Homeschooling in the Rose Garden - Homeschool Blogger

I am sad to go but...

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:53:00 -0500

My blog is moving.

Homeschooling in the Rose Garden will now be on Blogger along with my other blog:

There are many reasons for me to move, but mostly, it is just ease. I have another one I keep up with on there, and so I also can keep up with the homeschool one a little better. At least that is my hope. I hope to see you all over there as well... I will be missing all your wonderful comments and will for sure come back to see what you are all up to as the days go on.

Thank you for everything my Homeschooling Friends!

Val

New birds

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:04:00 -0500

A few new birds to add to our list. :)

Collecting the Moments

Loving this site...

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:20:00 -0500

I am just loving this site right now... I will have to look at it when I am not getting sleepy, but I think I have uses for a bunch of these things. Thank you Sarah!

Montessori for Everyone

And while I am on a web surfing trip, I may as well throw this baby out there:

Make your own Wordle

Fun!

Sunflowers by Van Gogh

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:30:00 -0500

Alex (left handed! I think that is pretty amazing!):

Mine:

And Cyan decided to copy this picture instead:

So this is what she came up with:

What a fun lesson that was! Bach is for next week. Then we move on to Mary Cassat and Mozart in November. I love homeschool.

Fun lunch stuff

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:40:00 -0500

I am a bit of an October nut. I hate the Halloween stuff... by this I mean, I hate the freaky, fake blood, jump out and scare you, decapitated heads hanging from trees in peoples lawns type stuff. But the falling leaves, worms, bugs, bird feeders, soup, naked trees, pumpkin, nocturnal animals... well, that side of October, I can't get enough.

In light of this, I had a bunch of October food things planned. Baking pumpkin pie from scratch (meaning from a whole pumpkin.) is something we do every year... pumpkin muffins, squash with butter and brown sugar. Yes... traditions run strong this time of year for me. To throw a bit of fun in the mix, I have been adding in things like this sandwich.

The kids spent all of lunch time talking about where the worms came from that showed up in their sandwiches. They finally decided that they were martian worms from Mars, and these worms drank toliet water and ate puppies. It always helps with the gross factor to have a teenage boy in the house. lol... Fun stuff. :)

Bach, and Van Gogh

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:40:00 -0500

This is our last study of Van Gogh (formal study anyhow) and our first week studying Bach. My idea is to have two artists for each month. One classical music, and the other classical art.

When we read the book The Yellow House, it talked a lot about the way that Van Gogh and the artist Gauguin lived together for those weeks, and although their personalities were vastly different... to the point where they could never live together again, they inspired each other deeply.

Here is a website that talks more about that and the history of the pair of friends. Gauguin painting Van Gogh, painting sunflowers.

Today, we will be making pictures of sunflowers. We have none in our garden after this last frost... but we do have TONS of pictures as they are one of my very favorite flowers, and I am printing some out for my kids to play with.

The picture below is my favorite sunflower picture that I have ever taken. I know it sounds funny, but I just love the composition of this picture, and the dew drops, and even the dead ones hanging out behind the big one in the center. It's just a wonderful capture. :)

The book that will start off our study today is Camile and the Sunflowers.

Broken Bones

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:05:00 -0500

Alex broke his arm yesterday. Broke it bad. It is amazing how much a kid can handle when he has to.

My son, who sounds like he is giving birth when he stubs his toe, barely made a peep when he fell, hard, while rollerblading (he was racing and I was watching) and dislocated and broke his wrist yesterday. It was incredible. I went through this mental dialog outloud as I watched... He won the race, but as he hit the finish line, the guy leading the race yelled "RED LIGHT!" and Alex stopped and dropped to the ground trying to stop as fast as possible. I say, out loud "Ooooo... you're ok buddy. Ok, get up." As he rolls over, looking at me with this strange look, then tries to put weight on his wrist and I say "unless you broke your wrist..." and go BOLTING across the roller rink floor, scoop him up and set him down on the side of the rink. I turn over his wrist and it is literally bending backwards at an impossible angle. Immediately I start delegating what needs to be done. "YOU! You help him take off his skates please. CYAN! We gotta go. NOW. Can you help her take off her skates? I will go get their shoes and the car. Can you get something for his arm to rest on? Thank you." I go get the car, pull it up to the very front of the roller rink, toss Cyan's car seat in the way back so Alex can sit closest to me, go back in, and someone has gotten Alex a roll of paper towels to lay his wrist on and they are handing me a gauze roll to wrap it with. I do this, carefully, the whole time helping Alex breathe. "Ok buddy... in through your nose, out through your mouth." "Mama, it really hurts. Oh god, it looks so weird! Mama, I'm scared. Will it hurt when they put it back." "Yes Alex, but then, honey, it will feel a LOT better. Very very soon. We are going there right now. Right now bud." "Ok, but it looks so weird! I'm scared." "It's ok to be scared, just keep breathing, in through your nose out through your mouth. Cyan? You there honey? Put on your boots. No honey, we can't stay. Don't start crying... we will come back next week ok? You're ok. We have to go right now. Can you get my purse. That is a really important job. Can you handle it? Great!"

