Secular Thursday: Homeschool Days 3/11/10

"A man's real worth is determined by what he does when he has nothing to do."

~ Megiddo Message

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We didn't really do anything this week.  It was way too nice on Monday and Tuesday to stay inside, so we went out to play because the weather was going to be bad at the end of the week.  And it is.  I want to spend a lot more time outdoors this spring.  We'll be setting up our very first garden this year.  I'm so excited!  I don't have any lofty goals though.  I'll be thrilled to pieces if we get the fence up, the surface leveled, and the boxed built and arranged.  If we don't grow a single thing, at least it will be ready for next year.  Besides we have plenty of things to do around the house that should keep us outdoors until it's too hot.  So there may be a lot less "academics" happening as we play outside for a few months.

Last weekend was a lot of fun.  The TMBG concert was great.  Robotson stayed with some friends we ran into, Funny Girl and B went up to the front, and Dimples and I stayed back where it was less crowded.  She wasn't as into this time, and spent most of the show watching the people dance behind us.

The AIR meeting was really productive, but that's a whole other post I need to write up.


Books

The little bit we did this week included Robotson starting A Wrinkle in Time.  He's reading it to me.  When he's actually reading, he's doing great and having a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, he is procrastinating a lot.  I'm afraid he won't be finished in time.  For him, I'm not worried because the reality of missing a book club will be such a disappointment that I doubt it happens again.  I feel bad for the boy who picked the book though because he's a sweet kid and I don't want him to take it personally.  I plan to talk to his mom about the possibility (Hi, C and J!)

As the weather is warming up, we are only a few weeks from getting the girls back downstairs to sleep.  I. Can. Not. Wait.  We'll be back to reading and Storynory in no time.  We did read a few books this week, including The Dead Tree.  I had sort of hoped it would be a nice parallel to human mortality, but it turned out to really be about a dying tree.  I still thought it was very interesting and Dimples enjoyed the pictures a lot.  But you can't really make connections between termites eating the inside of the tree and people getting older.  A better book for comparing human and plant lives is The Fall of Freddie the Leaf.

Science

Before I realized the weather was so beautiful on Monday, the kids were inspired to create their own Rube Goldberg machines after watching this video.

(via Pharyngula)

There were books, dominoes, LEGOs, cars, and balls everywhere.

Funny Girl is still very much in love with all things ocean.  I found a couple of really fun videos of people swimming with whale sharks, and then we read about them on National Geographic's website.




(both via The Right Blue)

Conflict Resolution

The only other thing to note from this week was an impromptu conflict resolution.  I was getting a bit tired of all the attitudes concerning t.v. and computer time here lately.  I felt it was time to cut them down for the nice months ahead.  My part of the resolution was the remove the temptation completely during the days that B is working.  The kids then got to decide how much and when they would use the t.v. and computers for the other three days.  Robotson also wanted a later bedtime.  In the end, everyone was happy, and it's actually been much quieter and peaceful all week.  For anyone interested:

Robotson's new bedtime is midnight on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  The rest of the week it is still 10pm.  I told him that was my absolute limit on bedtimes, and he agreed to try not to argue the point any more.  So far, it's been great.  There is no electronic entertainment on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday during the day.  Monday evening is the first opportunity for television.  Tuesday is our day off, but nothing starts until after the park.  Wednesday and Thursday, nothing until after schoolwork and chores.

We'll see how it goes of course.  This was the first conflict resolution that we really worked together and got things accomplished by actually listening to each other and talking things through.  If nothing else, that was worth the experiment.