So busy lately -- very little time for the blog.

Our most exciting activity right now is, for me, our professional organizer. (Thanks Mom!) We have had one meeting, and our dining room secretary is being transformed into the household management center, while the big armoire in the dining room is finally getting organized as an accessible kid-craft area (in addition to holding regular dining room stuff like tablecloths, etc.).

There is hope for us yet!

We are just sailing along with fractions. I'm thinking we have effectively skipped 4th grade math and moved on to 5th, as we have not been back to the 4th grade book in some time. And next up in the 5th grade book is area of a triangle and angles, which we did last fall.

I am delighted that we have found more math that Violet finds fairly easy. Today we started division of fractions by a whole number, and after 2 minutes she was asking (and figuring out) -- "Well how do you divide by a fraction? How do you divide a mixed number?" Wheee! It is days like this when I am so glad to be homeschooling -- I know that her comparatively harder time with long division and memorizing multiplication facts (she's getting much better as we work with fractions, but there is still some counting even by 4s or 6s on the fingers) would have kept her stuck and prevented her from doing the higher-order thinking math that will keep her interested in the subject.

Victoria went back to preschool today. She was so excited that it made me a little sad. It was really nice having her home. I am so torn about how to proceed next year and in the future. And then I read this today:

Well, more to think about, as always.

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All you homeschoolers with 4 and more, just bug off! For me, homeschooling with two is a 100% increase in Red Sea enrollment, so it is new to me.

Victoria is on her 2nd week of vacation from preschool. It has worked fine -- as you might expect, at least some of the time we lose by having a demanding preschooler around the house is balanced out by the time we gain not having to drop everything at a particular time and go pick her up.

I have enjoyed getting more time to spend with her, and we have spent a lot of time reading together. One book has been such a hit, and is so wonderful for her age, that I wanted to mention it. It's one of Richard Scarry's busytown books, What Do People Do All Day?

She especially loves reading about Farmer Alfalfa growing corn, then taking it to market so he can get money to buy a truck, and so the Pig family can eat it. After that she likes How Wheat Becomes Bread. It reminds me of all the great Mr. Rogers segments about how factories make basic things like peanut butter or toilet seats (!) Oh, God bless Mr. Rogers -- still chokes me up to think about him.

I also followed the advice of Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea and picked up What is Science and B is for Bunny, but I'll try to hold those until Easter.

(Yes, I know they have little to do with Easter, but they bulk up an Easter basket better than candy all the same!)

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I wish I could say that this was a typical homeschooling day, but I wanted to write it down because I gotta say it was a good day.

First thing: Violet demands a cuddle. She was trying to prolong our time together last night, so I told her, more snuggles tomorrow. So we climb in my bed, both still in PJs. She curls up into a little ball and burrows into me, and says “I love you soooooooo much.” For Violet, this is affection beyond belief. We don’t typically get this from her, but lately she is more given to spontaneous shows of affection. To be the first to say “I love you,” though—that’s really new.

Piano practice: Learned a new section of a piece. We had a good talk about getting frustrated with mistakes—that when we make mistakes, even though we know the world isn’t going to explode or our heads aren’t going to fall off, it sure feels that way. I am very excited about moving to private lessons—she is so ready.

Math: I’m pleased with using 4th and 5th grade materials together thus far. We have been doing a lot with approximation, which I think is good for her very literal mind. Using the 4th to introduce and then the 5th to take it the next step—a surprisingly small step!—is a great way to practice and reinforce without feeling super-repetitive. So much of the “increased difficulty” from grade to grade in primary-level math seems to be about the number of place values (10s, 100s, 1000s, etc.), so I am glad that we will not be waiting til next year to do some of the same stuff, just with an extra zero! Violet whipped through her workbook pages without stalling or doodling for an extra 15 minutes (except for one problem that initially seemed to require long division, which freezes her up a bit). She was enthusiastic about the ease of the work, especially since we were doing the 5th grade book today.