We get to the hospital. The dr looks at it. He says yes, it is both dislocated and broken. Looks like a fracture, just in one of the bones. We need an x-ray. Before that, we are going to give him a shot for the pain and the nausea (he was feeling pretty sick because of the pain) and then we will take him to x-ray.

X-ray shows where it is broken and dr immediately says that we need to go to the neighboring hospital for the Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon. I ask why, he can't really explain it, but it is more of a repair then he can handle in the urgent care.

This whole time, Cyan is starting to freak out. She, of course, is crazy worried about Alex, and has nothing to do. She has a scratch from the bunny the day before, on her belly and she needs to have the dr look at. The dr, catching on very quickly to what was going on, gets her a cold pack for her scratch as I go out to call Don to get him to come and get her. He is still asleep. When I come back, Cyan is sitting next to Alex, with an icepack on her belly, while he has one on his completely broken arm. They splint his arm and we are off and ready to go.

So off to the other hospital we go. To wait, apparently, for the Orthopedic Surgeon to get there and set Alex's arm. On the way, Alex says he feels a 'pop'... and then his arm feels better. (His wrist popped back into the socket on the way there... probably because he was so relaxed at this time.)

Alex is totally loopy on the pain meds at this point. Talking in circles, showing me what he can do with his broken arm all of a sudden because it doesn't hurt (as I try to get him not to move it), being 'very serious' about lots of things where I 'need to listen' or 'am not listening'... lol... '

It was interesting.

Cyan's emotions are hitting fever pitch about this time. The poor little thing is crying, following me as I am trying to help Alex walk, saying things like "Nobody is paying attention to me. It doesn't even matter if I am here." I try to reassure her... giving her the 'really important' jobs of watching my purse and making sure Alex is sitting down while I go to the vending machines to get water and try to find her a snack (it is nearly 7pm at this point)... I know that she is having a really hard time feeling useless, and I am not sure I did anything to help, as she knows that if I take my wallet with me, the job of watching my purse isn't really that important, and Alex is sitting there watching tv like he is stoned. So nothing big to do there. But I was all out of creative parenting tips for that moment.

We sit for about an hour (this is a total of 3 hours so far) in the waiting room watching America's Funniest Home Videos (which, btw, shows TONS of potentially bad injuries and then everyone is expected to laugh. At this point, I am not laughing... in fact, I was disgusted by some of them). When we finally get to the triage nurse, she tells us she has no idea what she is expected to do here and it is completely odd that they would send us to a different hospital to set a broken arm. I didn't fully understand myself, so was of little help. But somehow, magically, we get placed in a room almost right away.

Then dr #3 comes in to look at Alex. He is a real piece of work. Total jerk. He tells me that my son can't have his arm set tonight because I gave him water and they have to put him to sleep. I said that didn't make any sense. I gave him water because they gave him heavy duty pain meds that gave him cotton mouth and that was what they were doing so they could set the arm. Now all I needed was the ortho dr guy to come and fix it. "Ortho dr?" "Yes, the man that is coming to set my sons arm... right now." "Well he won't be able to do it tonight either because you fed him." "I gave him water because he is ALREADY on pain meds." "Whatever." and he leaves. Seriously, this guy was an ass.

Then, in walks the 'ortho guy'. Oh gosh. What a life saver. So sweet, kind, talkative, honest. And good at what he does. Don showed up while he was telling us what was going on, and then left with Cyan after the nurse came and gave her a pudding cup, a graham cracker, and some stickers. Ortho guy tells me that Alex's wrist isn't out of socket.

To which I say: 'Yes, I know that, it popped back in when we were on the way here, is that all that was wrong with him?'

