the sleppys

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).

I’m often asked how we feed a family of seven on a teacher’s income without the “benefits” of government subsidies. Day in, day out, we use the same ingredients: rice or pasta, beans, onions, sometimes garlic, bell peppers, maybe celery, broccoli, and/or carrots. Dad roasts a chicken, which feeds us for a couple of days. On the surface, it looks like the same old same old, but the spices and herbs we use are different.

I try to teach the children to appreciate foods from all over the world, but with only rice and beans, you have to be creative. This is what I’ve discovered:

Olive oil, mint, and garbanzos make it Greek.
Olive oil, basil, and tomatoes make it Italian.
Sesame oil, soy sauce, and ginger make it Asian.
Corn oil, cilantro, and tomatoes make it Mexican.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme make it English.
Pork fat, soy sauce, and tomatoes make it Peruvian Chifa.
Pork fat, parsley, and mustard make it German, but I never use garlic when cooking German food because everybody knows that the Germans don’t eat garlic.

And then there are the varieties or regional herbs and spices:
Cinnamon over Italian makes it Cincinnati.
Crystal hot sauce over red beans and rice makes it New Orleans.
Mango with Asian still keeps it Asian, but with cumin, it’s Cuban.
Key lime over Cuban makes it South Florida.
Sour cream and avocado over South Florida with a side of lychees makes it Sleppy Rock. (I just made that up. I don’t think I’ve ever had that combination, but it’s perfectly possible!)

You get the idea: a rough overview of world cuisines. It’s not the End All, Be All, but a small glance of our culinary escapades just to show readers that rice and beans doesn’t have to be boring.

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

Math ~
Ty: Place value through 1,000s, addition and subtraction using two-digit numbers and regrouping, Subtraction through zeros
Kyle: Place value through 100s, addition and subtraction through 99 without regrouping. Regrouping done with manipulatives
Taylor: Counting, one-to-one coordination, pattern recognition and duplication, sorting.

English ~
Boys: Narration and copywork of fables, poems, folk tales, Psalms; Runic writing
Taylor: Beginning letter sounds, recognition of Dolch words, capital letter writing.

History ~
Boys: Narration and copywork of the Old Testament kings and European migration to the Americas including vikings and pilgrims

Geography ~
Ty: Definitions of landforms, bodies of water, habitats
Kyle: Cardinal points; Mapping skills
Both: Drew, watercolored, and labeled a map of an island that contained no less that three major rivers, a mountain range as their source, a steppe, a desert, deciduous and coniferous forests, lakes, wetland prairies, a freshwater slough, islands, capes, cliffs, coves, and harbors. They made up a story to go with it.

Health ~
Boys: Nutrition, food pyramid, creating square meals; Safety, personal choices; Hygiene, hand washing, dental

Art ~
All: Horizontal, vertical, diagonal lines; Straight, curved lines; Positive, negative space; Working with primary colors; Perspectives in back- and foreground; Human bodies in motion (crouching, running, shooting)

Phys. Ed. ~
All: Ballet, five positions of arms and legs; Bows and courtesies; Climbing trees; Crawling across monkey bars; Hanging and swinging

German ~
Ty: Narration of poems
Kyle: Numbers and days of the week
All: Singing folk and children’s songs

Penmanship ~
Ty: Lowercase cursive, some uppercase cursive
Kyle: Capital and lowercase letters in print

Music ~
Ty: Technical drills on piano; C, F, G, D major chord studies; Christmas carols and songs; “Star Wars”" Main Theme
Kyle: Technical drills on piano; Middle C position and G Major pieces; Christmas carols; “Imperial March” (Darth Vader’s Theme)
All: Scale and arpeggio solfege singing; English and American folk songs

Handicrafts ~
Ty: Knit and purl
Kyle: Knit
Taylor: Finger crochet to make ropes

Kendall and Talon are not included in “All” because they are not in school. They sometimes participate in singing folk and solfege.

The children on on our street don’t come to play anymore. They pass by our house on their way to other neighbors. I’m not upset by that. I don’t think that our children are all too bothered by it either. They know that the government schooled kids are a little bit ruder, more crass, and generally inferior to them. Our home schooled children get excited about the opportunity to play with their home schooled counterparts at the home schooling group in the playground.

