November and what we've been up to

Liam: Lacrosse, Junior Zoologists

Liam also read: "Call of the Wild," has worked through the first two Keys 2 books in fractions, has done weekly reverse dictation and daily copywork or handwriting. We watched the X Men movies and I am reading the "House at Pooh Corner" aloud to the kids. We finished "Holes."

Junior zoologists met for 8 sessions and included extensive teaching about conservation and animals worldwide. Liam signed up at bushmeat.org to advocate for the bushmeat crisis in Africa. He's become keenly aware of recylcing too. Bird watching just started up again for us too.

We've played games (he's a World of Warcraft afficianado online) such as Settlers, Quiddler, Rummy 500, and Old Maid.

Took several trips to the park with Rocky as well for nature walks.

Caitrin: sewing class, Chinese with Rosetta Stone, Greek book 2, drawing, violin lessons, knitting, drawing fashion, fall soccer, nature journaling and drama at co-op.

Caitrin is also working through Miquon Math, handwriting, copywork, French dictation, reading magazines and books such as the American Girls of Many Lands novels and American Girl magazine. She's sewing projects on her own such as a blanket and repairing clothes. She is completing projects in her weekly class as well. We have done a few experiments such as growing crystals.

Jacob: saxophone lessons and preparation for Honor Band auditions, private tutoring in Algebra I with Ing-Wan, biology at co-op, Spanish 1 at Lakota Freshman, photography at co-op.

He is also signed up for soccer in the spring. He is studying western civ. at home and we are using "Sophie's World" as a spine along with the Young Person's Guide to Philosophy. He has completed several short bios of Greek philosophers. He is doing my Kidswrite Intermediate class with me and is on project two. He continues to do copywork and some dictation. His reading includes To Kill a Mockingbird, and the short stories on the Slingshot Companion list.

We've taken field trips to the zoo, to the Newport Aquarium and to see "The Diary of Anne Frank" at Lakota West High School. Jacob performed in his band concert and we all attended.

Good fall.

Four weeks of blissful homeschool

We've had an incredible start to homeschool this year. I should be entering things daily so I don't forget them.

Still, here's a run down on all we've accomplished and enjoyed.

Numerous teatimes which have led us to complete several books: Ella Enchanted, Holes, and The Master Puppeteer.

Currently, we're reading The House at Pooh Corner. I get such a kick out of Milne's writing. He has a great sense of humor and the kids are enjoying it.

We've done some reverse dictation, copywork, handwriting and letter writing. Liam and Caitrin sent two thank you notes a piece to grandparents and both of them addressed the envelopes and wrote the notes themselves.

Liam has a magazine subscription to ZooBooks that he reads cover to cover the day it arrives. So far, he's regaled me with detailed narrations of tigers and sea lions and elephants. In addition, he's a member of the Zoo's Juniro Zoologist program which began last night. He talked to me about what he learned from the moment he got in the car until we arrived at home.

Some of what he shared had to do with conservation and how to protect endangered animals like the Blue Macaw. Apparently in Trinidad, conservationistspaid the poachers to not poach macaws and as a result, they've rescued them from the endangered list.

We took Liam and Caitrin to see a play at Xavier which was a performace of Caribbean dance and poetry by Derek Walcott (Nobel Prize winner). Though it was over their heads, I was so pleased with the way both of them have found connections to what they watched in spite of not really loving it.

Liam spent the day at the zoo with my mom on Monday. He is also reading Jack London's "Call of the Wild" that Jon bought for him.

Liam is also studying fractions using the Key to series and is doing extremely well with it. We began the year with Jacob's Mathematics but decided it was too abstract and not useful. Ing-Wan pointed us in the direction of Key To again and I must say, I don't know why I depart from it. It's excellent. We'll just continue with decimals, percents and pre-algebra and geometry. Liam is a natural with math and I'm happy he's working on it.

Caitrin is studying Chinese on Rosetta Stone and is in Book Two of Biblical Greek. She whizzed through Greek level one which was all about learning the alphabet. She's starting to add vocabulary now which is so much fun.

She's got a subscription to American Girl magazine which she reads the day it arrives and is slowly working on Leyla from the Girls of Many Lands collection as well as Little House in the Big Woods. We've had some wonderful conversations about history because she is so curious about the placement of the characters in their right context.

Johannah is playing the role of Miep in The Diary of Anne Frank and that's led us into listening to and reading about Anne Frank. I watched the documentary with Johannah the other night and Liam and Jacob both watched part of it with us.

