June 2015: Planets, Animals, Birthday, Crickets, and Summer Fun

William stayed with my mom for three weeks during June to enjoy some time away and to also help my mother after a surgery, since my dad is working in California.  He was actually away for his birthday, so he got to celebrate twice.  He had a lot of fun and learned new things while he was away.  He even made an appearance in one of the local newspapers back home.

Meanwhile Nathan kept busy working, and I kept the kids entertained with fun summer activities and engaged them to enjoy nature's finest with me.

Nature

Eyed click beetle (Alaus oculatus)

Female scarlet tanager (Piranga olivacea) 

Females of some bird species will fly repeatedly into windows that are reflective, believing it's attacking another female that threatens its chosen nesting territory.  This bird visited on numerous occasions, spanning a week. I was trying to decide on my mode of stopping her for her own good when she finally stopped on her own.

Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) 

I'm relatively positive this is an Eastern cottontail, but we have swamp rabbits, too, and they are both similar.  The latter is the larger of the two.  All the ones we see on our property are likely cottontails, simply based on their habitat preference as opposed to the swamp rabbits'.

American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)

This picture was taken from inside, through a less-than-perfectly-clean window, from a great distance.  These birds are so satisfying to observe.

Jupiter and Venus (June 27, 2015)

Jupiter and Venus (June 30, 2015)

Could these two planets be the "star of Bethlehem" the Eastern magi supposedly followed around when the biblical Jesus was born?  These two planets lined up even more closely together two millennia ago.   The kids really enjoyed going out to see these!

Another baby bird rescued

There was nothing to do for this one.  Since it was on our front porch, simply guarded by our dog Atlas, we could not locate the nest nor return it.  Its flight wings were not far enough in development for leaving the nest.  We do not have a nearby wildlife rehabilitation, and Missouri's policy is to leave neglected babies alone.  Though William was tempted to keep it and feed it, though it's illegal, he took it to a somewhat safe place and hoped for the best.

Blackberry vs. black raspberry (dewberry)

Kitchen Helpers

The curly girlies filling a muffin pan with cup liners

Trusten and the girls helped me make our muffins, which we ate very few times during the hot summer.  I like to use the oven and stove top heavily in the winter for baking, simmering stews, etc.  But in the summer we have eaten a lot of fresh fruit, yogurt, smoothies, etc. for breakfast and quicker, easier meals for dinner.  June is berry month in this area, and that means buying gallons worth of blueberries from the produce stand we visit each year.  The rabbits ate most of our strawberries that we have growing, but we still managed to pick－and enjoy eating－plenty of black raspberries and blackberries.

Trusten decided he wanted pancakes one day, and he made them by himself for the first time. He'd already been working for a bit before I took this picture, but it wasn't until I did that I noticed he was having to stand on his tiptoes, so...

I fetched the child step we've had for many years out of the bathroom.  "There, Baby, that's much better."

Outside Summer Fun

William got to enjoy the big pool at my parents' house during most of June, but these three relished the small pool quite a lot.  I loved watching them have fun while I also read books and enjoyed nature in our beautiful yard and its surroundings.

Nathan parked his tractor elsewhere for a few days.  I pointed out the tall, chlorophyll-deficient grass to the girls, and they ran over to curiously examine it as I explained why it was lacking the vibrant green color it should possess.

All four kids got to enjoy the water park on two or three different occasions.  It was soooo hot outside!  I tried to get the kids to find out more about a boy there on one day.  I wasn't the only one who noticed he was very underweight (and I thought Trusten had been too thin for so long, but nothing like this) and bruised.  I was so horrified by his appearance that I kept reflexively looking away.  I was so torn, not knowing what to do.  I pulled up CPS website, even, and debated as to whether to call right then and there.  The boy was there with a group, which appeared to be a church group. I was not able to get the information I needed, and as the boy was very hyper and fell down and got hurt, I started wondering whether maybe he was just wild and accident-prone.  I hope I didn't make the wrong choice.   Other than that distressing experience, I enjoyed watching the kids have fun.

William's Trip and Return

William spent one day at my sister's, where he reported that my older niece (three years old) "wore [him] out."  They went to the zoo, and it looks like the Air Force base near them.

There's William.  He went with my mother to her beekeeping meetings.  The newspaper, not surprisingly, messed up and said he was from Pea Ridge, AR, though I'm sure William probably told them "north of Pea Ridge" or something to that effect. 

