Fall Semester Homeschool Plans for the 6th and 8th Grades

For the 2017-2018 school year, Syd is in the sixth grade and Will is in the eighth grade--and it only took me eight or so years to work out a good system for homeschooling them! I'm still creating most of my own curricula, but I try to have a textbook as a spine for many of the subjects, and then I fill in the syllabus with extra readings and activities. Thankfully, though, I have found some go-to packaged curricula that I like, and that offer several levels, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel for every kid in every subject.

Even though Will is an eighth-grader, I've also decided this year to present her with high school work. She's well able to study at the high school level, and she's made some suggestions that she might want to consider going to public high school next year, so I wanted to give her a preview this year of what homeschooling high school would look like, as well as provide her with a background transcript that will make it clear that she's prepared for high-level academic classes if she does decide to enroll. She might as well reap the benefits of being bookish by nature!

A couple of Will's high school-level courses are year-round, which means that we'll be doing far fewer themed units for science and history. I'm a little bummed, but it's already clear that what we're losing in variety we'll be gaining in depth. The other challenge is leveling the work for Syd, as I am NOT planning two entirely different curricula for each subject. 

Here, then, is our overall course of study for this year:

Service Learning

We'll be continuing to volunteer with the Children's Museum of Indianapolis this year, primarily as tabletop activity facilitators. It's a little tedious, since tabletop activity facilitators generally have to sit for two hours and I prefer activities in which we're up and moving, but I do enjoy interacting with all kinds of children, and the skills that we practice--communication to all kinds of children, teaching/demonstrating an educational activity and a scientific concept, leadership (especially Will, who usually gets to run her own table independently, while Syd works with me), and patience--are terrific for the kids. I also really love the environment of the Children's Museum, a place where learning is eagerly encouraged, and I love that the adult staff members treat my children as equal and valued members of the team, fully capable and respected.

Math

Syd is continuing with Math Mammoth, generally completing one lesson a day. Will went through the same curriculum, so it's old hat to me by now. I often have to help teach the lesson by using hands-on manipulatives--

--but otherwise it's an independent work that she completes and then hands to me to mark. I mark the incorrect answers, hand it back, and she tries those problems again. If she misses a problem for the second time, we go over the solution together.

We are still getting into the groove of Will's brand-new math curriculum, Art of Problem Solving's Introduction to Algebra. It's also written to the student, but the format, in which a kid tries a few problems at the beginning of the lesson, then reads the solutions to to those problems, learning the lesson material along the way, and finally tries a new set of problems to see if she's mastered the lesson, is not yet working well for my kid who deeply desires to do the minimum effort possible. I'm still reminding her that yes, she has to work the problems out, not just write down answers, and yes, she has to read through the solutions to the problem, not just erase her wrong answer and write in the correct one, and yes, she has to work the problems out, and yes, she has to read through the solutions, etc. etc. ETC.!!!!!!! This week I have her working through the AOPS online reinforcement problems to see if that will help her cement the concepts that she's barely learned the past two weeks, but ultimately, she's just going to have to get the hang of doing the work. 

This could be a year-long curriculum, but after she settles into it, it actually shouldn't take the whole year, allowing her to get a head start on another of their Introduction series--I'm looking forward to geometry!

Because neither of the children's math curricula provide much in the way of hands-on reinforcement, I also run a math lab with them every week. Usually, this is a hands-on activity that relates to what at least one of them is currently studying. This week, for instance, both kids are working with exponents, so I had them use poster paper and centimeter graph paper to model the perfect squares up to 400, writing the equations next to each square. It made a giant and lovely Montessori-esque paper tower, and I've already seen Syd referring to it as she did her math work. 

Grammar

Both children are using the Analytical Grammar curriculum, and I'm quite happy with it. Will completed the first third of the Reinforcement and Review book over the summer, and has begun the second season of Analytical Grammar, just as Syd finished Junior Analytical Grammar over the summer and has begun the first season of Analytical Grammar. I'd like Will to get through the remaining two seasons of Analytical Grammar this year, in case she does want to go to public school next year, but after Syd finishes the first season of Analytical Grammar, she'll likely just have a Reinforcement and Review lesson to complete once a week for the remainder of her school year, and then she'll start season two of Analytical Grammar in the seventh grade.

I've toyed with the idea of also having a grammar lab once a week, and we do so sometimes--

--but it's too much work for me to plan to do it consistently, mostly because hands-on grammar activities are thin on the ground and so I have to invent, create, and then plan most of them myself. Perhaps I'll prioritize it when the kids aren't doing Analytical Grammar every single school day.

Music

This is one of the studies that I'm creating as I go this year, and it's my favorite so far. Music study has been very much a failure for our entire time homeschooling--nothing sticks, because I've found nothing that the kids care for and want to invest any effort in. But last semester, almost on a whim, I added a weekly folk song to our work plans. I'd introduce the song on Monday, we'd talk a little about it, and learn it over the week.

Oh, my gosh, the kids have LOVED this! I've put more thought into it this semester, seeking out folk songs that have interesting social, geographic, or historical context, and we highlight the important themes and specific elements of each folk song as we discuss it. I find a variety of interpretations of each folk song to present to the kids, and I've become more interested in finding more resources, as well. This week, for instance, we're studying "As I Go Down in the River To Pray," and so in the evenings we've been watching O Brother, Where Art Thou. It never would have occurred to me to show this to the kids before, but they're familiar with The Odyssey, they're now more familiar with folk songs, and so they LOVE it. It's turning out to be a really fun unit.

Foreign Language

This is another subject that we've struggled with, as I keep trying to get the kids invested in learning a language and they keep just. Not. Caring. We are two lessons in, however, to private language classes with a personal tutor through italki, and so far it's successful. Syd is still a little shy with their tutor, who's a native French speaker who Skypes us from her current home in Russia, but it helps that Will is with her, and I'm liking the personal attention, and the personalized homework that the tutor assigns. Maybe it's the fact that there's another adult who's not me that they're accountable to, but they work on French every day without complaint. I've also told them that if they continue to study hard, they'd know enough French that we could take our next big vacation to Canada. They're excited about possibly seeing the Northern Lights, and I want to go to Prince Edward Island!

