Camian Academy

This morning I woke up and found a paper flower (made by Cameron) and an I Love You card (made by Ani) under my pillow. Happy Valentine’s Day! Seven years ago today I was in labor for the first time and less than 24 hours from meeting my daughter.

Unit studies are so fun. We enjoy them, but they are tiring to me. Jamie suggested using other stuff for normal school and occasionally doing unit studies for fun. That’s probably the best idea. Of course picking something that both kids will enjoy and respond well to is difficult.

We are using Handwriting Without Tears, Math-U-See, and Latin for Children. We’re not stopping those. It’s everything else that is up for grabs.

Today Ani informed me it is time to do “real” school again. That’s her typical pattern. After a few weeks of a unit study or unschooling or whatever she begins to really miss more academic fill in the blank sorts of things. Really, anything I choose with blanks to fill in will make her happy provided I don’t underestimate her ability level and bore her to death. But since I don’t want to do two completely different sets of school with Ani and Cameron I can’t just pick any old fill in the blank thing.

So I started talking to Cameron. He told me he likes the dinosaur unit but he would like more “real” school. I asked him if he liked Handwriting Without Tears. He said yes. I asked him if he liked Math-U-See. That got a very emphatic yes. I asked him if he liked Latin for Children. Well, I can’t be three for three. He said he likes some of it but not all. Which is totally fine since it’s well above his level and I’m happy to hear him recite some of the vocabulary and chants. It turns out what he likes about HWT and MUS are the blanks to fill in. Yes, it seems my school allergic child is beginning to like “real” school.

I’ve been trying to make sense of Sonlight’s website. I like the literature-based approach. I like that while it’s packaged and planning is done it can still be purchased a la carte. I like that it can be used for multiple ages and levels. I hate their website. I ordered a catalog which I understand makes a whole lot more sense. While I’ve been at it I’ve been ordering lots of catalogs from homeschooling supply providers. I love “reading” homeschool stuff catalogs so I’ll have fun anyway (suggestions for places to request catalogs from are welcome!). At the gym yesterday I was talking to a woman who has three kids, ages 7, 10, and 12, that she has homeschooled throughout. They use Sonlight. She said she envisioned herself as a unit study homeschooler. In the end it turned out unit studies were too much, burned her out, and not what ended up best for her kids all the time. She supplements with “fun stuff.” Even packaged curricula don’t have to be all or nothing.

Eventually I’ll get this all sorted out. I still very much love the classical approach, just not necessarily the way it worked for the Wise and Bauer kids. Maybe I’ll just consider myself uber-eclectic. For now, at least, we’re learning about dinosaurs and having fun doing it.

I haven’t updated what we’ve been doing in our dinosaur unit for some time now. I remember now why we stopped the unit studies in the first place. They are super fun and we love doing them. They work well. But they are tiring and I burn out quickly. Some of the things we have done over the past few weeks:

• Checked our chicken bones in their vinegar baths most days and recorded the results
• Read pages 52-110 of Jurassic Park
• Discussed topographical maps
• Listened to Lyrical Life Science topographic map song (during which the children did some “dino dancing”)
• Made topographical maps using the information on page 53 of Jurassic Park
• Discussed post-mortem contraction and looked at contracted raptor “fossil” plate
• Cameron wrote problem, hypothesis, and procedure on science project backboard
• Ani wrote the information under problem, hypothesis, and half of procedure on science project backboard
• Dino Dig (see picture below)
• Discussed chaos theory and demonstrated it with dripping/running faucet
• Used the Let’s Explore Dinosaurs book to determine which model dinosaur was a sauropod (which led to Ani trying to identify all of our model dinosaurs)
• Discussed warm vs. cold blooded
• Made a fern “fossil” rubbing and labeled it
• Discussed and made a line graph
• Discussed egg teeth
• “Hatched” a Hatchin’ Grow Dinosaur
• Assembled and glued Dino Dig skeletons
• DNA kit (extracted DNA from an onion)
• Listened to Dinosaur Rap CD

Ani and Cameron excavating dinosaurs. Ani got a T Rex and Cameron got a Triceratops.

He weighs 18 pounds 6 ounces and is 27 1/2″ long. He loves to growl now. His big brother has taught him well.

