Jaden:
Language arts was finished up for this year, except as how it will be used in his writing lessons. We worked on math money flash cards one day. Today we started on his writing lessons out of the Complete Curriculum book; he did three pages on nouns. And he did his two weekly Explode the Code lessons. Just one more lesson to go out of that book, and he'll just have two ETC books to go.
Trusten:
I've only done alphabet flashcards with him once since the last blog update, but I read him a book of his choosing every day, sometimes more.
Both boys:
*Daily chapter of Proverbs
*Daily reading from Bible Stories. Some of the things we've read over the past few days are about the "Sermon on the Mount," the healing of Jairus' daughter, the healing of the cenurion's servant, and more. I've had this book for several years now; I think it was a gift to both Nathan and me from my parents. I like it more than most bible story books, because it has real pictures off to the sides of the pages with captions telling about specific things mentioned in the stories. It gives facts about historical places, foods, and objects, for example.
*Annie's Manners: 2 pages of reading and coloring
*Social Studies: I tied a couple of the boys' play silks around their head to demonstrate how some African Americans wear turbans like their African familial ancestors.
*Prepare and Pray: We've read four chapters of Swiss Family Robinson now, and I've asked the discussion questions that P&P include for those. We dehydrated apples, made a solar clock using a stick and rocks. I really like the discussion questions. It has touched on things that Jaden has recently learned elsewhere. For example, he had to tell me about mammals. I also like going over the character qualities that are listed.
Swiss Family Robinson, for the most part, is good so far. My favorite things about it are the superb vocabulary (as most older books are....despite all the increased knowledge and technology of today, people overall sure are stupid now) and the morality. However, the family sure seems to delight in eating some abominable creatures like a penguin, bone marrow (it was insinuated that bone marrow had been sucked out by them in the past), and a gigantic lobster. Of course, if they were truly to the point of starving, I could see eating a penguin, but when there are coconuts and other things available, I don't see the necessity in eating such unhealthful (unclean) animals. So, it's kind of odd to me to read such high morale concerning some things while reading such abhorrent things mixed in. I really disliked reading about one of the big dogs (mastiff, if I remember correctly) chasing down a mother monkey and eating it and then being forced to give the baby monkey a ride on its back afterward!
*Bible Prayers for Bedtime: This book was also a gift; it was given to Jaden by my friend Keith. While we've read the similar book with bible stories, we'd not started this book about praying. I decided I wanted to start reading this right after my morning prayer with the boys. We started it today. It starts at the very beginning, discussing how Adam and Eve could talk to God, but after they were banished, people eventually started praying after seeing how doing all the wrong things was causing disharmony among people, so they needed to call out to God for help. It's going to go through and teach the different reasons for prayer and give examples throughout the bible.
*Youtube:
-how cat food is made, why most pet food is dangerous, how to make homemade cat food
-apple nutrition, breastfeeding benefits, antioxidants
-top 10 worst foods, whole foods vs. processed foods, digestive system problems and causes
*Gods Design for Life: The World of Animals: We started reading about amphibians.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Prepare & Pray, Hygiene and Nutrition, and Let's Drive Thru History!
When I left off last time, Jaden was out doing a scavenger hunt. I gave him a list of things to find and some other items to assist him:
One of the things I had him do was take his digital camera out to take three pictures of things he finds interesting and to give me an explanation of why he finds them so. Well, he took a picture of a rock with a fossil, which also happened to be another thing on his list, and a picture of the woods. The third picture was of that plant from which he'd taken that neat ice that he showed me. You should remember the picture I posted on here before. Well, the actual plant with the ice on it was even neater, but we need a cable to upload his pictures.
Jade learned how to write a book report (a short one), learned how to compare and contrast, and learned how to classify things. He's done four Explode the Code lessons (he does one every 1st and 6th day of the week), and he's still doing well on those.
I bought a good used hardback copy of Swiss Family Robinson. I found it for a penny on Amazon, and with shipping it was just $4.00, which is still a great deal. I'm enjoying it so far, and I think Jaden is. Trusten doesn't have much of an attention span, so he probably doesn't know much about the story. I do read it to both of them. We've so far read two chapters, and we're going through the Prepare & Pray curriculum along with it. I like the Toddler Tales, which are extremely short stories aimed toward toddlers (like Trusten) which teach good lessons. We also discuss character qualities of the characters in Swiss Family Robinson and go over discussion questions. Now, there are a lot of things listed in the P&P curriculum to do, and I don't do them all. I pick and choose which ones I want us to do. The main reason I wanted to get the curriculum and the second half called Blessed Assurance is because I wanted a Christian-based family preparedness program of study.
