Monday business day

2015-1-26
9:30 - greenhouse operations,
---plant maintenance - the parsley is up!
---discussion of what someone would be able to buy her plants for
9:45 - discussion of making toys, materials, discussion of patterns, shops, 'make to order' and so forth
---math about supplies and prices
10a  - break to go to town

11:30a - Lowes, making calls, getting card signed for friend who is leaving our store, conversations with coworkers about homeschooling, what Esme likes and doesn't, her new shoes, plans, drawing etc etc...

One lady customer walking by said 'Sick, are we, home sick from school today?'...  We said, no homeschool - this is a field trip to talk to people, ask questions, listen to me make some calls and then go home and do our other things.  She said 'Oh'.. shot her husband a 'really now, would you look at that...' look, but walked on.

-----reading and using the vending machine by herself, 'breaktime'  I offered to pay for chips to split, but she really wanted a drink, found one she could afford (by reading the signs) and paid for it out of her own purse.

-----hard lesson (offer to pay for piece of brass fitting)  She didn't know what it was, and didn't know why she couldn't have it because it was lying on a shelf behind a display in a dust pile.. but STILL...and she tried to lie about not having anything in her pocket, so I pressed the morality of it.  I asked the store manager to price it for her, and made her pay for it.

         Even if it is trash, even if you don't know what it is.. if it's in a store and not yours, don't take it unless you ask or offer to pay for it.  That is stealing, and it is wrong. 

12:30 break to get back in car and go uptown

1p - supplies @ Dollar Tree and WalMart, post office

2p - lunch and association word game (her choice)
-----She would say a word, then I would say a word to go 'with' it, and we would decide if it was funny, a good match or a bad match for the word.  I was impressed by her choice and she had a lot of good ones.
2:30 break

3p - feeding chickens and puppy vaccinations (disc. watching Daddy give them to the puppies)
-----opening comic books that came in the mail, reading Power Pack 1985 with help
4p - break

//She also helped Daddy open a package of ground beef and split it up into six sections and deliver one section of it into a pot for him, which will be our dinner tonight (sloppy cheeseburger). We discussed the hard lesson with Daddy, as well.

She does feel very accomplished for the day, and has put her comic books (with my urging) into a fold-a-file so dogs and cats and other things can't get to them but she can have them by her TV to read.  I really hope this encourages her to read more and want to read about what happens to the four kids in the Power Pack.  We had gotten one issue at a flea market stand last year and she has read and re-read it so many times, amazed at the kids having powers and being siblings.

I have some planes to make tonight!  And we have flea market in the morning.

New items in the KnitOwl shop

At the KnitOwl shop for 2015 at mariemeyer.etsy.com

It's the time of year I am buying seeds for our garden, and Esme's greenhouse endeavors now, and also getting other items ready for the flea market we go to throughout the year.  Our Blue Black Shackamaxon beans did very well this year, and we will be selling packets of them with some free surprises of other varieties I have been growing.  And the Alien Monster Dolls are back up for sale with the octopi and the planes.  These are made to order toys and I will have to fit them into our schedule to sit down at the machine and make a few here and there.

Seeds:

Florida Speckled Lima Beans (Butter Peas)

Blue Black Shackamaxon pole beans

Brown speckled Whipporwill cowpeas 

and limited supplies of White climbers, White speckled climbers, Ireland Creek Annie, Tongues of Fire, Kenearly Yellow Eye and Tennessee Greasy beans.

What are we planning for the garden this year? 

I have decided to forgo all curcubits and other zucchini other than Tromboncino squash, which I've *heard* the squash bugs don't like.. in hopes of cutting down their numbers.  We will be going forth with the Principe Borghese tomatoes and Black Prince.  And of course.. I can't put myself into a box yet on the beans -- there will be some planted, probably many.. but it is to be determined. 

Friday

Handwriting

One of the hardest things for Esme is handwriting, and spelling.. and put the two together you get frustration and a struggle to accomplish anything.  But, as I tell her, it will only get worse if she doesn't practice.  So, I enforced a half hour of writing sentences today to -reinforce- capitalization, end punctuation and making a complete sentence.  She complained a LOT, and this is what we came out with.  Toward the end she was actually getting a little better... and she made a joke of 'hat' dog when she knew it was the last one.

