Do you know the Freemason's Cypher Code? (Week 26)

We do. And we can write with it and understand it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigpen_cipher

Anna brought it up at our craft class this week and I was so glad. Leif and I touched on codes and code breakers when we read about WWI and II last fall. I thought maybe he'd get 'into' codes and we could write secret notes, but it just didn't take. Now it has. Last night he wrote his own pig-pen coded letter to his dear friend, and we delivered it today. While I cannot divulge what it said, because I know the mama needs to keep the secrets, not spread them, suffice it to say it was the best little coded note written by an 8 year old, who has a sense of how you speak to others in written form (how are you?), and yet at the same time, is a newbie to this whole social discourse thing (what you a doing?)(huh?). It was precious, and made Kit and I want to watch The Big Lebowski to see if Leif had truly caught the essence of 'the Dude' in his tone.

This week Leif had a new experience. His soccer coach invited him to come to the practice for their Academy class. It sounds more big-league than it is, the truth is it's a practice-only class for kids 8 and up who are truly commited to improving at soccer. So not just the community team with over-sized donated t-shirts, get my meaning? I think Leif enjoyed it, and this week we'll talk to his coach more to see what happens next, can he come back, what's the deal? I think I can get him 3 weekly opportunities to play this spring, which he is really excited about. And I need to toss on my cleats and go to the field near our house and work with him too, he'd love it.

Our knitting class has finished up, but our project has a bit more work to go. This week Leif knit his Inuit guy and read more about igloos. Now we just need to knit his hood and stuff him and give him hair. Hannah had struggled with the knitting and just wanted me to do it for her, but I'm going to try again with the hoood part, I think she could get it if she doesn't start out thinking she can't do it. Pics next week, promise.

We got a story kit out of the library of First Nations stories/tales, plus some factual books on the various bands in BC and their traditional lives. So far we've read the stories, and we all really liked them. Leif liked the story best of why the birds fly south each year (they lost a bet between the animals and the birds) and thus the bat is a bird-like animal who stays here all year (he helped the animals win the bet). Hannah liked the story about how we humans were once naked tiny people, and how we grew with the animals help to be brave and tall. (My fave was the Eagle boy). Next week I hope to weave in some learning about BC bands and culture. We'll see . . .

The annual Lego display was up in Sidney until March and we managed to squeek in during the last week of it. It is always fun for them to see what is made, and it inspires them to create new stuff at home. Leif was excited to see a Robin Hood set.



We'd been watching the original movie version with Errol Flynn, and Leif and Hannah were enthralled with the swordfight scenes. They'd tell me how fair Robin was, he always gave the guy his sword back and waited until he was ready. And he hit his mark EVERY TIME MAMA!!!! Yes dears. They've been re-enacting different scenes from the film throughout the week, and then the lego show was the perfect addition to our Robin Hood fun. Leif also liked the dragon set at the show, and tried to copy it at home. (It's so great that when he sees something he likes he doesn't want to buy it, he wants to figure out how to make it out of his own lego.)





Leif's dragon


He was also really inspired by the castle set he saw. He took pics and then came home and copied them. He doesn't have a draw bridge in his lego, so he built a working port cullis on his castle. Sweet! Spot how much his matches the museum set.














Kit and I are doing exercises each day (we're feeling our age, the bones aren't doing so well). Push-ups and sit ups, and now chin ups. The kids HAD to show us their strength. I was impressed.

Yeah, I know they're sideways. If I could fix it I would. I MUST stop filming this way.






More Star Wars inspired living skills this week. Hannah makes Luke Skywalker smoothies!!!









After this kitchen success, Hannah helped me make muffins. She has mastered cracking eggs. As she beat the egg in the bow, she asked me where did 'they' get the first chicken. From the mouthes of babes. I explained the quandry of, well, did the chicken hatch from an egg, or did it lay the first egg. As she figured out the answer-less riddle, she broke into a huge grin.

Hannah has asked if she too can take more soccer, and do the 3-hours/day 5 day long spring break soccer camp Leif is signed up in. While she's 'underage', she's good for her age, and I'm going to ask her coach if we can sneak her in. I think she'll rock at it. Unless she gets tired. Then she'll hate it.


Today was a gorgeous day. We spent it here.