There are a lot of things that Nathan and I both have wanted to learn so that we can be self-sustainable if the need arises. People in our society have lost so much knowledge and ability to do things without our modern mechanical and electrical servants and our modern economic system. We want our children to learn these things as well. This curriculum will help me have an order of things so that we systematically get to everything we need to learn how to do. Of course, like I said, there are things that I'm skipping. There is a LOT of material. It's actually compiled in such a way to be the main curriculum for a homeschooling family. It's not going to function that way for us. However, I've already discovered that their approach to learning things greatly compares to my own. Anyway, from this point on when I update this blog, I'll just talk about what we did according to the P&P curriculum, but it's only the stuff I chose to do.
So far in P&P and Swiss Family Robinson:
*We learned about levers. It was mentioned in the first chapter, where father of the shipwrecked family made use of a lever to help him lift his homemade boat made of casks out of the ship and into the water. It was too heavy for him to move on his own. I located the physical science book and introductory chapter on levers in our God's Design for Science curriculum and read that lesson. I also demonstrated the use of a lever with objects in our home--ruler, rock, and cup--and we went over the terms: lever, effort arm, fulcrum, resistance, effort
*We learned that sundown near the equator happens quickly, and upon Jaden asking about the equator, I showed it to him on the globe and talked about it briefly. We also went over the term "hogshead," and I showed him pictures on Google Images. Hogshead ended up being one of the vocabulary terms in P&P, but I'm not using the vocabulary lists in there as part of our learning experience...only those things asked about.
*And we sang "Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us," a song which I've long loved. I played the music for it online.
The first day of last week Nathan went out into the cold dreary day to dig holes in the cold, hard, and rocky ground so that he could plant my eleven baby flowering trees that I received from the Arbor Day Foundation. I'm so thankful to him, as I'm not to the point where I need to be doing hard work like digging yet, but I'd wanted the trees. I hope I do a good job of taking care of them, and I hope to have more beautiful trees in a few years. The boys watched Nathan dig the holes and plant and water the trees.
*Math: One day I worked with Jade on adding and subtracting using our cuisinart rods, and I worked with Trusten on counting. Another day I had Jaden count to 100 using all pennies, then all nickels, then dimes, and finally quarters. I asked him why he thought it was necessary to have different currencies and asked whether he would want to carry 100 pennies in his pocket to pay for something that cost a dollar. I also had him count out to 25 of each coin set (except dimes, of course, and we went over why he couldn't do that with only dimes). I taught Trusten the difference between pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Jade and I played Bookworm (computer spelling game) one day while Trusten played with chalk on Jade's chalk board.
I'm doing United Church of God's sabbath school lessons with the boys again. I'd started to do that two years ago, but I stopped about as soon as I started. I like their format, though, so I will continue with this. I've done it two sabbaths in a row now. Each lesson includes a song, too, so I really like that. As far as bible-reading during the week, still a proverb daily. Jade sure knows the Proverbs well now. We've been reading them daily for around a year and a half now, I guess. For a long time I've stopped every so often in the reading so that he can fill in blanks (anywhere from a word to a whole verse), and he does so well. Trusten is now trying to fill in the blanks. I don't know whether I mentioned it the last time I posted, but I'm reading daily from Bible Stories to replace the bible reading (except Proverbs). That's working out quite well. I started this time in the new testament. We sometimes read from these other two new books Jade has at night before they go to bed. I almost always sing with them at bedtime: "This Little Light of Mine", "Jesus Loves the Little Children", and "Jesus Loves Me."
I'd been letting the boys watch a short bible video or other educational video during my prayer time (in another room where it's quiet w/o worrying about them getting into trouble), but they've watched almost everything we have, many of them numerous times, and my prayer time has been high-jacked over the past three or four months where it's not been so peaceful. Well, I decided I'd pick out something each day for them to watch on Youtube, and it may be something they've pondered about or if not, then something I choose. I was absolutely delighted to discover that you can make a playlist on Youtube and then set them all to play one after another (I didn't realize this before!). I love it! Last week the boys watched videos on levers, the atmosphere, hygiene, and fruits and vegetables nutrition. They learned, and I got peace!