The dear ladies who work in my mother's office—my mother is her county's tax assessor—threw William a surprise birthday party on his twelfth birthday.  He had helped do a lot of work while he stayed with my mother, once she returned to work.  He mostly did alphabetizing, since he already knew how to do that, but I think he learned some new things, too.
 

Crickets

Elizabeth really enjoyed crickets during the summer, so I read to the youngest three some cricket books, and we looked in Google Images to find out that crickets came in several different colors, including red!  There are all sorts of amazing-looking crickets across the planet.  To see Elizabeth pictured with a cricket in a cup, check out last month's post.

From The Cheerful Cricket and Others by Jeannette Marks

 Cricket treats! (No antennae; kids didn't care.)

Until next time...

Second Half of Summer 2013: What We've Been...

Another of my "What We've..." posts to cover the second half of summer, which will soon be over as reckoned by the fall equinox.  I've got at least four additional posts planned, which I soon hope to get posted.  They will cover our Trumpets celebration, plans for the remaining three and a half Roman calendar months, and then the starting back of weekly updates on what we've done in our homeschool, of which I'm already behind.  I'm typing this post on my iPad, as our messed up computer is finally officially finished, after three months of trouble following a lightning strike.  It served us well for four years before that happened.  Nathan is looking for a replacement, which is necessary.  I've had to download two different apps for this device in order to make blogging these posts with my pictures possible, but I'm so thankful I've got this option.  It appears as if there will be no font size changes or anything of that nature, but I'll make do.  Sooo...

What We've Read...

Jaden William's history (Mystery of History):

*Emperor Asoka of India

*The Septuagint and the Colossus of Rhodes

*The Qin Dynasty (Ch'in)

*Hannibal, Elephants, and the Punic Wars

*The Han Dynasty

*The Maccabean Revolt

Trusten's history and geography (Our Christian Heritage):

*Leadership/governing in our lives, especially God and parents

*Four oceans

*Seven continents

*Facts about each continent and some animals that live on each

We've gone back to pick up where we left off in Scholastic's Read and Learn Bible.  We are currently in 2 Kings, about to read about Elisha.  We are also still continually, over and over, going through the book of Proverbs.  Instead of a daily chapter, though, and also trying to fit in other bible reading with the kids (not counting my own reading), we are usually doing a chapter of Proverbs every other day, and the days in between we are reading a chapter in the children's bible.  Sometimes we combine and read both, but some days it doesn't work out, and I feel relieved that I have decided not to stress myself out about it.

Various children's books.  I'm not going to subscribe to the Weekly Reader/Scholastic News this year, at least not for Trust and Liv.  I apparently paid twice last year, because they sent me a notice of credit.  I am still trying to decide whether to order for Jaden William, but I'd likely let him read them on his own time, if I get them, if it's not too late.  When we got these, the reading from children's books was reduced, and I don't like that.  I love the wildlife magazines the kids get, and they are only monthly, so we will continue to enjoy these.  

What the Boys Have Written...

Jaden's book report on Lois Lowry's The Giver (book pictured above in previous section). Yeah, that boy managed to get his report all dirty, because he laid down on his belly on the front porch to write most of it!  He needs much more writing, writing, writing practice, but he is getting better.  He just gets in a hurry on everything!  This was his second draft, so I'm disappointed in how many spelling errors and missing punctuation there was.  

Jaden's book report on Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue.  This is his first draft, on which he came a LONG WAY from his first draft on The Giver.  And he's finally grasping how to write a full-length book report.  This is just his third, after The Giver, and you may remember his first one on The Children's Homer by Padraic Colum.  So I was pretty pleased with him on this.  I've got to go over it, type up corrections, and then he'll write his final draft, which had better be better than his final one on The Giver.  I don't know how that boy managed to spell things incorrectly and miss periods and such, when his second draft was COPY WORK.  I'd typed out corrections and added some detail in to better help him understand what he was lacking.  He definitely didn't lack in this report like he did that report. :-)  His grade (something very few things the kids do get) will be reported in a future post, as well as his book report on the final book in the trilogy.  

Trusten has mostly done copy work in his Language Lessons workbook.  He finished the one on which he was working and will now be working on the Explode the Code series and won't continue on with the next LL workbook until he's finished, which I expect will only take four or five months at the most.  He is good at flying nearly flawlessly through such things.  He's doing well on most of his work, despite his hair-trigger temperament.  Below is pictured some of the drawings he was asked to draw in his LL book.  He normally flies off the handle each time he's asked to draw anything (among many other things), which involves an exposive verbal outburst, a throwing of his pencil, etc.  Once I am able to calm him, it's as if nothing happened, and he gets his work done.  Same thing with anytime he's asked to write something free-hand (not copy work).  He knows very well I'll help him spell anything with which he needs help, but it seems all memory of that leaves him each time. 