Hannah and Leif would roll a big log off the end of this pier thing, and then throw rocks at it until it washed onto shore. Then they'd drag it out again. Hannah was determined to build a fort out of logs, so we did. :)


Monkey see . . .


. . monkey do.

Mid-winter has passed (Week 25)

. . and we can see hints of Spring's arrival. The kids have been noticing the appearance of buds on the cherry trees on our street. Leif has switched to a bigger paper route (64 papers vs. 33) in response to the lure of more cash. Now we deliver to our own street and the two parallel. It's a nice route and we've been blessed so far with gorgeous weather for our deliveries. And Hannah and Ivy have found a good way to travel along with us.



Leif and Hannah have been taking a new handwork class with Anna, our friend and former teacher from our Waldorf homeschoolers classes. They're doing a seasonal unit on Eskimos (the Inuit in the North) and building igloos, sewing seals and knitting an Eskimo. They're also learning some songs and acting out hunting scenarios. I can take some pics once they are finished. For now, all this hunting talk has inspired a new theme for dress-up at home. Leif the First Nations Boy hunting the Sister Cheetah to save the Princess. Yeah, we're staring our own unit of First Nations Studies next month, just to get a handle on the finer points.








I've introduced Hannah to the concept of skip counting. I drew a field of paired flowers and we counted them all one at a time. Then I pointed out how, since they were all paired, we could also count them another way. She had to think on it for a bit, but then she got it and after a few seconds of silence, she counted up to 38 by two's. Woohoo!

Leif is working on his times tables. I don't *want* to just make him memorise them, but I do see the value in knowing them. Sarah, any tips on how to do/teach this? For now, we look at the patterns in the numbers, how they repeat each other and what you can see when you wrte them out in paralell rows (2,4,6,8 with 3,6,9,12 etc).

Hannah has had fun giving me rhyming words for any word I start with. Goat, moat, boat. I sometimes write them down as she says them and point out how the ending spelling matches up.

Leif and I have been talking about Obama's visit to Canada. Why he's here, who he's meeting with and why the security is so high. Leif was surprised to learn he didn't fly on a plane with other people, that he had his own plane and transportation fleet. We listened to the Obama and Harper question and answer period on CBC and I tried to explain what they'd discussed, while still listening to the next bit. A tough exercise.


This month we celebrated Candlemas, a mid-winter party to keep the cold at bay and invite the warmth of spring. We gathered at the ever-lovely Saxe Point Park with friends and food, and were entertained with songs and stories.






Then we form a circle and walk around dipping stations, making our own beeswax candles and singing about the quiet of snow and candlemaking. It's a wonderfully relaxed, fun time, and we look forward to it each year. We meet new families, see old friends and the kids climb rocks by the ocean all morning.








We have begun reading Harriet the Spy together. I read it about a hundred times as a kid. I'd forgotten all the nasty stuff Harriet says in her journal (the woman was so fat her face looked like puffy bread dough. Nice.) but they love it, especially the wierd descriptions Harriet writes about her classmates and people on the street.


I leave you with a snapshot of Ivy, playing with her dollhouse (which was originally mine!) and her most reserved yet willing playmate.




Spring is coming. A few more weeks.

It's great that she's learning . . . .Week 24 for both (review is week 23)

. . but eat your damn dinner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hannah has always fought me over what she'll eat at dinner (only). Since I re-arranged the house (again) she now can avoid eating by following her curiosity to learn. She sits against a wall that has a big huge sheet of metal on it. It holds all our magnetic letters. She will not stop turning around and trying to spell words. She actually spelled 'dog' DAWG. Nice. She puts words together and asks me to sound them out. Then I show her how to correctly spell said word, and then I switch off a consonant each time, showing her how one part of the word can change while the rest stays the same. Boat, moat, coat. Her Reader Rabbit computer program is right at this level too, as one of the games gives her a word (MAP) and asks her how they can change it to another word (TRAP). Do you change the beginning sound, the middle vowel, or the ending sound? She grins when she gets it. She's begun labeling the back of her art (like her brother, see below) and when she writes it's indescriminatly left to right, then right to left, then down the side and over the top. I love seeing how she'll work away at someting with no notion that she might be 'wrong'. How important it is at this age and stage for them to try and succeed first, at whatever level they're at, and learn more later.

