the sleppys

Kendall and Mommy

We took two Everglades camping trips, two weekends, back to back. My camping-prep list consists of getting the children’ clothes and accessories squared away in their bags. December 29th, the boots were paired and laced up and contained its sock for its foot… all except Kyle’s. He had just put on his boots to go run errands with Dad only a few days before. Somehow, the lace was pulled out, and the sock and boot were missing.

After looking around and asking the children to put things away so that we can find the sock and boot, I found the missing sock in Kyle’s “miscellaneous” pile of stuff. *sigh*

Finally, when Dad came home and moved a duffel bag over a few more inches than I had moved it hours earlier, we found the boot itself. *whew*

While preparing for our January 7th camping trip, I practiced extreme vigilance during the week, making sure that no socks were lost and no laces were pulled out of boots.

This was my reward:

The day after the New Year, I went to teach my regular students. I came back at about eight in the evening. I was about to knock on the door when I heard music coming from the inside of the house. It was loud and fast and 80′s. Here is a scan of what I saw when I came in.

Ty in his pajamas, reading Earth & Space

Taylor teaches her dolls about the ocean.

Kyle singing into his “microphone,” Kendall and Talon on Dad’s lap

Four Long Haired Freaky People who pay no attention to Signs.

To the neighbors, it must sound that we’re having a party with topless girls and wild hair.

Oh wait, we are.

Santa Claus delivered an easel on Christmas. All five children got a kick out of it. The boys learned to play Hangman from Dad. The girls practiced drawing stick figures. Well, the twins, who are three years old, draw stick figures. Taylor teaches maths.

1 x 100
______

100

We have been practicing many, many Christmas carols and holiday songs since before Hallowe’en, in hopes to go caroling this year. The children, especially the three elder, know the tunes and most lyrics to over fifty carols and songs, holy and secular. This week, we chose a dozen to go caroling.

As night fell, we crossed the street to sing to a couple of the elderly neighbors. We walked back onto our block and sang for Dad. We went out to a couple other neighbors, some were home, some were not.

We’ll try again today, Christmas Eve, but during the day because we have family traditions for eventide.

If you have a minute and a half, here’s a video of our singing “Jingle Bells.”

Ty’s first fish–A monster of a spotted tilapia.

Working the same spot with a Husky Jerk, Ty caught another tilapia.

Not to be upstage by my son, I worked the Husky Jerk over a ledge and landed this peacock bass.

This is how we spent the better part of our Saturday. Good times.

Ty’s birthday was on Monday, the 14th, so we went camping on Saturday, the 12th. We headed out in the morning to Everglades National Park, where else? We took hikes around the usual places and saw the usual wildlife. Many Black Vultures sat along the trails. They migrate here from the north during autumn. They are friendly, curious birds. Turkey Vultures are quite a sight to see soaring and gliding, but they are not curious but nervous and will fly away if people approach. At Royal Palm, the babies walked around, which was different because I would carry them when they were younger. Now that they are a bit older than the last time we were at Royal Palm, they were safe as long as they were holding someone’s hand.

We hiked to the Mound from Gate 15 and saw that it was covered in broom sedge. We had been seeing the sedge grow and become more established during the past seasons, but this time, it was tall. Not just the sedge but the trees were taller, too, of course. Though it is expected to see taller plants, it also is a bit disappointing to see a view blocked by them. We were standing 50 feet above the Everglades waters, but the view was covered by these plants. Eh. The wood storks and vultures were pleasant to witness as they flew low to the water, almost at our eye-level as we stood on the Mound. The boys took their usual trip around the Mound while the girls sat around and daydreamed.

We made it to Pine Glades Lake where we ate lunch and presented Ty with his birthday present: a fishing rod. The boys fished for a couple of hours, and the girls waited in the van. I was sleepy, so I napped. But that made it difficult to keep the girls entertained in the van. Eventually, they napped, too. I tried my arm at casting and fishing but caught nothing. Everyone caught nothing.

We set up camp at Long Pine Key. It was a busy weekend, the day before being Veteran’s Day. Our usual campsite was occupied as was our second-usual site. Not that we have rights to them, but it’s always reassuring to be in the same place. We found a site on the border of the forest and the Road Closed sign, and had only one neighbor. Eventually, the Road Closed signs were taken down to accommodate for the higher demand of campers.

Night fell, and the mosquitoes buzzed and bit. I put on my mosquito net because they absolutely are in love with my blood. Kendall, who has the same attractive blood, also wore hers. Still, they bit her hands and legs. Annoyed by them, she climbed into her car seat in the van and kept saying, “Skeetoos hit me. I outta here. I home.” Hot chocolate made her and everybody else feel better. The children brushed their teeth and went to bed in their tents.

Dad and I stayed up to watch the fire. There was also some commotion at the camp site about a hundred yards to the west. I’m not sure what was going on, but the Park Police showed up on foot and spoke to the campers. I was trying to pay attention to the voices, but the mosquitoes were incessant, no matter how close I sat to the fire. I crawled into my tent at about 10:30pm, which is awfully early: Dad and I usually stay up past midnight. The crowd was very different that weekend. I heard a man a few sites over shouting “HIALEAH!” which is a town northwest of Miami proper and almost directly north of the international airport, heavily populated with loud people… I think because they have to shout over the sounds of landing 747′s.

At 12:30am, I was woken up by the sounds of clanging bottles.

At 5:00am, I was woken up by a bat’s squeaks, and I stayed up, listening to nature, which included mosquito buzzing.

We had a pancake breakfast with coffee (or water, for the children) and headed back home.

The air has been so dry and clear lately that we just had to go outside for a World History lesson.

