School Today...

I figured we should so something today, so I was up and in the shower before Brian left for work. Not that we don't do anything most days, but I am definitely not 'up and in the shower' at 7:15 most mornings.

I read the news and did my round of blogs before the kids were up. And when they did get up, we got going.

Raiden and I played Set. I read about this game of visual perception this week on the TP Homeschooling board. It's a thinker! We tried out the online game here and here. Kori tried on her own later in the day.

After breakfast, we all worked on our own thing. I finished my knitting project. Raiden spent the hour organizing his hockey cards and Kori was typing madly on a new story.

After Brian's lunch, we had the kids' math lessons. Kori went outside after her lesson to play a bit with the soccer ball while I helped Rai with his lesson. Which was a little short as I don't yet have a balance or scale and that happened to be the lesson of the day. (If that's not the story of my life, I don't know what is.) Rai went out and played with Kori after he was finished. I stayed inside and looked for balances and scales on ebay.

After our lunch, Raiden did his Handwriting and 2 pages of grammar. He read his Lego Club magazine and found a contest he wanted to enter. He was quite happy to print his own contest entry form. If that's not relevant printing practice, I don't know what is.

Kori worked a bit more on her story. She did a couple of pages of grammar: root words, comprehension, subjects and predicates.

Raiden and I did a German lesson. Kori participated for part of it. Sort of. If lying on the couch, mocking phrases and hitting herself over the head counts. I excused her from further attendance.

Throughout the day there was various forms of reading, playing, drawing and helping to clean up. My dad came over for dinner and the kids were quite happy to tidy up and play the happy hosts for Grandpa.

Currently, we're watching the first period of the 2nd game in the Stanley Cup finals. No score, 2 minutes to go in the first. Does that make sense to all you baseball fans? Rai has some reading picked out for the first period break and then it's lights out...until we do it all over again tomorrow. Except that I get to get up even earlier than I did today so I can help Brian take the garbage out. Can't wait.

WIP - Finished Knitting!

I never thought I would finish. But I have! Yea Me!

I ran out of one of the yarns used for this piece. I kept knitting with the other yarn to finish as best I could. Hopefully, once it is sewn together, that last bit won't be noticeable. With the colours and the pattern intact, I'm sure it will look just fine. I might even be able to hide that end in a seam somewhere.

Here I am blocking. Once the two rectangles of knitting were wet, it was pretty easy to pin them to the correct measurements. What a relief!

So, hopefully it will be dry soon and I'll do my best to sew it together properly, the first time. Please see my other knitting blog if you would like to relive the misery of me knitting 3½ of these silly pieces in order to have 2 finished.

Otherwise, stay tuned and after a quick picture, I'll have this puppy sewn up and shipped off asap.

Koshaf

For our GeoClub Project, we decided to try an Egyptian recipe to go with our presentation. I thought it turned out well. After all, it wasn't terribly difficult. Our Egyptian friends attending had nice things to say about our Koshaf - a sweet dessert.

First, I washed and recruited the children. I typed their reports for them, the least they could do was pitch in with this part. After all, this part doesn't involve standing in front of people and speaking. Here they are halving 1 cup of dried apricots. The recipe wasn't clear if we had to chop or not, but the kids weren't getting off with just chucking things in a bowl.

Next, 1 cup pitted prunes. Also halved. If you've never shopped for prunes before, they also come with the pits still in 'em. Try to find the pitted prunes first as the staff may not like you returning the prunes with pits back to the bin.

Not that I'd know.

Then, halve 1 cup of Figs. Measure out 1½ cups of raisins. I used sultana raisins if it matters. I don't think it does.



And here we have it. Set the chopped fruit into a dish that will hold the heat. Measure out 1 cup of sugar. More if you like your koshaf very sweet. Boil 2 - 2½ cups of water.

Spread the sugar over the fruit. Pour the boiling water over the sugar. Cover the dish and let it sit on the counter until cooler. Then put it in the fridge for a bunch of hours - preferable overnight.

Here we go. Easy koshaf in a bowl. Serve it cold. Never having eaten prunes or figs before, I thought it was ok tasting. Very raisin-esque. The amounts I used here makes a medium family-sized serving bowl. I didn't find it terribly sweet, but it's not supposed to be. Egyptians don't eat rich, fattening, sinful things like I do. They also don't use utensils very often. So your guess is as good as mines as to how you are supposed to politely eat this dessert.

