My Little Soapbox

Jr. lost his second front tooth on this Saturday morning in a somewhat serendipitous accident while tussling with his brother. The second front tooth was hanging on tight and beginning to worry me just a tad with the irritation it was causing in his gums. I was actually delighted when he came up and said “I hit my mouth with my knee and my tooth popped out! It hurted a little bit and was bleeding so I rinsed my mouth..see mom!
Picture soon. The one I took that day didn’t turn out

What we saw tonight outside:

To give you an idea of size the trees in the pictures are a field length away from where I was standing. The clouds towered over us but weren’t scary since they were big and fluffy. The sun was setting when I snapped my pictures which made interesting lighting but mostly made it so I couldn’t see what I’d photographed on my camera. I was pretty pleased to find a couple of decent pictures. The bird in the one photo is our egret (or maybe heron) that lives by our creek. I can’t recall the last time we saw clouds that tall. It made for a wonderfuly site tonight.

Just a few highlights of our day at the State Fair.

Lil’B is making his dragon breathe “fire”

Jr. has a repeat of last years face painting choice of skull and crossbones

We found the biggest piggie bank tucked back by the train exhibit. I was impressed with the work that the train modelers (is that even the right word?!) had done. The exhibit has gotten better and more intricate each year and continues to be a favorite stop of ours.

Jr. watching the swans at the DNR exhibit.

Lil’B telling Daddy something neat about what he’s seeing at the DNR exhibit.

Jr. will begin his Year 2 next Monday. This year we have lots to do and hopefully most of it will be fun for both of us. I am almost ready which I suppose is better than not ready at all. Finding time to actively focus on planning is still an issue. And one that must get resolved if we are to get a significant portion of our plans completed this year. Unfortunately without time to plan what falls to the wayside are the fun, big projects that require me to make sure we have stuff on hand. My goal this year is to carve out time to plan and to gather up the necessary materials for the big projects.

The plan may seem ambitious but if last winter was any indicator of what’s to come this year we will have a number of months where we are effectively here, home and hardly anywhere else. Long winter days are perfect for keeping busy with learning fun!

Year 2 Plan

Math: Singapore 2A/2B
We will be continuing with Singapore Math. Jr. is still lightening fast with picking up math concepts and continues to develop his interest in numbers. This program has worked well with keeping him slightly challenged and growing. We will be adding in Challenging Word Problems this year.

Grammar: Growing with Grammar 1st/2nd
I love this program! What’s more so does Jr. The lessons are nutshell lessons that are easy to complete with no frustration from my reluctant writer. The writing is there but not so much that Jr. gets fatigued which is what leads to frustration. We started this late in the year last year so we will not actually hit the 2nd grade pages till closer to November.

Reading: ETC Online, Various Read Aloud Books
Reading is the bane of Jrs. existence. He can read and read well for his age in my opinion. But he loathes reading aloud. So this year we have an assigned books for him to read to one of us (the parents) at varying levels. We’ll be starting out the year with easy books to encourage his confidence in himself and move up as the year progresses. For additional reinforcement of the phonics rules Jr. will use Explode The Code Online.
This is probably the area of I expect the largest adjustment throughout the year.

Handwriting: HWT 2nd Grade
We need to refine some of the technique and then add more writing to the day. Jr. has nice chunky handwriting when he takes his time but does still tend to utilize all uppercase letters when writing. He’ll also be continuing with writing to his pen pal across the pond. And we’ll have copy-work pages to change up from the technique days.

Geography:
I do not have a set resource for Geography as our focus for this year is just exposure. We’ll touch on Oceans, Continents, US Geography and some World Geography. But the main idea of the year will be to make him more aware that there are other places, countries and peoples.

Science: R.E.A.L. Science Life & Earth & Space
Originally I was just planning on working on Life but instead I am going to be combining the two throughout the year. Depending on how it goes this combination may extend into next year as well. Due to the time of year and what is available we actually started this two weeks ago to cover the first two preliminary units so that we could jump ahead to the butterfly unit since we have caterpillars in a jar now. We will focus on life science for August and then switch to the Earth & Space weather units for September while I regroup for Life again in October.

History: History Odyssey Level 1 Middle Ages
The Ancient while fascinating just never grabbed my boys attention. So while we plodded through as much as we could we will not be continuing on Ancients this year. Instead he will move forward to the Middle Ages and return to Ancient times in a couple of years. I will reiterate my love for rotational nature of history in the Classical method. In a fun and interesting twist on history Jr. has already snagged a few of my “to be read” books for History - knights seem to be right up his alley this year.

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So there is our plan well along with some extra curriculars, art projects and field trips. It will be a full year but one that I hope only keeps us pleasantly busy and learning. If it seems to overwhelming I’ll dial back a bit. On paper it looks crazy but when I look at the lessons themselves it evens out to be an engaging, doable year.

It is almost that time to officially fill out paperwork and to begin our new school year. I am busily putting some polishing touches on our upcoming year at the same time I completely rearrange the science units to accommodate the things we can do right now.

