Mr. Brilliant departed for SoCal this morning. He was cool as a cucumber but I was a bit of a mess. Not that I let him see that.
Miss Bliss will enjoy a extra long weekend of sleep overs with a number of her school mates, events include a volleyball playoff, a horse show, a trip to a farm and a trip to the dog park.
I’ll be headed to Philly Friday morning. Mr. A+ checked into the hospital today, he has tests tomorrow and surgery on Friday.
Mr. Brilliant will go to his grandma’s to stay for 10 days while I get my husband sorted.
Mr. A+ will spend the weekend in the hospital in Cleveland, then a friend will collect him and drive him to Pittsburgh. Perhaps this friend will drive Mr. A+ to his surgeon in Delaware, or perhaps I will fly to Pittsburgh. Either way, Mr. A+ will have someone drive him, in stages, from Cleveland to Delaware.
Next Friday he will have surgery to fix the clot in his leg.
I’m still scrambling to manage care for Miss Bliss, but it is much easier now. I reached out to her classmates’ parents and there is one family that will take Miss B for two days, another family that will drive her to and from school twice, another family that will take her for a night and two teachers who offered to take her for a night each. With the help of our neighbor and our babysitter, I think we have it covered.
So I will delay booking air travel until Mr. A+ has his travel all locked and loaded. In the mean time I will farm out the pets and pack and prepare Mr. B’s school work so his grandma can take over instruction for 10 days.
I still haven’t made the Prune Cake from Pioneer Woman’s cookbook, that will just have to wait. Today Miss Bliss plans on making cookies and Mr. B has asked to make ice cream. He has also been asking to make potato chips for weeks now. Today may be a good day to do that.
Or, what I hope we’ll accomplish next week…
Reading Comprehension:
Animal Legends, use an organizer to write your own.
Discussion; what is a myth?
Short passage on the Arctic
Vocabulary:
Antonyms
Worsen, knowledge, inferior, synonyms, bashful, encourage, cautious, complain
Writing:
Write a police report, making use of a story map
Describe your room, using details. One paragraph.
You hear a sound at the window of your room. Describe in detail. One paragraph.
Using the picture of the house provided, describe what is going on at the house. Three short paragraphs.
Review use of main idea, topic sentence
Create a brochure about your town. Include artwork.
Review, in detail, writing paragraphs, using clusters of ideas
Geography:
Imports and Exports of South America
Plants of South America
Animals of South America
Continued discussion of deforestation of South America
Responsible Tourism
Write a post-card about your vacation to South America
Art:
Paint an experience Stuart Little had in the story. Use pencil to outline, then color in with watercolors
Math:
Division with Remainders, an introduction
Place value, expanded notation and standard form
Adding and Subtracting 3 through 5 digits
Return to three digit multiplication
Copywork:
Taken from Aesop, ‘The Patchwork Girl’ by L. Frank Baum
Literature:
Final review of Stuart Little
Life Skills:
How to Brainstorm
Predict what will happen
Use of proper equipment for sports
Social Studies & History:
Field trips planned, depending on Mr. A+’s situation
Continue reading ‘All Sail Set’ & ‘Look Homeward, Hannalee’
Continue work on Native American paper with Ms. B.
D.E.A.R:
‘The Search for Delicious’ & ‘Pendragon’
My husband is in the hospital, about 4 states away. The situation is serious but not dire.
I need to get my day going and get the kids focused on school.
Tuesday we did school, but Mr. Brilliant decided to see how hard he could push his dad, so school was more about pushing boundaries than getting work done.
Yesterday we did school, but we halted early to take Mr. A+ to the airport.
Today Miss Bliss was home ill and Mr. Brilliant decided that if his sister didn’t have school, than neither did he. I was too wrapped up in my grief about the friends lost in Seal Beach to make a stand with Mr. Brilliant. So long as he worked his 2 hours on Spanish I was ok. He did.
Tomorrow Mr. A+ is having unexpected surgery. I don’t care if Miss Bliss goes to school or not, Mr. B. will be doing a full day, and then some, of school work.
Most of what was planned for this week has been achieved, it just wasn’t done with much grace.
I am so thankful no one in my family was injured yesterday. We did lose three friends, no one close to us, but people close to my family in Seal Beach. My father-in-law just called, I spoke with my mother-in-law earlier today. Such grief, so much sadness.
Magnificent commute this morning. The heavens cracked open about 645 this morning with dozens of flashes of both cloud lightning and cloud to ground lightning. Driving the bridges was… interesting, in the ancient Chinese curse way. A cloudburst made the drive hazardous. Hell, it was liquid air, couldn’t see the car one length ahead of me.
The big dog was barking and fussing, I knew he’d driven something to ground, I guessed another snake. Yep, a Copperhead, a big one. This snake has a few brain cells to rub together, it took off after I locked up the dog. Good for it, I came our armed with boots and an entrenchment tool.
Mr. Brilliant has decided he likes ‘The Search for Delicious.’ by N. Babbitt
Up until now Mr. Brilliant has had no difficulties with math. Today I reviewed his work on 2 and 3 digit multiplying. What a mess! He has no idea what he is doing. Actually he does know, he’s just decided to try doing all math ‘his way’. That would be fine, if it worked.
