get a break from all that moaning.  Made me consider this week, why do we bother?  I could send my boys to school here in the little town where we live.  It would all be in Portuguese, but that might be good.  So why do we homeschool? Here's my list: 1.  Better future opportunities.  Without a good English base, our boys would have a harder time going to college in the States at some point if they so chose. 2.  Better education.  The schools here start late, teacher's strike often, the quality of learning is poor, the "social" education is totally negative. 3.  Better world view.  We can teach our boys with a Christian world view, emphasizing creation and missions. 4.  Better work ethic.  We are able to include our boys in our work since our schedule is flexible. 5.  Better time spent.  Our school day is much more condensed then a regular day in a "real" school classroom.  There's no need for roll call, lunch count, assemblies, or the multitude of Brazilian holidays! 6.  Better love.  We can show our children a better way to love their own, by teaching them with our own life sharing their presence and our hearts on a daily basis. Yes, it's not always easy.  It requires a patience that often eludes me.  Sometimes I get tired of it.  But I'm going to keep on and do my very best asking the Lord God to bless my efforts to teach my children well. Pictured below (if you read this on Facebook you can't see the pictures, by the way) are my fav pics from our wild trip to DC just before we came back to Brazil.  We had to run, literally, to Washington and then run all around Washington to resolve the situation that ensued with the airline and my permanent Brazilian visa status.  As we left my parents' home heading north we quickly wondered why we had not considered leaving the boys somewhere, anywhere.  They were fussy, fighting, hungry, tired, bathroomy (new adjective).  Why, why, why!  The whole situation was not good and their mood wasn't helping.  We had this crazy notion that we could see lots of neat things in DC that the boys had never gotten to see.  And we did, we got to go to the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian.  Our time was limited, but it was good.  We all survived the crazy trip and will enjoy it more when we get to see Night at the Museum 2 when it comes our here in Brazil.  The point is we made it.  It was frustrating, patience racking, and downright miserable at times.  But, there were a few of those sparkling, shining, Aha! moments that somehow tipped the scales in favor of good.  I guess homeschooling is sometimes like that trip.  I am learning to push the horrid over and get on with the good as much as possible!

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