Science

Will wanted to study biology this year, and Syd didn't object, so biology it is! For our spine, I'm using the CK-12 Biology flexbook, which is written at the 9th/10th grade level, so this will be listed as Honors Biology on Will's transcript. Both children are required to read the chapter assignment, although Will is also required to answer the end-of-chapter questions, and Syd is not. I've been relying a lot on Teachers Pay Teachers resources to flesh out this unit, both for interactive notebook elements that help the children cement the concepts, and for ideas for the labs. I'll be spending a lot of our homeschool budget on this class, as I'm making it very lab-heavy, since that's what both kids are interested in. This week, for instance, we'll be completing a two-day lab to isolate certain organic compounds in food, and I think we'll also be experimenting on spit, urine, and--if I can convince Matt to prick his finger again--blood. I don't have a deadline for this class, and it's already taking longer than I thought it would, as we've been having to wait for some supplies, so I won't mind if it takes us through the entire year.

History

This will be another year-long class, although it does have a deadline--the AP exams take place in Mid-May! I wanted Will to take an AP class this year, so I showed her the list of options, and she chose AP European History. I'm currently in the process of writing a syllabus for this class to send in to the College Board for approval so that I can list it in her transcript as an AP class, and I'll also expect her to sit the exam. This class is, by far, the most work that any of us will have done for homeschool to date--it has a ton of material to cover, a ton of writing that Will needs to do, a ton of facts to memorize, and although I do most of the homeschooling in our family, Matt will assisting me with this class by providing weekly lectures and a weekly art history lesson. It helps that we homeschool, because we can manipulate our environment and our family time to provide more enrichment, from the movies that we watch at night to the podcasts that we listen to while we craft and the audiobooks that we listen to in the car to upcoming field trips like this weekend's Medieval Faire and the monastery that we'll visit later this year.

Since this is a college-level class, it's way too difficult for Syd, so she is going to be keeping up with the time period by listening to Story of the World and participating in the lectures and art history lessons. I also have one catch-up day a week in which I ask Will to also read through the time period in Story of the World, and I've already found that it adds some excellent depth and a lot of interest to the study. 

Spelling/Vocabulary

Syd does NOT enjoy Worldly Wise, so she's allowed to work as slowly as she likes, which means that she's still halfway through Book 4 at the start of sixth grade. What she doesn't know is that when she finally finishes Book 4, I'll just skip Book 5 and put her straight in to Book 6. Since she moves so slowly, this will likely remain a daily work for her for the entire year. Will zips through Wordly Wise at a lesson a week, since she enjoys it, so she'll finish Book 8 well before the year is out. She'll have a little more free time then, as I won't give her Book 9 until ninth grade.

Girl Scouts

This is a large component of our school week, because it's one of the kids' absolute favorite things--and mine! I love that the kids are so invested in it, and that the badges are so cross-curricular, and that they expose them to subjects and activities that they wouldn't usually choose, and encourage them to do things that they wouldn't usually do. For instance, this week alone both kids are planning the activity that they want to do to complete Step 5 of the Outdoor Art Apprentice badge, and then we'll collect and/or buy the materials, and then they'll complete that activity later this week; they're finishing making dog toys and decorating donation jars for a local Humane Society as the last leftover bits of Syd's Bronze Award project; setting up their online stores for the Girl Scout Fall Product Sale (buy magazines from my kid!); and Syd is finishing up one last Junior badge, the retired Art in 3D, before she officially Bridges to Cadette at the end of the month.

I'm making extra use of this year, as it's the ONLY year for the kids' entire Girl Scout career (until they both Bridge to Adult) that they're in the SAME LEVEL!!! And can earn the SAME BADGES!!! SQUEEEEEE!!!!! So although I do ask the kids to choose most of their own badges to work on, and to plan how to earn them, I'll be planning several badges that I want to do with the both of them, while I've got them both at the same level. I'm also incorporating some badges, mostly Council's Own or Retired ones, into our biology study--one council has a badge for wildflowers, another for bats, and another for manatees! To complicate the matter, Will decided very recently that she wants to earn the Summit Award, which means that she needs to complete two more Journeys this year, and Journeys are a lot more work to plan and complete. AND Will wants to earn her Silver Award, so that's another huge project that she needs to plan and complete. Squeee? 

Literature

We read a lot, as a family and as individuals, and I'd thought that I would have a separate literature study this year, but honestly, I think Will is going to be doing enough essay writing for her biology and AP European History studies. Syd is still working through the MENSA reading list for her grade, so we'll continue to have our casual discussions of those books, and I've added to Will's history study the MENSA books for her level that apply. It's turning out that we're also doing a lot of critical analysis in our folk study unit, so it's seeming that a separate literature unit is a no-go for this semester, at least for Will. I might let a few more school weeks settle in, and then consider adding book reports to Syd's plans.

SAT Prep

This is just for Will, obviously. She's going to sit the SAT in early November, and to that end has completed the Khan Academy SAT Prep unit, and is doing daily prep work in the Barron's SAT manual, supplemented with LOTS of example problems from actual SAT exams. I expect her to do extremely well in the Verbal section, and to perform at her grade level in the Math section. And when the exam is over, so is this study! Well... until next year, at least...

History of Fashion

This is a unit just for me and Syd! We use this history of fashion book as a spine, with some supplemental readings and YouTube videos, but the meat of the study is that for every time period, we do some actual fashion projects for that period. We spend more time on some periods than others--for prehistory, we decorated shells and wove on a loom and worked with leather, and for Ancient Egypt Syd learned how to put on their eye makeup, but for Greece Syd just made a laurel wreath and for Rome she simply learned how to put on a chiton. For the barbarians, though, we're making soap together AND I'm teaching Syd how to sew leggings. If you want to know how that applies to barbarians, you should read the book! This is another unit that will take as long as it takes, with no particular deadline.

Geography

This is another simple, easy to plan, and not very challenging unit for the kids. They both adore earning Junior Ranger badges, and many national parks encourage children to complete their Junior Ranger badges by mail--so that's what we do, every single week! I pick out the badge book for them to complete, after previewing it to make sure that the work can be done at home or through internet research and that the site accepts badge books by mail, the kids do the work, I mail it in, and a few weeks later, here come the badges! Just yesterday, the kids received their Junior Ranger badges for Hot Springs National Park, which was actually one of Will's favorite national parks to do this badge work for, and it is now on our must-see list solely for that fact. We also plan to visit Jimmy Carter's birthplace one day, also because she was so inspired by him thanks to her badge work.