I'd bought a couple dvds in the Drive Thru History series with Dave Stotts. They were on American History. Well, I liked them (actually haven't watched all the episodes), so I decided to buy more. I bought the four I know that he's done for world history: Ancient Greece, Rome if You Want To, Turkey, and East Meets the West. We've watched the entire video on Greece and two of the three episodes on Rome. I REALLY like these! Jade seems to think they're okay now...I'm hoping he'll like them more as he gets older. I'd been telling Nathan about the other two and said I thought he'd like them, too, so one afternoon he got home early, and we watched the Greece together. We watched most of the one on Rome yesterday. The apostle Paul was mentioned quite a bit, and I appreciated how Dave made the point that Paul was one of the most influential persons in history. Also, he made it clear that the bible should be the most trusted source of history. These videos are great; I highly recommend them.
Jade has just about worn out the chess-playing. He loves to play chess on the computer. He also loves this art site where there are so many activities to do. It's called The Art Zone. Between those two things and Clever Island (which I think has almost come to and end of serving its purpose for him), he gets plenty of computer time (but I do limit it!). It's time to get an Internet filter installed, we think. He can navigate the Internet himself, and I'm afraid of him accidentally getting somewhere he ought not to be.
Oh! I about forgot about all my flash cards. I was upset that Trusten had apparently thrown our alphabet flashcards out of the Jeep one day ( I found them one day at the side of the path in the woods, and they'd been ruined by rain). But, my mother in law had bought a whole set of different flash cards, and hey, there are some for the alphabet! Trusten still doesn't know his alphabet, which is no big deal, but he's showing signs that he really needs to know it, as then he'd understand things better. He learns most things later than Jade, but I think that's typical of the birth order. I'm excited, though, because there are flash cards on money and time and measure. Woo-hoo! I'm going to open those two this week or next to give them a try. I like flash cards.
That's it...for the kids, anyway. I'm always learning, and if I posted everything I'm learning on this blog...well, you wouldn't have time to read it. LOL! I'm sure most think these entries are too long as it is.
Jade learned how to write a book report (a short one), learned how to compare and contrast, and learned how to classify things. He's done four Explode the Code lessons (he does one every 1st and 6th day of the week), and he's still doing well on those.
I bought a good used hardback copy of Swiss Family Robinson. I found it for a penny on Amazon, and with shipping it was just $4.00, which is still a great deal. I'm enjoying it so far, and I think Jaden is. Trusten doesn't have much of an attention span, so he probably doesn't know much about the story. I do read it to both of them. We've so far read two chapters, and we're going through the Prepare & Pray curriculum along with it. I like the Toddler Tales, which are extremely short stories aimed toward toddlers (like Trusten) which teach good lessons. We also discuss character qualities of the characters in Swiss Family Robinson and go over discussion questions. Now, there are a lot of things listed in the P&P curriculum to do, and I don't do them all. I pick and choose which ones I want us to do. The main reason I wanted to get the curriculum and the second half called Blessed Assurance is because I wanted a Christian-based family preparedness program of study.
There are a lot of things that Nathan and I both have wanted to learn so that we can be self-sustainable if the need arises. People in our society have lost so much knowledge and ability to do things without our modern mechanical and electrical servants and our modern economic system. We want our children to learn these things as well. This curriculum will help me have an order of things so that we systematically get to everything we need to learn how to do. Of course, like I said, there are things that I'm skipping. There is a LOT of material. It's actually compiled in such a way to be the main curriculum for a homeschooling family. It's not going to function that way for us. However, I've already discovered that their approach to learning things greatly compares to my own. Anyway, from this point on when I update this blog, I'll just talk about what we did according to the P&P curriculum, but it's only the stuff I chose to do.
So far in P&P and Swiss Family Robinson:
*We learned about levers. It was mentioned in the first chapter, where father of the shipwrecked family made use of a lever to help him lift his homemade boat made of casks out of the ship and into the water. It was too heavy for him to move on his own. I located the physical science book and introductory chapter on levers in our God's Design for Science curriculum and read that lesson. I also demonstrated the use of a lever with objects in our home--ruler, rock, and cup--and we went over the terms: lever, effort arm, fulcrum, resistance, effort
*We learned that sundown near the equator happens quickly, and upon Jaden asking about the equator, I showed it to him on the globe and talked about it briefly. We also went over the term "hogshead," and I showed him pictures on Google Images. Hogshead ended up being one of the vocabulary terms in P&P, but I'm not using the vocabulary lists in there as part of our learning experience...only those things asked about.
