We had a great weekend, filled with a little productivity and some really good family and friend time. MeWa and MeTae came down to celebrate Jase's belated birthday. She made him a cooking apron and brought him goodies to make (or, put together). There were all kinds of things in his little bag. The one thing he loves, though? The red rubber spatula that is All His Own. Pure joy. He used it to make the spinach yesterday morning and just chattered away about how great his spatula is. It's crazy what they zero in on.
And, now that he's five, he's decided it's time to learn to read. I don't know. I still need to get him in to see the ophthalmologist. And convince him to hold his pencil properly. But Em gave him the Classical Phonics books she's already done with, and he's happy drawing in them, tracing over her work while we do her lessons. He's got to be picking up some of that, and he's happy and engaged. I look around and realize that's a good half the battle, right there. (Also, we're loving Classical Phonics! If you aren't going to use Writing Road to Reading, and you have a child who loves to draw, but you worry that you'll pull your hair out with some other phonics programs, give this one a look. It's a delight to use.)
I got a wild hair last week and signed up for Scholaric, for our lesson planning and tracking. (Wild Hair Academy -- would that be too hard to explain on transcripts?) It's a very plain and simple program, and I wasn't feeling the love at first, but then we used it last week, and we like it! It's straight forward and easy to use. Set up didn't require that I haul out every title we plan to use for the term and enter all the details for that title before I could get started. (Something that drove me to some serious hard drive cleansing in the past.) The printouts seem to be a good fit for both my list maker and my schedule hater. (He doesn't hate schedules so much as he's just easily overwhelmed by myriad things to check off in the course of a day. The simpler, the better, for that one.) It's just customizable enough that I can make it comfortable for each of them. And if they :aherm: lose their pages, I have a digital copy on hand. So, theoretically, this will also be good for my blood pressure. After the trial period, the cost is $1 per month, per child. This maybe just what we were looking for.
In the rest of the news around here, no chicks have died, no children have wandered off, and I'm sleeping like a proverbial baby (not like any I ever had, but, you know). We've been going 90mph since we got home, though, and we're all in desperate need of a full week to just be *home*. I don't know what I was thinking when I scheduled ALL the things for right after we got back. Braces for James, braces for John, extractions for Jacob (the new teeth came in way behind the baby teeth and never triggered the roots to dissolve - he wanted to keep them and pretend he's a shark - we nixed that for what I hope would be obvious reasons, although he's still not convinced), groomer's for Buddy, clothes shopping for all the people who keep growing. I want to stay home and have tea, dangit! Maybe next week...
Z suggested we skip the garden this year. His reasoning make sense, but it feels like defeat. *Everything* grows here, often without any provocation at all. It shouldn't be that challenging for me to grow a garden. :sigh: But it is. And we do have other things to tend to this summer. So, we'll see. John suggested square foot gardening in the upper meadow. We'll have to do something about the moles, first, but that may be the way we go. The boys have already said they plan to plant their earth boxes. That's a ritual that doesn't get messed with. I do love that.
Kiss those babies!
~Dy
4 comments:
Welcome back - I've been checking for your return.
I always thought the phrase was "Wild Hare." Something to learn about now.
Even though I've been a reader for .. well, five years, since Jase had a birthday... can you please explain or point to the explanation of how you know MeWa and MeTae and how they got their names. I've rather guessed that it was a child's attempt at Mister Walter or Miss Taylor or something.
ROFL! I swear, I'm a walking exhibition of Mondegreens! It probably is "hare". I'm a child of the 80's, though, and have never seen the term in print, so in my head, it was hair-hair. Wild Hare Academy almost looks legit... hmm...
MeWa is Mister Ward, and MeTae is Miss Terry. They're the children's godparents. Jacob couldn't articulate the /s/ or /r/ sounds for the longest time, and when he came out of his elvish speech period, that was his most intelligible variant of their names. It stuck. :-)
Oh, my. So I've done a little research, and... that's an interesting discussion. :blink:
Evidently, the phrase is often coupled with a part of the anatomy that I, uh, most definitely did not intend. Huh.
Both are used, hair and hare. And if you stick with external applications, such as chasing a wild hare (behaving in an erratic, or zig-zag manner), or having a wild hair (such as those first gray ones that come in, more coarse, and refusing to behave like the other hairs), it look like either one would work.
I hope my next malapropism is a little less awkward on the research end. :-D
Thanks for the info, Dy!
And since I've got you on the line... here, a little heads-up. Consider looking into the Lone Scout program with BSA for the boys now, even for the the short term when/while you move.
Forewarned is forearmed and some councils really balk at having Lone Scouts, but homeschooling is a clearly stated criterion on their list. I'm guessing that you won't fall into a new troop right away, and they can keeping earning if registered as Lone Scout.
So glad that you're blogging again.
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