Regarding the sentence pictured below, he was required to write his own sentence using one of the words in a list.  After his meltdown, I spoke a few sample sentences for examples, like "I want to fly a kite" and "I hope my momma loves me" ("kite" and "hope" being words in the list).  He shouted, "I know you love me!"  (Think with me: "CHILL OUT, child!")  Well, he calmed down, and I left to be about my business in the kitchen.  When he was finished with his work, he properly put up his workbook.  When I went to check it, I was humored that he had written that example sentence, even after his outburst!

LOL.  (If you haven't read the two preceding paragraphs, please do so now.)  NO spelling errors in that simple sentence, and I didn't help him (true, I spell it "momma" and "Momma" when it's proper, rather than common, but I'm a rare exception).  He just loses it too easily.

Jaden's latest reading and research obsession has been technology, and specifically Apple technology.  He drives me crazy!  He asked me whether I'd rather him talk about languages again, and I said, "Yes!  Please!"  LOL 

I've started reading about plant science to Trusten.  I'll talk more about that and more in a future post.

What We've Been Eating...

Homemade suki-yaki steak with homemade white sauce (maybe not as satisfying to the lust of the tastebuds as what you eat in the Japanese restaurants, but mine is whole-grain rice and pasta and all organic ingredients); homemade chicken pot pie (ok, except for the crusts), homemade peach cobbler (a long-time favorite around here), squash casserole, fruit salad, potatoes, creamy chickenn and potato soup (pictured is a failed attempt at an experimental casserole, but afterward I started making it as soup and cut the potatoes differently); tortilla pizzas; spicy Thai noodles.

The soup and the spicy Thai noodles were well-liked around the table as new meals.  I've fixed the former a few times, but I've yet to make the latter.  I will change it up next time, as it contained way too much oil the first time (but was indeed tasty).  

My sweet boy Jaden William (10 years) has fixed breakfast many times lately (usually muffins). His favorite is pancakes, and he happened to surprise me one morning with making pancakes.  I was walking into the kitchen, and he was already flipping pancakes out of the pan.  Yes, he runs the grain mill, combines all the ingredients himself, and does the cooking, and he does a great job.  He's already had plenty of practice over the past few years.  I asked for chocolate chips in mine, and he surprised me with a chocolate chip smiley face!

That's a cantaloupe out of our garden (yum!), and Na cut the cucumbers one night for our dinner, and he made us all cute things.  He made me the little car/cart above.  Almost all of our cucumbers have been delicious.  Everything has been so good.  Nathan dumped all of our wood ash on our garden spot throughout last winter, and Jaden put the straw and chicken poop from cleaning out the chicken house on there, so our food has been nutritious and tasy.  

What We've Done on Sabbath Afternoons...

Pictured above: After one of the floods (odd for mid-summer), the kids swam and played in the water in the creek that borders our property to the south/southwest.  I took so many absolutely gorgeous pictures.  The kids played after each flood.

You can tell they're dressed and ready to go play in the creek again, but first some fun with mud!  Check out William's mudman!

The two sweetest girls...  Liv wanted to show me a moth and other nature finds.

These pictures are so funny.  Poor Liv.  Trusten torments that poor girl, but you've got to admit that the pictures of him chasing her with his mud ball is pretty hilarious.  

What Nature Things We've Enjoyed...

The kids got to enjoy witnessing the metamorphosis cycle of butterflies (painted lady species).  Pictured above are the caterpillars hanging from the top of their containers (nasty by that point) and each creating a chrysalis for their pupae stage, and then in the bottom picture they are all in the pupa stage.  I pinned them to the side of the butterfly pavilion.  Notice one on some tissue at the bottom.  It had fallen to the bottom of the container, and I didn't have much hope for it.  Jaden and I theorized.  I told him I wondered whether it would not develop properly if it laid on the bottom, or whether the sole purpose of caterpillars suspending themselves up high was to keep away from predators.  I wondered whether there was a dual purpose (like so many things, or often more than dual).  It turned out in the end that the butterfly emerged from the chrysalis alive, but one of the wings was deformed.  It was unable to fly, so Jaden put it in one of my pots of flowers.  We felt bad for it.

ALL ten caterpillars emerged alive as butterflies.  Nine were perfectly formed and able to fly away on release day.