We've been to the zoo, we've taken a couple of nature hikes with the dog including making center pieces out of natural items.

Lots of games: Quiddler, Apples to Apples, Rummy 500, Spinergy.

Caitrin is sewing up a storm - taking a sewing course from Trish each week on Tuesdays. Liam is starting up with lacrosse again on Monday. Caitrin is in the middle of soccer season. Jacob is going to classes each day at LFS. He has a concert coming up. He is also still taking his weeky private sax lesson. And it looks like Caitrin will be playing violin again! We found a teacher who will come to the house.

We all still watch a lot of TV now that the reality season has returned as well as the NFL and college football. :)

We're doing some fun writing exercises too and I hope to add to them this next month. Jacob is working through my high school writing book. He's just completed the musical language exercise.

Phew. Enough for now.

New School Year: 2005-2006

We started on August 7 and have had a wonderful first couple of weeks already.

Jacob:
Parttime enrolled at Lakota Freshman, taking Spanish 1 and Band.

Weekly Saxophone lessons (third year)

Studying at co-op: biology, algebra 1, and PowerPoint

English: Help for High School Writing (my program) and Online Literature (Slingshot Companion)

Liam:
Jacob's Mathematics daily

Brave Writer Arrow and handwriting book

Weekly freewriting

Junior Zoologists this fall for science

Caitrin:
Handwriting and freewriting

Reading books for herself (right now, Girls of Many Lands novels)

Rosetta Stone Chinese and New Testament Greek

Co-op: nature study, art, P.E. and music and drama

Fall Soccer

Together:

We've read The Master Puppeteer and Ella Enchanted.

We have Tuesday Teatimes with poetry.

We've taken two trips to the zoo, several trips to the YMCA for swimming and have worked on some of the chapters in Murderous Maths.

Went to the Zoo

over Easter week. Don't want to forget it.

Another round-up of experiences

So we finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and predictably, I cried. So sad!!

I did the Keen Observation exercise with Liam and Caitrin last week and they really loved it. Liam especially became much more expressive and precise in his wordings. I have a record of his comments and Caitrin's in my homeschool folder on the desktop (note to self).

Jacob read "To Light a Fire" by Jack London and discussed at length with Jon over dinner. (I love homeschool.)

We've had days of sunshine where we play on the trampoline, run around the backyard and read aloud.

Liam's lacrosse is in full swing. He practices with Noah in addition to scheduled practices.

Liam, Jacob and Noah are all playing Exalted (RPG) and when I asked Liam if he would like to do some writing with me, he reminded me that he is doing a lot of writing playing that game. And he is!

Caitrin and I worked on a lapbook for John Mayer. She is really getting good at typing online and using google. Amazing at age 9. She has rekindled her interest in Greek and so we pulled out the Greek books last night and plowed forward. She is adorable how well she spells and attempts to use this ancient language. She was telling Johannah and Liam that they are her sister and brother. :)

She also made a host of Chinese lanterns and paper chains to decorate the back yard and to help us play color tag.

Movies: we watched Winged Migration, Harry Potter 4, Millions, and one about Emmett Till (Civil Rights Movement).

Jacob continues to work through "Story of the World" and Chemistry. He is also working on algebra and especially is preparing his application for AFS. He is reading the website daily and is working several mowing jobs to get money together for that ambitious trip.

That's it for today!

Last Week

We listened to Trumpet of the Swan read by E. B. White in a day. Such a great book. We also finished the Eragon sequel Eldest. Jacob wrote a short piece on the shogunate in Japan and did a nice job.

Caitrin and Jacob also started a podcast called "Intelligent Conversations." They go to into it, Johannah joined in as well. Jacob has spent a lot of time this week working on our .mac account and is learning how to make iDVDs and slideshows.

We watched the Oscars, we watched "Winged Migration" and lots of TV shows, including our usuals: American Idol and Survivor.

Liam and I took Rocky for a walk yesterday and these are the questions he asked me and what we discussed:

Why do we call some countries "Third World?"

I explained the innate heirarchy implied in this construction of the world and we discussed "developed" and "less developed," we looked at the "1/3" and "2/3" constructions and whether those were more just in how they framed the argument.

Aren't there any "Second World" countries?