Art Adventure: On our drive to the art museum, we listened to an interesting story on NPR about brain development, evolution, and the “Lucy” fossil, among other things. Led to a cool conversation about how in some sense we all have African heritage. Violet asked a question I couldn’t answer right off: What are qualities that make Cro-Magnons different from humans? Didn’t figure that out til bed time, when I scared her out of her interest by suggesting that we make a little science unit out of the subject—it’s just as easy for my curiosity and enthusiasm to overwhelm her as it is for her curiosity and enthusiasm to overwhelm most everyone else. But we do have a cool new exhibit at the Science Museum on the idea of race that will bring us back to it.

We had a great tour of the art museum. We only got to see a few things, things that the kids had seen before. The theme was “people and their environments,” so the kids were really supposed to think about how people are influenced by the things they see around them in creating art. Violet really engaged with the art and seemed genuinely excited by “visiting” the different countries in the museum, especially China and Africa. (More on the art museum in a later post.) She was so disappointed that we had to leave early, but leave we did because we had to race to ice skating.

Violet loves ice skating, and Victoria likes it OK. Victoria is usually ready to go after about 30-45 minutes, but Violet would skate forever. It is a homeschool skate session, with lessons at all levels, plus practice time, so there is a group of teenage girls there practicing spins and jumps and what not. Violet managed to get one of the girls to work with her on spinning in a circle, so she practiced and practiced and practiced until I thought she might get plowed over by the zamboni. She’s decided she’d like to be a professional figure skater or speed skater, but probably figure skater. Well, never say never.

Both girls were very well behaved, in marked contrast to last week (!), so we hit the local Caribou Coffee afterwards. We discovered that in the spring there will be an -- Oh My Gosh -- Ice Show! With Costumes! And Headpieces! And two performances! For All Levels! Oh the ecstasy!

As we started to leave the coffeeshop, Violet said to me for the 2nd or 3rd time, “This is a really good day.”

By the time we came home it was time for all to retreat to separate corners—Puzzle Pirates, PBS Kids, and blog—until dad got home. My legs hurt from skating, and I have hours of freelance work to do (still no nanny!), but I agree with Violet. This was a day that I was so happy to be a homeschooling mom.

[Edited to add: I know the images aren't loading -- you aren't missing anything, but hopefully it's a site fluke and it will fix itself.]

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I decided to use the J-Term concept for homeschool -- January is going to be a month of short-term study of things we don't normally study.

Primary J-Term subjects:

Can you guess what we're doing in February?

That's right, we're going to Mexico! I am so very excited. A friend called us on Christmas Eve to say that because of illness (sad) some family members would not be using their 1/2 of a double bungalow, so we are going for an entire week. Plus our friends have 3 little girls, so built in playmates and childcare swapping! We never go anywhere for a week anymore. Wahoo!

Violet also "graduates" from Yamaha right after our return, and for their final in-class recital she wants to write her own song. I'd said that's fine as long as we actually write it. I will probably do most of the recording, but I thought at least she could help me fill in the black dots and such. I think she needs some reinforcement on notation anyway -- especially the various rest symbols -- so it should be good. We also have our teacher search narrowed down to 2, both supposed to be very good. One I know is supposed to very good with precocious kids and kids who like to improvise and compose -- though I hear she is a bit "picky" with her students.

Violet has also been begging Husband to teach her more HTML. They did a little bit one night before bed and I had to drag her away from the computer. Of course, her dad is her hero, so she loves computers. And she would love to be able to do games and such.

Not sure how much physics we'll actually cover, but I want to make good use of the Physics Circus that Violet and Husband will be attending soon.

Monday we're headed to the homeschool store for new Singapore books. I think our plan is to buy two years at once and bounce back and forth among them, plus use some supplementary materials. She averages about middle of 5th grade for math, but she still needs work memorizing those multiplication facts! So we will get the 4th grade books as kind of an "intro" to stuff and then go into the 5th grade for more depth, and continue to use outside geometry and algebra materials for challenge as well.

I don't know why I even put so much effort into math. It's not her passion, it's not her best subject, she does fine with it, but somehow math is the subject that I spend the most time trying to get just right.

