And the Schooly Stuff Goes On.

What a morning. See, we had the kids calming down in quiet time by 8pm and by 9pm both were tucked into bed. They woke up this morning with big smiles and pleasant attitudes. As did Mom and Dad since we were in bed at 10 and 11pm respectively. What sleep can do for a family!

So my wonderful children were kind and helpful. My daughter sat down at 9am and we took out a page up Key to Fractions that had given her trouble last week. It was on mixed fractions and after playing with pattern blocks for a few minutes she got what she'd been missing before and whipped through the work. Math Mammoth was done in record time with no whining and a lot of smiles. Next were a few logic puzzles that gave Catherine so easy a time I've resolved to hunt done some more dificult ones for her later.

And then we turned on the kids music station and danced around the living room. Much shaking of arms and wiggling of bums. The rest of the day so far has been me cleaning or reading blogs and the kids playing on their own.

I used to resist giving the kids a bedtime. I thought it would be better to let them discover their own rhythym and if it meant they went to bed at 11pm, so be it. They were listening to their bodies. Except bedties aren't just about individual children, they're a tool that keeps the family unit running smoothly. Some families can cope very well with with no bedtime but ours tends to split at the seams. Kids stay up late so I do as well. I wake up early to welcome my neice and am inevitably crabby due to the lack of sleep. Since the house isn't even 800 sq. feet (a cough on one side of the house wakes the sleeper on the other side) the kids wake up early as well and we're all barely dragging ourselves around the house for the day (I didn't mention the husband because he generally gets to run away to work). So bedtimes it is, for the kids AND for me.

The Schooly Stuff.

My third post for today but heck, I haven't posted for 4 or five days so it's okay. One post to explain my absence, one for the YouTube joy (oh yes, she has realized she can embed videos. She is happy.) and one for the actual and original purpose of this blog. So on to what we did today.

What we did was a little bit of Math Mammoth and then several pages from a dinosaur activity book. Nothing too challenging. Catherine also did some logic puzzles for the first time and really enjoyed them. I used to love doing them as a kid and she has just as much fun.

She then wandered away from the table and started drawing dinosaur pictures that are meant for a future exhibit on dinosaurs. I'm betting that my living room will be swimming in plastic dinos by the week's end.

Harry grabbed some paint and decided to paint one of his wooden trains blue. Thankfully, it was a generic Walmart one and not a Thomas engine. He then painted a lego truck and a dinky. The dinky was painted to become Lightning Storm McQueen. LSM is an alternate blue version of the lead character from 'Cars' created by whoever manufactures the toys because all the little boys already have a red version and need something else to ask their parents for. Thank goodness my little guy just grabs a dinky and a paintbrush.

Evolution for ID-iots

From now on I will no longer engage in will-to-live sapping debates with IDers. I will simply refer them to this video. Well, I'll probably make a few rude gestures at my monitor but I'll still refer them to this video.



So the creationists won't feel left out, here's what I'll refer them to...

Easter Break

Apologies to anyone who might be reading on a regular basis. My mom and dad came up Thursday afternoon and we decided to jump in their car and spend the easter weekend with them. The husband and dog joined us on Saturday and the easter bunny managed a visit Sunday morning. It was a pleasant stay but the usually two-hour trip back home clocked in at about 3 hours due to spontaneous-pee-producing moments where blowing snow made the car ahead of us, the road and everything else disapear. The husband was reduced to driving-by-hope a few times. We were also plowing through drifts that reduced the road to one lane at times. But we made it home.

This morning I'm researching monochrome laser printers. We have an inkjet all-in-one but on the last time we ran out of ink the cost for the black and colour cartridges almost reached $100. The bloody all-in-one only cost $60. I'll keep it for scanning and colour printing but pick up a cheap laser printer for the worksheets and such.

Damn Brownies

Catherine can pick a prepositional phrase out of a sentence and name the subject and verb of that sentence like nobody's business. Easy Grammar, with it's black and white pages and ever-present cloned turtle armies marching across worksheet pages, looks boring. But it's not. What it is is rigourous and thorough. So Catherine's doing well and heck, she ain't the only budding grammar diva in the house.

Grammar this morning obviously. Math Mammoth as well. Read a little bit on the tower of Babal in her bible activity book and we'll read the story from my Oxford NRSV tommorrow so we can get a better picture of it.

And then it was Brownie night tonight. I thought we were selling cookies door to door. The brownie pack leader or herd leader or whatever the title is missed giving Catherine the information last week and then I misheard the leader when she called me to let me know about the cookie sale. So I arrived expecting to have to flog cookies and found out that thankfully, I'd missed the whole thing as it was really yesterday. Phew! However, Catherine and I had a nice chat about the little brownie chant they have to do on the drive to the meeting. She hasn't memorized it yet and admitted she just faked the thing. I said I thought that was fine. Christian though I may be I squirmed when I heard the little girls promising to "love my God". On the copy we got later, 'faith' was written in in an attempt to be inclusive but, of course, not everybody believes. Some little girls don't have a faith. Nevermind the promise to, "Serve Queen and country," just so she can tape together construction paper easter baskets for an evening.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the brownies but Catherine enjoys it and has friends there. We can always talk about the icky cultish bits afterowrds.

Dinosaur Hunt

After math and after debating whether animals could make concsious choices about good and evil (we read the second Genesis myth last night)Catherine pulled out her really big dinosaur book. It's The Ultimate Book of Dinosaurs and of all our dinosaur books it's been the one that we've gone back to over and over again. She sat down on the couch and started working at reading huge dinosaur names and doing quite a good job at it. After awhile she decided that she was an Ornithomimus and that Harry and her niece Maddie were her babies.

Now of course a mother dinosaur needs to teach her babies to hunt but it's still a little disturbing to see your 8 year old hurl a stuffed rabbit across the kitchen and scream at your son and neice to, "Hunt the rabbit! Kill it! KILL IT!" Even more disturbing is to see that little, delicate 3 year old neice barrel towards the stuffed bunny on all fours, grab it in her mouth and shake it to kill it.

Things got a little gentler when Catherine built them a nest. I mean, yes, occasionally a pterodactactyl circled overhead and Catherine had to toss a blanket over them, whisper to them to be quiet and sheild them with her body but that's reasonable. She certainly doesn't have to much of a Bambi sensibility when it comes to playing animals.

The neice has gone home, Harry is watching Winnie the Pooh and Catherine and the husband are out swimming. I think it is the time for some chocolate mint ice cream.

I'm Zoe!

I hate cutesy quizes that determine what breed of cat or colour of dryer lint you are but over at O'Donnell Web he has a link to the, "What Firefly Character Are You?" test. Who could resist that one?

I am ecstatic to announce that I am Zoe Washburne, war vet and second-in-command to Captain Mal.


I love the character and I adore Gine Torres who should be the first and last choice for Wonder Woman if they ever get around to casting the damn movie.

I have to admit, there's one other quiz I like. It's the original Geek test and by it's account I'm a Major Geek.