Jaden's Clay Artwork

I'll be giving birth in about a week or so, and I've been tired lately and have had other things I've had to do, so I've not assigned a lot of book work lately.  It's been about two weeks since Jade has done his daily math word problems and Language Lessons pages, and it's been a week or more since I've done a spelling lesson with him.  I've read to the kids but with a reduction and nothing from Mystery of History or the science book we're currently on, but they get history and science here and there, regardless.  I've been reading them a daily devotional and then sometimes a chapter in Proverbs on top of that.  Jade has continued to do grammar and math almost daily, and I mark those lessons so he can do his corrections.  He usually has very few, if any, corrections to make for grammar, so he'll correct and do a new lesson each day, but for math he does a lesson one day and then corrections the next day and no new lesson.  That's just the way it is for math now, because he must go more slowly on that.

Jaden William finished his clay art class.  The main thing was a bird house.  The teacher still must fire them again, and so it should be ready to pick up within two weeks.  All the kids in the class did a good job on their bird houses, though I really think Jade did the best job.  His bird on top definitely looked the best.  They all made little bowls on the potter's wheel, too, though, and Jade's collapsed on him.  He was really upset about that.  But he was the only one who made some other things.  He made a truck, a pumpkin, and then a rectangular thing with two neat imprints in it.

It was so exciting to see his creations!  He decided he would use his collapsed bowl for a candle holder.  I told him if he didn't want it that he could give it to me after he made his planned candle, and I would be happy to have it.  So, today he put a wick in it and poured some dyed and scented wax in it.  Then he said he was afraid he poured it in while it was still too hot and something about it sometimes cracking when he does that.  So a bit later, after I'd taken it back to my bedroom, he said he wanted to look at it again, and it had little crack-looking places in the wax, so he was upset about that, but I don't care.  I'm so proud of it!

We drank some punch and talked to his art teacher last night, and she told us that he was a very neat kid.  She said that he took more initiative than most kids she's ever known and that he has quite a few ideas in his head.  She told me that he'd told her that day that he kept the Sabbath.  She asked some about what I believed; she doesn't even know much about the bible to begin with, but I told her almost everything Christianity taught I don't believe and do not believe is biblical but was pagan-adopted by the Roman Catholic Church.  Nathan explained that the best way to describe him is agnostic (he believes in a God/Creator but doesn't ascribe to any in-stone beliefs beyond that).  She was delighted to know how well we got along and respected each other's beliefs and said that her experience in most "Christians" was that they are very closed-minded and disrespectful of other beliefs, etc.  Maybe that in itself will pique her curiosity enough about what I told her to investigate more for herself.

Anyway, she said that it was apparent that whatever I was doing was good, because she was really pleased with Jaden.  That was nice for me; I needed to hear it.  I've been so down on myself over the past several months.  This year has taken a toll on me, and my out-of-whack hormones and all the stresses I've experienced this year has resulted in my struggling greatly with patience with the kids and decreased energy to do more with them, so I've felt like an awful mother.

William had taken his teacher a candle to sell to her his last lesson or the one before that.  When Nathan said to her, "If he's told you anything that sounds outlandish that he does, it's probably true."  That's when she admitted that when he'd told her he made candles, she thought to herself, "Yeah, right," but then the next week he took her the candle.  Jaden William then told her about the stool with a storage compartment he'd made earlier in the week.  :-)  He only had scrap wood parts from Nathan's projects to work with.  He's always so busy doing things, though.  He actually used up all his money (rare for him) on some new books and a new drill--a nano drill.  He actually had only enough to cover a little more than half for the drill, so I told him I'd front him the rest of the money, but he'd have to do extra work.  I need that right now, anyway, so he's been doing a lot more house work than normal to give me a break, and he has also done things to help Nathan, like loading up split firewood into the truck and stacking it in the back yard.  He won't get his drill until he has satisfactorily completed extra work without complaint for the remainder of my pregnancy.

Some other things Jade has done lately...


Going deer hunting with his daddy:

Nathan and Jaden dressed up and ready to go into the woods

He's been making breakfast some mornings.  It's handy that his Gamma (Nathan's mother) just recently sent him an apron and some wooden utensils of his own.  He loves pancakes, and I've posted about him making pancakes before, but this time he did everything completely on his own--read the directions, mixed it, and cooked them all.  The sunglasses?  Probably stuck them on his head after retrieving them from his baby sister.  The A-shirt?  I guess he'd not gotten dressed for the day yet, or sometimes he puts on crazy things.  He drives me up the wall with his strange dress at times.

 Saving animals from Sylvester's (our beloved cat) jaws:

Creepy, I know.  A mouse!  I told him to deposit that thing across the road, and I hope it doesn't come back into our territory.  The cat has been doing his job killing mice lately, but Jade can't stand for the cat to kill anything.  I get sad about birds and such, but I like that we don't have a big mouse problem.

I'll talk more about Trusten later, but for now, I will post a few pictures of him putting bug stickers on a scene in a book I'd bought him for his birthday back in May.  I'd forgotten about that book!  He didn't act interested back at the time.  But it just so happens the book is about insects and spiders and such, and we have been studying those things, so it was handy that I came across it and read to him more about spiders, insects, etc., and he had fun with the stickers.

That's it for now!

Until next time...