the domestic zoo

I’m leaving tomorrow!

God has truly smiled upon me and I have today and tomorrow off from classes. My archaeology professor said he’d just e-mail me the test review, and my friends in Digital Media said they’d take notes.

Let me tell ya, that’s truly what I needed after the week from h-e-double-hockey-sticks. The pièce de résistance being having my keys locked in my car and having to wait outside for AAA for nearly TWO HOURS.

Oy.

Today I’ve got to:

- clean rabbits’ litterbox and bedding

- clean mouse cages

- clean cat boxes

- clean bedroom

- do laundry

- pack

- finish organizing kids’ schoolwork

and a million or so other things.

Martin is still with us and still doing well. No idea what the random bleeding episodes were, but he doesn’t seem to be having any more issues for the time being.

I am leaving for Turkey on Thursday and will be gone until Monday, the 12th. As always, I’m nervous about leaving my babies for so long, but I know they’re in good hands. See y’all in two weeks!

Random Homeschool Lesson Plan Question:

The kidlets are going to be learning about the 50 states. I will *not* be responsible for the fact that most Americans can’t put half the states on a map and they think that New York City is the capitol of New York. But I’m not sure where to start. Eventually Stephen will veer off to learn about the government, and Hannah’s going to be doing a unit on the great state of Maine.

If you were teaching the states, what would you do? Would you go state-by-state in….

- alphabetical order?

- chronological order? (i.e. when they joined the US of A)

- geographic order? (starting with one coast and moving across the country) And which coast?

Thanks for the input! It really does help. I’ve decided to do it geographically, with a fair amount of history thrown in. I wrote up a Timeline of the States (through the 1950’s) which includes important people and events. The kidlets will have to pencil in the dates of statehood as they learn them. For instance, they’ll learn about the Missouri Compromise in order to understand why Maine became a state when it did. On the geographic side, we’ll work on placing states, knowing landforms, etc. Because it’s important to know that, no, Colorado isn’t on the West Coast. Not that I ever thought that…;-)

And once we’ve learned about our own country, we’ll expand to North America. Today, Maine. Tomorrow, the world!

I made huuuge progress with the kids’ schoolwork this week. Knowing I’d be gone for nearly the first half of March gave me the motivation to actually plan out their schoolwork a whole stinkin’ month in advance.

And I know most people won’t understand why that’s so difficult, but the learning experiences of a homeschooled child are constantly growing and changing which makes it very hard to actually map out more than a week of work. At least when you have kids like Stephen, who absorbs stuff so rapidly he’s blowing through his textbooks, or Hannah who’s just wonderfully, brilliantly ADD. Half the stuff they know was never on a lesson plan.

But, then again, the beauty of having a calendar set up is that the kids can work ahead a few days, or choose to skip a day and make the work up later. We’re all about being self-directed here.

Hannah’s picking up Japanese really quickly and is constantly correcting my pronunciation. And did I mention how well Stephen absorbs stuff? He’ll be sitting at the other end of the couch reading a book while we’re working, and he’ll just start translating things.

He did not appreciate being Hannah pointing at him and saying Nan desu ka?*

Me. Turkey. Five Days.

Yikes.

*What is it?