*And we sang "Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us," a song which I've long loved. I played the music for it online.
The first day of last week Nathan went out into the cold dreary day to dig holes in the cold, hard, and rocky ground so that he could plant my eleven baby flowering trees that I received from the Arbor Day Foundation. I'm so thankful to him, as I'm not to the point where I need to be doing hard work like digging yet, but I'd wanted the trees. I hope I do a good job of taking care of them, and I hope to have more beautiful trees in a few years. The boys watched Nathan dig the holes and plant and water the trees.
*Math: One day I worked with Jade on adding and subtracting using our cuisinart rods, and I worked with Trusten on counting. Another day I had Jaden count to 100 using all pennies, then all nickels, then dimes, and finally quarters. I asked him why he thought it was necessary to have different currencies and asked whether he would want to carry 100 pennies in his pocket to pay for something that cost a dollar. I also had him count out to 25 of each coin set (except dimes, of course, and we went over why he couldn't do that with only dimes). I taught Trusten the difference between pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Jade and I played Bookworm (computer spelling game) one day while Trusten played with chalk on Jade's chalk board.
I'm doing United Church of God's sabbath school lessons with the boys again. I'd started to do that two years ago, but I stopped about as soon as I started. I like their format, though, so I will continue with this. I've done it two sabbaths in a row now. Each lesson includes a song, too, so I really like that. As far as bible-reading during the week, still a proverb daily. Jade sure knows the Proverbs well now. We've been reading them daily for around a year and a half now, I guess. For a long time I've stopped every so often in the reading so that he can fill in blanks (anywhere from a word to a whole verse), and he does so well. Trusten is now trying to fill in the blanks. I don't know whether I mentioned it the last time I posted, but I'm reading daily from Bible Stories to replace the bible reading (except Proverbs). That's working out quite well. I started this time in the new testament. We sometimes read from these other two new books Jade has at night before they go to bed. I almost always sing with them at bedtime: "This Little Light of Mine", "Jesus Loves the Little Children", and "Jesus Loves Me."
I'd been letting the boys watch a short bible video or other educational video during my prayer time (in another room where it's quiet w/o worrying about them getting into trouble), but they've watched almost everything we have, many of them numerous times, and my prayer time has been high-jacked over the past three or four months where it's not been so peaceful. Well, I decided I'd pick out something each day for them to watch on Youtube, and it may be something they've pondered about or if not, then something I choose. I was absolutely delighted to discover that you can make a playlist on Youtube and then set them all to play one after another (I didn't realize this before!). I love it! Last week the boys watched videos on levers, the atmosphere, hygiene, and fruits and vegetables nutrition. They learned, and I got peace!
I'd bought a couple dvds in the Drive Thru History series with Dave Stotts. They were on American History. Well, I liked them (actually haven't watched all the episodes), so I decided to buy more. I bought the four I know that he's done for world history: Ancient Greece, Rome if You Want To, Turkey, and East Meets the West. We've watched the entire video on Greece and two of the three episodes on Rome. I REALLY like these! Jade seems to think they're okay now...I'm hoping he'll like them more as he gets older. I'd been telling Nathan about the other two and said I thought he'd like them, too, so one afternoon he got home early, and we watched the Greece together. We watched most of the one on Rome yesterday. The apostle Paul was mentioned quite a bit, and I appreciated how Dave made the point that Paul was one of the most influential persons in history. Also, he made it clear that the bible should be the most trusted source of history. These videos are great; I highly recommend them.
Jade has just about worn out the chess-playing. He loves to play chess on the computer. He also loves this art site where there are so many activities to do. It's called The Art Zone. Between those two things and Clever Island (which I think has almost come to and end of serving its purpose for him), he gets plenty of computer time (but I do limit it!). It's time to get an Internet filter installed, we think. He can navigate the Internet himself, and I'm afraid of him accidentally getting somewhere he ought not to be.
Oh! I about forgot about all my flash cards. I was upset that Trusten had apparently thrown our alphabet flashcards out of the Jeep one day ( I found them one day at the side of the path in the woods, and they'd been ruined by rain). But, my mother in law had bought a whole set of different flash cards, and hey, there are some for the alphabet! Trusten still doesn't know his alphabet, which is no big deal, but he's showing signs that he really needs to know it, as then he'd understand things better. He learns most things later than Jade, but I think that's typical of the birth order. I'm excited, though, because there are flash cards on money and time and measure. Woo-hoo! I'm going to open those two this week or next to give them a try. I like flash cards.
