Learning Life Through Unschooling

Mar. 20, 2006

Happy Spring!!

Happy Spring!! While I was in school, the first day of spring was always the 21st but it's changed now to the 20th so I suppose winter is getting shorter.

What a day we had today! Grammie has a Scholastic book fair going on at her school and we decided to go up and take a look. We came home with some great finds. Matthew found a book on March of the Penguins and a Lego Knights Kingdom. Rose grabbed a cute one about baby and mother animals cuddling up to go to sleep and Sheila Rae's Peppermint Stick. Matthew also found a 'bug vacuum' and was really excited about it. But after we looked it over, we decided it really wasn't strong enough to pick up any bugs we could think of and we have several bug cages at home. So we left it there. But he was equally excited when he saw a booklet with about 10 different model planes in it to put together, called Wild Wings. These were very simple almost styrofoam planes but he had a lot of fun putting them together and sharing them with Rose. And I found a really neat Flip Flap Math Book that I'll leave lying around to see what happens.

As an example, it has a picture of 5 ducks then a big + sign, then a picture of 3 ducks and a big = sign with a ? When you pull the tab, it changes the ducks and question mark to the numerals 5+3=8. It covers addition and subtraction and I'm sure Rose will find some help identifying numerals as well.

I've been getting progressively sicker for a week now and have decided it's at least bronchitis so I made an appt to see my dr in the afternoon. Turns out it is pneumonia instead. The thing that keeps me going back to my particular dr is that he gives me freebies every time. And it's not that it's free so much (though as a SAHM with 3 kids, we appreciate anything given freely!) but the simple fact that I don't have to lug the kids all the way to the pharmacy that my insurance covers, 20 minutes away, and back again while coughing my lungs up. As always, he gave me enough samples of antibiotic to see me through the pneumonia (I hope!!). I suppose the next few days will be spent in bed. This is always good because I have lots of reading to catch up on.

While in the exam room waiting for my doctor, the kids became very interested in the posters and models in the room. Matthew read several "maps" of the human body and showed me the gallbladder I had removed, how long the intestines are and were DH's spleen used to be. He also was quite absorbed in a chart that explained some kind of cell degeneration that was over my interest level. Then he joined Rose looking at models of the shoulder and heart. He explained to her that the white parts were bone or cartilage, the red was muscle and the rubbery green parts were the tendons. Rose encouraged him on with, "that's yucky!" and "ewww". The heart model opened up and they got to examine the heart valves and identify several different sections of the heart before the doctor arrived. It was so fun to watch all this learning going on even while I was too sick to care. Sometimes waiting isn't such a bad thing.

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