The group meets once a week. It’s tough to get down there, though. I do enjoy spending time with that bunch because they are more like us, in faith and family values, than the children who live on our block. (Although, there is a family down the street who also home schools. We are friends, but those children are a little bit older than ours, with the youngest being eleven). With my having to go to work and the van’s being occupied by Dad when he’s working, being at the playground for the home school group isn’t always a possibility. We haven’t been there since the first week of December.

I had plans on going today. We had to get our schoolwork done before eleven in the morning to even think about walking to the playground, which is a mile away. I wrote down homework assignments that the boys had to do yesterday while I was at work so that a lot of the school work can be out of the way. But they didn’t do it. All they had to do was copy a few lines about the days of the week and finish their math work. But they couldn’t do that.

They reminded me of my music students who “don’t have time to practice” during the week, so they are unprepared for the next week’s lesson.

They were too busy playing. This morning, Kyle woke up and ignored my instructions to get started on his work. For an hour, he muddled around the house.

Now, after going on and on for thirty minutes about how they should do the work that is assigned to them, the boys are doing their work quietly, making up assignments that should have been done yesterday. They know they are going to miss the homeschooling group.

I’m pissed off about it because I enjoy hanging out with other grown ups. I enjoy being outside, watching my children play. But, well, they were too busy playing yesterday that they couldn’t do their work.

Pttth.

Nearly two years ago, our washing machine stopped working. We threw it out and washed clothes by hand for many months. The most difficult part of washing clothes by hand is wringing them out, so with President Bush’s stimulus check, we bought a wringer. It was working well, and I had an efficient system of washing diapers, clothes, and linens. The boys would help each other wring the babies’ diapers (which are flat pieces of cloth) and their own t-shirts. We acquired a second-hand washing machine some months later and completely forgot about the wringer and the hard work it requires, so we relied on that for a year (though not as systematically) until it finally failed on us.

The clothes started piling up, and I finally hand-washed a load of laundry, using the wringer from the mop bucket to wring the clothes, but it didn’t do a great job and left the clothes dripping on the line, which made the drying time twice as long. I couldn’t use the appropriate wringer because it wasn’t latched onto a table or sink that is sturdy enough to keep the whole apparatus from wobbling. If a pair of jeans is going through the wobbly wringer, they are going to be stuck in there.

Dad took the washing machine out of the utility room and set up our new washing station.

Well, okay, it’s the wringing station. The washing station is… a secret operation.

On the first load, Talon helped me by handing me an article of clothing. She didn’t touch the wringer at all, and I made sure that her little fingers were not in close proximity to the rolls of the wringer. She was busy getting herself wet from the wet clothes. So, sorry Talon, you’re not going to “help” me again any time soon.

********
Oh, yes, we also make our own laundry low-sudsing detergent:

1 bar soap, 4-6 oz (Castile, Fels-Naptha), grated
2 cups Borax
2 cups washing soda (we use Arm & Hammer)
1 cup baking soda

Mix it all up and use 1/4-1/2 cup per load as powdered detergent.

It starts in the beginning of May, when the heat index rises above 90, when the Royal Poincianas bloom in reds and yellows, when the “dry” season in South Florida is in its dusk… We see the dawn of flag season.

Our flag is on continuous display in our foyer, between the Ten Commandments and the Ten Home Rules posters. We have it mounted on a pole, which is stuck in a pipe, which is embedded in a bucket of concrete. On Loyalty Day, May 1st, we take it outside to wave, and we carry it inside at sunset. No more than two weeks later, we carry out the same procedure for Armed Forces Day. Two weeks after that, Memorial Day. Two weeks after that, we fly it on Flag Day, June 14, which is also the birthday of every US Army soldier and veteran. Again, on Independence Day, our nation’s birthday, we let it fly in the free American breeze.

We do display it outside for other days such as Patriot Day and Presidents Day, but I do love the quick succession of display days in the early summertime. Five times in eight weeks make it memorable.

After two weeks and a day, we thought that the chrysalis had died. I’ve read that it takes ten to fifteen days for a butterfly to emerge from the chrysalis, but by Friday, the 15th day, no change had become of the chrysalis.

It was Saturday evening when we saw its changing color. The chrysalis started turning darker, and the orange patterns on the wings were becoming apparent. Our hopes were up for our little Monarch friend.

Sunday morning, it was really black with a small amount of orange (and white, where the white dots on the wings are). Thirty minutes past noon, and I saw no change. It’s like waiting for a baby to be born. There’s waiting and waiting.

About an hour later, I stepped outside to see the chrysalis and was surprised to find a fully emerged butterfly holding onto a nearby twig. It didn’t flap its wings. It just clung to its twig, waiting for something to do, probably stunned as anything could be after having been asleep for a half life then waking up with wings!

