Mathmatics vs. Grammar

Yea for them....Connor and Cailin have advanced in their math curriculum one more time.

Connor loves math and is quite happy to finally be able to say..."I'm in Pre-Algebra"

Cailin's just glad she's done with long division (if only that were really true) and she's not at all happy to be going into Epsilon which focuses on fractions. Math is difficult for her to understand, yet, she does get it.

If only there was a way to parlay math concepts with grammar. She loves grammar.
She loves to parse/diagram sentences (where as Connor just groans at it)
She has all the helping verbs and linking verbs memorized. She's currently working on memorizing 44 prepositions.
She beat the tutor/teacher, Mrs. Jacobs, once in a contest to see who could write all the sentence purposes down the fastest.
Needless to say, grammar is what makes her tick! She thrives with it.
She does have quite a tenacious streak in her. When she gets it in her mind to do something, she'll do it. So, I'm trying to inspire her with examples from her Aunt Risa, who, when she was in school, was told she'd never do well with mathematics and to just get the minimum req's done then quit. Well, that teacher didn't know about her tenacious spirit, and she was going to "show that teacher a thing or two" she worked hard to understand math and she did! She's now an epidemiologist---she uses math everyday in her career. Way to go.....but Cailin just rolls her eyes at the story--I don't think I've inspired her yet. Ya' gotta help me here Risa!!

Pumpkins, Corn, Hayrides and Wet Gremlins?

Some of my siblings converged upon our home this weekend for a wonderful glorious weekend of family togetherness. For the past few weeks I've been pondering on a great autumn outing for us to enjoy--a trip to the local pumpkin farm, complete with a corn maze, hay rides, bluegrass music--was just the ticket for a great day of fun.

The day started out cold, but, by the time we piled into the van it was much warmer, the kids were in a good mood--all were excited--the makings of a wonderful day were there.

However, something must have happened on the ride to the farm, my happy little gremlins' mood somehow became wet because what came out of the van certainly wasn't what went in the van.

One kid was whiny about this, the other wasn't happy about that.....the list went on and on.

My much anticipated day at the pumpkin patch clearly wasn't going the way I had anticipated it would. Grrrrr......

We adults, kept at it, and the day did progress with some happy smiles. In the end I think we all had fun.

We wandered through the corn maze hoping to find all the stopping points with out using the map. Connor and Ryan went on their own, from time to time we'd cross paths with them.

You could tell the drought this past summer hurt the corn crop for farmers. This maze wasn't nearly as tall or full as it's been in the past.

This little one was joyful and happy--not one unhappy cry (except for food) came from her sweet face. She enjoyed the bumpy ride being pushed around by Uncle Bob.

Don't be fooled by these cute smiles--the wet gremlins lurked closely behind them. :)

My siblings--Elizabeth, Brian, Risa, Bob.

Liam had two fascinations on this trip. One was corn--the other was goats. (more on that later)

While we were traipsing through the corn maze he found woolly caterpillars, a candy wrapper and lots and lots of corn. He'd pick up one ear, then another, and he'd try again to pick up yet one more ear of corn. Only, one would drop. So he'd pick the best of the three and throw the others to the ground--until he'd find another great one. This game continued through out the entire maze. It kept him busy and happy.....and happy was my goal!

Uncle Brian and Cailin decided to go through the maze, by themselves, once again. The rest of us headed off for the farm animals petting area.

Before we took off for the pumpkin farm I told my family about a friend of mine's child being bitten by a goat at this farm. Unbeknown st to me, Liam was attentively listening to this story--thus began his obsession of goat. Many times he asked about the goats....where were they.....etc. etc.

He mustn't have been too frightened because once I pointed them out to him he didn't shy away and even tried to feed them.

His favorite animal seemed to be the rabbits.

Petting the donkey...

...and the mule...

...and the enormous Belgian work horse.

We then took a break and found some yummy treats to eat. They had brownies, cupcakes, cookies or rice crispy treats to choose from....only 50 cents each....yea, my kind of price tag. They also had ice cream.....which was alot more than 50 cents, so the whiny gremlins creeped back into existence.

Savoring every chocolaty crumb this little one didn't complain, he loved his treat!

While waiting for the others to finish their sweets, Delaney and Liam, (later joined by others), found a 'milking cow' and tried their hand at getting milk from the udder.

Delaney actually got the hang of it and produced a strong steady stream of 'milk'.

At the end of our stay we took a hay ride to the pumpkin patch

By this time much of the grumbles were out and we had an enjoyable ride, or maybe they were just excited because they knew the end was coming soon, they didn't have to wait much longer to go home..... :) Who knows?

Notwithstanding their attitudes, I had a good time with my brothers and sisters. I especially enjoyed catching up with Bob, we haven't seen each other face to face for quite a few years.

Once we got home, I feed the kids and put them to bed!! Hopefully they'll wake up in a better mood. As for the rest of us, we enjoyed grilled chicken, a delicious salad (with apples, craisins, feta, tomatoes and crutons) and the best multi grained french bread I've ever had. Yumm good food and peace & quiet. Now that's the best way to end a day!