The dog won’t stop barking. Mr. Brilliant won’t get dressed. I had work done on three teeth today. About half way through the procedure the dentist asks me if I can feel the drill. Yes, I can. The drugs are wearing off now and the pain is winning out over the numbness. Mr. A+ leaves town tomorrow for three and a half weeks.
Going to bed and staying there is starting to sound like a good idea.
Today’s tip: Remember to brush and floss at least daily, twice daily is better. Teach your dog to come when called. Teach your dog a ‘silence’ command. Get dress every morning, down to the shoes, to set a good example for your kids. Try not to worry too much.
Today I made a batch of Pumpkin Muffins, Oatmeal Cookies and Peanut Butter-Nutella Cookies. I also made Twice Baked Potatoes and Pico de Gallo. Everyone loved the Twice Baked Potatoes. Served up with the Pico, it was awesome. For dinner I served last night’s grilled chicken with the beans from last week and today’s Pico, along with the Mexican rice and some cheese, all wrapped up in a burrito shell. Imagine my shock when Mr. Brilliant actually *ate* his beans!
Miss Bliss will be getting a smoothie for breakfast tomorrow, along with the pumpkin muffins. Mr. Brilliant will be getting a scrambled egg with bacon and chicken burrito for his breakfast (as will Mr. A+, should he be eating at home).
I am starting to have some significant issues getting Mr. Brilliant to read. He’ll read comic books willingly enough, but to do his school reading? It is a struggle, every day.
A big storm is headed our way. Weather Bug just pinged me to warn of flooding expected tonight and high winds over night and tomorrow morning.
On tap for next week:
A field trip. Most likely to Charles Towne Landing, Mr. Brilliant keeps saying he just doesn’t care and I’m not inclined to take him on a field trip if he doesn’t care.
Objectives on this field trip are to learn about the flora and fauna of the Charleston area, also, to learn about the Native Americans of our area.
Grammar:
Pronouns
Verbs, linking verbs, helping verbs
Verb tense, past, present, future
Using ‘ing’ verbs
Review present tense verbs
Math:
Numeration through 1,000,000
Carrying and Borrowing with long division
1 digit numbers x 2 digit numbers
2 digit numbers x 3 digit numbers
Inverse of multiplication is division
Vocabulary:
hostile, petrify, quiver, scamper, shriek, wrath
Palindromes
more prefixes & suffixes
Copywork: Taken from ‘Socks’ by Beverly Cleary, ‘The Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame, works of Robert Louis Steveson, & works of Aesop
Geography: Create a Country Fact Sheet, Imports & Exports, Deforestation of South America
Reading Comprehension:
More fables, use of sequencing, more animal legends
Writing:
Story Map
Mr. Brilliant met with Ms. B, his writing tutor. They are working together on the written presentation of Mr. B’s Landscape Project.
Review writing skills
Life Skills: Making choices from Stuart Little unit
Science: Evaporation, solid vs. liquid, Whaling in America from Stuart Little unit
Cooking Science, describe the properties of sugar, peanut butter and sugar and peanut butter, mixed together
Spanish: We missed our lesson with Miss Naomi this week, she had a family emergency and had to leave town. Mr. Brilliant will continue studying food words.
Added to this week’s list of Vocabulary:
Hostile, mortal, myth, petrify, quiver, scamper, shriek, wrath.
At the rate my kids are going, the SAT will be a snap.
The Landscape project draws nearer to completion. Currently Mr. Brilliant is creating the Native American village. I had planned on him keeping all his work centered on Native American’s of the LowCountry, however, he just cannot sink his teeth into writing about any of the tiny tribes of this area. He’s decided to write, instead, about the Cherokee. Fair enough, he’s 1/16th or 1/32 Cherokee (both kids have black eyes, a gift from their Cherokee many-times great-grandmother).
A side note about our own family history here; one reason I’m spending so much of this school year focused on the Civil War is this; Mr. Brilliant and Miss Bliss had family fighting for both the Blue and the Grey. The family myth goes as follows, two brothers, hailing from Virginia, enlisted on different sides, unbeknownst to each other. After a nasty battle, one soldier runs home, AWOL, and, upon hearing from his mother that his brother may well have been fighting on the other side at this same battle, he decided to desert. He fled to Tennessee. The brother, wounded, and released from the army, followed his deserter brother. The two brothers met, had a terrible fight, and mended their fences and settled down in a sparsely settled area of western Tennessee. One of the brothers married a Cherokee woman. When the US government demanded the resettlement of the Cherokee nation, these grand-parents of my children removed to Oklahoma. I believe that the son of the man married to the Cherokee woman married a woman who was mostly Cherokee, so that is why it is unclear if my children are 1/16 or 1/32 Cherokee.
So Mr. Brilliant is going to write about the Cherokee of South Carolina as part of his Landscape project. He still needs to write about the flora and fauna included in his Landscape, then he writes a review. Questions to be answered in the review include;
A+ Homeschool 