That's it...for the kids, anyway. I'm always learning, and if I posted everything I'm learning on this blog...well, you wouldn't have time to read it. LOL! I'm sure most think these entries are too long as it is.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Spices, Hopscotch, and Spaceships
Since the last post....
We read about cloves, which are one of the spices I use in making pumpkin pie. Jaden wanted to know what the plant looked like. The flowers are a pretty red; the flower buds are dried when completely ripe and then ground. Cloves are very popular in food and drug use around the world. Something even I learned was that clove cigarettes were just recently banned a couple months ago in the United States. Our FDA is certainly ban-crazy...all except for the stuff that is really causing serious harm to people in the way of food and drugs. What hypocrites. What's most ironic is that the supposed reason for banning clove in cigarette usage, along with any other natural or artificial flavoring in tobacco cigarettes, is to reduce the number of young people getting hooked on tobacco. I guess banning tobacco usage didn't cross their minds (or the bribes the lawmakers receive from the tobacco companies are just too nice to refuse). Not that I think tobacco should be banned; I don't, although I'm not sure yet whether there is a real worthwhile use for it. I do know that it is terribly abused, and it's a rather poisonous-smelling incense.
We read about chili peppers. We went on a quick trip to town after last sabbath, which was my first trip to Rogers in six weeks or longer. I think Jaden saw a chili pepper on a sign, and he asked about them. Chili peppers refer to any peppers of the Capsicum genus in the Solanaceae family. I showed Jade what a cayenne pepper looked like fresh and told him what we have in the cabinet is the ground product from the dried fruit. Chilis are also used widely around the world for both food and drug usage. I learned something, too. I didn't realize paprika was any type of chili pepper ground. I had mistakenly thought that paprika was a species of its own in the Capsicum genus, but that's not true. Paprika is a general term for any sort of ground chili pepper, and so it naturally varies from mild to hot flavors. Different parts of the world use different flavors of paprika.
Jaden asked about hopscotch when I was reading one of his Berenstain Bear books to the boys. Sooo, I taught him how to play hopscotch. I wanted to teach it to Trusten, too, but he wondered off across the yard to his new tricycle. When he came back, I'd already explained the rules, and he just started walking through it. I constructed it out of tape in the rocky driveway, and we used a metal nut as a marker. I'd like to have a cement slab poured in the near future for a basketball goal, anyway, which will also be good for things like hopscotch, where we can draw it with sidewalk chalk. I didn't really make the squares big enough, but it was suitable enough to teach him how to play. He didn't play correctly at first; he didn't understand that he was to place both feet in the double squares, so at first he hopped in them each with one foot. He needs practice! (And bigger squares...my foot touched the tape borders just stepping in it.)
Jaden had learned how to write a story the week before last in language arts. Last week he learned to write: a poem, a description, a friendly letter, and a how-to. This week he will learn to write a book report; we just haven't done any language arts book work this week yet.
Jade asked me how fast a rocket goes when launched into space. The first thing I found was how fast a space shuttle flies when in orbit around the earth, which is 17,500 miles an hour! I finally found the answer that he really wanted, which is known as the earth's "escape velocity": 11.2 kilometers a second, which is about 7 miles a second!
Speaking of spaceships, last Thursday evening Nathan, the boys, and I went outside to watch the space shuttle (Alexandria, I think it's called) and the International Space Station drift across the sky. It's not something you see every day, and the boys sure enjoyed it!
Jade also helped me make bread last week. He watched, and then I let him do some kneading. I pulled the recliner over to the kitchen counter, and Trusten and I sat there together watching Jaden, until I decided I should take over.
Trusten was flipping through the Curious George book that has several stories, and he asked me about a page, and I saw that it went through the entire alphabet in an interesting way. I'd not known that was in there. Several of the stories in that particular book are the same stories we have in individual CG books, so I have never been through the whole book. It looks more enjoyable than any of the other alphabet books we have. And it's certainly something new. I haven't worked much with him in awhile with regards to learning the Roman alphabet, and I think if I get back to that now it will take no time for him to learn it. We're about to read this while Jaden is outside. I have just assigned Jaden to a scavenger hunt, which I will talk about in my next post.
