A few thoughts and things going on…

1.  We’re having a Geography week here (the girls and I).  We’re learning about Brazil this time (M’s choice) by investigating the country and its geography and culture online, reading a couple of books of traditional stories from Brazil, and looking at books and watching an Imax video about the Amazon rainforest (those are for tomorrow, actually).  They’ll add maps, flags, pics of the money and other things particular to Brazil to their notebooks. 

2.  Madeline and I have almost finished reading The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat.  This week we’ve been investigating Mobious strips, tangrams, magic squares, number patterns, and triangle numbers.  When asked if she wants to order the sequel to this book, M answered *gasp* “Yes!!!”.  

3.  Ben has been moving right along with his MathUSee PreAlgebra book – he’s on lesson 12 already and seems to be doing just fine with this.  I’m not sure where we’re headed after he finishes this book – the next MUS book or something else, perhaps a Life of Fred book?  He’s also been working in a new Grid Perplexors book (logic puzzles), writing a story (Bionicle related) on his own (well, I told him that I wanted him to be doing some kind of writing, either my topics or Freewrite ideas or his own choice of writing – he chose to write a story;  he won’t let me read it though – should I insist?).  We need to figure out how to get work done with his Chemistry kit.  Dad’s supposed to be doing it, but it’s been hard to get to it. 

4.  We’ve had a couple of kids with colds/coughs this week so it’s been a bit of a down week. 

5.  I got out for a desperately needed evening out by myself and a homeschool group meeting last night.  Dinner by myself at Panera (ahh, the peace and quiet!), a quick trip to Target to buy a bday present for a friend’s son, a splurge on a Starbuck’s coffee to take to the meeting with me, the meeting (very informal – just mostly chatting with friends in my hs group), then a bit of a chat with one good friend from the group afterward.  Came home to a quiet house with everyone including hubby in bed! 

 6.  Reading around in various places about reading material for kids – twaddle? classics? This is a big issue for me as well and one I’ve struggled with even before I began homeschooling, when I was still teaching elementary school.  I hope to write down my thoughts about this topic soon. 

7.  We’re gearing up for a big garage clean-out weekend.  We’ve got to tame the clutter beast that is our garage, not just because it desperately needs it, but also because we’re having our house treated for termites on Monday and we’ve got to have everything pulled away from the walls on the inside of the garage.  Less stuff in there in the first place means less stuff to move away from the walls.  Just not sure how we’re going to get it done with little Mr. Tornado around needing to be watched every moment.  Wish us luck!

8.  Thinking that next week is going to be a very light week as we’ll be leaving on Wednesday morning for a long holiday visit with my in-laws.  Should be a fun time – I get to see my new 3 month old niece again (they were just here visiting this past weekend, but how could I not be thrilled to see her again?  It’s just the thing when your “baby” is getting closer to two years old than to one…)

That’s enough miscellany for one evening.  Just needed to jot some of these things down.  More another time!