When she's not ignoring my pleas to eat her dinner, she's asking me how things work. How do binoculars work? How do they make toilet paper? Where does gasoline come from? Well, I found websites to illustrate each answer, including a youtube of How It's Made that is all about toilet paper. I had planned to show her how water can bend a picture like the lenses do in binoculars by putting drops of water onto a covered magazine page. So she could see how the type was different under the droplets. But before I got around to it, we got started on our volcano projects, as both Hannah and Leif had lots of questions about them from our recent trip.

I found a great book at the library (the Kingfisher series of course) about volcanoes and earthquakes, with experiments to do for each topic. The first one we did was seeing how heat can keep thins circulating, like a current in the water. This was to larn about the magma in the earth's mantle, and how it was a current of hot liquid that just kept going around and around. I filled a clear bowl with cold water and into it placed a small bottle full of hot water and red food dye. The hot water cycled out of the bottle and moved in a current around in the cold water. While we were doing this experimen, I spilled some drops of water on our library book. Hannah noticed that the typed words under the drops of water looked bigger than the rest of that paragraph, and said "Hey maybe that's how binoculars work!". I love homeschooling.

We then did a puzzle using paper I'd traced the continents onto and cut out. This was of course for learning about Pangea (Pangaea?). I started to talk about how dinosaur and plant fossils were found on continents far away from each other and that paleontologists had wondered what caused this. Hannah piped up with "So they made a HYPOTHESIS right?". She'd recently watched a Magic School Bus episode where this concept was featured. Way cool kiddo. So these finds backed up the concept of the continents once being part of a larger land mass. I could relate this back to the earth's mantle because we'd already talked about it, and had settled on the idea that the earth's crust was like the shell pieces on a cracked hard-boiled egg. Seperate but touching, and attached to the egg itself. This brought us to earthquakes. After reading and discussing how and why they occur, we experimented with it. :)





Last weekend we celebrated the Chinese New Year at the annual Lion Dance Parade in Chinatown. Leif was interested to see our various Civic, Federal and Provincial representatives there. All of whom we'd voted for, back when I gave him my vote in our Federal and Civic elections. How cool is that? I introduced him to a few of the members who's names he'd recognise the best (Rob Fleming, Denise Savoie, Charleyne Thornton-Joe and our mayor Dean Fortin).

(** I uploaded al the pictures this week on the wrong setting, and it's to much work to redo it. Just double-click on a picture to see it bigger.)



Then we settled in to watch the Lion's dance through the street and munch on lettuce offerings and red envelopes.








We ended up at the Chinese Public School, which I've always thought is a cool building, and a great part of the Chinese community.




Okay, the dude, the Leifster, the Leiferamalama.

Well, the big event last week was opening his own bank account. Here he is counting out his cash, then filling in the deposit slip, and then making the deposit.







Then he asked me to order him a coveted Lego set and blew less than half his dough. He has changed paper routes to a route twice as big as his old one. $40 a month and it's a good hour of work for him. He plans to save $1000 and then spend $100. It'll take him 2 years to do that. He's been asking about the two other friends that he knows who have a bank account. One has a decent sum in his because his distant relatives (no grandparents in town) send him money for his birthday and xmas instead of gifts. And another friend is given an allowance instead of needing to earn the dough. I explained why these 2 other circumstances occur and how his life is different. He accepts this very easily and I believe takes pride in how he's earning his money. Maybe when he reaches a big figure amount in his account, I'll add a bit to. I'm still debating this. But the paper route will give him a $50 bonus if he has no complaints for the first 6 months. We're 4 months in and so far so good. I'm proud of what I've taught him about money, the little Jedi.

So I mentioned his art before. He's done about 15 of these, and the following are a sampling of personal faves, though they all rock. I LOVE the titles he chooses for these. If you look closely you can figure out what's going on, who's on what side and who's just a crazy-wierd animal. My personal favorite is DRAGON'S HILL, the one of the reclusive mountain goat herders who are afraid of strangers.

(Remember to double-click for a better view of these.)

THE PITS OF TREASON



THE DARK MOUNTAINS



THE JUNGLE OF MIS FORTUN (his spelling)



DRAGON'S HILL



And this is the card he made me for Christmas.

Isn't that awesome?

His chapter book reading is moving at a pace that rivals my own. He's plowed through a bunch of Thortun Burgess books, and keeps his current one under his pillow. He found one really boring, saying he kept reading it to see if it would pick up, but it was just about a boring old frog. Way to know what you like buddy.


