Camian Academy

We are all done with regular school for the year. I’m not really counting our Christmas Around the World unit as really doing school since that will mostly be just fun stuff.

We watched the Latin for Children A chapter 16 video, learned the chapter maxim, the imperfect verb endings chant, the words plow, sail, blow, call, avoid, gold, silver, arm, conversation, and plan, read the grammar page, and Ani completed the worksheet, pre-quiz, and activity pages. I read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle (great illustrated classics) aloud. Ani told me the synopsis and the kids reviewed it (Ani loved it, Cameron liked it). I read Peter Pan (great illustrated classics) aloud. Ani told me the synopsis. The kids reviewed it (Ani said she l-l-l-l-loved it - hmmm, has she been watching this a bit much, Cameron said he loved it, too). I read The Picture of Dorian Gray (great illustrated classics) aloud. Ani told me the synopsis. The kids reviewed it (Ani loved it, Cameron thought it was okay). So as usual Ani loved all three (and especially Peter Pan, but at least I got some non-hated it/didn’t like it reviews out of Cameron. I read all of the Illustrated Book of Mormom volume 8 aloud.

In history, we read and discussed the sections of Story of the World volume 1 on The First Roman Prince, The Birth of Jesus, Jesus Crucified and Resurrected, The End of the Ancient Jewish Nation, Nero the Evil Emperor, Christians in the Catacombs, The Emperor is Christian!, The British Rebellion, Rome Divided in Two, Attila the Hun, Stilicho Roman and Barbarian, The Coming of the Visigoths, The Last Roman Emperor, and The Gifts of Rome. That completes the first volume of Story of the World. In science, we read about and discussed elephants, wolves, meerkats, cats (wild and domesticated), dogs (wild and domesticated), puffins, squirrels, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, and gerbils, reindeer, tarantulas, flies, centipedes, and scorpions. That completes our animals unit.

Ani did two piano lessons. She completed two pages in her lesson book, two pages in her activity and ear training book, and a page in her notespeller book. In music history, we learned about Monteverdi and Mussorgsky. In art, we learned about Massaccio (and did a profile portrait activity) and Degas (and did a motion drawing activity).

Ani completed lessons 26 and 27 in Spelling Workout C. She misspelled two of the twenty regular words in lesson 26: below (beloy) and contain (cantain). She also misspelled two of the five bonus words: bouquet (buoke) and beneath (beanth). In lesson 27, she got all of the twenty regular words correct and misspelled two of the five bonus words: raccoon (racoon) and crooked (crookid). She watched the video for lesson 1 of Math-U-See Epsilon and completed pages 1A and 1B. Cameron spent a bit of quality time with the Math-U-See blocks and discovered addition. He was most fascinated that there were many different combinations that all add up to 7.

Yesterday I finished reading Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky by Connie Lapallo. I love historical fiction and this book definitely did not disappoint me. It is a wonderful book. The writing style just sucks you in and you feel like you are there watching the events as they unfold.

Connie Lapallo is descended from a girl, Cecily, who came to Jamestown without her parents in 1611. In researching, Connie (a fellow homeschooling mom from Virginia) discovered just why that was and who the little girl’s parents were. Cecily came to join her family. Her mother, Joan, and sister, Janey, arrived in 1609 and survived the Starving Time. This book tells the story of the early women of Jamestown.

I bought the book intending to read it to myself and then save it for next year to read aloud as a family. 2007 is the 400th anniversary of the very first colonists arrival in Jamestown. As I read I could see a unit study based on the book taking shape in my mind. So next year we won’t just be reading the book all together, we’ll be reading and learning and doing based on the book. This will be aided by the wonderful notes following the story that include what happened to the main characters, who is real and who is not and why, who still survived in 1625, maps, and more.

Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky is the story of Joan. As I finished it I couldn’t help but wonder about Cecily. Connie Lapallo does plan a sequel to tell Cecily’s story. I will definitely be buying it when it comes out!

Jamie and my big kids really like to eat smoked oysters and smoked mussels for a snack. I find that utterly disgusting, but whatever. Last night Ani and Cameron were having smoked mussels and they asked about mussel anatomy. So Jamie googled and came up with a picture to show them. From that point on Ani dissected her remaining mussels before eating them and would gleefully announce that she was eating the heart or eating the stomach or whatever part.

