Right Brain Vs Left Brain

 I know you aren't supposed to compare your kids. 

I know this. I do. 

But you know what you do when you have multiple kids? You compare. It's human nature. It's practically law. 

Teaching both kids at the same time, I've had to work hard not to compare. I shouldn't compare. Calen is in 6th grade, Camden is in 4th grade. What is there to compare? Calen is a natural wizard and self-educator in all things. Camden needs more one-on-one visual learning and a lot of review. I shouldn't compare them. But like every parent in the world, I do. 

This school year we are working on Weather as our science unit. This is incredibly fitting as over the summer Calen got about 2/3rds of the way through his Weather merit badge for Boy Scouts. The teachings are basically the same, but of course each kid has a different level of work and writing to go along with it. This makes it a little easier to not compare, but not really.

Because I always try to make things more interesting, I was scrolling Pinterest while the boys were reading their books on the French-Indian War, (or something, I suppose I should pay attention to what they're learning too. --Just kidding, I do. Kind of). I found a neat and easy science experiment that visually shows air pressure that only involved the stove, a pan, and some empty pop cans with a bit of water in them. Count me in. 

We put the pop cans (with a bit of water) in the pan on the stove and waited until they boiled. When they reached boiling, You take some tongs and flip the can upside down into a bowl of ice water. 

Note: My tongs apparently are slippery tongs. I could not get a good grip on these stupid cans. So I covered the tongs with packaging tape and then wrapped them with thick rubber bands to give them a "grip".

When the can sits upside down in the bowl, the can instantly (and I mean instantly) crushes itself! Why? Because when the tiny bit of water in the can boils, it turns to steam. Steam is a gas and not actually oxygen. When you flip the can into the ice water (so that the can opening is submerged), the cold water instantly turns the gas back into liquid, leaving nothing (not air, not gas, nothing) in the inside of the can. The air outside the can pushes into the can and squashes it like a bug!

Back in my day we would just step on cans to smush them and didn't need stoves or tongs or ice. 

To prove that the kids paid attention to this experiment, I had them write a diagram showing why this experiment works. And this is when we have to try to not compare. 

Calen, with his nice handwriting and his wonderful artistic ability, draws a beautiful two-page diagram of the experiment, complete with neat, legible labeling, careful illustrations and a clear cut explanation of how the experiment worked. Of course he's two years older, but when he puts his mind to it he always does careful, meticulous work. Of course as a bonus he will also verbally point out and elaborate on every.single.little.detail for a full forty minutes without taking a single breath. The kid has a word quota he needs to meet every day, before noon. 

Nicely drawn, careful captions, easy instructions

Two pages, even

Camden, on the other hand, is a bona fide Picasso. He has a vision, a great vision, but his execution on paper is come sort of cross between someone writing calligraphy with their foot and a minor gas tank explosion. It's all there, the diagram, the drawings, the labeling, the arrows, the explanations, but more like how those fancy artists stand 6 feet away from their canvasses and sling paint at it. That must count for some sort of Social Distancing 2020 extra credit, right? Verbally, Cam knows exactly what every scribble means, and translates it very well. It's kind of like a corn maze. You can try to go through it yourself, or you can ask for a map and then the picture it's trying to make is crystal clear. 

What the hell exactly is going on here?

I feel like these illustrations accurately depict each of their brains. Calen - methodical, clever, detailed, organized. Camden - chaotic, exciting, mysterious, and fills up every inch of space available. 

Whatever, you both get A's. I told them to draw a diagram, not to draw a masterpiece that would be framed in the Alaskan Art Museum. Though, if that were the case, Camden's almost certainly would have won, because museums like that weird abstract crap. 

Leaving Us In The Dark

 It was a dark, nasty, pouring down rain fall day. Normally this is one of those gross days where I turn on every single light in the house like an anti-environmentalist because I hate the dark! Unless it's fall, in which I turn on all my Christmas fall lights and light all the pumpkin smelly candles in every room and it's just great, thanks. 

As I'm warming up my coffee for the 294th time and reading the teacher manual for today's lesson, it suggests that after lessons we turn off all the lights and see what it's like to not use electricity for the rest of the day. 

Well, I'm about 3 days behind on laundry and there's a hockey game on TV tonight, so how about we do school without electricity. Besides, it's now still dark at 8:00am when we start, so it will be more effective. 