Jaden LOVES winter fun of "busting ice" as well as playing in the snow when we get it. He's actually prayed for an ice storm before! (YIKES!) WE don't like ice storms, but for him it means ice, ice, and more ice for him to bust! Well, we haven't had an ice storm this year...yet, anyway. But, he's already started his ice busting and outdoors winter exploration. He asks me every morning that there's frost on the ground whether he can go out and bust ice, and he goes out to do that FIRST thing, before we even get to breakfast, because he wants to get out "before all the ice melts." Last winter (or maybe two years ago) I let him have our old purple plastic pitcher (b/c we only like to store and drink out of glass). He likes to put water in it and freeze it in our freezer so he can then take it out to "bust ice." He's been doing a lot of that, since there's been limited ice to bust outside, and he simply cannot wait.
His newest ice-busting tool is a piece of wood that was part of a board. Ooooh, no, Nathan was gathering logs last night to build a fire in the wood stove, and Jade happened to see him bringing in that piece of wood, too, that Nathan evidently picked up from the back deck. Will shouted, "That's my ice buster! That's my ice buster!" I'm so glad he caught him, because I'd have never heard the end of that. It would have been crying and wailing, "Daddy burned my ice buster!"
He brought inside a lovely ice formation a few days ago. It was made up of several thin layers of ice upon each other. He said that it grew on a plant:
He also drew a nice goat. His December issue of Your Big Backyard came in, and it sometimes has something to draw with those four-step instructions. There was a mountain goat in there this time, and he decided to try to draw one. I LOVE it! I told him that I really liked it, and so he gave me his drawing. I have it hanging on the fridge for now. Nathan told me privately that he really liked Jade's goat, too.
Nathan got an old non-working Mac computer, and it's been sitting on the back deck for many weeks now. Jade finally brought it in last Saturday evening, and they started disassembling it in the boys' room. Trusten wanted to be a part of it, too (naturally). Jade loves taking things apart. The bad thing about it, though, is that he likes to just start tearing up things, so it ended before it was meant to. Nathan said, "We're done. You're trying to tear it up rather than learn about it." Too bad. Maybe it will be continued later.
As far as Jade's computer time goes, he's been playing a lot of chess lately. He started playing that a few weeks ago, and he's obsessed, I think. He plays Clever Island usually when he gets out of the shower while I go shower and get Trusten clean. Chess has seemingly caused him to forget his other computer games.
I'll be updating the things we've been learning in science, the bible, and Prepare and Pray in the next post. After all, I don't want to write a book here, now do I? ;-)
We read about cloves, which are one of the spices I use in making pumpkin pie. Jaden wanted to know what the plant looked like. The flowers are a pretty red; the flower buds are dried when completely ripe and then ground. Cloves are very popular in food and drug use around the world. Something even I learned was that clove cigarettes were just recently banned a couple months ago in the United States. Our FDA is certainly ban-crazy...all except for the stuff that is really causing serious harm to people in the way of food and drugs. What hypocrites. What's most ironic is that the supposed reason for banning clove in cigarette usage, along with any other natural or artificial flavoring in tobacco cigarettes, is to reduce the number of young people getting hooked on tobacco. I guess banning tobacco usage didn't cross their minds (or the bribes the lawmakers receive from the tobacco companies are just too nice to refuse). Not that I think tobacco should be banned; I don't, although I'm not sure yet whether there is a real worthwhile use for it. I do know that it is terribly abused, and it's a rather poisonous-smelling incense.
We read about chili peppers. We went on a quick trip to town after last sabbath, which was my first trip to Rogers in six weeks or longer. I think Jaden saw a chili pepper on a sign, and he asked about them. Chili peppers refer to any peppers of the Capsicum genus in the Solanaceae family. I showed Jade what a cayenne pepper looked like fresh and told him what we have in the cabinet is the ground product from the dried fruit. Chilis are also used widely around the world for both food and drug usage. I learned something, too. I didn't realize paprika was any type of chili pepper ground. I had mistakenly thought that paprika was a species of its own in the Capsicum genus, but that's not true. Paprika is a general term for any sort of ground chili pepper, and so it naturally varies from mild to hot flavors. Different parts of the world use different flavors of paprika.