Ortho guy: "Oh no. He broke it. Broke it good. But... he broke it right at the growth plate. So if it isn't fixed correctly (like perfectly) he could not grow in that wrist again."

Me: Deep breath. "Hence, why they called you."

Ortho guy:"Yes, and also, why you had to come over here. We need to do the repair under live x-ray to make sure it is set just perfect."

Ahhhh... it is all clear now.

So they give him more pain meds, but this time locally (just in his wrist) and hang his OMG messed up wrist from two fingers from the ceiling... that was an experience. Seeing my sons wrist bent the wrong direction, but hanging from the ceiling with a water weight hanging from his elbow to help it pull down. OMG... I still can't get the picture out of my head.

Anyway, about 10 minutes after ortho guy gave Alex the local med, he comes back in, and asks Alex how he is doing... Alex says it feels weird and looks totally wrong, but it doesn't hurt more than a 3 (they were doing a pain scale with him the whole time to see if he was going to throw up or pass out). The guys says "Ok" and grabs his arm, shoving the bone back where it needed to go. I think my eyes nearly bulged OUT of my head at this point... and I had to turn away. Alex just gave this gasp, turned white as a sheet, and then looked back at his arm. It looked 100 times better. "This guy is good!" Alex says, with his drugged, loopy overtones. "You'd think I'd done this before or something" says ortho guy. lol...

The next hour, I wasn't allowed in there. I stood by the door and watched, but they had to use constant x-ray for the rest of the setting to make sure they got it right. Everyone in the room was draped in led vests. Including Alex. So it was a good hour of doing that... then they were finally done. They set up his arm in a expandable splint, because apparently he can't get it cast until it stops swelling, which could be a full week and a half with this bad of a break. So we have to meet with ortho guy in his office and get that done Monday after next.

We got home just after 9:30pm, and we got there just before 4pm. It was a long, hellacious day. But Alex is doing great. The guy was really really good. And as long as Alex babies his arm for the next week and a half while the bone is starting to heal up again and the body is recovering from the strain of the dislocation, he should recover completely in the normal 6 - 8 wks.

What a day.

Long weekend

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 11:53:00 -0500

And thank goodness. We have needed it. I am sick. We have one day of school this week due to Don's changeover, and then three more days off. So we will not be doing school again until Saturday.

Sometimes it is nice to be on such a wierd schedule. :)

I plan on getting completely well, making batch after batch of roasted tomato sauce, and putting up as many veggies as I can pack in. I am also planning on going through clothes, now that Fall has officially hit here. That is my long weekend list.

I hope everyone is enjoying their week!

Northwest Trek

Fri, 3 Oct 2008 19:53:00 -0500

I love Northwest Trek! I have been there 6 times now and every time we see something different. This time, it is rutting season. We got to see all the critters bedecked with huge antlers, rubbing up against trees, calling to mates, and/or sleeping. lol! It was great!

The little Cheney Discovery Center is the best. It is a building set aside in the center of the park for kids. It has a couple critters (local toads, snakes, salamanders, and a living bee hive with glass on the back so the kids can see in), but mostly it is crafts. Today they were featuring bugs and frogs. Logan was in heaven! He kept yelling "Bee! Bee!" and "B-fly!" (toddler for butterfly)... it was completely cute. :)

I let Alex have the camera honors today... but here is a link to the pics from one of our previous trips.

NW Trek Nov 2007

Salmon Hatchery

Thu, 2 Oct 2008 15:41:00 -0500

Field trips are SO great!

Today we went to the salmon hatchery.

It was the best field trip I have ever been on. No kidding. It was AMAZING! We saw spawning salmon down in the river, salmon jumping up the water falls and up the ladder, the tour guide pulled a salmon out of the hatchery and showed it to us (it was about 35 lbs!), and he even showed us the roe (salmon eggs) and the milt (salmon sperm) from the different sexes and how to tell them apart.

It was just incredible... Cyan kept screaming (because she could do that down next to the waterfall) "This is the best field trip EVER!" "This is AWESOME!" as the salmon would jump, again and again. I was lucky enough to catch one jumping on film... (Second video)

Some really wonderful websites we used to get ready for the salmon run. First I printed out this book. Then we went through the lifecycle of a salmon on this website, first with one egg, then another. By the time we actually went to the hatchery, the kids were saying things like "Look mama! There is a Sockeye! It's the red one." and asking questions that were appropriate and informative to the rest of the kids on the tour too.