I think that's another musing for another day: What is the place of math in our school? Do I really want to give it so much of our energy?

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Christmas crazyness is threatening to bring school to a halt before our planned break starting next week. I won't let it!

We did some math and history today, but both took forever, plus Violet had a dentist appt., so Chinese and piano went undone. We'll try to do piano tonight -- Violet is trying to get a 30-days-in-a-row photo up on the wall of the studio, but it is hard for all of us. Math today = percents. History = The Vikings, Hurray! We are, after all, in Minnesota.

Here's a tidbit that might not be found in your average history book:

Some of that you might recognize from the SOTW book, but the frightened grass (!) and the fist-shaking anger at the hubris of Charlemagne (a bit of poetic license about Charlemagne there) are pure Violet-y goodness.

We also got a bit off schedule for a happy reason, which was a visit from grandparents, during which we enjoyed:

These guys

And the fabulously rocking

Which really made me want to get both Violet and myself one of these

Also saw the World's Largest Gingerbread house, as below. The structure is wood, but covered in giant gingerbread bricks piped together with icing, in addition to the darker Hershey bar bricks, and window lead made of red licorice. Sixty feet high, it was. Mighty strange and impressive. 90% edible, as Violet keeps telling me. The armless gingerbread men on the facade suggest that someone has been testing out that claim.

[Edited to add: since I rarely post pictures of the adults in the family, I feel I should point out that Mimi and Papa are posting with the girls, not Mom and Dad.]

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Violet just had her last recital with the Junior Music Course in Yamaha. This semester will be the end of her group lessons.

We really liked Yamaha. It was too slow and too easy, but Violet enjoyed the group lessons. She was always with older kids, and the school was flexible about moving her ahead a class or giving her different solo pieces. They have a strong ear training component, and the kids work on rhythm and intervals, and singing solfege.

We would have pulled Violet from the group lessons last year, when she was clearly going faster than her class, but she felt strongly after leaving public school that she wanted to keep her piano class, and it was easy enough to oblige.

I do look forward to her private lessons, though we are not yet settled on a teacher. I think it will be interesting to see what she does when she is not motivated by besting the other students or sitting in a lesson waiting for the others to catch up.

First photo: The new barrette purchased to minimize hair-fussing during the recital.

Second photo: Playing 'Arabesque.' Violet's was the last solo of the recital -- she was pretty pleased to be the last pianist featured.

Third photo: The group playing "Endless Journey," a rhythm piece.

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Little Victoria is off preschool for the month, so our schedule is really in chaos. She demands to be *on* me when I am trying to do something with Violet -- something she would not be doing otherwise.

I've tried to adjust our homeschool expectations accordingly, without totally giving up. (Vacation starts officially on the 18th for Red Sea School.) I've totally abandoned Singapore until next year, when we'll start a new grade (but which grade?), and we are focused on fractions/decimals/percents for the rest of the year in math. I'm embarrassed to say that I am using a cheap book on fractions from Walgreens (allegedly grades 5-6) to supplement the intro to fractions we got in Singapore.

History is fading -- Violet seems to be losing interest. Her written summaries are really getting weak again. Some guys had a battle, and this one guy won -- that seems to be the basic formula. We need to get back into how people lived and away from the tribes and battles -- and yet the Western and Arab worlds are getting formed, and some of these events are so decisive in the development of world history.

I think my strategy must be to slow down and get a little more into details of culture, language, etc.

Speaking of language, Violet has announced her intention to learn Japanese and Korean next -- she says she wants to learn all the languages of Asia. Why Asia? Who knows. I am thinking of doing some minor comparative language studies. We recently read in SOTW about the mixing of cultures among China, Japan, and Korea, so we could probably pursue that further.

Otherwise we will be doing lots of holiday crafts up until the 24th. We're doing a paper tree on the wall with homemade paper ornaments -- somehow I have to make this look attractive!

