This is The Chipmunk wearing the same outfit Babycakes is wearing in the previous post. It doesn't seem possible.

Weekly Report

Has it been a week already? These pictures are from Sunday when The Fam gathered to celebrate my husband's birthday. That is my dad and sister in the background. The Chipmunk had stepped in the cake (in its plastic container) then it melted a bit in the car. But it was chocolate, so we ate it! Nutmeg wanted to hold my niece, Babycakes, all day.

My parents took the girls home with them, so Jerry and I got to be a couple for the first time in awhile. We saw the new Indiana movie and ate Italian. Wednesday and Thursday, the girls and I really did school. I was surprised at Nutmeg's good attitude after so many days off. She was hyper though. What did you feed them, Gran?

We are far behind the history schedule that I set for us, so we will definitely have to work on that this summer. Next week will start on Wm Penn. There is a great story my husband related to me about Wm. Penn meeting King Charles II. Apparently, Wm Penn came for an audience and, being a Quaker, did not remove his hat before the king. There was palpable tension throughout the audience chamber. Ever gracious, King Charles removed his own hat. Penn queried, "Friend Charles, why hast thou uncovered?" The kingly Charles replied, "Friend Penn, we are accustomed to having only one hat in this chamber."

Ahhh. The Stuarts! Can you tell we will be covering the ousting of the Stuart monarchy a bit different than SOTW?

Well. We are still working on the Pond unit. We are going to finish it! We have been reviewing amphibians this week. My husband picked up some holds at the library for me, and the librarian asked what we would do with ourselves with only 4 books! Hmmm..

I thought I found "kin" last night at the pool. A lady was telling me that after 15 years of marriage, her grandmother did not call her (my friend's) husband by his name. She calls him "hickey." "No way!" I say. "Where is your grandmother from?" Would you believe her grandmother and my grandmother are from the same county? I located her by that one word, "hickey." I was telling my grandmother about that, and well, one hickey leads to another..."What's your hickey again?" Mimi asked. And by "hickey" I of course knew she meant my blog address. I really need to get off this hickey and go do some work in the hickey.

Michele

I hope you all had a great hickey.

After our trip to Old Cars Days...we had hummus sandwiches by the river. We had been listening to The Wind and The Willows all morning in the car, and then found this perfect place for Ratty and Moley.

Here are the girls playing Pooh Sticks. It turned out to be quite the Brit Lit day!

Well, for weeks I have been so excited about a fairly local barracks built in 1793. That roughly matches up to our history studies. And it is Georgia history which I always try to emphasize. Well, The barracks has been used as a private residence until fairly recently. So it was more about life in the country in the sixties than anything. Of course there were The Old Car People. Perhaps some of you like Old Cars. I just cannot understand why they show up everywhere! Jerry was a bit bitter when he saw them; I had been talking up the age and orginal use of the building for weeks. When he saw the Old Cars, he slipped a bit and said, "No matter what the occasion, they always bring their old dxxx cars." The Chipmunk calmly replied, "No, Daddy, some of them brought their old dxxx trucks." Well...

The Civil War re-enactors where there. Odd since we have never had a civil war in this country- you know two or more factions fighting for control of the central government. We did have the Late Unpleasantness of 1861, when the USA invaded the CSA....maybe that is what they meant ;) Anyway... there was another group there that goes to the same events as the military re-enactors and shows a civilian side. That was really interesting. In fact, I entertained serious thoughts of joining. It would be alot of fun for the whole family and it would match up to our history next year. We'll see. I suppose it costs TIME though.

Weekly Report

We have got to finish up our pond unit! This morning we went to a pond with some friends. After many threats, the kids settled into it and found tiny frogs and a beautiful dragonfly. Before that they were more interested in throwing sticks at the fish and arguing with each other!! The pond was surrounded by beautiful woods, and we were fortunate not to see any snakes! The grasses were growing into one edge of the lake, so we discussed pond succession.

Everything else was about the same this week: Saxon math, First Language Lessons, etc. I updated "Nutmeg's Curriculum on the side of the blog to include links.

I started reading Edith Nesbitt's "Wet Magic" to Nutmeg yesterday, and we are both enjoying it.

We did not "do" history this week, but tomorrow we are going to a historical landmark that is having a colonial days-type festival. I will post some pictures tomorrow afternoon.
Hope you all had great weeks!

