Friday, September 23, 2011

I Come From Ork

I was pretty excited when my husband went out to the store today (code for I am smoking) and came up carrying the mail because................today Merle's Halloween costume arrived. Which was pretty unexpected seeing I only ordered it Wednesday. I need to take up the sleeves and put a pin tuck in the wig/headpiece but overall it fits and she doesn't appear to like it:) Princess Leia!





Photobucket

Sorry for the crappy phone photo.


There comes a point in your life when you realize that your child is going to be way smarter than you. You hope for it, but you also secretly wish that you will always be just a little bit smarter. If only, because you are their parents and you need that so they don't know you are talking out your ass most of the time. Well yesterday I had my moment of acceptance. This a three way conversation between Roo, Merle and I (and yes Merle is only 9 months so just go with me on this).

Me: Merle did you poop?
Merle: screech, snort, clap.
Me: Should I be scared?
Roo: If I may interrupt? I have been working on my baby translation skills.
Me: Okay. Did she poop?
Roo: Merley did you poop?
Merle: dada, ma, click.
Roo: She said maybe. But don't worry because it is not diaper explosion.
Me: Good to know.
Roo: She also says that her conscience is still making her feel guilty about the incident on Tuesday, but she doesn't want to talk about it because she is embarrassed.
Me: Where did you come from?
Roo: Ork, but you call it Saturn. Then she left.

I was like, seriously wtf? I had to write it down so I wouldn't forget. That was my moment that I knew she would surpass me in brains. Which is hard to admit because I am a know-it-all asshole, just ask my husband;)

This is what we completed this week.

Memory Work -  We added the water cycle to her daily list.

Spelling (All About Spelling level 2) - She finished Level 2 lesson 7 the silent e.

First Language Lessons 2 - We worked on lesson 107-109 narration and linking verbs.

Writing with Ease 2 - Completed week 3 of writing, narrations, and dictation using excerpts from Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald

Latin (Lively Latin) - I am moving really, really slow through this Latin program, we may even get 2 years out of it. We spent the week learning/memorizing our vocabulary words and our chants.

French (Nallenart L'Art de Lire1) - 1 worksheet, story translation and the uses of s'appelle.

Math ( Singapore 2A/2B) - Still finishing 1B, we finished up the review and division section this week. It was a nice gentle introduction into division. We also did 2 chapters from Life of Fred Elementary series.

History (Story of the World Middles Ages) - Chapter three Augustine Comes to England, Medieval Monasteries, and Writing Books by Hand. We did the corresponding map work and colouring her Illumination fancy Medieval letters. Tonight for dinner we at like the monks from medieval monasteries, lentil soup, bread and cheese, apples and pears, and apple cider (should be water but I hate water and they drank cider on special occasions). We watched House Hunter International while eating:)





Photobucket
This is our medieval meal, you can't really see it here. Merle decided she really likes old cheese, the older the better she says.


Science (Elemental Science Earth and Astronomy) - Roo learned about seasons and the water cycle this week. She also went on a long nature walk with dad where she fell in a pond.





Photobucket

This isn't from the nature walk but it is her today enjoying the last flowers of the season of the first day of Fall while we were on our way to the grocery store.


Geography (Expedition Earth)-  We stamped our passports and went to South Korea. Every other day she reviews her Canadian provinces and territories and every day she goes over the countries in Europe via Sheppard Software. She is also learning to map the world by heart via The Core method and started her continent blobs this week.  Continent blobs are rough circles/ovals drawn in the area on the map that corresponds with each continent. It's done after the five great circles are drawn in order to be able to visually space where the continents are located. This is what it looked like (I'll take a picture tomorrow because I forgot).





Photobucket

Our stamped passports and the flag of the countries we have visited.


Art (Meet the Masters) - This week we started our study on Vincent Van Gogh.

Composer Study - Classical while doing continent blobs and geography.

What did Merle do? She has started click her tongue repeatedly. No crawling really, she just kind of drags herself on her belly around to wherever she wants to go.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Bathroom Door - 1 ......Celtic War Axe - 0

Two weeks down and I think we may in fact be finding our groove. Except for that one day we slept in because the baby decided to sleep in and when she does we all silently rejoice and stay asleep.  For history this week we studied the Celts. I'm completely not a crafty person but I thought it would be fun to make Roo a Celtic war axe. I have pretty much zero craft supplies in the house except for the basic stuff so it was made from digging through the recycling box. This is the finished product which she loved.



Photobucket


 Later in the day she had on her princess dress because you know all warriors wear princess dresses. Anyway, she went running from her room into the kitchen screaming a Valkyrie war cry with her axe raised over her head and hit the bathroom door and landed on her butt. I have no idea how she didn't see it but she didn't and there were lots of tears and hugs and mutterings of how her hand was broken. I wanted to take a picture because it was kind of funny to see but I thought that would have been mean.

Also: NEW ADDICTION ALERT, it is called Pinterest, I love it. It allows you to keep track of visual lists of things you want, wishlists, idea lists, DIY lists, or in the case of me, wishful thinking lists, and honestly my life isn't complete until (fill in the blank) lists, here's mine. So addicting.

This is what we completed this week.

Memory Work -  No change from last week as she has a pile of stuff that she is still working on daily.  

Spelling (All About Spelling level 2) - She finished Level 2 lesson 6 the silent e.

First Language Lessons 2 - We worked on lesson 104-106 pronouns and state of being verbs.

Writing with Ease 2 - Completed week 2 of writing, narrations, and dictation using excerpts from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

Latin (Lively Latin) - We completed Lesson 1.1 which was introducing us to different nouns and masculine, feminine and neuter how they work in Latin 

French (Nallenart L'Art de Lire1) - She did 2 worksheets and translated the story in to English.