The childrens maternal grandfather came to visit that afternoon, and we went outside to show him the Monarch. Dad started taking video if it. I suppose that it got excited by the ruckus that was going on around him because he opened and closed his wings a bit and began crawling. Dad stuck out a finger, and the butterfly climbed aboard. Dad tried to get him close to the milkweed so that the butterfly can get something to eat, but it took off, the butterfly did. It fluttered toward the middle of the front yard.

After a few hours, Dad and Taylor went back outside and caught the butterfly practicing to fly. It eventually found a safe place to spend the night on a leaf of the strangler fig in the front yard.

On Monday morning, we went outside and found it on the same leaf. We spend the morning indoors but popping our heads back out, looking for it, making sure that it’s safe. In the afternoon, it had wandered into the backyard, still flapping and fluttering as if practicing – but with more confidence.

A cardinal and blue jay were eyeing it but made no move to go after it.

It has been a little stressing, worrying about that darn butterfly that we’ve raised since hatching from its tiny egg under the milkweed leaf. I hope he comes back to eat sometime.

We are almost through with the first nine weeks of our school year. For lack of time and laziness in creativity, I’m listing their accomplishments as yet.

Math~
Ty: Adds and subtracts, with regrouping, four-digit numbers, including money.
Kyle: writes numbers to 150, adds and subtracts using a number line, adds and subtracts without a number line (mental math) to sums of 12.

English~
Ty: Reads “The Magic Treehouse” books, spells second grade high frequency words
Kyle: reads “Frog and Toad,” spells Dolch words

History~
Both children read and listen to stories about Norse gods, English and Irish legends, and the Old Testament.

Life Science~
Ty: Notes the differences between invertebrates and chordates, the differences between the five chordate orders, hypothesizes on special features’ functions (whiskers, beaks, shells)
Kyle: Differentiates between living and non-living things, plants and animals, names parts of a tree and knows their functions

German~
Both children count, recite the alphabet, name body parts, months, days of the week, family members by relationship, and rooms in the house
Ty: writes
Kyle: listens and recites

Art~
Both children work on line compositions and projects on positive and negative shapes.

Handwork~
Ty: knits rows of 12 stitches.

Penmanship~
Ty: practices lower case letters, Dolch words, proper nouns in history
Kyle: practices capital letters, Dolch words

Piano~
Ty: plays harmonies, triads, staccato, and dotted quarter notes in C, F, and G Majors
Kyle: plays Middle C position melodies

Everyday, we journal, study mathematics, English, and German. The boys alternate days to practice piano or do their penmanship assignments. Each fortnight, we study a new Block subject (Art, Science, Handwork, Legends).

I have been exercising four times a week for the past month or so. The boys ride their bikes, and I pull the three girls in a Radio Flyer. I also carry a telescopic tactical baton in its deployed position in case of stray dogs or creepy people. We don’t have a lot of either of the two in this neighborhood, but you never know until you know. And by that time, it’s too late.

We go around the lake, which isn’t really visible from the street where we walk because it’s a private lake. The circumference is suitable for a morning walk (just under a mile), and the scenery is pleasant. To get to the lake, we take the long route. To the lake, around the lake, and back, we travel between two and a half and three miles.

Most mornings, I’m really working hard at a quick pace. I sing the running cadences that we sang in the Army: “A Yellow Bird” and “Hail O Ordnance Corps” are my favorites and the ones that I remember. It’s been 10 years since I sang cadences in formation. But some mornings, I do low-intensity exercise, so I don’t huff and puff so much.

As we come within a quarter mile of our finish line, I pick up the pace to where I’m almost at a jog (but I can’t jog because the wheels on the wagon aren’t built for that speed – and because I hate jogging). Our last tenth of a mile is our cool down period. When we get home, we drink lots and lots of water!

Why am I posting so frequently without a title? Because I have been putting my immediate thoughts on my facebook status and then realizing that I’m using fb as our family archives when THIS blog should be our archives!

That mentioned, I found Isis’ empty food bowl in her crate. Isis was standing over it. Taylor had given the dog her dinner. I looked more closely and found what looked like herbs in her bowl. It seems that Taylor, in her want to do things right, had sprinkled parsley on Isis’ food. (We put garlic on her food to ward of ticks). Taylor confused parsley with garlic. I thought that was really cute and sweet.