It's not terribly relevant to a geography study, but I do require that the kids know where each place is that they're studying, and I do try to find a couple of relevant secondary resources for us to peruse for each place. Two nights ago, we were watching a very dry documentary that covered several national parks, including Glen Canyon, which the kids had just completed the Junior Ranger badge for. I was confused by it, and I asked out loud, "How did they choose what parks they're covering?" Will immediately answered, "Mom, it's because these are all on the Colorado River," and then Syd began going on and on about dams, so they're getting more out of it than just plastic badges!

Art

Matt is the children's art professor, and every Sunday, just after breakfast, he holds art class. Sometimes he teaches them a new technique--this weekend, they used our light table to trace images to make a more elaborate piece of art--and sometimes a new media--a couple of weeks ago, he showed them how to use Photoshop, and the kids had a fabulous time making very ridiculous Photoshopped images--but it's always something hands-on and creative.

Extracurriculars

Horseback riding. Pony Club. Ballet. Ice skating. Girl Scouts. Homeschool playgroup. Mommy is a chauffeur! 

Other Daily Work

Every school day, the children also have to watch CNN10 for current events, do a 10-minute workout with me (we did take turns leading the workout, but that caused a lot of fighting, so now we take turns choosing a 10-minute workout video from YouTube) for physical training, and spend 30-minutes doing chores (mostly they're just asked to clean, but they have to come to me first and ask me what their priorities should be--I might really need for them to empty the dishwasher first, or clean the kitchen table, or sweep the back deck). 

And that's our planned school year! Some studies will last into summer, some will only go through this semester, we'll have an entire month during Nutcracker season and another during Girl Scout cookie season when we have a light schedule, and I'll add in extra units before and after our planned travels, and follow the children's interests for other studies. 

What are YOU studying this year?

History of Fashion: How to Put on a Doric Chiton in Ancient Greece

In our History of Fashion study, Syd and I have:

worked with leather, embellished shells, and woven on a loom in Prehistory.
put on the eye makeup of Ancient Egypt.

and now here we are in Ancient Greece!

We've done a LOT of studying on the subject of Ancient Greece, including dressing the part--doesn't Syd make an adorable Spartan?

--so we didn't spend a lot of time on this particular unit in the study. Syd read the chapter on Ancient Greece in The Complete Book of Fashion History, found a rectangle of fabric (it just happened to be the My Little Pony blanket that I gave her for Christmas last year), and I helped her assemble her chiton.

It's really very simple. The fabric gets wrapped under one armpit, and the edges are pinned at the opposite shoulder--don't pin them right at the corners, which will make the neckline gape, but at a comfortable spot for a nice boatneck. Pin up the other side at the shoulder, as well, and there you have your chiton!



We have neither made the decorative overfold nor added the belt--if your fabric is too wide, either or both of those will take care of the excess, but that My Little Pony blanket was made to be this kid's chiton!



For extra embellishment, the clips that hold the fabric at the shoulders can also be fancy. And if you were male, your chiton could be knee-length.

Here are some more hands-on projects for studying Ancient Greece:

• make a cookie and Jello map of Ancient Greece
• make a felt olive leaf garland (modify it from this tute, though, because this isn't what they looked like)
• DIY a set of Spartan armor out of cardboard and duct tape
• make Athena's shield (or any hoplite shield) out of a pizza pan, spray paint, and clay
• make paper Greek tragedy and comedy masks
• make papier mache Greek vases
• draw blackline on terra cotta pots
• construct a temple out of a giant box
• make a clepsydra

P.S. If you like hands-on homeschooling projects, check out my Craft Knife Facebook page, where I share all the awesome homeschooling and hands-on resources that I come across.

History of Fashion: Wear the Eye Makeup of Ancient Egypt

In our History of Fashion study so far, the little kid and I have:

worked with leather, embellished shells, and woven on a loom in Prehistory.

And now it's time to travel to Ancient Egypt!

Our spine for this study is The Complete Book of Fashion History, which is already well-thumbed by everyone in the family. For this unit, the little kid and I re-read the pages for Ancient Egypt, and while there are loads of cross-curricular activities that you could do here--you could use the Story of the World chapters and activity book resources for Ancient Egypt, read biographies of Cleopatra and Nefertiti, study mummification, make a pharoah's costume or models of their elaborate jewelry--we've actually spent a LOT of time on Ancient Egypt over the years, so I zoomed in on the one thing that we haven't played around with yet: their eye makeup.

Eye makeup was a big deal for the Ancient Egyptians, and not just for cosmetic reasons. Just like football players do now, putting on dark eyeliner reduced glare on the eyes of the Ancient Egyptians in the bright sunlight, and the fact that the eye makeup contained lead, while it was terrible for their long-term health, did protect them from loads of eye diseases and infections.

Why would Ancient Egyptians get so many eye infections, you ask? It's because of all that freaking sand! It got everywhere, including in their eyes and into all of their food. Ancient Egyptians also had terrible teeth, because they ate so much sand that got into their meals that it wore down the enamel on their teeth.

The little kid and I watched this video that shows images of Ancient Egyptian artwork, focusing on their eyes to provide the evidence that yes, indeed, dark eye makeup was a thing (at least on the artwork!)--



--and then we watched this video of a makeup artist recreating the look on her own eyes:



And then the kid tried it for herself!

This was a fun activity for the little kid, and inspired a whole week's worth of makeup play. It has never occurred to me for a single moment to ever want to put on even a smidge of makeup, but honestly, looking at the kid sitting across the table from me at 10 in the morning, sulking over finding the percent of difference between two numbers... I think she's wearing a little makeup right now, actually.

Here are some other ways that we've studied Ancient Egypt over the years:

• We took a class at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
• The kids made sugar cube pyramids.
• We made giant (and small) cookie maps of Egypt.
• The kids made and painted salt dough maps of Ancient Egypt.
• We made and labelled poster-size maps of Egypt.
• The kids each made a model sarcophagus.
• We visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California.

Apparently, we like mapmaking!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool History: A Cookie and Jello Map of Ancient Greece

The kids made this cookie and Jello map of Ancient Greece as an introductory overview of the geography of Ancient Greece, although it would work just as well--even better, perhaps!--as a culminating project. Looking at photos of the cookie map now, a few weeks after the kids did it, I can immediately see some places--Mycenae! Thera!--that we didn't label but have since studied, and a couple of places--Troy! Sparta!--that the kids have had to look up the location of again, since it didn't stick. But back then we were more concerned with the location of places like Thrace and Macedonia, and the kids DO remember where those places are after this activity, so there you go.

