The Rhythm of Our Days

Queen of the Hill hath produced one of my favorite posts, and one of the most creative ways to talk about homeschooling, ever.

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…

I came into the kitchen the other day to find my oldest, “operating” on a tomato….

With temps and the heat index over 100, August has brought the kids inside. No bikes, no roller blading, rarely swings. I used to spend whole summers in Florida nearly entirely inside as a kid; the only other viable option is to spend it in water. Some day we’ll have water nearby again, that doesn’t require a drive, and we’ll all spend our August days pruned :-).

They’ve been watching movies, more than usual: the entire series of Christy, How Green Was My Valley, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Rascals….

Reading: The Babysitters’ Little Sisters series, Harry potter, and bunch of others they read a chapter or two of and then pick up something different the next day.

Art projects: sewing and embroidering pillows, drawing on the newly harvest butternut squashes the neighbor brought over, a series of plates on the seasons, fashion design, building design…

Cooking: learning to make grits for breakfast, pasta dishes for supper, and dog food mixtures for the puppies.

Shopping: when I was sick, firstborn took my Walmart list and did the whole thing for me, even price comparing!

A few nights here and there Dad has been doing some spelling, grammar, and latin with them but mostly they’ve done a few chores and gotten their showers in the evening. It’s just about too hot to do much of anything else.

listening to: Opera Babes, Holst’s The planets

watching: How Green Was My Valley

wishing we had extra funds for: movie tickets to see the new Harry movie

at the table: new painless learning placemats on states, dinosaurs, and presidents

in the evenings: grammar, copywork, reading, and spelling with Dad

finished: the summer program at the tutoring center across the street. They had a folk dancing performance and art display.

planning: rocket project for scouts, release of newest Harry book

Oh what a difference a few months makes!

He had a 25% delay by the speech tests; a larger concern by two doctor’s opinions. Not enough to get therapy though so we let it fly. Good choice mom.

Today he said his first sentence, “I can have it Mom?”

Common vocabulary words: monsters, Wheaton, sissy, idiot, baby, hurts, milk, berry, juice, cup, fork, kitten, chicken, fire, truck, car, bean, mom, nurse, boobie (yes, he still asks almost every day and he’s been weaned since after Easter), poop, potty, jeans, shirt, shoes, cheese, more, church, donkey, road, swings, bed, diaper…..

unique vocabulary words: all-ee (water), elelelelel (banana, he makes the sound by working his tongue back and forth over his lips). Dee-do (thank you)
favorite sentence structure: all nouns and verbs. As in, “Mom. porch. book. tractor. read.” Translation, “I want you to sit on the porch, rock me, and read to me the tractor book.”

Favorite bad words: bitch, stupid, idiot. Yes, we are properly mortified.

Favorite word, object, fascination: TRACTOR.

A few minutes ago, he came in my room, saw a magazine with jack o lanterns on the front and said, “pumpkins”. I think he’s doing just fine…

I have no idea why I chose that title…only that our summer seems to have fallen into the kind of groove given to whistling and humming little ditties.

Over this weekend we doubled our garden. More work was done on the treehouse, after Firstborn got ahold of some pallet wood.  Sunshine  created a  CD cover for her girl-band with a friend,  The Strawberry Blondes. Evenings were filled with latin and spanish with dad with a little grammar and spelling tossed in.  The two oldest packed for camp and are now gone: Firstborn off to  a week of boyscout camp and Sunshine  in North Carolina for Orthodox camp.

W is happily looking forward to having his parents “all mine”, as he says, knowing he’ll have to share with R.K but that it’s no big deal….they’ll just pile on the bed in the morning and snuggle. This week we’ll pick squash and green beans from the garden; maybe we’ll have tomatoes by the next.  The summer program across the street continues with folk dancing and art and stories. It seems a perfect week for a raspberry pie and some lemonade.