She insisted it was torture to write anything...and I told her if she wanted to be a grown-up this was a necessary skill.  She had no trouble at all making her checklist yesterday (well, except spelling lemon).. but curled into a ball and fussed at least three times when I corrected her punctuation.  The huge end punctuation is part of a stalling technique to claim she wasn't done with that sentence because it wasn't dark enough.  //ha   She is a character, always has been...

I have to go into work, and Daddy has more school to do with her later.  We spent the rest of my time for getting ready for work getting her hair washed, making lunch and watching snowflakes fall and puppies wrestle.  Her coleus is starting to come up, so I might show her that in a bit and show her to spray water a mist over them in the greenhouse.

//
8:30a    - Writing sentences with caps and punct.
9a     - break

10.45a    - gardening / plant maintenance
11a    - weather observation & discussion
11.15a    - copywork
12.30p    - break

1.15p    - Fractions discussion, time addition
1.30p    - pbskids (codebreaker)
1.45p    - PE (200x jumping jacks, 50x 10lb bench press, 40x 10lb
          deadlift)

2p     - math stretch app
2.30p    - drawing, reading aloud ("Peace and Quiet")
2.45p    - synonyms worksheet
3p    - done

Thursday greenhouse and more

10:30a     - supply run to stores
                   discussion of science experiment needs
                   supplies for greenhouse, petunia seeds, spraybottle
She kept a little notebook checklist for what she wanted to do/get and helped me check off the items on my list, as well.

11:30a     - groceries, shoe comparison shopping,
                  math during checkouts, self-checkout
12:00     - home, break
1.15p    -  Kahn Academy math, subtraction, equating, word problems
1:45p    -  break
2:15p - Greenhouse operations, dirt, transplants, planting
She helped make dirt.  For a kid who has been head-to-toe in mud often, she seems to have acquired a strange distaste for dirty hands.... We transplanted the geraniums - having her make the pots and transfer one whole by herself.    Then, I had her prepare three four-part pots for the petunias and plant the seeds - but there were only nine seeds!  So she chose some Kale.  She watered and made labels reading off the packages.

2:45p - Minecraft discovery...summoning command, some reading involved...she was upset we couldn't summon a skeletal horse.  We did summon ender crystals and dragons and other horses.
Juiced a lemon with the real kitchen juicer to paint on paper to test a science experiment she saw

3:45  - break
4:30  - clothes care and maintenance, discussion
5     - done

//She checked out Gary's Mod again for her free time, trying to remember how it all worked.

Notes
Her attitude was some better, today.. I only had to remind her to do what she was doing about half as much as usual..   When she first woke up she thought we were going to clear the rest of the garden and till it all today.. but was sad when we said the weather was turning for the worst and there were other things to do today.  She was close to excellent in town -even though we were making a 'rush' of it compared to days we go to the library and playplace for our town trips.  She did complain about making dirt, and did argue a lot about doing the online math, but then saw that her Avatar grew again.. so that was better after that.  She has been somewhat upset this week because of the puppies being sold from this litter, and missing them... but she has done such a good job with socializing them that we have tried to stress how much better dogs they will be for their people as her work well done.

Tuesday Wednesday

11.45a    - candle making (Science AND arts and crafts!)  apparently perseverance on this one, too (read on)

We tried to make dipped candles - but ended up with just prepared wicks because our pan was too shallow.  I thought that might happen... went on to Plan B, and prepared three eggshells by putting holes in the ends and blowing out the yolk and white into a bowl.. she liked that step.  Then we ran the prepared wicks through them and put them in a holder.  BUT - the wax was too hot, and the eggshells not very dry, and the styrofoam holder container melted and let the wax out onto the wax paper we had lined the surface with.  So, we got some sand and put it in a bowl, and rescued one of the eggs that way - getting at least small dome-shaped candles.  It wasted a lot of wax.... but it was a good learning experience. She really liked watching her crayons color the wax, and seeing the 'state change' between the block of wax, melted wax, and cooling wax hardening up on the spoon again.  I ordered some tin molds to use next time, and we talked about what went wrong and what we did get out of it.

