The Mac and Cheese Chronicles

Bip and I have the bed all to ourselves for the week since Philip is gone. He’s spending the week in Hawaii (lucky guy) at a conference he put together. I’m not too sure what exactly his job is, so I can’t explain this conference. I know he’s in charge of a global satellite system and trying to get as many joint commands to use it as possible. Joint commands are where multiple branches of the US Armed Services are serving together in one unit. I think. Could be wrong, wouldn’t be the first time.

With Philip being gone and summer having arrived with a bang, I decided to mix things up a bit with our schedule. We school year round for two reasons. First off, we take a break from our regularly scheduled curriculum on Fridays. We don’t skip the assignments or double up on another day, we just push the 5th days’ work into the next week and everything moves over one day. If you do the math, you’ll see that we end up with 9 weeks beyond the more traditional 36 week school calendar. Those weeks, plus 7 weeks worth of breaks scheduled around the year make up our year round school. Taking one day a week off gives us a lot of flexibility. Sometimes that day is for appointments or other non-school related activities. Most of the time, though, it is for our extra fun things, like music, art and hand crafts.

The other reason we school throughout the summer is to prevent the summer boredom and craziness. My oldest tends to run amok without specific, directed things to do. Left to his own devices, he irritates me and his sister and ends up in trouble. Having schoolwork to do leaves less hours of the day for him to be naughty. Not to say I schedule every minute of his day. That would drive all of us nuts. But between school, chores, quiet time, and meals, his free time is in shorter blocks of time throughout the day- just long enough for uber-silliness to start to creep in but short enough for me to end it before the trouble starts.

The only problem is, we usually have school in the morning and by afternoon it’s blazing hot and humid outside. Today’s forecast – hot, in the 90’s, humid, chance of thunderstorm in the afternoon. That’ll be the forecast until September. The children last all of 5 minutes outside before coming in, first for water, then for a hat, then just give up altogether. You’d never even know that public schools were out for the summer. It’s so hot that there are no children out at all.

So we readjusted our schedule. We loaded up Bip in the stroller and headed to the park at 9 am. It was still warm in the sun, but there was a good breeze. We stayed out for an hour, then came home. By the time I put Bip down for a nap, we were able to start school at 10:30. Everything else in our normal schedule has been moved down. I wasn’t entirely happy with the fact that by being at the park, our morning chores didn’t get finished until 1 pm. Maybe tomorrow we’ll do chores before going to the park.

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One of our extra things we do in school is our story notebooks. I don’t really know what else to call them. Each child has their own sketchbook to draw a picture and then write a story. They use Crayola sketchbooks which are unlined. I measure off 2″ from the bottom of each page and draw a line. They draw on the upper portion of the page then dictate a story to me. I haven’t given them any direction on this, just let them draw whatever they choose. It’s been an interesting peek into whatever is on their minds that week.

Boo is not really into coloring or drawing. This is painfully evident in his story notebook. He does not draw like a 7 year old at all. I have been trying to keep my opinions to myself and not “help” him draw, but really, he really needs to do better. You can really see what I’m talking about here:

“We were all with God in a very happy place. That is Heaven. All the yellow stuff is the glory surrounding them. We were all very happy. We had a terrific party. We danced and danced all night.”

He does write good stories.

After another, I hate to say “bad”, drawing I decided he did need more guidance. We had an impromptu art class where I taught him how to draw a little more realistically. Here is his first drawing since then:

“Today I was driving my motorboat to the Smarty Mart to deliver stuff. The wind blew now and then, so I had my motor on, too. I also had my sail up. I arrived at the Smarty Mart in a jiffy. Then I just hung out for the rest of the day.”

Much better.

Pumpkin Girl’s stories are mostly about her and Rebecca:

“In Heaven, Becky was with God. They were happy and smiling at me when I went in. They had a beautiful party for my family. At the end, we all had a great time and then went to bed. The End. (p.s. The one that is all sparklish is God.)”

Today we not only used the notebooks for undirected stories and pictures, but we also used them to further our drawing skills. We used a picture of Larry and Bob from a coloring book and copied it. I then had the children write their own stories to go with the pictures. Interesting enough, Pumpkin did better at the drawing, getting all the peices in the same places at the coloring book picture, but for all her story-telling skills, she had trouble making up a story.

“Bob and Larry are dancing outside in the cool morning.”

Boo wasn’t as accurate with the drawing of Larry and Bob, but he embellished his drawing by putting them in a boat. He also made up a great little story, complete with dialogue.

“It was a warm, sunny day. Bob and Larry were out sailing. They were headed towards the beach. It was a windy day. The wind took a pause, so they had their engine on, too. When they spotted the beach, Bob shouted, “Land, ho!” And Larry shouted, “Anchors down!” They landed ont he beach and had a wonderful time there. ”

Here’s my drawing. I didn’t write a story.

This is one of Boo and Pumpkin’s favorite school activities. My plan is to keep them going as long as they enjoy them. We will be starting nature notebooks in the fall, too, so I may combine the two into one discovery journal where they can continue to write and illustrate stories, and observe and record nature and the world around them.

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We had so much fun with our science experiments today!  We are using the Usborne Science Activities Book 2.  Today we had experiments with fizz.

First up:  raisins and soda.  Pour some clear soda into a clear glass or jar.  Add a couple of raisins.  The gas bubbles in the soda will grab the raisins and lift them up.  As the gas escapes, the raisins will fall back down, but come up again when more bubbles stick to them.  This is really funny to watch!

Next:  baking soda and vinegar.  Just add a little of both to a cup and watch what happens.

And: fizzies in your mouth.  A little citric acid plus a little baking soda gets you…nothing!  You need to add liquid.  But first, mix some powdered sugar in for taste, then put a pinch of the mixture in your mouth.  Sort of a sweet and tangy fizzy thing going on.  Fun!  Put some of the mixture aside for Daddy to try when he comes home.  You can also watch what happened in your mouth by taking a spoonful of the mix and adding water to it.

By the way, if you are using the Usborne Science Activity books, Sonlight has some great DVDs to go along with them.  Every experiment in the book is demonstrated on the DVD by a fun and often silly science dude.  They are great to compare your own experiments with our to use if you don’t want to do them yourselves.  Especially if you can’t get all the materials needed.  Sonlight also sells science kits to go along with the books and DVDs so that you do have things like citric acid on hand.  I’m not affiliated with Sonlight in any way, just a big fan of their curriculum.

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