Ninety Three Million Miles from the Earth

For the next 6 weeks for science we are spending time learning about astronomy. This week we read books and watched a video about our sun. The only star in our solar system and it's 93 million miles from earth.

The video--a Bill Nye, the Science Guy-- gave us a great idea for a project to do.

We pulled out 3 white bowls and filled them with water. We then added food coloring to two of the water bowls.


We placed them outside--one was covered with a dish to create an atmosphere--we left them there. After a few hours we checked to see if there was a temperature change.

Indeed, there was. The water that was clear was cool. The darker uncovered water was warmer and the colored water that was covered with the glass dish was quite warm.
This experiment was to show how powerful and strong the sun's rays were. It was interesting to me that we did this on a cool and cloudy day. We wanted to see if the old adage about getting a sun burn, even on a cloudy day, could be correct. We all agree, we believe it could happen.

We've also spent some time memorizing the different parts of the sun: core, corona, convective zone, sun spots, solar flares, photosphere, radiative zone.

My Flute (from Cailin's blog)

I have been playing the flute for about five months, and already I've gotten pretty good at it. I love the way the flute sounds, and there were people in church who had played the flute and it was a very pretty instrument. So, my mom got me a flute, and I learned how to play.Many people have thought that the flute has holes you cover up with your fingers, but that's not true. It has pads that you press down. Also, you don't have different pads for each note, there are multiple pads you must press down to make one note.

You might think it's easy to do the blowing part of it. Wrong. When I started, I couldn't blow a note at all! I whistled into it, and now when I try to do that, I can't.

The flute is separated into three parts. How else do you think it could fit in the flute case? There is the head joint, the part where the blowing hole is. I don't know if the hole you blow in is called the blowing hole. Then there is the part in the middle, where most of the pads are. Then, the tiny end piece. It has (I think) four pads. One of them, the first one, is the one you use almost just as often as the pads on the middle piece. There are two pads on the end that look like the ones on the middle piece. On some flutes, there are three of those pads.

I love the flute, I love to play it, and I know that it's a beautiful insrument.

And for the grand finally, it's ME playing the flute! (Probly my favorite song, 'March from Scripio.')

Ecology

Ecology \i-kal-e-je\ n 1. a branch of science dealing with the relation of living things to their environment 2. the pattern of relations between living things and their environment.

For science, during the past six weeks, we've been learning about our world and how it interrelates.

Q. What are some of the biomes of the world?
A. Grasslands, deserts, tundra, scrublands, deciduous forests, coniferous forests (taiga),
tropical rain forests.

Cailin and Delaney spent the week learning about the grasslands in Africa--the Savannah. Delaney especially enjoyed learning about the elephant. Cailin learned that each continent has it's own 'grassland'.

Q. What are 3 types of consumers?
A. Herbivores, Carnivores, Omnivores

Q. What are the parts of the food chain?
A. Producers, Consumers, Decomposers

Q. What are the natural cycles?

A. Water Cycle, Carbon and Oxygen Cycle, Nitrogen Cycle

Here we are learning about the water cycle--watching ice cubes turn from solid to liquid to gas-- parlaying that information to the cycle of water precipitation, evaporation, condensation and back again to precipitation.

Q. How do animals react to environmental change?

A. Adapt, Migrate, Hibernation---Online, I found a fun song about animals and how they prepare for winter cold. It drove the older kids crazy to hear us sing, but it sure did help Delaney understand about animals adapting, migrating, or hibernating.

Q. What are six forms of pollution?
A. Noise, Air, Water, Land, Thermal, Radioactive

This week we spent some time reading about where our trash goes once the trash truck takes it away every Tuesday.
We read about reducing, reusing, recycling. One evening we spent time making new paper out of old. It turned out to be a fun project.

After soaking paper in water, blend till it's a jumbled mess like this.
Using old screen, evenly distribute paper pulp over screen.

Blot excess water out between newspaper

Roll to squeeze even more water out. Let it dry overnight and it should look like this--

Our paper didn't have a smooth even texture as you normally have with store bought paper, but it's still easy to write on!

If our source books are correct, I believe, that recycled newspapers go through a similiar process.

Ancient Egypt: Pyramids

Ancient Egypt is a fascinating culture to study. The kids really enjoyed our afternoon making pyramids.

The age when pyramids were built is known as the Old Kingdom. During this time Egypt was at peace. The pharaoh reigned securely and the peasants spent their time farming land and building these magnificent archaeological structures.

They were built by Pharaoh's to be the means for them, when they die, to cross into the afterlife. More time was spent preparing them than the home in which they lived in while on earth.


The first of the pyramids were called 'step pyramids'. They were built by Pharaoh Zoser. Some believe these structures were modeled after the Mesopotamian 'ziggurats'

We used sugar cubes to build ours.

The Great Pyramids at Giza, the largest of all pyramids, was built by Pharaoh Cheops for his tomb. One hundred thousand men labored constantly for three months until a new crew relieved them. The pyramid required twenty years to complete and is made of more than 2,300,000 blocks. (~2.5 tons each in weight).