We've made cookie maps of geographical locations many times before, so that part of the process is fairly cut-and-dried for the kids now. They can independently roll out the dough, carefully cut the map out with the tip of a sharp knife, peel up the unwanted dough, and bake it, watching it carefully to remove smaller pieces before they burn.

But unlike other maps that we've made before, Ancient Greece has tons of islands, the placement of which I wanted to secure in the final map. And I wanted something to represent the sea, something that was NOT icing... shudder. I had the idea of blue Jello, but I wasn't sure that it would work. I shopped it around to some of my mom friends at our weekly homeschool playgroup, and they weren't sure that it would work, either, but they gave me the idea to freeze the baked cookie map before adding the Jello, in hopes that the map wouldn't absorb all of that liquid before it could set.

It worked only okay, but that was enough for us!


The blue that you see all over the cookies isn't from the Jello being absorbed by the cookie, although it was, a little--that's from us slopping the liquid Jello all over the darn thing while trying to move it and get it settled in the refrigerator. Next time, I'll probably clear a shelf in the fridge (and good luck to me on THAT!), then have the kids pour the Jello in after it's stable.

We also didn't notice until Syd was trying to pour the Jello in and kept running out, but that giant half-sheet baking pan that I've had since the first time the kids asked for a themed birthday party is not perfectly flat anymore. Is any pan that large EVER perfectly flat? It looks flat, but every time Syd poured, the Jello would settle in the Aegean Sea, leaving next to nothing for the Ionian Sea. You can see it in the photo--the Aegean Sea has all the Jello, while the Ionian Sea has just a hint.

Regardless, even a hint of ocean was enough for our purposes. Time for decorating!







As you can see, we're still benefiting from the map coloring lesson in Math Labs for Kids, as the kids used the greedy algorithm to color in the kingdoms of Ancient Greece. Syd also made labels for most of the important locations--


--and they were added to the map with much fanfare and even more candy decorations:


The finished map is certainly one to be proud of!






We'll be seeing some of these places during our trip to Greece later this summer, when it'll be even sweeter to see them in person than it was to eat them!

P.S. Here are some of the other cookie maps that we've made over the years:

• cookie map of Egypt
• cookie Solar System
• cookie map of the United States

Work Plans for the Week of April 10, 2017: The Three-Day School Week

School last week went well, although it felt really busy--well, it WAS really busy. Syd prepped daily for the Trashion/Refashion Show, which was last night. It was perfect, we had an awesome time, and Syd's garment and modeling were a hit! I'll talk more about it another time, after I've caught my breath (and caught up on my sleep!), but here's a little preview of Syd's original design, Supergirl of the Night:

The other activity that the kids worked on ALL last week was preparing for the party that our Girl Scout troop threw for a preschool class--this morning! This was the Take Action Project for Syd's Junior Agent of Change Journey, so she had an especial lot of work to do, including sewing the favor bags for each of the small guests, but both kids were on numerous committees and had several jobs that took the entire week to complete. I think the whole troop was a little nervous about this party, but they did amazing work, the preschoolers loved it, and I think that all of our Girl Scouts came away with that awesome feeling that you get when you work hard for someone else and are surprised by how great the experience turned out to be for you, as well.

All of that on top of a full academic schedule made for a very busy school week! The kids' favorite subject turned out to be our Story of Science curriculum--building the Platonic solids did not go so well, as dang, those nets are tricky to put together, but drawing models of the celestial spheres turned out to be a HUGE hit:


The kids loved the silliness of the concept of the celestial spheres, but I think they really took to heart the understanding that without experimentation to draw from, observation and logic were really all the tools that the Ancient Greeks had to help them understand how the universe works. Without science, logic and observation can get you many places, but they cannot get you everywhere, including to an accurate model of our Solar System.

We're taking this week a little easier, as thankfully we have nothing to frantically work towards for this weekend. That will change next week, when we need to start preparing for a Girl Scout camping trip the next weekend, but for this week--easy does it!

I've taken advantage of our three-day school week (the kids have an all-day nature class on Friday) to skip our more consuming subjects, our history and science curricula. We'll hit them again next week, when we're fresh.

Daily work this week includes journaling or writing from a creative prompt for ten minutes (I've finally gotten Will to agree to do this--woo-hoo!), typing practice on Typing.com, more reading from their MENSA reading lists (Syd generally reads a chapter from her current book, while Will often reads an entire book in one sitting), Wordly Wise for Will and a word ladder for Syd, SAT prep on Khan Academy for Will, and cursive copywork for both kids.

Books of the Day this week include some selections that I'm really excited about--Kids of Kabul for Will, a re-read of Marvelous Math for Syd, a book of folk tales from Iraq for both kids, and The Tail of Emily Windsnap for Syd.

And here's the rest of our week!



TUESDAY: Math Mammoth this week is more fraction calculation for Syd and more solving equations for Will. Each kid hit a bit of a wall with their respective units last week, so we may have to take some more time with them if it's not feeling any clearer this week.

Poor Syd also loathes Junior Analytical Grammar, perhaps because, for us, each exercise is a multi-step process. She parses the sentences in the exercise, then hands it to me so that I can mark the words that are incorrectly parsed, then tries those words again, then gets my okay to diagram the sentences, then hands it to me so I can mark the parts of the diagram that are incorrect, then tries those parts again, etc. It's nearly impossible to get every single word and every single diagram correct on the first go, and if there ever was a person who hates to get even a single, tiny thing incorrect, that person is Syd! Nevertheless, the kids are learning English grammar, so there you go. Will follows the same procedure for her Review and Reinforcement worksheets, and although she doesn't love them, either, she is more resigned than Syd and more willing to muscle through to the other side.

This day is Home Ec day, which means that I won't have to make dinner! We're using Your Kids: Cooking, which I'm happy with even if I don't always love the recipes (Matt theorizes that this is because the books author is an educator, not a chef). The kids ARE learning how to cook independently, and they seem happy with how their food tastes, and that's enough for me.