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It was a lovely day in spring falls. And S----, N------, M-------, and R----- were enjoying a picnic at a lovely place, fall 1891. Now S----- was good-tempered and sweet, while the boys were medium-tempered. Of course they were not as sweet as S-----, but—it was a good start. Now R---, the eldest, did go shoot turkey every thanksgiving. But once every ten years, S----- was asked to watch.

Now then. This year, S------ had been asked to watch. She usually wept, for she did love animals so. But then, they came upon a turkey. S---- struggled to hold back tears—of fear! The turkey was pointing R----’s gun at them. S----- screamed, and wept with fear that she and R----- were to die. N----- heard the screams of terror and ran to their aid. S----- was weeping and sobbing so much she knelt before the turkey and cried, "Oh ever grateful turkey! You must spare us! We solemnly swear we shall not kill a turkey for any reason this and the following year! Oh, oh dear turkey, we will build a temple to worship you, master of the universe!!!"

Well the turkey agreed but said he must have the temple set up in a week with a golden statue. Then it said it must have a magnificent palace. M---- heard this and said, Er- yes, um—dear turkey,--uh—the universe is—ah—all yours!" Then N---- said, “ Oh good and loving turkey, we—um—worship you!” “Oh, N----..." said S---- firmly, “we should indeed worship the turkey, and the lord." N------ declared “We will have a chicken thanksgiving!"

“S---? “ It was I---, S----’s little sister! “ What in the world?" S---- cried. “Now we do not have enough food! I----, couldn’t you have stayed home with Mamma and Poppa?" “ I was really hungry, S----!" said I---.

S----- said, "Oh, I so wish we had enough, and I do think there are some wild chickens around here—Aha! R-----, run get your rifle! Hunt that chicken down, now! Come on now! I---- is hungry! Go on! Now is no time to play games. R-----.... Right now! Go on! Go on, now! Get that chicken! Come on, now! I--- is very hungry. Well done. “ “Grrrrrrrr....“ said R-----. Well they roasted that chicken, ate it all together, and hunted another, roasted and ate it all up. Well by then they were full, and made the temple and palace, and then they all burped.

The end.

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We keep marching along into the darker days of the fall, which means that mom gets more and more tired, and less and less patient. I don't plan to talk much about it, but I suffer from seasonal depression, and this year it is pretty bad. (Which is why my posts are becoming more sparse -- I'm pretty sure that reading about life as a depressed person is only slightly less unpleasant than actually living that life, so I spare you.)

Anyway, the bright spot is that today I just needed to buck the routine and do something different, so we played a very fun game instead.

Great States was great fun -- Violet actually liked it better than the Carmen Sandiego computer game she had tried earlier! We have been pretty lax with American geography (social studies right now is the medieval Franks of Gaul), which is pretty useful to know when you live in America, so I'm glad she likes it. Now I need a fun math facts game!

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. . . we get a graphic novel about a "practical" girl who accidentally writes herself into a book and comes to discover that the fairyland things she didn't believe in (like unicorns) are real.

And we get a ballet based on the story of Cinderella, to be performed next week. Here is an invitation for my husband to perform as the prince:

Can you see why teaching writing to this child is so perplexing?

Happy Weekend!

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There are so many things I want to write about, but I never have time to develop them the way I want. So instead, here is a recent poem by Violet.

Is that not just the sweetest thing ever?!

OK, maybe not sweeter than anything your kid has done, but still . . .

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Life has kept us tired and busy -- thus, no blog updates of late.

Geometry is pretty interesting, from my point of view. I make up worksheets for Violet, because I can't find anything pitched at the right level. I'm astonished at her ability to remember the forumlas and theorems we've done so far.

She knows how to find the sum of the angles of a polygon --

S=(n-2) x 180, where S = sum and n=number of sides

She knows how to find the area of a polygon --

A=1/2 ap, where A= area, a=apothem, and p=perimeter.

No, I did not know what an apothem was either, but it is a line drawn from the center of a polygon that bisects one of the sides and a central angle.

She knows how to determine if a pair of triangles is congruent or similar.