Connor calls his 'Great Cardboard pyramid' his 'Rosetta stone pyramid! I think he just enjoyed playing in wet glue. :)

The great pyramids are guarded by Sphinx's in Egypt. Our pyramids are guarded by Connors fearsome dragon clay creation.

Ancient Egypt: Presentations

The culmination of our arm chair travels to Ancient Egypt occured among friends. The kids presented their individual research topic to others at our history group meeting.

Cailin, ever the cat lover, was quick to pick her topic.....Cats!! of course. She learned that the Egyptians loved their cats so much that when the animal died the people of the household shaved their eyebrows to show mourning. Mummification of the cat was common. They even had a god dedicated to the feline members of Egyptian society.

Cailin had fun mummifiying her beloved stuffed animal with rolls of toilet paper.


Delaney created this replica of a merchants/store keeper type home. The outer court was where animals and the 'goods' that the merchant wanted to sell to others were kept. Although dark, due to small windows, just inside the home was where guest were recieved and meals were eaten. In the back were the bedrooms and kitchen, however, many meals were prepared upstairs on the roof to help control fires from burning homes down.

For his birthday, Connor recieved a new book called 'The Red Pyramid' by Rick Rioridan

This book is about the egyptian gods, which turned out to be a great gift, because he chose his project to be on these mythical gods.

He shared a story about the birth of some of the gods and how vicious they can be to one another.

One child gave a presentation on games that the kids played. Apparently, they enjoyed rousing games of tug-of-war. Our crew went outside to try their hands at it too.

Although much debated by the boys, the girls won!! Way to go girls!

Presentation time isn't complete without food. One mom found a website with modern egyptians/turkish recipes. I found one with chicken and garbanzo beans served over rice. Surprisingly, most of the kids liked it, although according to some of them it would have been much better without the beans. :)

A Wonderful Weekend

On Friday, Barry and I found ourselves escaping the rambunctious noise of home for a wonderful weekend getaway---just the two of us!

We traveled to Raleigh, NC. We had fun rambling through two bookstores, shopping a bit for Christmas, working for two more ancestors in the Raleigh Temple and finishing the evening off with a scrumptious meal at Chili's. While at the temple we enjoyed recharging our spiritual batteries, it's been a while since we've had the opportunity to enter that holy edifice.

If by chance I was missing my kids, which I really wasn't, we were reminded of them at 2am by a crying baby.....I was just glad that it wasn't mine to deal with.

We did enjoy sleeping in though!

The next morning, after an old-fashioned southern breakfast at Cracker Barrel, (mmmmm, blueberry pancakes,) we headed off for the BRC Center.

In May, Barry purchased online tickets for us to see Dave Ramsey --LIVE! Now we were finally on our way to this event.

Dave Ramsey is a personal finance consultant/radio talk show host. He often says that the advice that he gives is just like that you would hear from your grandmother, except he keeps his teeth in. He places a very high value on personal responsibility and integrity. We've been listening to his radio show for a few years now, and like what we hear. We wanted to see one of his live events. It was the boost we need.

Several years ago we started applying his "baby steps" plan in our lives but deployments, babies, medical bills and other such things, we found ourselves stalled. We were not going into great debt, or spending our money foolishly, we had just lost hope of building our savings and progressing into the future. This "live" event gave us back the "fire" for controlling our finances, and planning for our family's future. It was a lot of fun and very informative.




[B] This was a growing experience for my parents. The rose colored goggles that up to that point they had worn when dealing with our kids came off in a hurry. They were nice enough to keep watch over the kids while we were away. We left emergency notification numbers for "Fire" Rescue" but mostly for the police. Nothing was broken, no one went to jail. It was a successful trip. We have decided that for the next couple of weeks, it would be in our interest not to ask Mom and Dad to babysit, no need to push our luck.

In reality, Mom gets the last word in. There is no need to leave her a long list of rules, and things to do etc. That goes into the trash as soon as we pull out of the drive way. It is a controlled free for all. Most bedtimes and "health food" rules do not apply. Every grandmother worth her salt lets their grandchildren have ice cream for breakfast. Besides, she'll always walk away at the end of the day. After all, they are "OUR" kids.


[V] Liam probably had the hardest time. While I was packing for the trip he followed me around begging me to let him come with us. When he found that wasn't achieving the desired response he pulled out his three year old, authoritative voice and declared "Mommy, you don't go--and I mean it!"

Today, Sunday, we traveled to Pembroke for stake conference. The kids especially enjoyed Pres. Averitt's story about him as a 3rd grader being unjustly accused of cheating. In reality he just didn't get all the information about the assignment because he wasn't paying attention. He went on to talk about the importance of accepting ownership of our mistakes and not trying to blame others--that's if I heard it right, I was dealing with Liam, who by that time had had enough of sitting and being still for the day.
Afterwards, on our drive home, we stopped at a wayside for a picnic lunch.

We enjoyed the sunshine and I took the opportunity of them being dressed nicely to take some posed photos of them. I'll have to get one of Bri another time, she's dealing with a cold. Her eyes are weepy red and nose is yucky.

Just too cute, I had to put them both up. When Barry say them he asked "Is he naughty.....

or angelically nice?"