The first school day of the week, the kids take a new keyboard lesson from Hoffman Academy. Will LOATHES these lessons, but since she's already admitted to me that she only wants to learn history and science in our homeschool, I'm neither surprised, nor do I care other than about how annoying it is to make sure she puts in her five minutes of half-hearted practice each day. But when she's grown, I want her to say not "My Mom didn't bother to give me music lessons," but "My Mom got me music lessons and I blew it." Syd enjoys the keyboard much more, but insists that she does not want "real" lessons; she likes the low-effort, low-expectation, fun-for-her system that we've got in place.

After starting her dog house this weekend, Will should, with daily work, be able to finish it this week and earn her Girl Scout Cadette Woodworker badge. And when she's finished this dog house, she should be able to build anything! Syd, as well, should be able to finish up her Junior Gardener badge. She's tried the step that requires her to complete a seed-related science experiment numerous times, until I finally decided that it's the experiment that's at fault, and not my kid, and planned out a different one for her to do. That experiment, plus regular work setting up her sister's old bee and butterfly garden for the season, will complete her badge work.

In math enrichment this week, I'm going to show the kids how to key the decanomial square to symbols so that you can use it for algebraic reasoning. They don't love the decanomial square, although I find it fascinating, so every time we pull it out is another chance for me to share my love of it.

WEDNESDAY: The kids have really been enjoying working on a new Junior Ranger badge by mail every week, and they're getting a lot out of the experience, as they always do with Junior Ranger programs. This week, they'll be doing the Hot Springs National Park badge--my entire childhood, I lived less than three hours from there, and yet I've never been--and I've also found a documentary of the park to show them.

At Syd's request, she works on a new baking project every week. Sometimes she looks up recipes and sometimes she makes them up, and sometimes, as in this week, she doesn't actually bake at all. Will's grandmother gave her a cotton candy maker for her last birthday, and Syd wants to use that appliance to make cotton candy out of Jolly Ranchers, and perhaps also pop rocks. We'll see how that goes!

Surprisingly, Will is interested in earning the Cadette Budgeting badge. It seems like a dry badge to me, but I guess tweens and teens are naturally interested in learning more about money. Unfortunately, Will rarely has any (by her own accord--I have plenty of lists around the house of ways that an enterprising tween might earn herself some pocket money), so I've had to modify some of this badge's requirements. For instance, instead of tracking her own spending for a week, and coming up with one dollar spent on a candy bar from the vending machine at the library, beginning on this day and carrying on until next Wednesday, Matt and I are going to hand her the receipt for every single thing that we buy (must remember to do the Easter Bunny purchasing before Wednesday!). Will is going to be responsible for logging these expenditures, tallying them, organizing them into categories, and then evaluating them. We'll discuss her findings with her next Wednesday.

THURSDAY: Will has been complaining lately that she doesn't understand Biblical references.  Shame on me for that, but at least it's easily remedied, especially this week, when there are so many seasonal celebrations to enjoy. Sometime this week during our family time, I'll read them the story of Moses and we can watch Prince of Egypt on Netflix, and on this day I'll read them the story of Jesus and we will analyze Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper, then make a model of it with an egg carton, of all things. We may also have a feast, since it will be Holy Thursday, after all. I'll have to plan for a more comprehensive Bible study for next semester, though if Will was just a couple of years younger, I could have gotten away with just enrolling the kids in Sunday school, dang it! That's where I got all of MY Biblical references, as well as learned some pretty terrific songs and did some frankly astonishing craft projects.

Syd is just almost done with the Girl Scout Junior Scribe badge--as always happens, she's completed the fun activities, and now has just the couple of ones left that don't sound so fun. She does love creative writing in general, though, so I think this spot on the work plans will be enough to encourage her to push through.

Syd covers vocabulary and logic with her word ladders, so Will and I do a mind bender once a week. I loved these at her age, but I've either forgotten how tricky they are, or this is exactly the kind of mental stimulation that my poor, aging brain needs. Last week I even had to cheat by peeking at the solution!

FRIDAY: The kids have an all-day nature class that they are LOVING, and I get to spend five hours getting tons of stuff done!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet for one. Chinese for the other. Will has a Girl Scout program with the fire department, and I think it's going to be freaking incredible. Both kids have been invited to what sounds like an epic Easter egg hunt sponsored by the church that a couple of their friends attend--can you believe that my kids have never gone to an Easter egg hunt?!? They have only done hunts at home, the poor lambs. They're going to have a fabulous time.

And then on Sunday, there will be the traditional Easter Bunny clue hunt (our Easter Bunny makes the kids solve riddles and run all over our property and the drive-in to find their Easter baskets), ham and yeast rolls, maybe some sweet potatoes, and lots and LOTS of chocolate.

What are YOUR plans for the week?

Organizing Written and Oral Reports in Elementary School: The Iceland Project

My kids write reports and essays fairly often, but our homeschool group's frequent academic fairs are great opportunities for them to really dig in and up their skills--and show them off!

I tried a new organizational strategy this time, borrowed from Third Grade Thinkers, that worked out so perfectly that we're going to keep it for all time. Heck, I may start using this method!

After the kids had each read a couple of general resources on Iceland (Culture Grams and Britannica School gave the best results for this particular subject), they chose some narrower subjects on which to focus: Will wanted to write about Iceland's volcanoes, geysers, and glaciers, while Syd was most interested in Iceland's language, food, and horses.

I cut off a long section of butcher paper for each kid, then wrote their focus subjects, plus a section for the introduction and conclusion, as column heads across it. As the kids read and re-read all the print and online resources they collected, I asked them to find at least one general fact to help them write their introductions, at least one fact with "meaning" that would help them write their conclusions, and at least three facts relating to each focus subject:

I LOVED Third Grade Thinkers' use of sticky notes to write facts on, and for the exact same reasons: they're easily manipulated to reorganize the flow of logic, and their small size encouraged the kids to summarize instead of copying. Intellectual honesty begins young, folks--NO PLAGIARIZING!

The next challenge, of course, is to not let the kid just string the facts together to make each paragraph, but instead to contextualize, be it with example, personal observation, or a sense of meaningfulness. As you'll see in the reports, Syd had an easier time doing this in her oral presentation, simply because of the subjects that she chose to cover; she was able to do an audience participation activity when reporting on Iceland's language, and we made and brought in laufabraud (more on that another time, but yum!) to enrich her reporting of Icelandic food.