I got to share about eastern Europe and communism and the fall of the USSR. Liam already know about the USSR (what it stood for and what the results of the fall were). So we then branched off to discuss how a country can have that kind of control over other countries as the USSR did over eastern Europe. He was so interested!

I'll ask him for more of our discussion when he gets up. It was long and satisfying.

February homeschool

Caitrin: Lapbooks - teapots and tea, as well as fashion. She's been reading the Olivia books (owns three now an can read them!). She wove little rugs and has organized her artwork into a notebook. We've played lots of games, especially Clue. She is practicing violin every day. She made thirty Valentines for co-op and then created a thank you note for each of the grandparents for the money they gave her for the holiday. We've spent a lot of time watching the Olympics. Movies include: Nanny McPhee, Chasing Liberty, Good Boy. We've taken a few trips to the parks, notably Keehner Park with Rocky and Liam. We've had several teatimes (at least one per week) where we read poetry and read Eldest.

Liam: Liam and I have started working through Jacobs mathematics and are having a lot of fun with it. He still does most thing sin his head, but I love how it is helping us look at mathematical reasoning, not just adding numbers and following processes. He is enjoying it if I do it with him, which I am. He wrote Valentine card thank you's to both sets of grandparents. He enjoys poetry still and is actively interested in Eldest. He spent time this month improving his island chain project including coloring and defining his maps. I have had him do copywork a couple of times and he enjoys using poetry for his selections.

Jacob: Jacob is working through Jacobs Algebra I, Story of the World for history, Chemistry for science (writing narrations) and dictation and copywork from Eldest and poetry. Jacob continues saxophone and his cookie business. This week, he applied to AFS for the New Zealand semester abroad. He is learning iWeb and wants to develop a website for us. He continues to show interest in Halo online. Watched Band of Brothers this last month and has a renewed interest in WWII.

MLK Jr. Day

We spent it at the Freedom Center.

No time to make an entry but overall, things have been great.

We're working through Eragon, Jacob has a growing collection of narrations for history and science, Caitrin made a lapbook for the history of tea, Liam is doing math each day and some reading.

We are also watching American Idol and Friends every day. :) Caitrin has taken to knitting again and wants to make a lapbook for knitting.

Johannah and Jacob

Jacob worked on more of the Jacob's Algebra book. I really like it. He also saw the movie Munich with Noah. He is also whipping through the Pullman fantasy series and is keeping up with history. I noticed that he has a narrative about peter Stuyvesant in his history notes. We are going to work on polishing that into a finished product. He has great syntax but not such good punctuation. He is not bad at it, just a bit unconscious about being attentive to it. More dication needed.

Johannah and I went to her Algebra II tutoring (she finished her exams this week) and then went to Barnes and Noble where we worked on thesis statements and the expository essay. I like going there with her. I feel like I finally have time to help her work on writing in a way that she will do the work. We checked over her credits and she only has one history course left to graduate! I'm very proud of her.

We'll keep working on math and English next year, but she is done except for American History. She's done well, in spite of the challenge of school.

We are now scheduling her college visits.

Catch Phrase and Reading and Caitrin

Caitrin is finally breaking through. It's a slow process, but I see her trying to read more and more. She is actually working on it on her own, not just when I ask her to. Thank God!

She's making her way through Trixie Belden and an American Girl book, one paragraph at a time. It's taking her about fifteen minutes to do a paragraph alone and a little less if I'm a part of the process.

We are playing Catch Phrase a lot and the kids love it. Good game for using language to communicate. Tonight, Caitrin and Liam dusted Jon and me. Funny to see them beat us so easily.

Caitrin is weaving little rugs for her dolls. Very committed to the project. Lots of moving of her dolls around too. She narrated several of the Many Lands doll stories to Jon tonight. We also read some books at Barnes and Noble (Long-Long's New Year about the Chinese New Year). She loved that!

She has two Olivia books and is reading them with me too. I love her energy around books suddenly. Big change.

Today Liam and Caitrin came to Trader Joe's with me. Each one pushed his or her own cart. Little ones. I got a kick out of them. They have so much energy and are non-stop talkers.

YMCA for health

We're going to add the YMCA to our weekly outings. After the unqualified success of skiing, I am ready to add the YMCA for swimming for the kids and running for me. I weighed in at 126 (about fifteen pounds more than I want to be).

Today, kids played in the pool for an hour and I ran and lifted weights and sat in the jacuzzi.

We also read Eragon, had a teatime with poetry (read lots of nice poems out of our newest poetry book) and Jacob did his history and math.