I also read our copy of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar for fun, and I played a video on Amazon on Demand of butterflies and their lives.

We only kept the butterflies as adults in the pavilion two--maybe three--days, and then the kids took turns getting one on their fingers and then releasing them.  The picture at the bottom right of the collage directly above is so funny.  JW had a butterfly perched on his finger, but by the time I shot the picture, the butterfly was gone.

We LOVED this!  It was especially a treat to us, because we love butterflies so much!  Life is truly a miracle!  It's just so amazing!

Poor Elizabeth didn't know any better.  She'd found the under-developed butterfly that Jade had put in the flower pot of flowers.  She came walking excitedly toward me with a big smile on her face, holding the butterfly.  I was horrified on the inside, but I managed to gently tell her that no, that wasn't good.  I don't think she damaged it too much (it wasn't going to make it, anyway), but William started to shout, so I had to calm him quickly and remind him that Baby Sister didn't understand how to hold butterflies, and she was just excited to get to hold one like all her siblings.

Jaden William a beetle or something in its pupa stage. This was exciting!  I liked this particular ones.  You can the one in the upper right picture is broken open a bit, so you can see the larvae inside.  The rest were undisturbed.  This was fascinating!  I just love all the awesome things you can find in nature.  The coverings were like tree bark!

Liv is picured with an adult pill bug crawling on her hand.  She loves these things!  (My younger sister did, too.  I won't touch them.)  Liv is often scared of such things at first, but once she realizes they won't hurt her, she takes quite a liking to them, whatever the "them" may be.  

Well, I've got LOTS more to share, but this is it for now.  There will be more soon.

Until next time...

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...

Feast of Trumpets 2009, Starting School Again, and Cooking Pancakes

We started back on the books Wednesday, the 16th of September on the Roman calendar. I have a very simple schedule for the remainder of Jaden's first grade year, and it's been working well. On Sundays and Fridays he does a lesson in Explode the Code (for a total of two lessons a week), Mondays and Wednesdays he does a lesson in Spelling (usually 4 pages), a few pages in Lang. Arts (4-8 pages), a few pages in Math (4-7), and a lesson in animal science out of the God's Design for Life series. On Tuesdays, he does a lesson out of Spelling and a lesson out of Lang. Arts, and we go grocery shopping on this day. On Thursdays we do Spelling, Lang. Arts, and Prepare and Pray. Then, of course, every day I read to him a chapter out of Proverbs and then usually a chapter or two from where ever we are in reading through the bible (still in Jeremiah, and we're going through it s-l-o-w-l-y).

Oh, whatever day he wants to do some art, he does that in his free time. We'll go back to history and music next year. I have his math and language arts lessons pre-set with paper clips throughout the Complete Curriculum book. It's making it very easy and organized for me. When he's nearly finished (I have it set to last around 6 -7 weeks), I will pre-organize his writing lessons. He'll be using the skills he's learned from reading, spelling, and language arts in order to be successful with that section (this was my choice, as I just didn't think he would be ready for that section until the others were completed). Then, during the last week or week and a half of this year he'll be doing testing from the book. He will be finished with the math section within six weeks, probably, so I bought him another workbook for math. It's a first grade math book by Miquon.

He's doing very well in spelling. He breezes through his lessons. Most of the language arts has been easy for him. With some of the things, he struggles a little at first and then quickly figures it out. Some of the stuff in math he struggles with, but he says every time before we begin math that he likes math. He's been doing addition and subtraction, including doing fact families, and he's done place values. He caught on to the place value stuff very quickly. We're still working through some of those lessons, and then we'll be starting on money.

We observed the first fall feast--the Feast of Trumpets--last sabbath. This is the second year we got the boys gifts, but I have a better plan now. I made them each a Feast of Trumpets reward folder. Both Nathan and I wrote short notes to each of the boys, hole-punched them, and put them in their folders. At the bottom of the notes, we also listed the reward(s) they received this year. We will be keeping these folders for them and updating them every year by adding an additional page with our notes each year. The notes are to detail what they did well the previous year, what we've appreciated, and what we've noticed that they've overcome, what behavior traits are good and what extra help we've appreciated. The reward(s) can be taken away if they fall away from having good behavior and slack off helping the way they should or being disrespectful or irresponsible, not taking care of their responsibilities. Of course, for now, this applies more to Jaden, since he has more responsibilities than Trusten.

I made trumpet-shaped cookies again for the feast. This was my second year in doing so. The cookie cutter is too big, though, so the shape gets messed up when transferring the cookies to the cookie sheet to bake. This year I made roll-out peanut butter cookies. At least they tasted good. We had a beef brisket as the center of our main feast meal. We had that Friday evening and then leftovers the next day for lunch.

