Dissections

I opened the box from Home Science Tools with great excitement and at the very top were the three garter snakes ready to be dissected and I decided that snakes were a bad choice.  A very, very bad choice.

I'm still a little (lot) freaked out knowing they're downstairs in a box in my locked store room.

Who knows what they'll do once I go to bed.

The rest of the dissection specimens--no big deal.  The sheep brains and sheep hearts looked fascinating.  Frogs are nothing, crayfish pretty cool, and the grasshoppers reminded me of my oldest sister who used to catch small animals, kill them, dissect them, and carefully attach the body parts to a labeled sheet of paper when she was 10ish.  She's in the medical profession now--no surprises there.

We're doing nine dissections total, including owl pellets.

I might have to just throw the snakes away though.  Or give them to my nephew who has heretofore been sniffy about my kids being homeschooled and now is desperate to join us--all due to dissecting.

I guess this is it, that pivotal moment in life where you find out if you are tough or a wuss.

I'm pretty sure I'm a wuss.

Oskar, 5 months

This post has nothing worthwhile in it, but I had this adorable pic of Oskar sitting around my desktop needing to be shared with the masses.  He's so cute!

How is everyone doing on getting ready for school?  The library has assigned me several boxes because I've put so many books on hold to look through.  I'm tempted to get a library card for Oskar so I'll have seven cards instead of six, but then I think that might be excessive.  :)

We're using the Harmony Ed charter school program this year--the Independent Learning option-and I've also been spending countless hours figuring out what to purchase for this year.  I'm trying out a few new things.  In the next few days I hope to post about some of the new curriculum we'll be trying out.

In the meantime, I'm headed to bed.  My MIL is watching the children all day tomorrow so I can work with diligence on homeschooling stuff.  I am grateful for her.  Today I tried to work on homeschooling stuff and my children made a huge mess with the watercolors, so I sent them outside where they got into the mud.  I sent the older kids downstairs to sit on their beds while I bathed Harriet (the two-year-old).  While the water was running for the bath I mopped the kitchen and dining room floors where the kids had walked in with all the mud.  Then Oskar started screaming so I nursed him--all the while forgetting that the water was still running for the bath.

My older kids came upstairs and told me that there was water coming out of the ceiling downstairs.  I remembered the bath water and went racing into the bathroom where I found water pouring over the sides.  Yay.

Suffice it to say, it will probably be easier to pull homeschool together without the children.  (Come to think about it, most things are easier without children.  But without them what would we do with ourselves??)

Inspiration

This has easily been the busiest summer of my life.  Between baby Oskar (he turns five months in two days!!), extensive partying with my family, and Relief Society responsibilities, I feel like I've accomplished nothing but never had a spare moment.  I've heard this feeling intensifies as children get older and busier.  Frightening.  

The past two weeks or so I've tried to gather myself together a little and remind myself that the summer will end and homeschooling will not.  It was time to formulate some plans, buy some materials, put together some units.  I felt bone dry, creatively speaking.

Then I looked through my blog.  I CAN create fun activities.  I am a professional teacher and a veteran homeschool mama (does 5 years make you a veteran? I say yes).  I just forgot for awhile that school can and should be the best part of my day.  

Sometimes all it takes is a little inspiration.  And sleep.  I'm going to bed now and when I wake up tomorrow I am going to whip me up a little unit fantasticalness.  

Medieval History and Life Science here we come!!!!  (Any ideas would be appreciated.)  :)

Sourdough

 I received a new cookbook for mother's day (I gave it to myself) called "Family Meals."  It is a lot of fun.  I learned how to make ricotta cheese (yummy!) and now I've successfully made a sourdough starter and sourdough bread.  Actually, it wasn't just me.  My son Cowen needed to fulfill a church requirement to plan and prepare a nutritious meal for his family.  He chose a sourdough panini and thus we embarked on our sourdough adventure together.

 There were a few false starts with the starter (ha).  It was doing exactly what it should do but I didn't realize it so I threw a lot of perfectly good starter away before I recognized my mistake.  That was a good thing though because it caused me to sit and watch a bunch of youtube videos about sourdough.  Cowen was there watching with me and we learned a lot about yeast.

FYI: there are no good short videos about yeast on youtube or good books about yeast at our library.  If you know of any good resources, please shout them out.  We liked these videos the best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GmnAD4J7E and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYXjURcBk98.  We also really liked this one on how to make a sourdough starter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmLmpJhumSM, although we didn't make ours like he did.  We used grapes.

I was nervous about doubling the recipe as I had never used sourdough before, hence the two bowls.  Sourdough is a lot more forgiving than I thought.

 One of the first two loaves of sourdough bread Cowen and I made.  It was delicious!  A triumph!