Now, if we could just get the pronunciation of Isoceles down we'd really be in business!

Geometry is great math for the highly asynchronous young math learner. Your mind can run way ahead with the logic and theorems, and you get to practice your operations skills without thinking too much about them. I am thinking, however, of instituting a weekly operations review to keep hammering our math facts.

The problem I have realized is that once you step out of the standard scope and sequence, it's hard to get back in. We're off the grid, curriculum-wise, so I don't really know where to go after this. Do I have to keep making up my own math stuff? Because that is really not my speciality. My speciality is emptying the dishwasher and knitting while Violet teaches herself math out of a book.

Our playdate was lovely. Violet had a friend over from homeschool group, the first time we've done this. If I am allowed to say so -- it was a total geekfest. Hey, we're a family of nerds, well, except maybe Victoria, but she's still young. It was just fabulous to see Violet and her friend geeking out joyfully, without any thought of what they should be doing. My understanding is that this boy (age 9, very bright) is not great in groups, so it's really nice that he and Violet have clicked in this way.

They spent much of their time exploding water ballons on the front sidewalk. We had a couple of lovely surprises. First, when Victoria came downstairs from her so-called nap, she was dying to meet Violet's friend. ("Do you think he will like me?" my little 3yo asked.) He was very friendly and offered her a water balloon to pop. Then the older kids made a balloon for her and dropped it several times rather gently to soften it up for her so she could break it herself. (I'm not sure this was either helpful or necessary, but I thought it very sweet nonetheless.

What especially charmed me about this 9yo boy was that when they got to the bottom of the bag of balloons, he convinced the girls to leave the last 2 in the bag, so each of them would get the same amount of balloons. Must be fair! (Oh, and they were diligent about picking up the remains, without any instruction from me, so that was a real plus.) Then one ripped, so we only had one left. So he said to me, "Hey, why don't you make a balloon and do one big last splash with us?

Well it was just so friendly and -- can you tell I am a boring mom by nature? -- surprising to me. I was delighted to be invited in rather than sent away from their playing. I had been so scruplulous about telling Victoria that Violet would want time alone with her friend, about staying in the background, and this boy had no expectations that someone ought to be left out because she was too old or too young.

Is that a homeschool thing? Of course I don't know. But I enjoyed it all the same.

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" . . . who from their labors rest . . ."

I've always liked that hymn. Spiritually I am Catholic, but musically I am a Wesleyan. ;)

I am doing a lot of freelancing this week, so Violet is on her own a lot. In preparation for All Saints, and since we are studying medieval history, she's reading a lot about various saints.

Today's saints: St. Jerome, St. Isidore (patron of picnics -- and farmers), and St. Francis.

Earlier this week: St. Columba, St. Benedict, and the Venerable Bede.

Can you guess which saint the bird-loving 7-year-old (who today prayed that God would give her wings) has claimed for her current favorite?

Indeed, Francis has captured her heart, as he does the hearts of so many children. Our faith formation project for the weekend is a peanut-butter birdfeeder.

By the way, this is the Feast Day of St. Ignatius of Antioch, not to be confused with Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus -- those wonderful, sometimes-loopy Jesuits.

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Actually, we're not quite there. We're more getting Byzantine -- what does that signify?

Here's a recent History Notebook entry -- not a lot of substance to the SOTW reading, but we had fun looking up the images to paste in:

Hmm, my chosen pictures aren't working. Well, close your eyes and imagine a very fancy cathedral and a toga.

And one more reading:

What more do you need to know about Beowulf than that?

Other news: Very cold and windy this week, at least compared to last week -- good thing we got in so many field trips. We nixed the art class altogether -- just way too busy around here. She hasn't mentioned it, so I'm glad we aren't spending the big bucks on it.

This week's You Know You're a Mom When . . .

When you reach in your pocket to get your gloves and instead pull out -- a pair of 3T underpants.

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We're getting into our fall rhythm, I think. So here's what a homeschool day at the Red Sea School is starting to look like:

Get Victoria ready for preschool, DH will take her. Get Violet up and out of bed -- not an easy task!