12:45p  - puppy outside training

1.30p    - garden clearing / seed harvesting
 She helped me pull tomato cages and t-posts, used a pliers and cut and wrapped up strings of wire, looked for dried bean pods and sundried tomatoes still clinging that might have seeds in them.  We stacked 6 bricks and the tposts and cages away from the garden and talked about what we needed to do to make it ready for the tilling machine, and why we didn't want any wire in the garden.  She told me what she remembered about last year's tilling.. and played 'karate chop' in the dried tomato vines.  She built a 'tiger trap' out of grass, sunflowers and cornstalks and then showed me how it was supposed to work.  The two black puppies rolled around, followed us at our heels and one of them even brought Esme a stick to add to her tiger trap and then acted all happy she had helped.
2:30p    - break

3p      - lake walk, nature discussion, PE games

We walked to the lake and played hide and seek in the long grass, saw a tiny baby fish in the water (really odd for January, but it was 50 out) and ate lunch, which she had helped prepare.  She forgot her sandwich at home so she had to eat part of mine - which wasn't her favorite thing...it was entirely new to her (tuna and avocado, she had packed bologna, but not in the bag she had put everything else in!)..she ate half of it reluctantly, but did eat it all.  We played frisbee and hide and seek.. then walked home.  There was lots of talk about where the sun rose and set and what it meant about what time of day it was now...argument, and discussion about time of year/day, temperature, sky etc.


3:30       - break

4:15    - reading letter from neighbor about her farm
4:30    - pbs kids
5:00    - baking soda experiments
The PBS games site had baking soda experiment journals - and we tried several of them with a balloon to show the air being made instead of a cork.  She wrote down which were acids and which was a base.

5:30    - proper use of candles, matches
I stressed this was adult supervision stuff, and showed her how to strike a match, light the candle (with something under it) and how to transfer the flame from one candle to another to light more than one.  She did it several times and was very proud of the candles we had made ourselves.  She would like to make more another day and is glad her 'broken crayons came to use'.. her own words, because her teachers hated broken crayons and didn't want her to save any :)

5:45    - done, eating supper and very happy

---------------------------------------------
2015-1-20

This was flea market day, and we had planned to get up very early and take all the puppies.  Esme did a great job getting up when asked, grabbing food and a drink, getting dressed and getting her bag ready to go for the market.  We were in the car in about a half hour including all the packing.

7.30a    - Sitting at the market, doing Math Stretch app, geography discussion with world atlas app.

8a    - flea market (math, socailization, etc), shopped for fruit, toys, made change
We sold two of our puppies at the flea market, as well as her having to watch out for puppies, help attend to them and to people who came to see them, stay in sight and with us at all times, use her bag of 'stashed' food, drink and toys to amuse herself, keep a good attitude and ask good questions as she had them.  She asked me what several things were, why several things were (morning, sun, shadow, dew etc. etc), and talked about memories from flea markets before.  She price-checked a hen for her coop, at 8 to 10 dollars, but had forgotten to remind us to bring her cage so she will have to get that next week.  Then, she bought a large and a small toy, and a bag of apples from the fruit stand.  She looked over ducks, banty hens and chicks, as well as talked to several vendors and their dogs.  Helped pack up at 10:30 to take everything home.
11a    - break (3.5 hours)

2.30p    - pbskids.org
3.30p    - done

+1hr     - scrabble with Grandma

Monday Minecraft...

7:3a    - test on make own cereal,
             questions about what is vitamin D,
             discussion: what does skin do?
             skin vs. fur, nails vs. claws vs. tools : tiger traps
8a     - approximation of time words, 'just past', 'just about', 'quarter to' etc etc.
8:15     - break


9a      - Minecraft building of mansion 'moneybin', trampoline
10a     - redstone piano, ender dragon fight
11a        - more minecraft building
12.30p    - break

1p    - puppy washing
2p    - puppy contact cards
2.15p    - done