For the International Fair, the kids had the final challenge of translating their written reports into engaging oral presentations. We did this in a couple of different ways. When the kids wanted to insert something unscripted--such as the Icelandic greetings that they memorized, or Syd's Icelandic naming activity--into their report for the oral presentation, I had them write what they wanted to do centered and in caps in the appropriate spot of their report, so that they would see it as they were reading and remember to pause their report and complete the unscripted portion. This worked okay, although I had to help Syd get her Icelandic naming activity both started and stopped; I'll have to think more on how to help her work through that independently next time. I also wanted Will to look at her report less and at the audience more, so I narrowed the margins on her written report way down, printed it, and then had her cut the paragraphs apart and glue them to index cards. In rehearsals, she did an excellent job referring to the cards but speaking to the audience, but during her actual presentation, I don't think she looked up from those index cards once! At least she remembered to speak loudly and clearly.

Don't feel as if you have to watch this video of their presentations; for one, I'm ashamed of how shaky my camera work is (I don't think I was actually looking at it as I filmed, because I was so focused on the kids), and there's also an embarrassing part in which both Matt and I rush to chastise Will as she's interrupting/correcting Syd mid-presentation, because we're both super traumatized by the time the kids fought on TV and I, at least, wouldn't have been surprised if Syd had leaped onto Will pro wrestler-style and began to roll around with her in a cloud of dust.


Fortunately, everyone emerged from their presentations unscathed, and the little hellions were able to later pose in triumph:

After the presentations, as everyone's milling around and looking at displays and eating geographically-themed snacks, these two totally random people literally just wandered into our conference room and began to look at all the displays. And it wasn't just walk around, glance at stuff, and wander out again--these people were INVESTED! They stopped at one particular kid's Ancient Egypt display, and admittedly, this kid had done a seriously tremendous job--she's too young to be a fully literate reader, I *think*, but she stood there and recited, from memory, just a giant amount of information about Ancient Egypt--but this couple stood there for something like forever, reading all the captions and actually translating the title of her presentation and her name from the Egyptian hieroglyphics in which she'd written them. Matt was pretty sure that they were going to kidnap the kid to be their language officer at the Stargate, but I sort of imagined them as very clueless and naive tourists from some random country, coming to the United States to see all the sights, and then seeing on the library calendar that, "Oh, Guthrun, look! An International Fair! I remember reading about World Fairs in our history books as a child! We MUST attend!"

And since this kid is definitely still in town and hasn't been indentured to the Stargate, clearly my theory is the correct one.

Here's a partial list of the resources that the kids used to study Iceland:



Of course, there are many more than these, and we didn't even begin to cover Norse myths or the sagas or do any of the activities collected in my Iceland pinboard (and how I dearly wanted to help the kids make a set of runes!). Ah, well...

Gotta save something for next time!

Our In-Home Branch of the Public Library

What I'm about to show you is embarrassing, I'm told. I don't personally think it's embarrassing, because I have zero sense of personal shame, but I do recognize that you are probably going to think that this is very, very weird.

Okay, here it is. This is an entire bookshelf in our home. Ninety-nine percent of this bookshelf holds materials from our town's public library and our university's libraries. We call it the Library Bookshelf:

At the top left there, you see some undergrad chemistry textbooks that I've checked out from the IU library. I was studying biology through the MIT OpenCourse system, but kept running into a bunch of chemistry that I didn't know, so I switched to chemistry. Of course, now that I'm studying chemistry, I keep running into a bunch of electricity stuff that I don't know.

When Will was researching for her Biography Fair project, way back in the fall, we all got really into Jules Verne. Now, most nights of the week, Matt reads aloud to us a chapter of The Mysterious Island before the kids go to bed. We keep having to return it to the public library and check it out again, because it's something like the longest book ever.

I got interested in Lewis and Clark after Syd chose a documentary on them to watch as a family some time ago. A friend suggested the historical fiction of James Alexander Thom, all of which was clogging up the library bookshelf for a while before I decided that I would save them all as a treat to read on our big road trip this summer, but in the meantime I also got interested in the Native Americans of that time, especially the ones who lived in what is now Indiana, and will be incorporating a lot of that material into our Indiana study.

I always have a ton of teaching materials checked out from the IU School of Education library. They give me a LOT of help in teaching math, especially, but they also have manipulatives, textbooks, board games, and children's books, and their lending period is immense. The kids' Latin textbook actually belongs to the School of Ed, and I think that we've only had to return it and check it out again once in the past year. Most of those Latin books on the shelf (though not all) are from the IU libraries, actually, as well as that whole Saxon Math collection--I like Math Mammoth, but I always have my eye out for alternatives.

The magazines belong to us. I don't know why, but I can never seem to sit down and read a magazine unless I'm on a road trip, so I save them up.

Will wants to learn to solder. I feel doubts about this.

Those entomology books are also all from the IU libraries. I've finally decided on a humane-ish killing jar, but I still can't figure out where to buy the chemicals to charge it.

Homemade pizza is a staple in our house.

We always have a lot of materials that support our Story of the World studies on our shelves. I really should return the rest of our Ancient Egypt materials, since we'll be coming back to Ancient Egypt again in a few chapters. We completed the Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (or something like that) chapter this morning, and I think that instead of bothering with spending another week doing mapwork for fictional characters, we'll move straight on to Hammurabi next. Looks like I'll be doing another library search!

Yes, I am very interested in post-apocalyptic fiction. Anything will do, although I love zombies the most. Matt keeps most of his pleasure reading in the car, since he likes to hide out there to read during his lunch hour at work, so imagine another big stack of graphic novels and histories there.

Syd's earning her Potter badge right now in Girl Scouts, so we've got some pottery and ceramics books on the shelves. Will's interested in woodworking, which explains those books, but just decided this morning to start earning her Geocaching badge, so expect a bunch of geocaching books on the shelves in a couple of days.

Both girls read non-fiction books about animals, comic books, joke books, and trivia books. I just replenished Syd's stack of easy readers, so there are about twenty more on the shelves than there were in this photo.

Will's also really into fantasy, and also novels about kids who rescue pets, or girls who help ponies, etc. Those titles come and go at lightening speed, however, so the specific ones are pretty hard to pin down. I do know that right now she's reading Tom Sawyer, a book that we own, but only because she came up out of nowhere one day and asked, "Why can't I understand what Jim is saying?"

I paused, closed my eyes, and contemplated all possible contexts, before my library science and liberal arts training pinged and led me to the correct conclusion: Jim, whose speech is written in dialect, friend of Huck Finn but also of Tom Sawyer, whose book I know we own. Will and I then had a lovely conversation about why it's tacky to write in dialect, what such writing is trying to show, and why black men of that time might not have learned, or be comfortable speaking with, correct grammar and pronunciation.