By 8:30 or so we are usually ready to start school. Today it was math -- the 8s on the times table. After the agony of long division ("I know the answer, I just don't know how I know the answer!") it is good to do something easy.

Next, history. Violet decided to start at the beginning of our Story of the Word Middle Ages to the Renaissance book now that our RenFest prep is done. So, we read about how Rome began to fall apart because it was too big to defend from all the "barbarians." We also learned that the Celts painted themselves blue and use animal fats to gel up their hair into spikes to prepare for battle. Would scare me!

After we read -- I do this as a read-aloud, just for fun and variety's sake -- we do our narration. Sometimes I take dictation, sometimes Violet types. Today I had her do a do-over, which I would almost never do. But her sentences were mainly constructed of exclamation points and words stretched out for emphasis, like reaaaaallllllyyyyyyy, which is super annnnnnoooooyyyyyinnnnngggg. Right? And since the day was going well I decided to push her on it. She still insisted on trying to be funny -- including a genuinely clever pun on "Pax Romana" and "the pox" -- but I felt a little more certain that she had been paying attention.

I let Violet take a short Neopets break (10 minutes) while I did some straightening, then we took Pupster for a short walk around the neighborhood to get some sunshine for all of us. Then we came back in and Violet did Rosetta Stone Chinese for 15-20 minutes, until it was time to go pick up Victoria from preschool.

Quick jaunt to Target to get new bike helmets for both girls, a new ball (Pupster keeps attacking them), and a giant frisbee. Then our nanny comes -- let's see, she needs a screen name, let's call her Mary (as in the ultimate nanny, Mary Poppins). So Mary sets up a picnic for the girls on the lawn, then they take scooters and trike and toys to the park for the rest of the afternoon (stopping briefly at our neighborhood coffee/ice cream shop for a treat).

Girls return at 5 pm. Violet still has a bit of Chinese to do, but she is begging to play the Sims. We agree that after she finishes Chinese she can do Sims while I make dinner. In the meantime Victoria is dying to try the new Dora the Explorer PlayDoh set I got in a moment of weakness, so we set it up, and she dutifully ignores my admonition about mixing the colors and does what children are born to do, and begins mushing them all togther.

Dinner is running late. I let Victoria watch some PBS kids and Violet plays Sims for entirely too long. We have dinner (a penne/chicken sausage/broccoli thing I had doubled and frozen a few days back), then Victoria has a bit more time with the playdoh while I load up the dishwasher and DH gets Violet to practice the piano with the metronome -- a hated task, for understandable reasons. Playing with the metronome is hard! But she is a trooper, and she is really getting good at both keeping with the ticker and getting back on track quickly if she falters.

And then on to bed. Though I'm pretty sure that Advanced Sneak Reading is going on more often than I realized.

Some days we have no nanny, some days -- like tomorrow -- we have a class or homeschool playgroup or field trip. So there is no real typical day, just a series of related adventures, punctuated by trips to the coffeeshop and too much Web Boggle.

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Wow, everything looks so different on Firefox/Windows!

My computer is out for repairs, so I'll have to update with photos later. Two field trips this week -- Heritage Lab (Milling, Mining, Lumbering) and the Renaissance Festival!

I'm hoping the sitter will take the girls to Oliver Kelley farm next week, so maybe we'll see some of you Minnesotans there!

Just look for the adorable girls with the absolutely perfect manners . . .

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I have a new favorite homeschool subject. History is going really well -- Violet finds it all fascinating (adults who couldn't read or write? no computers?). I am so glad we started.

I'm also liking Story of the World pretty well. It is pitched a bit low, but we can work easily around that. What I like best is the narration/responses Violet gives. She was telling me so much that it was taking 2 pages of paper, and I couldn't write nearly fast enough. I was going to take dictation on the computer for her, but she asked if she could type instead. I wasn't sure -- I type a lot faster, and in the past she has written with a lot of "ers" and "ums" and "wells," like you'd read in dialogue, and put more energy into being silly than conveying info. But I thought, why not? And lo and behold, she did great!