All in all, a nice day.

Perfect Unschooling Day

Yesterday was perfect. I was gone in the morning at Rita's so worried that we wouldn't have as good a homeschool day as we usually do. Instead, it was better.

After lunch, I read to the kids (we are now slogging through Eldest, which they love). After we finished several chapters with a fire going, Caitrin began coloring a map of the world suggested in the book. Liam pulled out his Eono's Island Chain notebook and filled in details (gods and religions and other writing). We did some Internet research too and he decided one of the islands would have Confucianism for its main religion.

Jacob worked on his chemistry, history and writing.

We all sat at the table together for a long time (couple of hours) while we also began the new Jacob's algebra book. What a terrific math text! I'm so excited to really learn math this time. Both Jacob and Liam worked the problems.

Caitrin continued to color diligently her new map and then got the idea to make little standing figures out of paper and toothpicks and tape. She then put those figures on the map so they can move around. Each one was a character from the book. Delightful narration project!

At bedtime, Caitrin read the Mercer Mayer book Just For You all by herself. It was amazing to see her make so much progress. She's on the verge of a breakthrough for sure.

She's been busy with dress up lately too - lots of uses for a big swath of fabric (pink underskirt material).

Week one of 2006

So we discovered skiing and now that's all anyone wants to do. Caitrin, Liam and Jacob all did brillinatly on the slopes and got all that wonderful fresh air mothers concern themselves with.

Caitrin is reading On the Banks of Plum Creek all by herself, slowly, painstakingly, but refusing to let me help. Do I hear shouts from choirs of angels? Yes! She is also coloring in the ink drawings that we Xerox and making a beautiful collection. Challenges: reading fluidly, responding to punctuation as she reads and making her lower case letter only go up halfway on the lined notebook paper.

I got a kick out of two things. One: she received an "Olivia" book for Christmas and read it herself! She just bought the seond one and loves it. Two: We read "Phoebe the Spy" together (she part of the book, and me the other part) and she adored that story. She narrated the whole thing to Jon on a walk yesterday and it tickled me to hear her tell such a vivid version of the story. She compared Phoebe to a CIA agent. So cute!

She's into rewatching old Disney movies such as Aladdin, Tarzan, The Little Mermaid and more. She does a great job of narrating those stories to anyone who will listen. We continue to read mythology too.

Liam is also copying and reading. He finished his first Soup book over Christmas break and loved it. He listens attentively to our read alouds and continues to devour poetry. For math, we are going to dump Math U See (since it is way beneath his current level) and move on to Jacob's algebra starting the coming week. He and Jacob can work on it together.

Both Caitrin and Liam are hooked on Quiddler (card game) that makes you spell words out of random letters (a bit like Scrabble but with cards). Liam is great at it. We are also playing a lot of catch phrase and I'm thrilled at the way their verbal skills are growing.

We got to watch "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" as well as "Charlie and Chocolate Factory" over the break. They also watched myriad Christmas movies such as "Scrooged," "The Muppet Christmas Carol," and "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." I liked comparing these stories.

Jacob continues his cookie business and has nearly finished his level of Math U See (in a semester!). We will embark on Algebra with Liam starting this week. He is addicted to skiing after one day on the slopes. Loved it. He blogs and keeps his journal going. He has done a great job of writing about science and history in the fall. I am going to introduce some testing ideas for those two subjects to help him prepare for essay testing.

Jacob is still playing saxophone and improving lots. Caitrin is playing violin and not improving as quickly but seems happy to do it.

We all went to Festival of Lights this year and Jon was with us. What a treat. Liam lights up himself any time we are around animals. Hope to go again this week (zoo).

Time to close. Life with the kids is good and I feel like they have struck a great balance between organized learning and their own pursuits.

Catching up over the last few weeks

Jacob: Continues to work on chemistry written narrations, reading from Story of the World (modern era) and has almost finished his Math U See this semester. He plays lots of Halo and is keeping up with Let's Eat at co-op. He is taking saxophone and is getting better about daily practice.

Movies: lots, but I need to ask him for a list.

He has finished all the mysteries wwe set out to read this fall. He's also done some writing (freewriting and some revised work).

We took a trip to Cleveland for the U2 concert which included a fabulous trip to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Museum that was like a day of social history lessons in America and Europe. Had such fun discussing it all.