I’ve got most of Jr.’s things mapped out and ready to play that wonderful fun game of “school chess” where the pieces get moved around to hopefully end up in a decent completed order by the end of the year! And I’ve mapped out some things to keep darling Lil’B busy. He’s very cute when he grabs “his school” out of his basket. I never know exactly what he’ll come back with - lately it has just been paper and crayons. He’s my budding little artist. And it never fails to amaze me how well he can already create things. I’m not the artsy type though I do sometimes try. But let’s face it my main and best “art” are stick people! I draw a damn fine stick person!

In other news in partial preparation for this year but mostly in a bid to get my sanity back I’ve set up my email accounts differently. Don’t worry if you are reading this it probably doesn’t actually affect you. Mostly it affects me. I love the groups that I belong to but I can’t get through all the email they send. It is daunting and I’m actually only really paying attention to three yahoogroups/elists. They are just prolific!

So I set them up with a separate address. That worked a bit but I was still getting tons of mail to my email client which would snag me when I checked my regular email. So I went a step further and set that email address in a different email client! Yep to get the messages I have to actually open a second program. It is fabulous!

It has also made me aware of how much superfluous email I get and how much of a time sucker my loops are to my day. My regular inbox is quiet and gets a handful of emails a day. Occasionally I get a couple dozen but its not hundreds. And I’m even whittling those down. My big loops are still available but I’m checking them every couple of days instead of lots of times each day. Do I miss out on threads - sort of but better late to the conversation than to feel muddled by all that clutter in my day.

I’m back to my quick loop around the internet which is very necessary if I’m going to keep the boys focused in directions I prefer like those that don’t get them into trouble. For instance I was “busy” and missed them dumping three bottles of paint into the sandbox. What exactly I was “busy” with I’m not sure and I do remember them asking something about paint. My only hope is that I was “busy” cooking or something more acceptable than tinkering on my computer LOL

One of my favorite times of the day right now is after the hustle and bustle of breakfast when I have my morning coffee while the boys have their morning playtime. For some reason we’ve fallen into what I’ve begun to love a quiet, easing into our day. I’m letting them choose how to play but they are consistently choosing to start with some quiet building or action figure play. Me - well I’m sipping my coffee, checking my blogs, catching up on emails and looking out my window.

Today the boys were playing quietly building structures with legos. When it happened that I was glancing out the window while gathering my thoughts on wording for a sentence (working on a website update).  I suddenly caught by a quick flicker of movement. I was then delighted with the view of my ruby-throated hummingbird visiting my hosta flowers. I immediately wished for my camera but I knew it was to far away. So I just stopped. I just stopped and watched my pretty flying friend.

And I enjoyed the view out of my window.

I recently listened to two different talks on food both are found on Word for Word if you’d like to check them out too. The first was from author Micheal Pollan about the subject of his book the Omnivore’s Dilemma. A book I’ve yet to get my hands on but it has been on my list to read for awhile. I should note that this was recorded a year ago in June of 2007.

The second was from Paul Roberts author of the End of Food a book that I currently have in my TBR pile from the library. The recording at Word for Word is from this June 2008. I do find it ironic that the cover of Roberts book has an ear of corn on it. Especially after having seen some of King Corn.

5 things I took away from these recording at first glance:

1. I need to talk less about buying local and actually buy more local - and I need a bigger garden yet.
2. I am not the only one who is disturbed about buying apples from New Zealand, grapes from Chile and so on
3. China can touch my food without my knowledge (Eww!) Just buying a chicken that is product of the US won’t guarantee that it has been completely processed in the US as well. Local chicken here I come!
4. The creation of food - Centralization of such a dynamic system often breaks it or at least muddles it up really well.
5. McDonalds is still the devil (I know you’ll love this one honey )

My favorite line from Michael Pollan “The most important change coming from the food supply is that people are voting with their forks.”

My favorite line from Paul Roberts on the future of food economy: “It’s going to be about meat.”

Food is a huge component of the discussions here at our house lately. I’ve spent a lot of mental time weighing options in the last few weeks because the prices at the store have reached that tipping point. That point where $2.99 for a half gallon of organic milk from who knows where versus the $3.15 for a half gallon from the local micro dairy makes the cents difference seem like chump change. And I’m supporting a local product that is has all the benefits of local: It’s natural and has flavor. It travels a very short distance. It’s putting my dollars solidly back into the Iowa economy.

The money we shell out for food isn’t really changing - well it is changing we jumped from spending a typical $60 per week to almost a usual $80. (If that sounds outrageous please remember that I have 2 grandparents, 2 parents, 2 children and 3 dogs in our household). What has been really changing is my awareness as to how far that easy food product I purchased is really going - just how far does that box of mac and cheese go in our home. How often when I feed myself or the children a processed product do they come back 20 minutes later with an “I’m hungry”. How does that compare to when I take the time to take raw (unprocessed) items and create a lunch?

That saying “curiousity killed the cat” well it’s “curiousity killed my grocery shopping” here lately. By looking at the actual things I’m purchasing, the success of those things making us feel satisfied at the end of the meal and so on - - it is significantly impacting my ability to just go into the store and purchase things blind. I need to know more about that item I’m looking at. Where did it come from? How was it processed? But I’m also feeling empowered to make my dollars go where I’d really like them to go.

I think I’m having a “get off the fence” moment.