The next thing.

So now, we've got the festival behind us, the wisdom tooth surgery behind us, the selling of mom's house is behind us and the next thing is my salivary gland tumor surgery on Monday.  I'm a little nervous about it.  The main thing is that I hope that I bounce back quickly and feel pretty good because I might have to go right back to work.  :-(  Fun times.  Also, we found out that youngest son needs his wisdom teeth out as well, but there's no rush for him, so we'll see.

In other news my Christmas cactus is blooming though it is Halloween.   It is beautiful.

what does any of  this have to  do  with  homeschooling?  It makes things easier because I  can leave youngest home with his sister to go visit mom, instead of leaving her home alone after surgery.   Homeschooling has made our lives easier and richer.  

What do you do when the dog has 2 heads?

Call the doctor.  My daughter had her wisdom teeth out yesterday and came home and some time later, mentioned that since the procedure she had been seeing double on one side and that it looked like Cosmo had 2 heads.  By the time the doctor called back, it had pretty much resolved, but all in all, despite watching Back to The Future II and III and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, it wasn't a very fun day.  Tired after moving and festival-ing over the weekend, the rest of us just kind of laid around with her.  The boy did keep to his exercise routine and his school schedule and I did work in the morning, but the afternoon was couch potato time, pretty much.  It was rainy and cold all day, which added to the lethargy.

Community Classes.

I just wanted to get you to think, this morning, about what classes and opportunities might be available in your area, for free, for you and for your homeschoolers.  This week, our library has baby, toddler and preschool storytimes, beginning quilting, rainbow loom, yoga, zumba, 3 or 4 different craft classes (one of which we went to last night), computer classes, bridge lessons, a class on what herbs to harvest in the fall, a watercolor landscape painting class (oh how I wish that wasn't while I was working!), a computer basics class, a lego club, a knitting club, a club for quilters, a writing the story of your life group and more.  That's just this week, people and these are all free.  4H in our county has needlworking club, sewing, sport fishing, country ham, sport shooting, and many more I can't think of right now.  Also, the local hospital has free classes.  We are toying with the idea of going to a free songwriting class tonight at a hospital. Also, we went to church and had a choir practice with a director who has a master's degree in music and we are learning from her how to sing better, for free.  :-)    Look at the newspaper Facebook and search for classes in your area.  We had a ton of fun last night at the local library.


Also, I got my results back from my biopsy and it was benign!  Yay!

Fall stuff.

It was exactly the same temperature inside the house as out of it.  While waiting at the dentist for my daughter this morning, I read an article in Reader's Digest about how you can lose weight by keeping your thermostat down in the winter and having to burn off body fat to keep warm.  Hmmm.  Sounds like a plan.

Of course, if I keep making delicious desserts like this pumpkin cake with caramel frosting, the body fat will probably hang around!

This is the view from our porch right now as fall in Kentucky does its beautiful thing.  I once heard a quote where someone said if they lived to be 100, they'd regret that they only got to see autumn 100 times.  I agree.  It's just amazing.

The young adults here are on a fitness kick and have been walking or biking every day.  The other day they saw this humonguous mushroom/toadstool thing and took a picture of it with my phone, so I'm sharing.

We spent some time today getting ready for the fall festival I'm in charge of this weekend.  Fingers crossed it goes well!  

An update.

I had the biopsy yesterday.  Physically it wasn't too bad.  The worst part is having to wait another week to make sure it's not malignant.  The doctor said that most of these are benign, so fingers crossed and any prayers would be appreciated.  Meanwhile, we've been doing our regular stuff, which means a lot of different things going on.  I have finally gotten used to the idea that my daughter can run some of the errands for me now that she has her driver's license and that has made my life a little easier, plus she has been doing more things around the house, which I appreciate very much.  The sale of mom's house is impending, so we are going to have to get over there and do some work.  The kids and I have joined the church choir to sing in the Christmas cantata.  Fall is happening around here, the youngest is going on with school without really any help from anyone and we are keeping busy.

It's looking more like fall here.

Since it's cooler, the morning glories bloom all day.  

On October 12, some balloons fell from the sky and landed here.  They were birthday balloons and it just so happens that October 12th is an important birthday in the book my daughter is writing, so it was kind of cool.

My daughter decided to do some of my kind of art and did a fabulous job.

While she was out running errands for me one day, she sent me this picture of the cereal aisle, to show that there are no longer gluten free Rice Krispies ... 

and this misplaced fork.  Not sure why she sent this one, but she did comment that Sheldon Cooper would say that this is not a fork, it is a trident.  :-)

And I've been wondering how all of my calendar pages so quickly go from looking like this

to looking like this.  :-P

Another good article and updates.

What Homeschoolers Can Learn from Finland's Math Success

a leaf shaped like a star got caught in a spider web and decorated our deck for a while.  

As to what we are doing?  We are still Netflixing The Gilmore Girls, now on season 7.  Don't tell me how it turns out.  Okay, go ahead and tell me.  No.  Don't.  The suspense is killing me, but I guess I'll live.  I'm going to be really disappointed when it's over.

We also just finished reading The Copper Gauntlet which is the second book in the Magisterium series.  It was very good.  We are going to start reading the Bartimaeus trilogy again possibly tonight. We started it before but we were interrupted and never got started back.

I found out that I am totally in charge of the trunk or treat fall festival at church since I said yes to being on the committee for it, expecting 2 other committee members, but everyone else said no.   Uh Oh.  Doing a little planning for that.

I'm still teaching the art class.  We are well into our second project.  It's nice and has grown to 9 people.  How cool is that?

I've been having a lot of medical tests.  My neck has been hurting and I had an ultrasound and then a CAT scan and it turns out I have a tumor in my salivary gland, which looks benign, but I have to have it biopsied to make sure.  :-(  Every time I say the word biopsy, I think of the lady in My Big Fat Greek Wedding saying "bib- bop-sied".  I wish I could get it done today so I don't have to worry about it, but the appointment to see about it is next week.  Trying to put it out of my mind, without much success.

Still no word on mom's house.  :-(














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Haikus!

Youngest son has an assignment in his writing book to do a haiku.  In case you don't know, this is a form of japanese poetry that has 3 lines, the first is 5 syllables, the second is 7 syllables and the third is 5 syllables.  Being a lover of words, the boy has been having a good time with it.

ah a lovely morning
I should write some haiku now.
they're just so easy.

you are just so nice
you say I am nice my dear
but I'M OBNOXIOUS.

gah what was that word?!
onomatomania?
no, that's not it. please?

Great article.

Here's the link:  http://schoolingtheworld.org/a-thousand-rivers/

And here's a quote:  

Cooper hypothesizes that the common feature of many “specific learning disabilities” is a preference for processing information visually and holistically rather than verbally and analytically. Rather than narrowly focusing on things in a linear sequential way, the child with this tendency absorbs visual input and meaning and context in a “big picture” way (blurry colors lighting up in the right hemisphere of the brain), a process which may slow down decoding but which also deepens and enriches it, leading to lateral thinking, intuition, imagination and creativity. These children’s brains are organizing themselves differently, and it should go without saying that their developmental arc may therefore be different. When we interfere in the process of this organization, when we stigmatize it and test it and remediate it prematurely -– when we try to teach dyslexics to think like other children by aggressively drilling them in phonics –– Cooper says we are robbing these children of the opportunity to build organically on their many strengths rather than being treated as something broken that needs fixing. 

As you know, learning "disabilities" are near and dear to our hearts around here.