I need to move us into a dinosaur unit, so that we're all experts for our summer dino dig. I'm still unsure of exactly where to start, however, since we've studied dinosaurs so often before.

I'm hoping that we'll stay with the bird study, as we focus more on Indiana-specific wildlife.

The kids' monthly day-long nature class has an emphasis on survival skills; they find that kind of disaster-prep reading fascinating.

We've backed off a bit on Will's history of video games study, just because we've had so much else going on. I need to check in to see if it's still an interest, and if it is, we need to get back in it.

Soooo... yeah. That's our bookshelf. Sometimes people come over, happen to see it, start to browse, then ask, with horrified fascination, "Are all those... LIBRARY BOOKS?!?"

Um, yes. Yes, they are. So if you've ever been at the library trying to check something out, only to realize, frustrated, that ALL the DK biographies are missing, or ALL the James Alexander Thom novels, or ALL the children's books on pottery, then you'll know:

I have them, and I'm not giving them back until they're three days overdue.

Work Plans for the Week of March 3: Latin and Libraries

I'm pretty well over the way that the Box widget that embeds my work plans always insists on scrolling immediately to them when my blog loads, and the way that Box has completely ignored my question about this, so at some point I'm going to have to make the time to research other document embedding systems, sigh. Until then, however...

MONDAY: While the local schoolchildren are suffering through yet another snow day here, it's business as usual for us--it looks like even our local volunteer gig will be open today, so add "De-ice the car" to my to-do list! Syd's working on her factor chart (I got the idea from an old elementary Montessori manual--I'll tell you about it another time, if it turns out well) right now, while Will, who's finished part of her reading work, is heating up some French bread for our breakfast.

We've got chapter 19 of Song School Latin today (more body parts), instrument lessons--and I am REALLY going to have to kick their butts on these, because it's been a while since they've really focused on regular practice--and we'll be able to spend a few weeks doing some regular creative writing, since our local PBS station finally got their butts in gear about the PBS Kids Writers Contest.

TUESDAY: The kids have both Math Mammoth and First Language Lessons today, which I always appreciate during lesson planning since they're so blessedly easy to schedule. A playdate and baking a king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras will use up most of the rest of the day, but we'll also be working on the kids' Girl Scout service project. They need to provide a bookshelf as part of this project, and at first I thought that we might get it donated, but the dimensions required are pretty specific to fit into a limited space, AND Will has expressed so much interest in woodworking lately, that I've finally decided that we'll just make the bookshelf. It's still a little cold for woodwork outdoors, so we may find ourselves with lumber, the portable work bench, and the circular saw in the living room, but I think it's going to be a great beginning woodworking project for the kids, and one that they're guaranteed to see in use every week at our regular volunteer gig.

WEDNESDAY: Will's big Spring Ice Show performance is this night--wish her luck!

THURSDAY: We've still got a couple of chemistry experiments centered on acids and bases to perform, but I didn't get around to getting all the materials for those yet, so I'm moving us on to the paleontology that we'll be studying off and on as we lead up to our dinosaur dig this summer. I imagine that we'll be interspersing this paleontology study with seasonal studies, like botany and animal biology, and kid-led interests, but for now, I'll be grounding the kids' understanding, and sneaking in a little more Latin!

I think the kids are also ready to start interspersing Drawing With Children lessons with other types of hands-on art, so we'll be trying out this copy of The Color Book that I was sent to review (ooh, I just saw that it hasn't been officially released yet--how fun to have it in our paint-covered little hands!)--it's focused on exploring color through a variety of activities, so it should be a fun integration into our week.

FRIDAY: We're soundly into our Indiana study, but I wasn't quite prepared to move into the next chapter of The Story of the World (nor am I quite sure, yet, how I'm going to handle that chapter, since it highlights one of the book's few flaws, Bible stories treated as history--we may end up just listening to the chapter one week and then moving on, but first I need a little more time to decide if there's anything really historically relevant there), so fortunately, there's ALWAYS something more to do with Ancient Egypt!

The kids get in moods in which they seem to forget about formerly favorite pastimes, sometimes, so this week's logic is a board game of each kid's choice, to remind them that they like to play board games! That, combined with a library program, should round out our school week on a VERY fun note.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We might go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art as a family, or we might send the kids to a pottery class and claim some grown-up time. We might go hiking, if the weather warms, or we might drag the bikes out and get them ready for a season of riding. We *might* order a couple more chicks from a local hatchery, although every time you ask me that one, my answer changes.

Homeschool History: Make a Sarcophagus

Creating a model sarcophagus is an excellent enrichment activity to add to an Ancient Egypt study, and it fits in well with chapter four of The Story of the World: Ancient Times, the chapter on Ancient Egypt that includes information about mummies and pyramids.

I found little cardboard... pencil boxes?... on clearance one day in one of the big box arts/crafts stores that I frequent as little as possible due to my tendency to buy things on clearance that I don't need and probably won't use for years, and kept them on a shelf in the study/studio for, yes, years before realizing that they were the perfect material for this craft. Can a time lag of three years still be described as serendipity?

Any little box that's longer than it is wide will work for this craft, however, whether it's cardboard or wooden--I don't think plastic would work well, but you can make your own cardboard box that's the exact size that you want. For a very miniature sarcophagus, you could even make a matchbox work, and that would be super cute!

Before the kids began their own sarcophogi, we researched a bit and did a Google Image search in order to study examples. Based on that, we talked about having a facial portrait on the sarcophagus, including decorative elements and patterns, drawing symbols or representations of the meaningful gods, and recording important scenes from their lives. We also talked about the importance of the sarcophagus being their best work, and thoughtful, and including a lot of details and creative embellishments. I introduced the idea that artists often create sketches or rough drafts of their work before they begin the piece itself, and to that end I gave them these sarcophagus design sheets and asked them to create a draft of their piece first. Will fussed at this, of course, because she hadn't focused yet and thus didn't feel invested in the project, and actually tried to scribble her sarcophagus out as fast as possible on the cardboard box, but I erased her work, done quickly and shabbily to try to make a point, and required her to do her design sheet first. 

While working on her design sheet, she finally focused and found herself invested in her work, and worked hard and happily until she finished:

Seriously, though--school in Cinderella pajamas? That kid doesn't understand how good she's got it.