Math ( Singapore 2A/2B) - Still finishing 1B, we finished up the multiplication section this week. It was a nice gentle introduction into multiplication. She does math under the table for some reason.





Photobucket

History (Story of the World Middles Ages) - Chapter two The Celts of Britain, Barbarians come to Britain, and Beowulf the Hero. We did the corresponding map work and are in the middle of reading Beowulf by Michael Morpurgo which is a nice, light and entertaining version for kids.



Beowulf




Photobucket


Science (Elemental Science Earth and Astronomy) - We learned about Earth from Space and Day and Night this week. No experiments though because she opted to bike ride instead which is fine by me because if this colder weather continues she won't be able to ride much longer. 


Geography (Expedition Earth)-  We stamped our passports and began our journey to Asia, first stop China. The Children Just Like Me book is great to be able to relate to how other children live around the world. Every other day she reviews her Canadian provinces and territories and every day she goes over the countries in Europe via Sheppard Software. She is also learning to map the world by heart via The Core method. We began a rough sketch of our continent blobs this week. Continent blobs are rough circles/ovals drawn in the area on the map that corresponds with each continent. It's done after the five great circles are drawn in order to be able to visually space where the continents are located. That was a mouthful, and I am sure confusing to those that have no idea what I am talking about:)

Art (Meet the Masters) - This week we made our portfolio that will hold all of her artwork she makes this year.

Composer Study - Classical while doing art. I need to get something together asap. 

What did Merle do? She enjoys getting her hair vacuumed when we are cleaning which is strange because most kids are terrified of the vacuum. She also regularly does something we call The Dirty Old Man. Here is a video, it speaks for itself:)






Photobucket

Her vacuumed hair that resembles Donald Trump.

Friday, September 9, 2011

The Devil is in the Details

This was out first week back to full time school and our first week of what we call grade 2. So far so good with our selected curriculum for this year. I only made one change. After one lesson of Latin for Children A I knew it was going to be too hard for this year so we shelved it for now and I got Lively Latin. It has the right amount of work and history portions to keep her interested. So my title for this post comes from the fact that I just may be raising a smart a$$. I haven't decided if it is an age thing or if it is a personality thing but whatever it is, it is definitely annoying. When you give her instructions, ask her to do something or even ask her a question it seems that you have to make sure you ask for EXACTLY what you want and or expect from her or else she will inform you that, that wasn't what you asked. Therefore finding a loophole. For example,

Me: Roo bring your dishes from lunch time out of the living room and into the kitchen.
Roo: There are no dishes in there.
Me: Oh, did you already bring them in?
Roo: There are no dishes to bring in.
Me: What? You ate lunch so bring the dishes in.
Roo: Those aren't dishes, those are recyclable materials. 

Lunch came from a prepackaged container, there were in fact no dishes.

My husband has been trying to teach Roo how to ride a two wheeler. She seems to be more interested of when they take a break and she collects rocks and sticks. A few days ago she built a fire pit instead.



Photobucket

Our first week was four days due to Labour Day, so this is what we completed this week.



Photobucket

First day of school.

Memory Work -  We are still working through the same materials that we had in the box last year but are adding stuff from this year into it slowly. I added the planets this week for science.

Spelling (All About Spelling level 2) - She finished Level 2 lesson 5.

First Language Lessons 2 - We worked on lesson 101-103 which was a review from last year.

Writing with Ease 2 - Completed week 1 of writing, narrations, and dictation. This was her first time doing dictation. She didn't do too bad, it was more the spelling of some of the words that slowed her down.

Latin (Lively Latin) - This first week is kind of like an introduction. It has given us the history of Latin and some small exercises. All in all, it seems like a good fit for her age and she seems excited to do the lessons.

French (Nallenart L'Art de Lire1) - This level is a gentle introduction to reading French. The level basically focuses on the French vowels and shows you how they are used via simple stories. These stories also aid in reading French. 

Math ( Singapore 2A/2B) - We are still finishing 1B but it seems to be moving quickly. We had to put it aside for a bit last year and did Math Mammoth for a bit to work on problem areas. 

History (Story of the World Middles Ages) - Chapter one was about the Fall of Rome. We did map work  for it as well as placed out final timeline picture on the Ancients timeline (The Fall of Rome picture) before we now proceed to the middle ages. This is exciting for me because the Middle Ages is my favourite time period. I am looking forward to sharing this with Roo.




Photobucket
It's a crappy picture but that is the Ancients and Middle Ages timelines from Pandia Press. the other two levels will be added as we do those years.


Science (Elemental Science Earth and Astronomy) - This week was like an introduction to earth and space. We learned about the earth, space and the moon. Then we built a paper mache model of earth which is in fact still drying and probably needs a second layer of stuff put on it. The we will paint it. She wanted to do the whole solar system, I thought no way:)



Photobucket
Our model of Earth in process. All we had was coloured news print so I hope we can paint of it.

Geography (Expedition Earth)- We began with an introduction to the Continents and Oceans even though she knows them already. The I handed out the passports we will be using for our journey this year. Every other day she reviews her Canadian provinces and territories and every day she goes over the countries in Europe via Sheppard Software. She is also learning to map the world by heart via The Core method. I think she has mastered the Great Five Circles and next week we may begin the continent blobs. 

Art (Meet the Masters) - We only did the introduction lesson this week. 

Composer Study - None this week. 

What did Merle do? She has figured out how to clap though it still surprises her when she does it. She kind of gets the waving thing, and she has taken to pulling her dress over her head until you say "where's Merle" and then she whips it down and laughs.



Photobucket


I learned how to do several different types of braids this week. This is the waterfall, the picture makes her hair look like she has a million split ends, I just didn't brush it before the picture. Not bad for my first attempt.


Photobucket