Ivy is cute as ever, and still as small. Her over-sized younger pal Cohen towers over her by 3+ inches, and she's just fine with that. Favorite books are the Star Wars lego catalogue (of course!), The Gruffao, Goodnight Moon and the ones about trucks and planes and dinosaurs. She had Al hostage for a whole day on the sofa, when Mom and Al came to visit, bringing him more books to read to her. When she sees him in the morning, she brings him a book or three. She survives on Cheerios, eggs, bananas, smoothies and granola bars. She loves to make movies, so here's a few.

She's singing Peanut Butter sandwich made with jam, yum yum yum yum yum.



And then these 2, well, I love 'em. I missed the time where she hid the puppy and then commanded it to "STAY! Stay puppy!". Another time she ordered Bodhi not to eat her gnomes. "Don't eat 'dem Bodhi-cat!".








Kit and I are well, by the way. We're renovating our basement to entice another unsuspecting masters student to rent a lovely posh suite underneath our herd of elephants. We'll keep you posted.

C

Is the Force with you? (Week 21H and 22L)

Because it's alive and well in our house baby!

We've had others ask us why we care about Star Wars so much. If you have to ask . . . . nevermind. It's just something we totally built up to the kids, from our childhod memories, and then we let them watch all 6 episodes (in their original 4-6, 1-3 order, don't fear) 45 times each, so they are as into it as we are. Actually, they are way more into it than we ever were, but it works for us so that's that. So in that light . . .

The kids were given a Star Wars cookbook for Christmas (Wookie Cookies and other feasts of the Force) and I immediately thought "living skills, perfect!". Our first foray into the book was making Boba-Fettucine for dinner. Observe:








While the pasta cooked and sauce bubbled, the kids set the table for a Star Wars feast.








MMmmmmmmmmm good! As we sat muching and slurping our galaxy pasta, Hannah had the brilliant idea to make our own Star Wars game. Cool. but what? On our holiday, we played about a hundred games of the old-skool classic Clue. So that seemed like the perfect fit. Murder, weapons, cool 'rooms' and weirdly-named characters. Perfect!

Kit took charge of making the game board while I dug out the incomplete decks of cards (see why I kept these??)to glue Star Was stuff onto. Hannah got to work drawing the rooms for the board (the cantina, Uncle Owen's Farm) and Leif rooted around in the lego to come up with models of our characters to move around the board. Behold our finished product:







It was great and now we have our own 'Clue' to play (the original is at Grandma's house).


Hannah had a new experience this past week. At her weekly music class, a new student joined in for the day. His name is Noah. Usually when I go t pick Hannah up she is dressed and ready at the door. Not because she hates her class or wishes she were at home, but because fo her, the class is over, why hang around playing? Hannah is, shall we say, aloof with her peers. the really sweet, kind kids in her class save a seat for her, or ask to be her partner, and she's just kind of, well, okay about it. She does not reciprocate their enthusiasm. And the bitchy kids she steers clear of (smart kid). But when I went to pick her up last week, she was not waiting for me. She was building blocks with this new child. Then they were rolling across the floor. Then they tried walking like crabs. When she saw me she ran up to me and said "that's my friend Noah, can he come over to play?". She NEVER SAYS THIS. Never. After talking to Noah's mom and their teacher I learned that Noah never says that either and they'd been thick as theives all morning. Hannah asked to be moved to Noah's regular day (Thursday) so they'd be together, and that's a day she'd get more complex music instruction anyway, so it works all around. She's trying it out this week and if it's a good fit we'll make the switch.

Hannah's reading is just leaping ahead of me, I can't keep up. While we awaited our flight at the airport, she asked why does that plane say "Hawaiian" when we're in Hawaii. What's with the extra letters? At home she reads to Ivy regularly, by sounding out the first letters of a word and using that to guess (along with the pictures) what the words say. Nice technique. For just tuning in to this reading gig, I think she's doing great.