The kids copied their designs onto the cardboard sarcophogi in pencil--I reminded them to be mindful of the scale, but that's a concept we clearly need to keep working on, since both of their drawings ended up pretty small--colored them with Prismacolor and Sharpie markers, and, since their designs left extra room, I had them each research and write the cartouche for their names on the boxes, as well:

I actually think that I will have the kids use these sarcophagi as pencil boxes, and if this alone serves to stop their bickering over who stole whose pencil, then it will be three bucks well spent. This does bring to mind, though, my favorite thing to do with a kid's finished project--use it! For us, at least, a project used or displayed is a project that brings greater overall enjoyment, and a project that eventually gets worn out or messed up in some way, and therefore a project that eventually gets thrown away, guilt-free. Guilt-free de-acquisition? YAY!!!

Possible extension activities for this project:

• Sarcophogi were sometimes decorated on the inside, as well (in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, we saw a sarcophogus made by a coffin maker for his daughter. On the inside, he'd written all the information from The Book of the Dead that his daughter would need for her journey--a beautiful relic of his last act of service to his beloved child), so you could also decorate the inside of your sarcophogus, perhaps even with hieroglyphics.
• You could create a mummy to live inside the sarcophogus. Some homeschoolers have symbolically mummified Barbie, and I don't think that's such a bad fate for her.
• A matchbox sarcophagus could be entombed inside a model pyramid.

This project is shared with the After School Link Party over at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational.

Work Plans for the Week of January 13, 2014: So Much Science!

MONDAY: Our homeschool Science Fair is in three weeks, so it is time to get cracking! Ideally, I'd like the kids to get most of their research done this week (hence all the research and reports on the work plans), and their big project done next week, leaving that last week for them to have plenty of time to finish up their work and prepare their oral presentation and display board.

So science will be a big part of three days this week--fortunately, our other work for today is fairly cut-and-dry. The kids LOVED Roll 'n Multiply (and don't tell them, but I *may* let them play it for their multiplication table memory work this week, instead of the plain old tedious study that I made them do last week), Will once again balked at learning one more new line in "It's Raining, It's Pouring" but found it simple to do once she focused (when she begins to have the self-awareness to realize this pattern and cease it, I swear I will buy her a present!), and we are all eagerly anticipating heading back to our weekly volunteer gig in an hour or so, after our long holiday hiatus (as was exclaimed over breakfast this morning, "We haven't been to the Hub since LAST YEAR!!!).

TUESDAY: For their Science Fair project, the kids need to research paleontology, the skeletal system, and chicken anatomy, so on this day they're going to use our human skeleton model kit to create a plaster of Paris model of the human skeleton, glue it to a cardboard base, then use paint or embroidery thread--we'll see what they prefer--to key its bones to the identical bones on a diagram of a chicken skeleton. Both humans and chickens have mandibles, and femurs, and clavicles, etc.

That big project, plus a continuation of the work for the Girl Scout World Thinking Day badge (Will still needs to research another country's educational system, Syd still needs to watch a couple of international Sesame Street episodes and compare them to the US version, and they both need to begin their big service project), should intersperse nicely with the book work that they've got for math, grammar, and logic, leading to a pretty nice, if full, school day.

WEDNESDAY: Finally, we're horseback riding again! The kids are so excited to get back on their horses. I'm sure Cody and Lola have missed them terribly, too!

THURSDAY: We're going to move ahead to the next chapter of The Story of the World next week (mental note to ME to request library books and get the prep work done for that!), so we're working on the last two mummy and pyramids projects that I wanted us to complete first. For this day, there are SO many great interactive games about Ancient Egypt online, and the kids are going to think it's a real treat to get to explore them all for school. On the next day, they're going to transform Mason jars into canopic jars--I'm really eager to see how that project turns out!

Last week, Will loved using Scratch to play Spacewar, and spent more time goofing around on Scratch afterwards, even finding some games based on some of her favorite books (she's a big fangirl over the Warriors series, just so you know). She mentioned that she might like to try programming something of her own, but then never got around to it, so I put it on her schoolwork as encouragement. Syd also had a blast planning her fashion show design last week, and claims that she's going to sew it completely by herself this year (YES!!!), so I may have her sew a muslin of a shirt pattern that I think will be easy enough for her to use. Of course, I thought I had a pants pattern that was easy enough for her to use, but I sewed the muslin for her myself, and she didn't care for the style, so it's back to research for me! Maybe if she has to sew her own muslins she won't be so picky...

As a side note, Syd plans to use the following types of fabric for her garment:

• orange jersey knit--We're talking orange T-shirts here, or orange graphics on T-shirts, or even orange notions to embellish the garment.
• green formal fabric with sequins--Wish me major luck here, because who on earth would have a formal gown made out of green sequined fabric?!?
• green bottomweight--I'm tacking this one on myself, because I plan to STRONGLY encourage Syd to piece the inner thigh portion of the green sequined pants that she's planning on making with a regular green bottomweight fabric. I mean, walking the runway with sequins between your thighs--can you imagine?

So if you have any orange T-shirts, green curtains, or green sequined prom gowns that you're dying to get rid of, send them over to our house! 

FRIDAY: This may end up being more work than we can do on this day--I'm still playing with how to incorporate the kids' math class into their schedule--but if everyone can get focused, we *should* be able to create lapbooks based on G is for Golden: A California Alphabet (I LOVE the Discover America State-by-State series, as well as the lesson plans that go with the books), sculpt canopic jars, make some progress on the World Thinking Day badges, and write a report on chickens, chicken anatomy, and the life cycle of the chicken. I'm curious to see how these reports go, actually--I'm going to ask the kiddos to collaborate on each of their reports this week, instead of writing two separate reports. Will they realize that this makes the project much quicker and easier to complete, or will they fight the whole time and make it take ten times longer?

We'll see!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: Here's to another holiday, another long weekend, and another short work week to come! I'm pretty excited that we have NOTHING scheduled for Saturday or Sunday; I hope the weather will allow us to take a long hike or go mountain biking. On Monday, I'll be doing our regular volunteer gig by myself while Matt takes the girls and some friends to a different volunteer gig with the Girl Scouts.

Also in the plans: yeah, they'll probably be boiling down a whole chicken carcass, bleaching the bones, and then beginning to re-articulate the skeleton.

Yay, science!