We bought a Rainbow vacuum on eBay a few years ago. It was already well used, probably 15 or 16 years old at least. Wednesday I was vacuuming and it died a sad, horrible death. It wasn’t unexpected. It had been dying for about 3 months and wasn’t picking up quite as well as it used it.

I had finished vacuuming one room and was starting on the next when Cameron accused me of starting a fire. Then I had to admit the smell coming from the vacuum was not a good one. So I cut the vacuum off and unplugged it. The smell got worse for a while before it got better. It was a metallic burning smell. I don’t think it had actually caught fire, but I think it just might have if I had continued vacuuming.

So I fried my brain doing research on vacuums. A cheapie was out of the question. We’re supposed to vacuum daily due to Fritz’s dust/dust mite allergies plus Fritz puts everything in his mouth now. The last vacuum we had that was cheap didn’t last very long and it was not used nearly as often as we need to use one now. I wanted something easier than a Rainbow. I didn’t want to have to fill the water, pull it along behind me, lug it up and down the stairs, and dump the water anymore. Too much of a process. So I narrowed the choices down to Oreck or Dyson.

The Oreck won. Actually, we don’t have to commit to it for another 29 days, but last night we brought an Oreck home to test out. It really came down to the weight of the vacuum. The Oreck is 8 pounds, the Dyson more than double that. Since I have to carry the vacuum up and down stairs light is good. Plus the big kids always had trouble handling the Rainbow, but had no problem maneuvering the Oreck. Also, Jamie didn’t want a bagless vacuum. He’s the one who always did the emtying so his desire for a bagged vacuum counted a lot.

I vacuumed our middle floor last night with our new Oreck. I have to say I really like it. The light weight is incredible. I carried the vacuum, Fritz, and a bag of extra bags inside when we got home with it and it was kind of funny to me that Fritz is so much heavier than the vacuum. It did a great job vacuuming the carpet as well as the kitchen floor. I think my favorite feature is the little brush thingies at the sides that sweep stuff out from along the baseboards. I hate having to separately go along the baseboards and now I don’t have to anymore. I’m guessing we’ll be keeping the vacuum after the remaining 29 days in our trial are up.

Yesterday Ani wrote a story and stapled it together in book form. She then wrote a price on the back (one cent) and asked Cameron if he wanted to buy it. Cameron declined so being the good mother I am I paid her a penny and received a delightful story in return.

The Girl Who Looked in the Window
One day a little girl was walking down the street. She look in a pet shop window. She saw a cat and said I wander how much is that cat in the window. So she went inside the store. She told the storekeeper what she wanted. The storkeeper got the cat and they liveid happliy together. The end.

(spellings are as Ani wrote the words)

Why is it my older two children seem to have no cold sensors in their bodies (or maybe it’s no common sense)? It snowed last night and the big kids happily went outside to play in it this morning. They really wanted to make snow angels (last night, not knowing it would snow, they laid on our kitchen floor making linoleum angels wishing they were laying in snow). They came in after a few minutes and suddenly they were freezing. They warmed up and three times now I’ve had to herd them back into the house because they have gone into the backyard with no coats, hats, gloves, or shoes on (hey, at least they were wearing socks, right?). They keep going out to get snow to eat but their trips are taking longer and longer. Crazy children they are!

We’ve been reading the Deltora Quest series as a family. They became an accidental read aloud when I checked one out of the library a few weeks ago. Deltora Quest is by Emily Rodda. She’s the author of the Fairy Realm series that the kids and I enjoyed reading a few months ago.

Anyway, I started reading the first book to the kids one night at bedtime. Jamie was home and listened and then asked that I not read it to the kids without him around. The books are really good. Sometimes they are a little too scary for me but I am a wimp and cannot handle the “scariness” of fantasy (yet I can read true crime without much problem… just the small side effect of thinking everyone in the world is bad after I’ve read two or three in a row). They are not too scary for my children. Really the Deltora Quest books aren’t very scary at all since they are aimed at 8-12 year olds. No one good and few bad actually die. To quote a line in George of the Jungle, they just get really bad boo-boos.

We’ve read 5 of the books so far. There are 8 in the original series, 4 in the spin-off Dragons series, and 3 in the spin-off Shadowlands series, plus a Monsters book.