Learning By The Way

Toby continues to be happy he can do division, he worked on dividing by 5 today. Moriah and Samuel did multiplication.

I thought that Moriah’s last ballet class of the summer was today. However, we discovered upon arriving at a very quiet ballet studio that her last class was last week. Ooops. All dressed up in her favorite ‘leo’ and nowhere to dance. She didn’t really mind though, as we had dinner planned with the Ben-Ezras and she got an extra hour to play with her friends before we ate.

It started out with me granting a rare permission to get out all the pots and pans and silverware and have a percussion band. Moriah was the conductor, and it was noisy. I went downstairs for a few minutes…

When I returned, they had moved the whole shebang in onto my bed! Then they came up with head drums and simultaneous toe drumming and cymbal playing. Noting the change of venue and choice of intrument, I believe the obvious choice of moniker would be “The Bed Pan Band”.

Elsie helped me rinse off all the pots and put them away.

It was a full day, and a beautiful one. I let everyone stay up just a smidgin late tonight. Moriah, Samuel and Toby played Fluxx together (Daddy’s birthday present), a fun card game where the rules are constantly changing. I snuggled up on the bed with Elsie and Peter and read The Magic School Bus gets Baked in a Cake (an uninspired book, but the company was good). Brush the teeth, and off to bed. God is good, and life is sweet.

Moriah can. She made Daddy’s traditional birthday cherry pie for him, doing all the work herself, but referring to Aunt Raquel when she needed reliable answers to her pie questions. We all were glad that Daddy shared his yummy pie with us.

But she is a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.

Yesterday we read more in Carry on, Mr. Bowditch. We are up to chapter 12 now. Nat has won his freedom from indentured servitude, is now learning French in addition to Latin, and is getting ready to sail for the first time Everyone is enjoying the story immensely.

Today and yesterday, the three older children worked on division.

Moriah found a Summer Skills Challenge in one of her books, and asked if she could do it. So I set her goals up to complete a double sided workbook page and read 30 minutes every day. After completing 20 days, she can pick out a book to buy in the library book sale room. Sounds like fun! Her workbook page today had cursive writing, and addition and subtraction.

Samuel and Aunt Raquel played a game of Stratego. It is fun and good for developing logical thinking skills.

There has been a flurry of reading since our library visit on Friday. Moriah read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, then finished Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (in the same day!) She has read Little House on the Prairie in the last couple of days. too. Samuel reread some of his favorite Animorph books. He also read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and shared several choice parts with me that had tickled him. Toby has been reading, too, though the only book I can specifically remember seeing him with was Makuta’s Revenge. Elsie continues to read to herself more and more, though she still has a bad habit of guessing on words rather than sounding them out.

James got a charcoal grill for his birthday. I assembled it today, with help of course. Toby was an extra hand and I was glad to have him there. He followed along the directions with me, and puzzled out the diagrams. Elsie was amusing, though of little practical help. I found it funny that she kept forgetting the name of Daddy’s new appliance, and referring to it as “Daddy’s blender”. Peter carried the hammer for me.

Do you remember when I told you about how we fermented our own ketchup? And how much better it is than storebought ketchup? Not only is it better, it also different. For instance, if you leave storebought ketchup upside down, draining the last little bits of ketchup toward the bottom, and then forget to put it away overnight, it does not, the next morning launch itself off the dining room table exploding ketchup all over the table, children, walls, and curtains as if we had had a Sabbath day visit from that heathen Attila the bloody massacring Hun, leaving in its aftermath a group of delighted red-speckled children who will not soon forget the effects of fermentation, gasses, and buildup of pressure.

Last night, we had Mr. P, a co-worker and sweet wife and family over for dinner. They are from Angola, one of the African countries that was settled by Portugal. They taught us how to say “Good morning” “Good afternoon” and “Good evening” in Portuguese. Dinner was a little later than I had planned, but Mr. P said this was fine, as noone eats before 8 in Angola. We had a lovely time. The children were EXTREMELY excited to play with their friend, Ishmael, who is 5 years old. They have worked with him on newsletter stuffing day at Samaritan Ministries, and love him dearly.

We’ve been doing stuff since I last posted. Toby has learned division, and is quite fond of his newfound skill. He has been doing a page a day for the last 3 days in the wipe-off division table book we have. Moriah has enjoyed the past 2 days doing a page in a “Summer Skills” book for children entering 4th grade. Most of the pages have some math and some grammar. So she has covered homonyms, incomplete sentences, and division. Samuel has been choosing addition and multiplication pages.

On Wednesday, we made tortillas from scratch the old fashioned way. I did some research on making them after my first attempt was a flop. I discovered that soaking the corn in lime (the mineral) is imperative for the success of the project. Important changes are made in the texture of the corn during the soaking process. It also catalizes nutritional changes, making the B vitamins more available and adding calcium. The dry corn was boiled briefly, then soaked in the lime solution overnight before we ground it into ‘masa’ flour. Moriah helped me with this, which was much appreciated. It is much harder to grind a wet substance than a dry one, as it has to be pushed through the mill. Elsie helped me smoosh the tortilla dough in the press, and Moriah ran the the grill to cook them. The tortillas were a big success, and once again I have a greater appreciation for the old way of doing things.

This a picture Toby drew today. It is called Turahga Electro. He is a Bionicle dude.

Math pages this morning:
Moriah- multiplication
Samuel- concepts and practice in rounding numbers
Toby- subtraction

After morning checklists and math pages, I introduced the children to an old friend of mine. Many times growing up, I read to myself the very copy of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch that I held in my hands this morning. Today, I read the first 5 chapters to my children. It’s just as good as I remembered it.