Liam: Making progress in all areas. Yippee! He wrote his first poem that was completely from his heart. He is still reading and memorizing poems all the time. We are studying birds, he is continuing to do copywork and Math U See. We have made progress in the Murderous Math books as well. He is one little calculator. Just started long division and it's a cinch for him.

We've also watched movies together, including the DVDs of the Nat'l Geographic too.

Caitrin: Reading more and more. We are reading Phoebe the Spy which she had a breakthrough reading aloud. She was actually reading with comprehension, not just sounding out words which meant she made intelligent guesses for the first time. Breakthrough!

She and I have made two lap books: Alicia Keyes and the human heart. She continues to write and do Miquon Math.

As a group we have finished Eragon and have begun Eldest. Fabulous time of reading, often combined with tea.

Good stuff.

Myths

Today was a wonderful day for homeschool. Nice to get back in the swing of things. I have spent too much time preparing for guests and then we had company. Now we can get back into our routine. Liam and I did lots of math together. He is really into multiplying double digits. He thinks it's fun!

Caitrin and I read another myth from Central Asia. This time, it was about a magical carpet. She was enthralled and so she and I created a little loom and she is now weaving a carpet herself!

We also read three hcapters of Eragon and made blueberry muffins.

Jacob continues to do his TWTM work and told us all about the Spanish exploitation of South America - over 500 billion dollars worth of gold taken from that place. Not possible!

Wish I had more time to update. I do not.

Beauty and the Beast

Caitrin and Liam accompanied Jon and me to see Beauty and the Beast (Disney's version) performed by the School of Creative and Performing Arts in Cinci. They performed at the Taft. What a magical night! They both were enthralled with the costumes, the singing, the way the sets rolled on and off stage.

It was such a rich experience.

Clue

Caitrin is obsessed with Clue. We play it all the time. Then
yesterday she decided she wanted to make her own version of the game
complete with characters who were actually silly versions of her friends.

I thought it would be a terrific creative project so we dove in. And
then I was pleasantly surprised to discover that creating a board game
is highly mathematical!

For instance, she wanted to have more characters than the original
Clue game. Well, that makes the game *longer* because the work of
deducting is slower with more choices meaning that the odds of
figuring out the murderer are longer.

When we set up the board, we quickly discovered that it mattered how
far apart the rooms were, how big the spaces were and where the doors
went. If we put the doors too near to the original positions of the
playing pieces, some pieces had an unfair first turn advantage. So we
had to count out the spaces and make sure that the doors were all
about seven spaces away from the original starting spots to ensure
that it takes two rolls to get into a room.

We discovered that it matters how big the center of the board was so
that the players didn't have to cover too many steps to get to rooms.
We figured out why some of the rooms on the original clue have double
doors (not just single).

In other words, we had never considered the structure of that game
mathematically. In fact, I had never thought about the fact that all
those calculations needed to be made in order to make Clue the great
entertaining, not too frustrating game that it is!

So we have completed our version complete with photos of her friends
on each of the cards and rooms on the board that feature catalog
photos: an entertainment room, a romatnic room, a doggy room and even
a sunroom! She made weapons out of sculpey clay (a pillow, knitting
needles, a fire poker, a plastic bag, a frying pan and a pair of
sewing scissors) as well as a die and little cubes to be each of the
characters.

And we've played. I am one of her eight characters (named Mrs.
Goodington) and as it turned out, for the first game I played with
her, "I" did it with the knitting needles in the sun room. :)

Knitting and so on

We've taken up the knitting bug around here. Caitrin is working so hard. it's fun to watch her hands gain mastery over the needles, stitches etc. I chose large needles and bulky yarn so my scarf is growing really quickly. (Just finished in fact) She's working with thin yarn and narrow needles so her project is going slower. Not a problem really.

We watched "Bride and Prejudice" which turned out to be an awful movie - campy, strange musical numbers that didn't fit with the genre of the movie or the story, bad acting on the part of the "American" guy, bad acting on the part of the "Elizabeth" character... What was disappointing especially is that we loved "Bend if Like Beckham" and this movie had none of the naturalness or charm of that one.

We're about to read Eragon again. Caitrin did some reading work on street signs (still resists reading from books). Jacob worked on math, science, reading (He's still finishing the Sherlock Holmes series and read Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None at the same time) and Story of the World history. He's got a strong discipline going. Nice to see.

Liam and I worked on borrowing and carrying yesterday. He is finally encountering problems he can't do in his head. But he insists on doing them in his head to double check the answers. Smart boy. Caitrin hit carrying in her Miquon book so it was a great time teaching this to both of them.

