Blueberries

We also came home with ticks and tadpoles, you will not be surprised to hear.

 

The girls do not share my strategy of, you know, actually picking all the ripe berries off of one bush before moving on.

I think they picked about four blueberries from every single bush on the property. 3.5 of these blueberries were eaten immediately.

Blueberries only consistently made it into the bucket after their tummies were full.

The third child is such a dear friend of my kiddos. We had the pleasure of watching her taste her first blueberry!

With three big girls to help, I ended up with over thirty pounds (and seventy dollars, yikes!) of summer.

This girl will be nine tomorrow. I'm simultaneously overjoyed and heartbroken.

Chess Classes from Chessology: Will Loved Them!

For the past couple of months Will has been a beta tester for Chessology, guinea pigging the development of a new online chess class. She took the class with the other children also beta testing, giving her teacher a real-world model to work through technical issues and develop strategies, and I provided feedback about her experience, to help him troubleshoot and make improvements.

The final result was a chess class that I just can't say enough about.

Willow LOVED her teacher, Coach Atkins, who was really personable and great with the kids. He teaches all the classes, using a webcam and a large wall-mounted chessboard:

Will's class ran from 9-10 on Saturday mornings--hence the doughnut!

The kids also use their webcams for a portion of every class, so that they can see each other and Coach Atkins can see all of them, but mostly they communicate through chat--one of the first skills that Coach Atkins taught them was algebraic notation, so that they can answer his questions and offer solutions to his puzzles and propose moves in demo games without having to have too much keyboarding ability:

One of my biggest pet peeves is the kids missing an activity that I've paid for, and I always try to route vacations to avoid missing activities as much as possible, so my favorite thing about this summer Saturday class was the fact that since it occurred online, Will could attend class wherever we had an internet connection. She attended class in hotels in Arkansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and if they hadn't had internet, I was prepared to drive her to Starbucks and just drink a giant coffee while she had her class--the sacrifices that we're willing to make for our kids' education!

Parents are expected to sit next to their kids and supervise during class which, while it means that I'm chained to the table for an hour doing paperwork (and the crossword puzzle!), it does turn out to be really useful. I've never formally studied chess, so I find learning about strategies like cascading pawns and en passant really useful. I can also pick out things like vocabulary terms and specific rules and strategies to add to Will's memory work--as an active scholastic player, she should learn that stuff, and it can only help her game. And since every week when I ask Will after class what her homework was and she says, "We didn't get any homework," and nearly every week they DO, in fact, get homework, it's also pretty useful that I'm sitting right there to hear and write down the homework assignment. 

A lot of the homework assignments have involved practice games set up in specific ways to teach specific strategies--

These cat and mouse games, set up in various ways, have really worked to make Will way more aggressive with her checkmate.

--and an interesting set of puzzles that turned possibilities for checkmating the king into an algebraic equation. It was pretty darn brilliant, and we've been using it ever since: 

You can see how it works in Coach Atkins' video about how he teaches it:

The girls have also been balancing equations in The Life of Fred, as well, so it's nice to have it all meet up.

I had several people ask me about the classes when I bragged about them on my Craft Knife Facebook page, back when registration wasn't open to anyone outside of the beta testing children, but now registration is open to everyone! Through August 1 you can actually get half off the registration price because we were beta testers and you know us (sort of), so you can click on the 50% off button and then name drop "Willow Indiana" as your beta tester buddy.

Okay--funnily enough, Will is actually at our town's scholastic chess club right now, along with Matt and Syd, so I'm off to eat frozen Kashi pizza and some cherries while reading my Dexter novel, figure out a pillowcase pattern to make from some organic flannel that I was given to review in the coming week for Crafting a Green World, weed my messy garden, and start on a frittata for dinner.

And yes, I may never make it past the Dexter novel on this to-do list.

It's a Dragon Party!

Postcard invitations are now our thing. Matt designs one side of the postcard, with an awesome party graphic--

I love how Matt designed this to capture not just the party theme, but also his and Will's shared love of video games.