Our trip to Hawaii, and subsequent flight home to the cold, foggy climate we know and love, had Hannah asking about the difference. Once we got home we hauled out the big globe and turned out the lights and had Leif stand on a chair to be the Sun, flashlight in hand. And she got it. She could see how the hot sun at the equator was not as close to us up North. We also talked about the earth's own rotation on it's axis and how this gives us sunrise and sunset, and why when grandma and grandpa were away in Turkey, they got up when I went to bed. She could see it and we related how the Sun 'starts' in Japan, hence their flag, and that's just after it's set for our bedtime the night before. We tried to show her the seasons but it became to hard with the model set up we had, and she just got confused (as did we). I know we can mimic it using fruit and pins and pencils, which we may do. But there's also a simple model at the science store of the earth and the sun. I think it has our moon also. That may be a useful option.

Now that Hannah's mastered World of Goo, Kit has turned her on to Inkball. It involves blocking a ball's path to force it into one of two or three holes (like golf) using the mouse. Bigtime hand-eye coordination. She rocks at it, beginner level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InkBall

I introduced Louis Armstrong to Hannah this week and she's hooked. She lies beside the stereo and skips back and forth to her favorite tracks.



Leif is happy to be home with his usual stuff. He's back to building with lego for hours and creating stuff in the yard with Hannah.






I've had some lengthy discussions with Leif this week. We talked about the art in our livingroom. He really likes a painting I bought a few years back. It's oil paint and done in such a style that from far away it is a grove of trees by the river, but when you get close-up it's just slashes of paint, dabs here and there. this lead to a discussion of the other art in the room (Van Gogh and Emily Carr). I explained how painting with oils is different than watercolours or acrylics. He proclaimed he wanted to be an artist. We talked about how the Van Gogh (and Carr) are copies of the original, which is a museum. He asked why it's there, why is it worth so much, why don't they sell it?

We talked about the economy, what that word means. I explained it as being similar to the word society being descriptive of how we get along, how we live, that economy is about how we spend and earn, where our money comes from and goes. We discussed the real estate problem and the mortgage issue in the states, how the banks got greedy. He has a sense concept of the erm interest because we're going to get a bank account soon and I explained why they'll give him interest if he leaves his money there a long time, how they earn money through interest on loans, etc. He pointed out how we're lucky to be able to afford to have me home with him, how others have a harder road.




Next week is bank accounts, Leif's latest art and Hannah's words. Promise.

Has it been a year already? (Week 20H & 21L)

Lawdy lawdy, I apologise. But I feel no guilt. This parenting gig is a real back and heart breaker, and if you've been kept in the dark it's given me an extra minute to get things done here in the real world. A recent holiday in the tropics (yes it's becoming a habit for us) has given me a much-needed reminder of what laid-back feels like, and dammit, I like it! So I'm taking steps to cut back, to chill out and stay mellow. If I'm typing to you on here, know that I'm leaving laundry undone, crumbs on the floor and I'm wearing the same old pj's I've had on for a week. But the kids will have been fed and read to, put to bed, and I'm relaxing with you and my homeschooling notes, looking to combine my to-do's into a simpler life.

See, the way we homeschool is I do stuff with the kids, and then I tell our lovely learning pal Sarah all about it. She takes our wierd outings, cooking trials and lego ships and sees the geometry, life skills and science classes hidden within, and turns them into Ministry talk so I don't have to. We love Sarah for this. Learn more at www.wondertree.org

So I want to to keep in touch with you all about our lives, through photos and videos and such, and I need to keep in touch with Sarah about the kids lives specfically, through photos and videos and such . . . SO . . . see where I'm going here?

Ta da! This is now our keeping up with the St. Brightfamily + The kids are alright homeschooling blog. If the idea of reading about how unique and incredible my kids are bores you to tears, well, you can kiss off. :) This is not the blog for you. But there will be nuggets of Kit and I thrown in as well. We are Lord and Lady of this Queendom. And since the goal is to know what's up with us while you're away from us, heck, we're all about the kids, so now you'll be on the same page!


Kisses

Big C



Leif and Hannah's Week (Addendum to their Extranet O4L's)

While in Hawaii we talked a lot about volcanoes. Their presence in our landscapes inspired Leif to build models out of sand, and Hannah to re-create them in any given environment.

Here's Leif's one-boy model of Rabbit Island, a volcanic remnant off the coast of Oahu. You can see it in the distance in the first pic. See how his feet match the island's shape?







Then both siblings re-enacted the eruption of Diamond Head and Koko. They'd been asking how an erupted volcano left a crater behind. Curious yourself? Observe.




Shoot. There was a movie of this eruption but it's somehow lost in my harddrive.