Recap from last week

Played Quidditch over and over and over again.

Played Settlers of Catan. I won. :)

Read Eragon every day.

Played Hang Man with Caitrin. Great game wherein she works hard to think of sentences of words she can actually spell. Then she can't see the words and has to hold them in her head as I make guesses and then put the letters in the right slots. It was hard work for her but she was so happy playing it because we had a little dry erase board with a new marker and it was fun to write on. This worked for writing and reading this week.

Math: Jacob kept up with his work, Liam did not and Caitrin played lots of math-y games with me.

We had a wonderful teatime where we read "Jabberwocky" and defined the nonsense words. Jacob is working on a dictionary to be followed by a poem writing exercise.

Caitrin watched "The Three Musketeers" Disney version. They use Operas to write the songs for that cartoon movie. Got such a kick out of it!

We continue to do our study of the outdoor leaves.

She and I did her Blood and Guts homework (silly stuff that she can't possibly understand yet, but we did it all the same). She's on a knitting kick and a beading kick. Love to see her do crafts like Johannah and Noah did at her age.

Liam spent too much time on the computer. He is happy to play games and to go on walks and to listen to read alouds. He is doing some writing (copywork) and enjoys reading poetry. But he is having trouble doing anything more routine than that.

That's it for now.

How to feel crummy about self in three short steps

Decide to move oldest daughter into her own bedroom.

Set off chain reaction of clean-up that involves relocating all old homeschool art projects and files.

Notice the items within and suddenly remember that I was once a great home educator!
--

Now I know that times were different back then. We didn't have cable and my teens didn't watch America's Next Top Model, MTV's Best Week Ever or Steve's Untitled Rock show in between episodes of Seinfeld, Family Guy and Friends.

I also know that I was not tired and could actually read an entire chapter from a novel without needing a two hour nap. Or back in the day, I would take that two hour nap with the baby after nursing him or her and the nap felt purely justified and necessary for sanity and baby's well-being... Today, it just feels selfish and elderly.

Seeing all those old art projects reminded me of the power of a neighbor who lives and breathes art. I live an breathe words. Do those transfer to the kids? Seems like they do, have and hopefully will.

So what have we done over the last bit of time:

Jacob watched the Steve Job's interview online and is now plotting to purchase the new iPod. He has worked mowing lawns, painting our deck and emptying his California savings account.

The kids and I continue to read Eragon.

We read "Jabberwocky" this a.m. for teatime (complete with cheesecake compliments Mrs. McAfee).

The middle three (and Noah who could not keep from jumping in every two seconds with his enthusiastic ideas) and I worked on the reading and definitions of the poem. Two of them kept falling over sideways. They were tired.

But we did read through the poem multiple times. Lots of words to consider and not all of them easily grasped in isolation from each other. Once the ball got rolling, it was hard to stop. All agreed at the end that they understood and enjoyed the poem more just discussing its words like this!

Liam decided to copy it for copywork. Tough one for spelling!

So here's how we did it.

For instance: what is a tove or borogove?

What does "Twas brillig" mean? Is "brillig" an adjective or noun (hint: it can be either - replace it with nouns and adjectives and see if they both work). You will have to choose one and then define it.

What does "outgrabe" mean? We talked about "outplay, outwit, outlast" (from Survivor) to help us think about what "out" does to a verb. What might it do to this verb?

What words come to mind when you read "mimsy"? Do you think of "flimsy"? One of my kids thought of a friend named "Mim" who happens to be bouncy and silly.

When we looked at the word "frabjous" we could detect a hint of the word fabulous and jouyous all wrapped up together. We asked, "Does fabulous and/or joyous fit with the use of this word?"

When we encountered "vorpal," my 18 year old pulled out one of his RPGs (role playing games) and read the use of a "vorpal" sword in the game (clearly taken from Carroll's poem) - it is a sharp blade that in one blow can cut off a head. It can only be used for decaptiation in this game.

We did some math, too.

Over the weekend, we played more Quiddler, painted the deck, took Rocky for a walk, and played outside.

Caitrin is making clay figures and beads using Sculpey clay. She is also coloring big pictures from one of our design books. She's listened to "When Bach Comes to Call" and her Suzuki CD for violin. Each day she does her practice routine.

Monday was co-op. Nuff said.

Time for grad school.