The children, the boys more so than the girls, are learning about Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Greece. Actually, the MAIN lessons this month are about Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire, but the boys needed a little bit of brushing up on their other Ancient Mediterranean/Middle Eastern histories.

We were all sitting in the shade of the Front Yard Hammock, enjoying the crisp breezes, the occasional wake of vultures hundreds of feet above us, and the flittering of zebra longwing butterflies, and listening to my narration and chatter about the ancient civilizations when a big, old, mean, nasty pickup truck with a trailer hitched to it pulled up a few houses down. Three or four men got out and downloaded their “landscaping” equipment and began making horrible, loud noises that I could hardly hear my talking about the first Olympic games. So we packed it up and continued our lesson in the homeschooling room. We still heard them and their lawnmower, leafblower, and edgetrimmer because we leave the windows open.

Dad has been working on something with the Macintosh computer. Something about hard drive, terabytes, operating system, and many other words that I’ve been told are English but I don’t remember exactly…. I do recall Panther Cheetah Bobcat or something big cats like that.

I taught Taylor a few more pieces on G Major on the piano. She’s not really playing any F-sharps yet because her pieces are only do through so (and F-sharp is ti).

This is a list of the subjects and content that the children have mastered or completed during the first nine weeks of school.

Maths ~
Ty: Grade Three Maths: Reading graphs and plotting points; probability, statistics, combination, median, range, mode; multiplication to 12, decimals, plotting decimals on a number line; multiplying two- and three-digit numbers, multiplying money and decimals, division using mental math,
Kyle: Grade Two Maths: Fact strategies for addition and subtraction, place value to 100; using a calendar, adding and subtracting time; fractions, adding fractions to make a whole, counting money, making change; addition and subtraction using mental maths.
Taylor: Kindergarten Maths: Sorting and classifying by size, color, shape; finding and continuing patterns; counting by 2′s, 5′s, and 10′s; comparing length, capacity, weight; using a clock and calendar; recognizing coins and adding money; making picture graphs and tallies, and exploring probability. She completed her entire Kindergarten Maths book and is now learning addition and subtraction from Grade One Maths.

English ~
Ty: Grammar: labeling parts of speech, simple and compound subject and predicate, identifying four types of sentences, recognizing and fixing fragments and run-ons, subject-verb agreement, singular and plural nouns. Spelling: Short and long a, e, i, o, u; ü; final double consonants, -ed and -ing endings, oi, ou, aw (in frost, talked, and caught), homophones, contractions, commonly misspelled words, spl, spr, str, c as s (spice), g as j (garage).
Kyle: Writing: forms, motives, and process, using exact nouns, lively verbs, and adjectives.
Taylor: Spelling: cvc, cvce (long first vowel with silent e as in kite and pale), some blends such as fr-, st-, and cr-.
All: Narration: Read aloud from Genesis and Exodus: Ty reads from King James, Kyle and Taylor from children’s Bibles appropriate for their ages and reading levels. Reading Comprehension: Each child answers questions about the passage he or she had just read.

Art ~
All: Drawing people in different poses using colored pencils or acrylic paint.

Phys. Ed. ~
All: Catching underhand tossed baseballs with baseball mitt. Throwing football with hikes, runs, and passes.

German ~
All: Singing children’s, folk, and Christmas songs. Listening to live narration of Der Rattenfänger von Hameln. Telling time, colors, numbers, greetings. Conjugating irregular verbs (to be, to eat) in first, second, and third persons, singular and plural.

Penmanship ~
Ty: Lowercase cursive and some upper case cursive
Kyle: All lower- and uppercase traditional manuscript
Taylor: Uppercase traditional manuscript including ampersand (&)

Music ~
Ty: Piano: Clementi Sonatina Op. 36. Theory: Question and answer phrases
Kyle: Piano: Mozart Minuet K.1. Theory: Drawing and naming notes, comparing time values
Taylor: Middle C position notes, beginnings of G major position. Plays some folk and children’s song by heart. Theory: Drawing staves, treble and bass clefs, and line and space notes. Recognizing the direction of a group of notes (up, down, and repeat); naming notes from both treble and bass clefs.
All: Singing: Solfege sight reading; English, Irish, and American children and folks songs; Christmas carols, holy and secular.

Government/Economics ~
Three branches of government, levels of government, purpose of taxes, comparing and contracting government and private industries, importance of personal property. Harvesting natural resources, manufacturing goods, trading and transporting goods. Goods versus services.

Earth and Space Science ~
Three types of rocks, decomposition cycle, rock cycle, water cycle, report on one planet other than Earth, three layers of Earth, volcanoes and earthquakes.

World Geography ~
Seven continents, four oceans, Prime Meridian, International Date Line, Equator, Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, latitude and longitude; Canadian provinces, Australian territories; named all countries and recognized their boundaries, located major rivers, lakes, seas, mountain ranges around the globe. Learned to find places using an atlas.

August 23, 2001: Second official day of home school. At 10:00am, we all took a break from maths and whatnot to prepare peanut butter sandwiches and goof off on facebook. Taylor walked to me with a white pebble in her hand and told me very calmly, “I lost a tooth.” The information didn’t really sink in, so I looked at her curiously and saw a gap in her mouth, where her tooth used to be. “Oh, Taylor! You lost your tooth!”

I texted Dear Husband about the event.

I’m not sure if it was that night or the next (we’ve learned that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t come during rainstorms, and it may or may not have been raining that evening) that we placed the tooth in the special wooden box, rested it on the sill, and said good-bye.

As usual, the Tooth Fairy left a note with instructions to brush regularly and be kind to brothers and sisters. She also brought Taylor a Schleich Eyela Elf Fairy. I’m thinking that may be what the Tooth Fairy looks like.