Jaden asked about hopscotch when I was reading one of his Berenstain Bear books to the boys. Sooo, I taught him how to play hopscotch. I wanted to teach it to Trusten, too, but he wondered off across the yard to his new tricycle. When he came back, I'd already explained the rules, and he just started walking through it. I constructed it out of tape in the rocky driveway, and we used a metal nut as a marker. I'd like to have a cement slab poured in the near future for a basketball goal, anyway, which will also be good for things like hopscotch, where we can draw it with sidewalk chalk. I didn't really make the squares big enough, but it was suitable enough to teach him how to play. He didn't play correctly at first; he didn't understand that he was to place both feet in the double squares, so at first he hopped in them each with one foot. He needs practice! (And bigger squares...my foot touched the tape borders just stepping in it.)
Jade asked me how fast a rocket goes when launched into space. The first thing I found was how fast a space shuttle flies when in orbit around the earth, which is 17,500 miles an hour! I finally found the answer that he really wanted, which is known as the earth's "escape velocity": 11.2 kilometers a second, which is about 7 miles a second!
Speaking of spaceships, last Thursday evening Nathan, the boys, and I went outside to watch the space shuttle (Alexandria, I think it's called) and the International Space Station drift across the sky. It's not something you see every day, and the boys sure enjoyed it!
Jade also helped me make bread last week. He watched, and then I let him do some kneading. I pulled the recliner over to the kitchen counter, and Trusten and I sat there together watching Jaden, until I decided I should take over.
Trusten was flipping through the Curious George book that has several stories, and he asked me about a page, and I saw that it went through the entire alphabet in an interesting way. I'd not known that was in there. Several of the stories in that particular book are the same stories we have in individual CG books, so I have never been through the whole book. It looks more enjoyable than any of the other alphabet books we have. And it's certainly something new. I haven't worked much with him in awhile with regards to learning the Roman alphabet, and I think if I get back to that now it will take no time for him to learn it. We're about to read this while Jaden is outside. I have just assigned Jaden to a scavenger hunt, which I will talk about in my next post.
Jaden LOVES winter fun of "busting ice" as well as playing in the snow when we get it. He's actually prayed for an ice storm before! (YIKES!) WE don't like ice storms, but for him it means ice, ice, and more ice for him to bust! Well, we haven't had an ice storm this year...yet, anyway. But, he's already started his ice busting and outdoors winter exploration. He asks me every morning that there's frost on the ground whether he can go out and bust ice, and he goes out to do that FIRST thing, before we even get to breakfast, because he wants to get out "before all the ice melts." Last winter (or maybe two years ago) I let him have our old purple plastic pitcher (b/c we only like to store and drink out of glass). He likes to put water in it and freeze it in our freezer so he can then take it out to "bust ice." He's been doing a lot of that, since there's been limited ice to bust outside, and he simply cannot wait.
His newest ice-busting tool is a piece of wood that was part of a board. Ooooh, no, Nathan was gathering logs last night to build a fire in the wood stove, and Jade happened to see him bringing in that piece of wood, too, that Nathan evidently picked up from the back deck. Will shouted, "That's my ice buster! That's my ice buster!" I'm so glad he caught him, because I'd have never heard the end of that. It would have been crying and wailing, "Daddy burned my ice buster!"
He brought inside a lovely ice formation a few days ago. It was made up of several thin layers of ice upon each other. He said that it grew on a plant:
He also drew a nice goat. His December issue of Your Big Backyard came in, and it sometimes has something to draw with those four-step instructions. There was a mountain goat in there this time, and he decided to try to draw one. I LOVE it! I told him that I really liked it, and so he gave me his drawing. I have it hanging on the fridge for now. Nathan told me privately that he really liked Jade's goat, too.
I have really enjoyed some of his recent artwork. I love art; I just do not excel at it myself. So, I love others' art; I just don't like to do art.
Nathan got an old non-working Mac computer, and it's been sitting on the back deck for many weeks now. Jade finally brought it in last Saturday evening, and they started disassembling it in the boys' room. Trusten wanted to be a part of it, too (naturally). Jade loves taking things apart. The bad thing about it, though, is that he likes to just start tearing up things, so it ended before it was meant to. Nathan said, "We're done. You're trying to tear it up rather than learn about it." Too bad. Maybe it will be continued later.
As far as Jade's computer time goes, he's been playing a lot of chess lately. He started playing that a few weeks ago, and he's obsessed, I think. He plays Clever Island usually when he gets out of the shower while I go shower and get Trusten clean. Chess has seemingly caused him to forget his other computer games.
I'll be updating the things we've been learning in science, the bible, and Prepare and Pray in the next post. After all, I don't want to write a book here, now do I? ;-)
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