Coloured Pasta

This project has been sitting in my pantry since my sister came home from working in Mexico. I'd call her and ask when that was, exactly, but I'd be embarrassed to share the date with you. Then you might believe the procrastination rumours that are swiriling around out there with my name attached. I might add that the rumours are totally unfounded. Yeesh.

Here's What You Need
1. Rubbing Alcohol.
2. Cutie pasta shapes with holes in 'em. Any size, but I'm dealing with tinies today. Adjust your amounts accordingly.
3. Food Colouring. I used the concentrated gel kind.
4. Zippy bags. One for each colour you plan on making.
5. Wax paper or Tin Foil. After doing both, I liked the tin foil best.
6. Egg carton. Or some other such container to contain the little coloured pastas when they're all pretty.
7. Measures - I used a smidgen, 1 tsp., and a 2 tbsp.
8. Toothpicks. Useful so you don't smear the wet colours or dye your fingers...much.

See? Cutie pasta shapes. Sorry about the blurry. I don't have a fancy camera like Ree. Or Karen.

Ok. Here we go. Into a zippy bag, pour in 2 tsp. of the rubbing alcohol. Then scoop about half a smidgen - use a toothpick - of colour gel in and squish it all up. (see? You thought I was trying to be funny. Didn't know 'smidgen' was an actual amount, didja?)

Then we dumped in about 2 tbsp. of cutie pasta. Squish all that up. Take a few minutes and really roll it around. Make sure all the pasta is equally coated.

Pour the coloured pasta onto a sheet of wax paper. Spread it all out fairly thinly with a toothpick.

Every few minutes, go back and stir up the drying pasta. It sticks a little. But not enough to be annoying. Here we have yellow, green, purple and pink drying.

Raiden found it helpful to cram my flip flops onto his sock feet during this process. Apparently it helps to channel your focus to the appropriate task. It also makes your big toe look amazingly long. Every boy is proud of a long big toe.

For the colours red, orange and blue, we used a sheet of tin foil. Personally, I liked this better. I'm not sure it made any difference in the final product. Speaking of which...

Pretty!

We're done. About two hours from start to clean-up, including drying time. Now, before you go stringing the cutie coloured pasta on a string and wearing it in the rain while sweating, I'd probably check how colourfast it's going to be. I am going to look into sealing the colour somehow before I do too much with my cutie pasta. But enjoy the pics. I couldn't find any to explain the process so I made my own.

Reading

Gosh, I love watching my kids learn to read.

With Kori it happened so fast that I wasn't aware of the intricate parts of the process. It all seemed pretty amazing. One day she was looking at books. Two week of Montessori and she was reading chapter books.

With Raiden, I'm relishing the process.

Perhaps I should mention that the best method that seems to work with him would be the 'Benign Neglect' way. I'm neglecting him in order to teach him to read. How's that for cutting-edge??

Recently, Rai's been attempting the silent-reading-to-himself. With me purposely neglecting to promptly join him at bedtime (see,that's me ignoring the little hellion) for stories has meant that he finds himself laying there, alone, with books. I save his favorite reads for bedtime, so he's pretty excited to read at that time of day. He finds himself browsing his current selection and he's discovered that this reading thing isn't so hard at all.

Previous to this new development on the Independent Reading spectrum, Rai's been successfully following along as I read aloud. He was excited to learn he could do this, because his first attempts to do so were failing dismally. I said nothing, but I did explain that his brain was learning to read and it could only handle one step at a time. I pointed out that he was making great strides at reading instructions aloud from his workbooks just now, so perhaps his brain was just busy with that and when it wasn't so busy, the following-along-during-read-aloud would fall into place in it's own time.

And whatdayaknow...shazam. It happened. He's following along for the last month or so with no effort at all. He even picks up where I begin reading again after we stop to discuss a passage.

Then there was a little blip where I had to be careful how long I let him look at books before I arrived to read. He was trying to read to himself, he got all the words, yet he couldn't get the comprehension. He was frustrated. We had a short discussion one night where I explained that he was making leaps and bounds of progress and how proud I was of him. I told him that once his hard-working brain was used to reading the words in his mind, the understanding would come.

And here we are. He is proud to point out to me the parts of books that he's read. To himself. All alone. We were reading a soccer skills book tonight. I was instructed to read the section on 'Goalkeeping Skills'. I'd read and he'd say, "You. That's what it said last night when I read it."

Did I mention that it's so very cool to watch your kids learn to do new stuff...and enjoy it? I'd have another one just to watch him/her learn to read. And walk. I like the learning to walk, too.