Tuesday Tea Time

The temperature is currently 70F.



The books are:

St. Valentine by Robert Sabuda
A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich
Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages by Harold Bloom,
and
All Year Round by Ann Druitt (mostly to flip through and look at craft ideas).

The menu is:

Trader Joe's "Blueberry Estate" blueberry juice, and
Trader Joe's Vanilla Bean mini-cupcakes.

G is for Glorious

After weeks of temperatures in the teens, we're having record highs.



Of course, this article in the newspaper yesterday sucked some of the fun out of the glorious weather. (Synopsis: Feb.9-10 1959 had much the same weather pattern as we're having now, and ended up with a major tornado -- the newspaper article had more pictures than the online version, so less was left to the imagination.)

Also, G is for Geometry Panels:



AnnaBeth was messing around with the Geometry Panels from RightStart, for no particular reason. She then had an extensive photo shoot involving and old tablecloth. We've come to the conclusion that our camera doesn't do purple, by the way -- those panels that look blue are actually purple.

Suzuki Piano Recital

AnnaBeth had her Suzuki Level One graduation recital today.

Uncle Mark got a few pictures on his iPhone:

Fwd:
Originally uploaded by GailV

I was reading the story. If you've been to one of these recitals you know what I'm talking about, but if you haven't, then here's how it goes: someone reads a story that incorporates all the titles of all of the piano pieces, and whenever a title is mentioned the student plays that piece. All of the pieces are played from memory.

She did a decent job. I had forgotten to have the piano tuned -- we usually have it tuned the end of February, so it needs it mightily right now. So that was too bad.

Also, perhaps someday I will catch on to how to blog from Flickr -- I usually take photos from my camera to my hard drive to Blogger. This one came from Mark's phone to my email to Flickr to here, and didn't land exactly where I wanted with the title I wanted, plus it could've used a pass through an editor to straighten it ... but, hey, life could be worse. Note the skirt she's wearing-- yeah, it's that one. Definitely a hit.

Oh, and we had our "It's a Small World" moment of the week at the recital. AnnaBeth had invited a friend from Scouts. When the mom brought the girl in she saw Aunt Linda (also at the recital) and said, "You look familiar...." It turned out that they were friends 20 years ago, and had lost touch with each other. The mom also knew our piano teacher. Sheesh, you think you'll be introducing all these people to each other for the first time, then it turns out everyone knows each other way before you ever even lived here.

Weekly Report -- Feb. 6

Language:

As noted Thursday, AnnaBeth finished FLL 3 this week. Our Writing With Ease lessons continued this week by using Story of the World passages, for that double whammy of accomplishing 2 subjects at one time.

Thalia continues to fly through Analytical Grammar, learning about gerund phrases and participial phrases (I have a very loose grasp on what the heck these are, but she seems to think it's pretty easy). She has decided to ditch LIghtning Lit 7, and we will forge ahead with literature suggestions from Latin Centered Curriculum. Also, I found our copies of Classical Writing Homer, and visions of starting that back up dance in my head.

In other language news, Thalia has decided that Spanish for Children is just too simple -- it assumes you don't necessarily know parts of speech (see above comment about participial phrases -- this is not a child who needs to review the definition of a noun or verb). She wants to go back to Rosetta Stone. I have a vague memory of the Rosetta Stone discs being wonky, so this may involve hours on the phone with RS tech support. Sigh.

Latin for Children is fine with Thalia, though, and continued smoothly for her this week. AnnaBeth hasn't started a new Latin program. As for me, I decided the weather wasn't quite right for Latin study, since Rome was typically much warmer than St. Louis has been this past week. My conclusion: Latin should only be spoken at temperatures above freezing. I'm pretty sure history bears this out.

Math:

Life of Fred is in hiatus while Thalia has started watching Teaching Company Algebra 1. And, yes, you ARE seeing a theme this week in regards to ditching old curriculum and trying something new. Maybe it's the February doldrums. But we've got all of these alternatives around the house, so why not use them.

In RightStart D (which I want to ditch almost daily, having used the program now for several years) AnnaBeth's comment of the week was, "We get to use the calculator and the chalk board on the SAME DAY? I love math!" So now I know how to entice her when she's reluctant -- chalk and a calculator.

Science:

Thalia continues to work on Prentice Hall Science Explorers.

AnnaBeth didn't do any science. Well, not formal science studies -- we're always making new discoveries around here.

Other Stuff:

The kids each prepared supper one night this week:

Meatloaf


A pasta dish that involved marinara, pesto, and lots of cheese


Scouts, dance, piano, choir, skating. No archery, though -- Thalia wasn't up to it this week.

Finished!

Today AnnaBeth and I finished First Language Lessons Level 3:



We enjoyed this book and workbook. Having done First Language Lessons Levels 1 and 2 twice over (one time per child) I was fairly familiar with how the series works, and FLL3 was easy peasy lemon squeezy. I just grabbed the book and workbook and did it with pretty much no prep. AnnaBeth and I both loved the convenience of the workbook. My only regret is that this wasn't around when Thalia was at this level.

We worked on this about 4 times per week, since that's what fit our life. The book suggests using it 3 times per week.

AnnaBeth is ready to forge ahead with First Language Lessons Level 4, delighted with the prospect of working on 4th grade material NOW. But I'd sort of like to fill in the time with other things -- spend more time reading books, writing things, explore other subjects.

Also finished today -- a new skirt for AnnaBeth:



Ottobre 1/2009 #19 "Hertta" skirt.

When AnnaBeth saw the heart shape pockets she thought it would be really cool to have this for the Girl Scout Valentine's party today. I got some fabric earlier this week and started it.



Then last night I was in the fabric store and saw the lighter color dotted fabric, and decided it was waaay better than my original choice. So I bought some, quickly pre-treated it (wash/dry -- always pre-treat your fabric before sewing!), and started over.



I added length to the skirt. I carefully traced it out as 110 in width and 128 in length, which should perfectly fit AnnaBeth, but it seemed very short when I held the pattern pieces up to her. I added about 1.5 inches to the main body of the skirt, and about a centimeter to the lower ruffle. Also, I changed some of the trim options.

I really like this issue of Ottobre, and am already plotting my next project. I think AnnaBeth and I will be visiting the fabric store during Thalia's dance class tonight.

F is for Flyshooter

F was going to be something artsy craftsy, like Fabric or Finished Sock or something of that sort, in hopes that y'all would think I was one of those cool bloggers whose life is filled with creative moments.

But we went to Cabella's this morning to get a new arrow rest for Thalia's bow, since she'd been using the cheapy plastic stick-on one, and the adhesive has pretty much given up on life (by the way, the crowd at Cabella's on a weekday morning is interesting, to say the least). And while we were waiting to check out I noticed a display of Flyshooters!



Whoa, I haven't seen one of these for years! I used to have a blue one.

Have you ever seen one? You use it like a gun:



Squeeze the trigger,



and the little white thingy flies off and hits the insect:



Make sure to retrieve the little white thingy, or else you'll just be left with a flat plastic piece that looks like a child's drawing of a gun. And you'll spend years trying to explain to people that it's a Fly Shooter, and trying to describe how it works, and how cool it is.

I can't wait until warmer weather. Look out, flying insects! This spring I'm prepared for you!

E is for Eyes

AnnaBeth's science book says that if you took people's eyeballs out of their heads, the eyes would all look pretty much the same.



What is so memorable about eyes, they say, is really what surrounds them, not the eyes themselves.



I wonder.

(Also, Chris, I never did A, which is why you couldn't find it. It seemed trite to start with A. Didn't Hilda warn us against being trite?)