--and the party details, and space for the address and stamp (we didn't have time to hand-deliver invitations for this party, so I also got Matt to type in all the addresses directly onto the invitations for me--yay!), and the kids do the front sides of the postcard invitations:

Willow likes to use Google Images to research possible illustrations.

Next week is pretty much designated as Party Prep Week--we've got cardboard shields to cut out, a dragon hoard to finish painting, dragon bread to bake, the rules of Dragon Tag to finalize, and a castle cake to put together.

She's going to be nine. I can't believe it.

Independence Day 2013

When we visited Philadelphia and Independence Hall a couple of weeks ago, it didn't even occur to me that Independence Day was right around the corner. Happy coincidence!

That helps make this holiday celebration the same as all our holiday celebrations--academic and low-key.

our hometown Independence Day parade (we like it weird!)

fireworks!!!

This is the first year that we've done fireworks at home. Our town can't seem to figure out the simple, practical measures that all the surrounding towns take to ensure a nice fireworks show that isn't a money pit, so they cancelled the show this year in a fit of spite. Normally, I'm really squeamish about causing the kind of scene that driveway fireworks make, but our across-the-street neighbor is really nice, and our next-door neighbor, well... Animal Control came back to our house a couple of days ago to verify that our coop does not smell, as he called again to complain that it did, and that our sight barrier is within the regulation, as he called again to say that it's not, and seeing that the officer was visibly angered at having been sent back for no reason (wild goose chases cost time and money!), AND as driveway fireworks are also within city regulation, I felt confident that I had the City's double support for annoying him inside the bounds of the law.

The M-60s were satisfyingly LOUD, and the honeybees were bright and loud and lifted up surprisingly and delightfully speedily and high. The children were absolutely giddy, and could barely be brought down the necessary few notches before bedtime, even with the generous application of sparklers:

Even after their showers, they went to bed still smelling like smoke and gunpowder.

Just as they should do on the Fourth of July!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Knitting, Chalk, Beans, and Elephant Poop

a review of Knitting for Dolls

a tutorial for kid-decorated bean bags 

a review of elephant poop paper

and a review of Side by Side, the research for which entailed a VERY contented afternoon of kid portraits done in sidewalk chalk, colored sand, and birdseed

In this summer season of swim lessons and day camp and finishing up unit studies and reviewing the year's math and big chores like weeding the garden and cleaning out the chicken coop, I've temporarily left behind our daily work list and transitioned to "work hours"--two hours in the morning and/or afternoon, depending on our outside activities schedule, when the children know that they're working for me. I have the master list in my planner of what I'd like to get done by the end of summer--our animal biology studies, the rest of the Bob books, the girls' grade-level Splash Math, experimenting with bubbles using our Zome tools, vacation scrapbooks, etc.--and I tend to alternate some of those activities with the chores that I'd like to get done that day, until our work hours are over. 

The structure is pretty chill, too, in that if a child takes the recycling out to the garage, and then stays out there for an hour to follow the chickens and swing on the tire swing, that's okay. Frankly, I'd feel ashamed to call myself a homeschooler if that wasn't okay. Chicken watching and tire swing swinging are VERY important to our homeschool.

And that's how, right this minute, Willow is finishing up the last three pages of a workbook associated with our horse study, and Sydney is throwing a royal fit as she "looks" (read: runs around the house and screams) for the outfit she needs to wear to aerial silks class tonight. 

And yes, I AM counting down the minutes (130) until they're at day camp for three hours this afternoon. I tell you, I could get spoiled by all that fit-free time!

P.S. I solved the mystery of Sydney's major fit-throwing streak these past few months. Matt measured her against the door jam a couple of nights ago, and discovered that she's grown two inches in the past four months; that's a half-inch a month! I've noticed since the girls were toddlers that they emotionally regress when they have a physical or intellectual growth spurt, so there you go. I also won't be surprised if when this growth spurt calms, Sydney is all of a sudden reading.