In case you're wondering if I dropped off the edge of the world...I did. I have the worst case of morning sickness imaginable. Well, others have out done me, for sure, but I just don't feel one bit good. So I s'pect that over the next couple or more months, my blog posting will be sparse...on an as I feel like it basis. Just because I know you want the rest of the story--I'm due the middle of July. That's so far away.
It's already November, so hard to believe. I just now finally feel like I'm in the swing of school and now the holidays are just around the corner. It seems the days, weeks and months go so much faster than I do. We had intended on finishing up this composer study a long time ago. All I can say is at least we are finished now.
Zippy chose Handel as the composer to study this time because my husband and the kids went to a Messiah performance at Benaroya Hall around Christmas time last year. Zippy enjoyed it so much, so she wanted to learn more about the composer, Handel. To learn about Handel's life, we read the book Handel at the Court of Kings (Great Musicians Series) by Opal Wheeler. It was a very interesting book. The part that seemed to get everybody's attention the most in the book was the page about Bach walking a long ways to meet Handel and then missing him by a matter of minutes. JD Boy felt so bad that he had tears in his eyes. He tried to figure out how to solve the problem, but I reminded him that they are both deceased at this point.
We also listened to the The Story Of Handel in Words and Music several times and enjoyed that very much. We have found that listening to this series in the car is a great way to learn about composers and their music.
We listened mostly to two albums of Handel music. One was of the Messiah and the other was Water Music. I also managed to find a few other Handel pieces on different CD's around the house. So we enjoyed immersing ourselves in Handel's music. I definitely have some favorite pieces and not so favorite, but they don't necessarily match with my kids. They enjoy uncommon pieces as well as the famous ones. Guess that means that they are definitely appreciating music.
The kids also did some notebook pages to go with this study. Even my three-year-old did one of these.
It seems that oak trees live everywhere in the States. However different types tend to prefer different climates. We were able to actually to observe oaks in two parts of the country, some in the Pacific Northwest and some in the Midwest.
We identified the Oak tree that we saw in Kansas as the Bur Oak We found this tree at a little park where we stopped for lunch one day. We hunted and hunted for acorns on the tree and on the ground. We found a couple of misshaped nuts. We concluded that the people in the neighborhood must have collected all of the acorns before we visited the park.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that my camera is broken, we weren't able to get pictures of the trees that we checked out in the Pacific Northwest. My kids, along with some of their friends, collected leaves from these oaks as well as all the other bushes and trees in the immediate area and this is one of the last pictures that I got before my camera went crazy.
We had a hard time identifying the oak that we saw in Washington state, as it matched most closely with the California Black Oak, it seems to me. However, the furthest north that the California Black Oak grows is southern Oregon. The only oak that we could find that is supposed to grow in Western Washington is the Oregon White Oak, but our leaves and acorns did not match this oak. The lobes on the leaves of our trees came to a point and had a little barb on the end. Maybe these trees were planted and were not native to this area or maybe there is more variation to the White Oak than we saw in our field guide.
The kids both chose to illustrate the tree closer to home.
Zippy was the only one who did an illustration of the tree. Both chose to do illustrations of the leaves and acorns.
By JD Boy (age 6)
By Zippy (age 9)
I nearly forgot to say that we found a couple of excellent books on trees. The illustrations are just beautiful and the information and writing style is charming as well. They are The Big Tree and My Favorite Tree: Terrific Trees of North America (Sharing Nature With Children Book). I promise that if you have children the ages of my children, you will love both books and no matter what age you are, you'll love the second book.
My husband is still a kid. I wish I was more like him in that respect. He recently decided that he would really have fun if we would put a zip line in for the kids. You notice, who I said would have fun? Well, he has. The rest of us have too. In less than two weeks, we have spent so much fun time on the zip line. Even G'tums, our three-year old rides it with thrill.
Here is a short video of the kids ziplining (And just so you know, even though that isn't in the dictionary, I did find other people who knew that it was the verb form of zip line.)
"Mo-o-om! There are soldiers at the neighbor's house!"
You see my kids were outside playing during school hours. After all, even homeschoolers deserve recess (and I needed to get the refrigerator cleaned out.) My kids have already discovered that sometimes people notice them during school hours and make comments to the point that my kids have become a bit shy about being seen during school hours. Our house is fairly private, but you can see it from that neighbor's house and now there were soldiers over there.