 Dinner time.  Blackened green beans with ham and gruyere cheese paninis.  YUMMY!  (We don't actually have a panini pan so I grilled them on the outside grill.)

 A small note on gruyere cheese.  It is crazy expensive.  The recipe called for it but I never would have purchased it except I found a block half off at Smiths.  Fortuosity, that's me byword (name the movie).  I loved it.  The cheese is tangy but subtle and absolutely delicious.  My children, on the other hand, said it reminded them of swiss and they wished I had gone with mozz or something else less tangy.  It did not, however, keep them from scarfing down the sandwiches.

Another sidenote.  I have now made sourdough waffles and used the leftover batter the next morning for sourdough pancakes.  This adventure into the land of sourdough has taught me that I prefer my regular waffles as the texture of sourdough waffles is a little rubbery.  I liked the pancakes more.  I also learned that sourdough is alive and continues to grow so put leftover batter in a big enough container to control the growth.  Otherwise, you wind up cleaning out your fridge.

Happy eating!

Ancient Roman Food

I love to cook so naturally we had to make a recipe attributed to Ancient Rome.  We tried this one:

Modern Roman Libum Recipe (serves 4)

I cup plain, all purpose flour

8 oz. ricotta cheese

1 egg, beaten

bay leaves

1/2 cup clear honey

Sift the flour into a bowl.  Beat the cheese until it is soft and stir it into the flour along with the egg.  Form a soft dough and divide into 4.  Mold each one into a bun and place them on a greased cookie sheet with a fresh bay leaf underneath.  Heat the oven to 425.  Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown.  Warm honey and place the warm buns in it so that they absorb it.  Allow to stand 30 minutes before serving.

(Full disclaimer: I forgot the bay leaves and we didn't wait 30 minutes to eat them.)

I chose this recipe because I just learned how to make homemade ricotta cheese (HEAVENLY) so I had some on hand.

 This is a good recipe for kids because it is pretty simple.  We doubled it so that all the kids would get a good taste.

 Sadly, I wish I had tried a different recipe and used my luscious ricotta for eating plain with a little honey drizzled on top.  The buns were good, mind you, but not as good as the ricotta on its own.  I thought the buns had a gorgeous texture--just the right chewy moistness--but needed something.  Salt, perhaps?  The bay leaves I forgot?

 This pic has nothing to do with Ancient Rome and everything to do with present day snails.  Snails that eat plants in the garden.  Miriam is mashing egg shells to put around bean plants.

 Goopy hands from forming the buns.

 I like this recipe for kids because the buns are shaped in your hands and don't require rolling pins and other items that cause bickering.  Plus, the clean-up is minimal.

 There are the buns soaking in honey.  I might make these again (with salt) because they do have that lovely texture and they don't need to rise. If I do, I'll make them smaller so more of the dough gets honeyfied.  Honified?

 The buns are sticky from the honey so didn't feel like finger food and yet they are buns so they didn't feel like they should be cut in pieces.  My boys improvised.

Another delicious day of Ancient Rome study!  

Getting Back Into It is PAINFUL

 I have decided that there is no casual, friendly, painless way to get your children and yourself into a routine after several months of a free-for-all.  Everyone is happier when on a schedule but that initial adaptation to the new environment is challenging.  Oskar is now three months old, absolutely adorable, and on a pretty good schedule.  It was time for school to start again.

 I planned, I prayed, I thought, and I hoped that the transition wouldn't be as grim as usual.  It was.  It still is.

 The messy house is just going to happen.  While you're reading with one child the others are going to be getting into things--especially the two year old.  Take a deep breath, let it out, repeat as necessary.  (All advice in this post is for myself.  I'm sure you all have magical powers that make this easier at your own homes.)

 Patsy, the Flying Poodle, learned how to climb our 6 foot fence and race away to freedom.  She contributed to the general chaos and I was less than impressed. She's currently living, in disgrace, with her godmother (my hubby's sister who trains search and rescue dogs).

I think the hardest thing for me is to really commit to getting up early.  I make my schedules and write down all the good things I want to do with my children and then I sleep in, we get behind from the get-go, we only accomplish the most critical tasks like reading, grammar, math, etc., and I get frustrated because the kids could do all those things at school.  I want to get up and going early enough that we get to all the fun extras.  I consider history a "fun necessity" and look forward to all our Ancient Rome projects.  We've worked on Rome two days.  We've had it in the schedule for six.  Grr.

The other hard thing is the infernal whining.  I'm sure your children never whine, but mine suffer from whinitis whenever we pull ourselves back into a good school routine.  "I don't want to read!" "I hate math!"  "I did Spanish for 15 minutes.  It was 15 minutes, it was!"  "When is it my turn?"  "I'm not rewriting this paragraph ever, Mom."  And on and on it goes.