I went over the feast lesson with the boys by first detailing a brief summary of all the feasts, as I do each high holy day, and the steps of salvation which they symbolize: Passover being that we need a perfect sacrifice for our past sins, Unleavened Bread that we must repent and remove sin from our lives, Pentecost that we must receive the begettal of the Spirit of God in order to help us live righteous lives according to God's Law, Feast of Trumpets that there will be seven trumpet plagues before the return of Christ and that at the seventh trumpet the saints will be raised and changed as Spirit sons of God, Day of Atonement that Satan will be locked away during the 1,000 year reign of the Firstborn Son of God and all the other sons of God (the saints in the first resurrection) so that human beings who have lived through the tribulation and their posterity will live under the Kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of Satan and that people will become "at one" with God, the Feast of Tabernacles that life here on this physical planet in these physical bodies is temporary and that the Sons of God "tabernacle" temporarily with human kind until the plan of salvation is finished, and the 8th Day that all who have ever lived and were not called to the Truth (whether because of death during childhood or spending one's life in a heathen culture, never hearing about the true Creator God and His Law and plan of salvation) will be raised to physical life once again and be shown the truths of the scriptures and be given their judgment period to choose life or death, and then all who have rejected God's way will be thrown into the lake of fire, and God will come down with the new spiritual earth and dwell with his Sons.

I then focused more specifically on the Feast of Trumpets, reading several scripture selections dealing with the feast and with what it means in the future fulfillment at Christ's return. Jaden understands it all more and more every time we go over this. I always ask plenty of questions as we go along. I explained that at Christ's return he will be bringing rewards (gifts) from our Father to the saints who earned them.

Jaden blew the shofar Friday evening. He's been blowing it on the weekly sabbaths and new moons for the last few weeks. He does extremely well for a six year old! He likes to do it. Then the next day, he asked whether I would get him and Trusten some balloons (I rarely let them play with balloons), so I blew up a balloon for each of them and wrote "Feast of Trumpets" on each of them. They played with their balloons after breakfast, and then after lunch they blew the little party noise blowers that I'd saved back from last year's feast. Then, we did the lesson, and we read their notes and let them open their rewards.

Jaden got a jump rope and two computer games (a racing game, as he has wanted a race car game for some time now, and an educational spelling game), and Trusten got a wooden helicopter with a wooden peg man inside (the latter of which I took away until he gets older, as it's a choking hazard). Trusten loves vehicles of all sorts and really likes flying machines (they both do, and they get that from me). He has frequently played with Jaden's little wooden helicopter (something Jaden has never played much with), and so I decided to get a bigger one for his very own. He loves it! And Jaden loves his race car game, which he gets to play after his school, other responsibilities (feeding cats, making his and Trusten's beds, and vacuuming the living room), and after outside time (I sure don't want him addicted to a computer game with no outside play!).

One day this week Jaden wanted pancakes (he loves pancakes), and he's been wanting to help me in the kitchen, so I let him make the pancakes. He even read off the ingredients the best he could, and with very little assistance from me, he put everything together, mixed them up, and cooked them. He did a great job! And it was a nice change to be able to sit down and eat pancakes while he cooked, instead of them sitting eating their pancakes while I still cooked! Yay!!! ;-) What a treat (and he thought he was the one getting the treat by my letting him cook).

The boys and I all got stung by yellow jacket wasps yesterday. I got stung on the front porch, and then a few minutes later the boys came screaming (and Trusten crying) from across the yard. I think they must have been by the nest. I have not yet gone out there to investigate. I had to take their shirts off, b/c they had yellow jackets crawling on them. Jaden got stung twice. Trusten got stung four times. So then last night we all read some things on the computer about stinging insects and learned about the Schmidt Pain Index. Very interesting stuff. And the creature that was second from the top looked like an insect I saw after I'd gone back outside a while after being stung. It was on the deck railing, and I was staring at it, wondering what it was and whether it could sting (it was obviously a wasp-type creature). Anyway, the creature I'm talking about is a Tarantula hawk. I investigated further to see whether they exist in Missouri, and they sure do. Well, if that's indeed what it was, I sure do not want to be stung by one of those. They are supposed to be worse than red wasps (which I've been stung by once, and my whole hand swelled enormously and stayed that way for days).

Well, I guess that sums up our learning adventures for the past week. I couldn't possibly ever fit in everything.