Next, all three of the kids came running in and they were talking at once, so I hope I got it deciphered right.
"Mom, they drove by real slow and looked straight at us!" (Let me translate that comment. That means, "Mom, they noticed that we're not in school. Now what?") "Mom, they WERE soldiers." "Then they turned in at the neighbor's house." "I bet they have guns." Can you hear the fear?
I didn't see the soldiers, so I have no idea who they were. (Maybe they thought it was Halloween a day early.) I was slightly amused though, but especially when I heard the solution to the problem from JD Boy. Only a six-year-old would come up with this.
"Mom, I know what to do. If I see them out there again, I'm going to quick put on my long jeans." (He's wearing shorts. Don't ask me why, maybe I should send a note to his mom to dress him better for this weather...) "I'll grab my fireman rain boots and my fireman raincoat and paint my jeans really fast to look like fireman pants. Then I'll run out and grab a hose and start spraying and they won't want to mess with us, because those fire hoses are really powerful, you know." (Yeah, but we don't have a fire hose connected to our house, we have a garden hose. Oh, well, maybe they wouldn't notice the difference.)
Breath!
"If that doesn't work..." (What do you mean? It sounded like there was no doubt that that would work.) "I'll grab a stick and start pretending like I'm shooting at the bear." (We think that a bear got into our trash again this week, so the kids are a bit nervous when they're playing outside right now. I am too.) "Then when they see me shooting at the bear, they'll know that I know how to shoot and they'll be afraid to start shooting at me." (What ever made you think that those soldiers were there to shoot YOU?)
I think everybody is calmed down now. We've already talked about the fact that we are legal homeschoolers. Someday maybe laws will change, who knows. But for now, it's legal. Police and soldiers aren't on their track. (Maybe they just came to get that bear. Now, they would be my heroes if that's what they're driving around for.) Why are my kids afraid that they're going to be snatched away if they're not busily doing their schoolwork during school hours?
For some reason, this reminds of my little brother (meaning younger, not smaller). So I just have to tell you one more funny story. (I hope you're reading this Bro, if not, you're supposed to be. You're supposed to be one of my blog fans.)
He was homeschooled too. One day, he was working in Grandpa's garden during school hours. He was probably right around six or seven and spent as much time as possible with Grandpa in the garden. Anyway, according to my brother, the UPS man came driving up and looked right at him. (Scary!) So my brother knew what to do immediately. He started jabbering about driving his tractor. (Yes, he did have pedal tractor.) After the UPS man drove away, he came running in to tell Grandma all about it. Then he said, "Don't worry though, Grandma. He thought I was a farmer. He just thought I was a midget." (Well, I'm sure he wouldn't think that now, if you'd try the same method again! Oh, but you're old enough that you don't have to worry about truancy laws anymore.)
Even before I had children, I knew that I wanted to homeschool. I spent some time thinking about that I would not be shy about our homeschooling. We would be proud of it. That way my kids would never feel afraid that somebody was seeking them out for not being in school. I was sure it would be easier for me, because time has passed since my little brother was being homeschooled. Nearly every state (definitely mine) has laws for homeschoolers. There are a bazillion homeschoolers. I would make sure that my kids would never be afraid of people wanting to just reach out and snatch them away for being homeschoolers, but I guess I didn't pull it off. My kids have the same fears that my brother had, just have different solutions....well, not really, but anyway.
Am I the only one with this problem? Are your kids afraid that someday they'll get snatched away just for being homeschoolers? Or have you successfully suppressed all of their fears? If so, how?
by Opal Wheeler. It was a very interesting book. The part that seemed to get everybody's attention the most in the book was the page about Bach walking a long ways to meet Handel and then missing him by a matter of minutes. JD Boy felt so bad that he had tears in his eyes. He tried to figure out how to solve the problem, but I reminded him that they are both deceased at this point.
several times and enjoyed that very much. We have found that listening to this series in the car is a great way to learn about composers and their music.
; (bottom center) 
and 
. I promise that if you have children the ages of my children, you will love both books and no matter what age you are, you'll love the second book.