Once we've had a schedule in place for about three weeks my children accept it and are generally happier with the increased structure.  They value play time because they know it is limited.  They start to feel a sense of accomplishment as they move from one section to the next in their math books.  Grandmas get called to hear new piano pieces and Dad can have ever more complex conversations in Spanish with the oldest.  It is human nature to be happier when progress is being made and the kids reflect that universal truth.  The getting there, though, is hard.

 I'll be writing more about our Ancient Rome unit.  I tried to keep things fairly simple as we are still working around an infant, plus the other demands on my planning time.  I found a lot of fun ideas on pinterest (yes, I finally learned how to pin things) including a whole folder thing on it.  (Okay, my brain is fried--what are those things called when you open up a fancy folder and there are lots of little flaps and envelopes and things??  The unit I looked at is one of those.)

 I'm not using the entire unit, but there were several cute ideas and we've never done a folder-thingy, so I thought I'd give it a try.

 So far we've filled out a little flap thing on the Romulus/Remus legend.  The kids were thrilled that they got to use a stapler and loved decorating their folders.

Harriet's in a slightly easier stage now as she is willing to join us for some things.  While we did our legend and our maps she made her own.

Do any of you have any brilliant tricks to getting your family back in a good routine??  I think we're past the worst of it, but we've had some distractions the last few days so I'm a little worried that all our hard work on the routine will have to be done again.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  For those of you done with school for the summer--have fun!!  For those of you who homeschool year-round or need to make up a baby break, I'll be posting this summer.  We'll forge on together.

The Prydain Chronicles: Gushing Warning in Effect

Many of you might not know that I am a closet YA fantasy writer.  I have an agent and everything.  Well, not everything.  I have yet to publish anything.  Small detail.  The joy is in the writing!  At least, I remember dimly that the joy is in the writing.  I haven't written much in awhile.  Something about having six children, homeschooling, and being the relief society president.  I lack time--that most precious of resources.

I started writing fantasy in second grade.  Before then I don't remember spending all my time thinking about dragons and monsters and wizards and hexes--and writing.  That's because I hadn't read the Prydain Chronicles yet.  I, sadly, didn't even know the books existed.  Happily though, my mother gave me the whole series for Christmas when I was eight and I devoured it.  I was in heaven.  My life was permanently altered and I have never been the same.

Lloyd Alexander is my all-time favorite author.  I have a special shelf dedicated to his books and I own almost everything he has ever written (some of the out-of-print stuff is hard to get, but I keep working on it).  My children aren't allowed to touch any of it.  They are the only books written for kids that I own that I don't share.  Mostly because I have read the books so many times that a stiff breeze would blow them apart.  I want to cherish them the rest of my life.  I should really just buy another set as my "lending"copy.

Now, as many of you know, I have a son who just turned eight.  The PERFECT age for the Prydain Chronicles.  However, Cowen isn't an independent reader.  I debated back and forth between listening to the audio cd with him or making him wait until he could read the books himself.  Pros and cons either way.

Since I'm about as patient as a two year-old, I eventually (it took a minute of deliberation) decided to get the books on cd from the library.

My children all really enjoyed the first book in the series, The Book of Three.  They've been quoting Gurgi nonstop.  But then we listened to The Black Cauldron.  Instead of trying to convey to you how much my children loved it, I'll let Eli (my four year old) speak for all of them.  Quoted from my family blog:

We finished listening to The Black Cauldron on cd (in fact, I found an excuse to drive to Mom's so we could listen to it--thank you, Emeline, for needing a haircut so desperately!!) the other day.  At the end the reader said, "I hope you have enjoyed this production of Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron."

Eli yelled from the back of the van, "WE DID ENJOY IT!!  It was AWESOME!!!"  

If you haven't read this series or listened to this series, repent.  I don't care how old you are or how much you like or dislike fantasy.  Lloyd Alexander is brilliant.  He takes a bunch of funny characters and makes magic.  The best part is that Taran (the main character) really develops and grows and matures (unlike a certain Hogwart's graduate I could mention).  It is fantasy at its finest.  It is also YA literature at its finest.  

Now I must go . . . somewhere.  We just started listening to book three: The Castle of Llyr.

PS If you can ever get your hands on Lloyd Alexander's book about his wife, Janine is French, then you are a very lucky individual.  It is extremely hard to find, but if you have a good interlibrary loan you might be able to get it.  Totally worth any effort you put in.  When the people she works with teach her to swear.  No, sorry, no spoilers.  Just find it.  Read it.  Laugh.  Love life just a little bit more.