I think I liked it better when all meat was chicken.

Jamie is 31 today. Happy birthday!

Our family has never been big on celebrating birthday on the actual day, or even very close to the day. Well, except my dad’s birthday. He was born on Christmas Eve so he always makes sure December 24th is his birthday and December 25th is Christmas and the two do not cross. His mother was very good at making sure he never got gypped out of a birthday just because he happened to be born the day before Christmas.

But I digress…

My birthday is April 5th. We celebrated it with my uncle on August 5th this year. It just turned out that was the first time we could get together. Cameron’s birthday was October 3rd. Uncle Ralph’s birthday was November 7th. Jamie’s birthday is tomorrow. Uncle Ralph is coming down this afternoon to celebrate the birthdays. The amazing thing is he’ll be doing Jamie’s birthday early. I don’t think that’s ever happened.

I don’t really think it is extremely important to celebrate near the exact day with extended family. I always thought it was great to be able to look forward to another birthday celebration. And this year was a bonus. With 4 months between my birthday and celebrating with Uncle Ralph, I had forgotten we hadn’t celebrated already by the time August rolled around!

Fritz has been having some problems lately and this morning he was tested for allergies. The good news is he has no true allergies to food. The bad news is he is pretty much allergic to the state of Virginia. He’s allergic to dust, dust mites, mold, maple, oak, ryegrass, timothy grass, english plantain, and ragweed.

The doctor asked me to keep a food diary so we can see if the baby reacts to anything I eat (and so he gets in the breastmilk) consistently (we already know dairy makes him throw up and peanut causes mucousy poop). Then I need to avoid anything that causes a reaction in him so we can prevent those sensitivities from turning into allergies from repeated exposure.

Poor little Fritz did not like the allergy test, but he was a trooper. First he was all happy to have his shirt off and be laying on his belly. Then the doctor started pressing the tines on his back. His eyes got wide with the first set of pricks. He started turning red with the second. He started crying with the third. And he was screaming with the fourth. I sang to him and the big kids joined in. The Itsy Bitsy Fritzy distracted him a little. Halfway through the ABC song he stopped crying. By the end of Popcorn Popping he was pretty happy.

We gave Cameron a little 10 gallon fish tank for his birthday last year. In the first two months we had the fish tank we went through at least a dozen fish, including one little one that just completely disappeared. In December of last year we got the six tetras and the one sucker fish that we still have today. After all the dead fish we were shocked that somehow we stopped losing them. They even survived the 10 mile drive when we moved to the new house just fine.

What did we change? Well, for one thing we quit changing the water. Our fish seem to like a dirty-ish tank. We also never add water from the tap to their tank. We won’t drink our tap water so we don’t expect our fish to live in it (never mind the water company here actually has a warning about using the tap water in fresh water fish tanks). Whatever it is, these fish are quite healthy and seem to like sharing the house with us.

Our sucker fish is amazing. He has quit growing longer now and is just getting fatter and fatter. He’s very strong. Sometimes we’d hear this sound and for the longest time we couldn’t figure out what it was. Eventually we discovered that it was the sucker fish moving the rocks in the bottom of the tank! He does that to get the junk underneath the rocks. It just amazes us to watch this little fish moving rocks with his head.

If Aaron Copland had not died in 1990, he would have turned 106 yesterday. In celebration of his birthday there was a free concert at Northern Virginia Community College. The performance was by a combined chorus of a few local high schools and the college chorus and the Washington Metropolitan Youth Orchestra. It worked out perfectly to go since we learned about Copland a few weeks ago and it was on a Tuesday which is the night of Jamie’s geology class. The concert and his class started at the same time and since he had a test last night we knew he’d get out early so we wouldn’t have to wait around until after 10 (as it turned out he had time to take his test and take a test at the testing center for a virtual class he’s taking and he was still waiting for us when the concert ended.

The music was excellent. We all like Aaron Copland’s music and the performers were very good. Ani forgot to whisper a few times at the beginning and got a little wiggly at the end, but otherwise the children were extremely well behaved. Even Fritz just sat and watched and listened for quite a long time. He finally fell asleep during the second to last song. Cameron fell asleep during the very last song. I’m not sure how since the Freedom Canticle is a very loud and exciting piece. Ani said she’d like to go to more things like that. Cameron said he liked the music but it was too long (about 2 hours).