Not on theTest

Click the title to this post to go to a short, hilarious, Tom Chapin music video about standardized testing, taking the humanities out of schools, etc...

Happy Birthday, Jerry

Wordless Wednesday

2 Finishes!!!

I finished these two up last week. I am almost finished with "A Man of Sense."

This was a freebie from the Sampler Girl. I changed the colors and added a flowering vine on the house.



"AY 1801" by Historic Stitches

Wetlands

Today we went to a state park to vist the wetland exhibit. We are planning a poster on pond succession as a follow-up. There was something going on there today; the NRA was there and lots of people eating hot dogs. I never quite figured it out. Most of the crowd was content to stay with the guns and hotdogs instead of the 1.2 mi hike to the wetlands (which was itself about a 1-mile loop). There was a very informative brochure to read at points of interest. The trip went a lot better once we let Nutmeg "be in charge" of the brochure.

Falcon

Romeo the corn snake

Boys with guns sitting in the back of a pickup, "guarding" a bear.

Mountain Laurel

Link to post by Rod Dreher

Here is a post about the effects of the earthquake on the country with the one-child-per-family policy. It is titled "Death of Generations."

Click on the title of my post for the link


Thanks Plaid Dad/Drew for pointing it out!

Weekly Report 12 May - 16 May

I think the hives are behind us. "They" think it was a product of a virus she had earlier last week.

We had no official school on Monday; we were running to the doctor and filling ice packs for the patient. All activities except swimming are now over, and I am so glad! I should probably put the money I save this summer in activitiy fees and gas in an account to use in the fall! ;) We are slowing down a bit in Latin. It is fun to learn lists of nouns, but when you learn conjunctions and all those "little" words, it becomes a bit more confusing. But Nutmeg still enjoys Latin so we will continue through the summer and add German back in in the fall. I have been so excited about the Time Traverlers American Revolutin cd from HomeSchool in the Woods, that we have gone back in time and studied Jamestown and Plymouth again so we could do the crafts. (above picture) I also got my Discovery Streaming account set up, so we have watched some history videos. Nutmeg was excited to see a Pocahontas cartoon. I will not let her watch the Disney movie. We listen to two of the songs I really like from the soundtrack, but please! OK, I will not go off on a rant about that movie... Math and FLL2 continue. We also do the Abeka Oral Language lessons. Does anyone else use this? Sometimes I wonder if it beneficial. We read books about dragonflies, and Nutmeg did a notebook page. What else.. We have been recognizing ladybug larvae; I never knew what they were before. It has been pretty quiet this week, which is welcome!
Hope you all had great weeks.

Michele

I want to have plenty of pictures to look at when the Japanese Beetles come.



Wife of Bath

Souvenir de la Malmaison

Souvenir de la Malmasion

Sweet William

Excerpt from Fox News...Science vs. Magic

Kelemen this week told the story of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who detailed the thinking of Trobriand Islanders in his book, "Magic, Science, and Religion" (1948).

"He said the distinction between magic and science for those Trobriand Islanders was that for magic you only count confirming cases," Kelemen said. "And so, say you had this idea that earthquakes occur right before or after volcanic eruptions, so when that happens you notice and you put a notch in your stick or whatever. When there is earthquake that doesn’t occur with a volcanic eruption, you don't notice at all or say there must have been mitigating circumstances in this case."

Scientists can fall into the same trap.

"Scientists do an awful lot of what Malinowski would've called magic all the time," Kelemen said. "We filter data and come up with reasons why our [results] in one instance are not correct and that allows us to overlook that instance. Nevertheless, it's a trap."

Wordless Wednesday

Garden Girls

Alright, ignore the debris; we have had some pretty good storms in the last couple of days. These are my garden girls. The dog is my 12-year old, Kroger special, best-beloved, Ursa. She never digs up her mommy's flowers! Unfortunately, Ursa is blocking your view of Nutmeg's combat boots. Probably not the way ladies of Jane Auten's day dressed to tend the roses!

I'm sorry, Heritage, I didn't hear you up there. I'm only 5'3"; you must be about 10'! I'll have to get a ladder to reach those old rose hips. I realize they are from last fall, dearest! But you really don't seem to be in any great distress.