Below, her paragraph on The Renaissance: A New Way of Thinking. (You can see that mom got a bit sidetracked withColumbus and the flat world in our discussion.)

The Renaissance was a time when people started reading the old Greek books, the bible, and started exploring the world, wondering if their thoughts about the world were right. People before the Renaissance thought the world was flat, not a sphere! That meant the earlier people thought sailing too far out would make them fall off the world! (Not that they were right.) A man tried to sail to India to prove the world was a sphere. He ran into what is now called America, but thought it was India, not America! That’s why he called the people there Indians. We call them American Indians or Native Americans. In the Renaissance people made their art more realistic. They made statues realistic, the light in their paintings very realistic, and lots of other art realistic. (Not martial arts, mind you.)

[Ed. note -- italics (here upright) in original.]

I have to laugh that she had to get that one little bit of goofiness in there at the end. And she did all the spelling herself -- except I reminded her how to spell Renaissance to get started.

She is so excited about the RenFest. She just picks up the tickets and studies them.

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We made our last bit of history for the week into a craft project. Our Knights and Castles activity book has good history and good directions for making a fairly realistic castle, explaining all the parts and their purpose. Below, our castle with gatehouse, drawbridge, and keep. Porticullis and towers with carapaces to come! (I hope.)

For science we have a new scale. Here is Dad weighing absolutely everything he can find on a Sunday afternoon. And here is Violet affecting extreme boredom because Dad won't stop weighing. But really, the scale is great!

Also, last weekend we decided to make some fudge. A little home ec.

And a lot of scraping the bowl.

In all, a good week. I look forward to abandoning long division for a while! And I think Violet may have more to add about the castle another day.

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I was going to add some photos, but I see that all of our photos on iPhoto are from the fair! I was serious when I said we wouldn't do much else until the fair ended, but geez . . . We do love our fair.

I went out the other night and went crazy at the bookstore. I decided to dive into The Story of the World and the Classical model of history. Regardless of the Wises' suggestion, we are skipping the first year and jumping into the second year, for the following reasons: if we do go back to school ever, we might go to a Classical school, so I want to get on track for a grade skip (or 2); I am much more motivated to get started when I start reading about the Renaissance, Henry IV and V, jousting, Robin Hood, Shakespeare, King Arthur, etc. (no offense, Homer); and most importantly, Violet and her dad have tickets for homeschool day at the Ren Fest in a few weeks!

I've been scouring the 'net for cute costumes that don't cost a fortune. Wish I could sew! Perhaps it's time to learn. We also raided the library -- got a couple of big hits: The Measly Middle Ages from the Horrible Histories series from Scholastic UK (Could someone make these easily available in the US please?!); and Knights and Castles: 50 hands-on activities to experience the Middle Ages. I think this will get our history study off to a good start.

I do worry a bit about our attraction to the Horrible Histories, Murderous Maths, etc. — the Maths aren't so bad, but history really is pretty horrible. Violent, bloody, disturbing . . . everything a sweet little 7-year-old loves, eh?

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There's no rule that we have to draw clear lines between doing school and not doing school, is there?

In fact, if there are rules about homeschool (apart from state law), maybe you just shouldn't tell me, because I don't think I can follow them.

We started back with math and Chinese today -- plus some unschool science: a pet wooly bear caterpillar and (woo hoo!) a monarch chrysalis we found in the butterfly garden. [Can I tell you how cool it was to hear Victoria, my 3yo, say unprompted upon seeing it, "It's a chrysalis!"]

My goal is to get through all of our multiplication and division section in the next month -- as in, by the end of the first week of October. I don't want to push, but I also feel like a month of drill-oriented math facts is going to be about all Violet can take. Then we'll do a geometry break again.

On the other hand, a month may be more than she can take, and I'll have to take some days off for geometry and algebra in the middle.

Why can't this child learn more slowly?!?

(Thank goodness some of you out there know exactly what I mean, and that I am not speaking with some sort of backwards pride.

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