Friday through Wednesday

This year we took a break for the Labor Day weekend, starting on Friday. No formal education.. but of course in homeschool learning never ends. Cimeron and Aaron had a great weekend at the Bigfoot Jamboree from Friday until Sunday, then Monday was a recovery day. Cimeron is already sick. I don't know for sure if she caught her cold at the Jamboree or at school last week. It has occurred to me that she'll probably be sick a lot this winter through catching bugs at school. She was a preemie and with a weaker immune system from birth she's always seemed more prone to catching everything that goes round. She stayed home from school on Tuesday but went back today.

Aaron ended the weekend with a dog bite. It happened like this: he was visiting his friend here.. then they went to the other boy's house when the family wasn't expecting them, and they had their dog in the house. Well, unfortunately their dog, who is litter-mate to our dog, Bear, and almost an exact twin, doesn't like visitors. Our dog is the same way about biting and spends his days on a chain in a pen now, and just comes in at night. Both dogs are very sweet and loving with their families. Anyhow, his friend's dog bit my son. The amount of blood pouring from Aaron's cheek was enough to put the whole family in shock, but as it turned out Aaron's just fine. The dog scratched him on the shoulder with his paw which (amazing to me) left a bruise on Aaron's shoulder that showed up today, 2 days later. Apparently their dog is bigger than ours but both dogs have big paws. Aaron has been over there dozens of times and this is the first time their dog attacked him.

Because it was late Monday afternoon when this happened I couldn't take him to the clinic until the next day. We're a two hour drive from the nearest hospital so I didn't want to go there. His friend's mom put a good butterfly bandage on Aaron's cheek-wound and Ida (the nurse-practitioner) doesn't think that Aaron will even have a scar. She recommended we just keep that bandage on and apply Neosporin ointment. Also we decided to give Aaron a tetanus shot. I wasn't sure I wanted him to have any more vaccines but because of Aaron's lifestyle which includes occasionally stepping on nails, I thought it would be best for him. Ida told me that Tetanus has a very rapid onset and does its damage within 24 hours, so it isn't something I want to take chances with.

Anyhow....... So that was our weekend.

When we went to the doctor's office Tuesday (yesterday) I was able to read some magazine articles to Aaron. We had to be worked into the schedule there so we were in the waiting room probably about 45 minutes or an hour. At first Aaron was very uncooperative. He didn't want to be there and turned up his nose at anything I could find in the magazines - cartoons, jokes, etc. ...all he wanted was to be at home again.

Finally I saw an article about a high jumper in the June 2002 issue of Highlights magazine, and just started reading it. Sure enough it caught his interest. The article was about Richard Fosbury, an athlete from Medford, Oregon who won an olympic gold medal and set a world record in the sixties, using a technique he'd developed himself. His technique, called the Fosbury Flip, is now used by high-jumpers all over the world.

Next I read "Wheels In His Head" about the invention of the Ferris Wheel, also from the same magazine. This was about how George Washington Gale Ferris came up with the idea of a giant viewing wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. It was created to compete with the Eiffel Tower that had been at the previous World's Fair. At first the fair committee didn't want it but finally approved it just before the fair was to open. This original wheel was gigantic. It could hold 2000 people at one time! It had viewing box-cars that each could hold 60 people. I wouldn't be brave enough to get into such a weird contraption but it was very popular with fairgoers and at 50 cents per ride made a big profit for the fair.

After that we switched to Popular Mechanics (Sept. 2002 issue) and read "Fueling the Future" by Robert C. Stempel.. it was about alternative fuels. We learned about cars powered by hydrogen fuel and about handheld electronic devices powered by photovoltaics. It was awesome and gave Aaron a lot to think about.

After the clinic appointment we stopped at the store for a snack and I bought him more felt pens and another game to use for math. We went to the Indian Creek River Access to consume our snacks and to enjoy nature and talk about the history of the area.

Because we did so much reading and because I felt he needed to take it easy after all he'd been through, I let him off studies for the rest of the day.

This brings us up to today. Wednesday. We got a lot done today. We started, like we always do, with Ancient Wisdom and Art. The scripture for today was Proverbs 27:4 - "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?" We read it together, then he drew a picture with the felt pens on his paper with the pre-printed scripture. Next he wrote the entire scripture out for writing practice. That worked very well so I think we will use our Ancient Wisdom for writing practice in the future.

After writing he had a break to watch TV because a favorite show was coming on. Next we had reading. I was going to have him do a lesson in the 100 Easy Lessons book but he said, "I have an idea - get rid of the book and throw it into the Klamath River." So I said that was a great idea and wrote the sentence on the pen board: "Get rid of the book and throw it into the Klamath River." We talked about different types of punctuation, how you would say the sentence with the different punctuation marks... etc... also we talked about capitalization and spelling. It was fun.

Next I read Judy Bushy's "Down River" column to him from the August 21 issue of Pioneer Press. We're doing a unit study on the Klamath National Forest and that column had a great explanation of how fires are fought when they break out close to town. It was interesting reading about people we know doing things to fight the Creek Fire, the location of which we've actually seen. Also since Judy is my friend it was cool to read something in the newspaper written by someone we know. While I was reading I put the Klamath Forest map out for Aaron to look at.

After that we played a game of rummy for math. I'm still doing warm-up math exercises with him - we haven't started our main math programs for the year... which will be more of the "Key to Measurement" workbooks and "Math For Smarty Pants" which we started last spring.

Now their friends are here visiting Cimeron and Aaron once again negating the well-known myth that homeschool kids don't have a social life.

  ¶ 5:04 PM