Trying to Outsmart the Dog.

Our fence finally gave up and fell down in the backyard. We have a new one ready to put up but nobody wants to attempt to dig post holes with the ground being dry and hard as concrete. Anyway, this allows Lucy, our outside dog, access to the back yard, which was previously the cats' domain. She's really taken a liking to cat food and wants to go in the backyard and keep the cats from eating their food. I put it on the patio table for them and she can't reach it, but still, she feels the need to guard it and keep the cats away from it. This morning, I fed the cats on the front window ledge to keep her from getting their food. They make a cute picture don't they?

Kinda weird.

I'm actually posting from the library while my kids are at the last tween event for the week. This one was game day and they felt that they really didn't need mom hanging around while they played Wii and other Nintendo games, so I got to browse the book section. That lasted about an hour and I got really bored and so decided to sign up for a computer. It's the first time I've used one of the library's computers and their really, really fast internet. Oh, I could learn to like this. At home my connection is unbelievably slow, so this is really fun. I may have to visit some of the blogs that have videos that I've never gotten to watch and watch them. I don't know. It feels kind of weird being on my own blog with my big old face staring back at me. This monitor is huge and makes my picture look big. I hope you all don't see it that large!

Anyway, I'm off for some really fast internet surfing.

See ya.

Here's the sword and the wallet, both made of colored duct tape.

These are from the library craft class. I haven't taken pictures of the many friendship bracelets yet.

It's funny.

It's funny how little things we do will translate into a few hours of learning for the kids. Yesterday, we did the craft thing at the library and my daughter was making crafts for hours. She's still making friendship bracelets. She's made a whole bunch of them. She looked in my embroidery yarn and found a pattern for some different kinds so now she's trying them. This has got to be educational for something? Maybe art?

During the bracelets tonight, my youngest son saw a bead with Roman numerals on it. He became facinated with Roman numerals and had me print out a page about them and then he studied it on his own for half an hour or so, pointing out interesting facts to me. (The whole time I was typing a report for work but that's beside the point!) Any little thing can be a leaping-off-place for some learning.

When my mom found out we were studying American history this year, she got a placemat with the presidents on it. My daughter has found this facinating and every chapter we read in the history book, she's got to look at the placemat and we've got to discuss who was president when each event happened. On her own, she started drawing the presidents and writing their names along the bottom of our American history timeline.

Tomorrow's the day that the grounding for my youngest ends. It's been an interesting 2 weeks. I actually think he's kind of enjoyed the time and revisited a lot of toys and things he hasn't played with for a while. He played with the castle building set, the lincoln logs, the bionicles, the paint and all kinds of different things. Anyway, it's over when he wakes up tomorrow morning. I wonder how tomorrow's school's going to go.

If you hear whining tomorrow, it's probably coming from here.

Yesterday's School Report.

We did do school yesterday. Everyone got their morning lists done by at least 3:00 p.m. The younger 2 kids also got their afternoon lists done and then we went to the first ever tween event at the library. (Tweens are kids from 9-12 in case you didn't know!) They've set up 4 events for tweens this week. The first was a movie on Monday, which we didn't go to and then yesterday they had a craft party. It was pretty cute. They had friendship bracelets to make out of some kind of crochet yarn and then they had crafts to make out of colored duct tape, which included a wallet and a flower/pen. Very cute. My youngest, always the free spirit, made a sword and shield in addition to his wallet and affixed a change pocket to the side of his wallet as well. I'll share pictures later. Then we all browsed the shelves and came home with a wide selection of books. One of the books my daughter picked up was a craft book and she spent some time making crafts out of it last night.

Today, the library is having a pirate party and tomorrow, game time. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Always late.

It seems like we are always late for everything. We didn't used to be but we've gotten really bad lately. It looks like today is going to be no exception. I've been trying to get myself and the kids ready to go to the library for a tweens event for the last half hour but we've all had to use the same bathroom because someone else is in the other one. I'm not going to mention any names but it rhymes with Baddy. The kids all had 'take a shower' on their MORNING lists but as usual, begged off until the afternoon. We barely finished our afternoon fraction lessons and then we all started competing for bathroom time. I really don't like being late.

Report on the Field Trip.

The firefighters gave us a tour of the place and let the kids climb in one of the big tanker trucks. The kids also got to look at through a type of thermal detector which was very cool. We talked about what to do to make our homes safe from fire, including installing smoke detectors in every bedroom, sleeping with the door to the bedroom closed, crawling on the floor to get out (Stay low and go.) and having a planned meeting place outside. It was very informative. We also talked about other kinds of rescues that the firefighters do, which was pretty cool. I think we all had a good time.

After the class, we got lunch and went to the park. The mom's had a planning meeting and the kids played. It was a pretty good day.

Field Trip!

We're going on a small field trip today. Since October is fire safety month, we're going to the fire department for a class on fire safety and then we're heading to a park. When we planned this outing a month or so ago, we were expecting the weather to be cool this second week of October, but no, it's going to be in the 90s. Nice and warm. Very, very warm.

Here's a link to a bunch of lesson plans from Scholastic on fire safety. in case you want to teach it this month.