So I reheat my coffee one last time (because I'm pretty certain the early settlers didn't have microwaves and I'm not about to start a campfire in the pouring rain just because I drink my coffee too slow) and kill the lights, all the lights, except for some candles which I put on the table. The kids really enjoyed the novelty of doing schoolwork by candlelight (especially since said candlelight had a specific banana-pumpkin smell) and we talked about what it would be like to live 100% without electricity like the early settlers did, and how I broke some sort of time continuum by reheating my coffee in the microwave for the 296th time (okay listen, it's really hard to drink your coffee while it's still hot while talking all.the.time during lessons). 

About halfway through lessons I was totally over it being so dark in the dining room (which already has very little natural light) so I plugged in our strand of lights that I keep around the window. We declared these "oil lamp light", since they were invented just around the same time period (1740s), but alas since I'm not my mother and don't have any actual oil lamps, Christmas lights had to suffice. Fake it till you make it, you know. 

During the middle of some math practice, a friend of mine sends me a screenshot of her 6th grader's math lesson. Something about fractions and how to get their denominators to match and who actually cares if their denominators match or not in the real world?! We hadn't covered it this year in math yet (I actually thought it was her 8th grader's math) but since Calen at 11 and a half is basically halfway towards a PHD in math, so I tossed the photo in his direction just to see what he might do with it. 

Instantly he was on his feet and to our white board, staring at the screenshot on my phone, and doing his best Winnie the Pooh "think, think, think!" imitation. I told him it doesn't matter but he insisted he knew how to do it he just needed to recall it. Within a couple minutes he's suddenly scribbling a bunch of numbers on the board and explaining it to me, of course I'm staring at him with a blank stare because I have NO IDEA what he's talking about because math just isn't my thing, man. So then I asked him to repeat his little lesson on 6th grade fractions (which I am CONVINCED I didn't learn until like, 9th grade, or possibly even later than that, like never) so that I can record it and send it to his buddy. 

This is how friends help friends with math homework in the information age. Cell phone recordings, Facetime, instant messenger. 

Also, I still don't see how finding the common denominator matters at all ever in the real world. 

It just never stopped raining today, so we made a second round of apple cider donuts from last week, because every Monday is better with donuts, and then the boys built Tinker Crates (another super awesome subscription box - Calen's based around engineering, Cam's based around geography) for science today while I rode our stationary bike in the garage to work off that donut I just ate. 

This kid and this hair

Calen building some sort of "gravity timer"

Camden's crate was about Madagascar, and he made these cute little fuzzy lemurs and a tree and "launcher" to flip them into the tree

Calen Cooks

 We've had a pretty low key and quiet weekend over here. After a busy week of getting back to a school routine, plus Boy Scouts and soccer, it was nice to just lay around and do nothing. 

However, Calen did cook for us yesterday night! We used the last recipe from this month's Raddish Kids cooking subscription. Sweet potato gnocchi made from scratch!

This was pretty involved, for a Raddish Kids recipe. It turned most of the kitchen into a fluffy floury dirty pan mess, but it was fun watching him roll the little gnocchi's, boil them and then fry them. They were delicious just plain (covered with a little melted butter), but we added the smallest amount of red pasta sauce as well just for an extra kick. 

Calen's really turned out to be quite the chef! 

Yo Ho And a Bucket of Apples

 We had a busy couple days so here I am playing catch up. 

Who's bright idea was it to relight the fire under this blog the first month I attempt at homeschooling, anyways?

Yesterday I was itching to do a fall craft because it's you know fall and the only thing that was missing from my house full of pumpkins and fall leaf garlands and pumpkin-banana candles burning and apple-cinnamon muffins baking was a craft. We crashed through our school day (which again is based on early settlers) and after a quick search on Youtube found a great video on Johnny Appleseed (that's a little more grown up than the Kindergarten version of him). So they watched the video and then we did a fun little craft where we stamped apples in multiple colors on a piece of paper and then weaved brown construction paper over the top of it to make it look like a basket full of apples. 

I'm counting my blessings that my kids still like to do crafts - even Calen, at 11 1/2, who still finds them incredibly fun. 

Today, we had a shortened school day (as our main curriculum is technically 4 day weeks) but I also needed to head to a house across town to clean it (a little side job, because I don't have enough to do). So we flew through a spelling test, a quick math lesson x2, and then ran to the house with the kids in tow. I was thinking there had to be something they could do while they were there that was school related, so I packed up a couple of spiral notebooks and this little box of pirate themed storytelling dice that we bought at a mom and pop toy store in California several years ago. The idea is you throw the dice, and whatever pictures end up front side up (a sword, a pirate ship, a shark, etc) you have to make a story involving each dice. We've done it a bunch of times verbally but I had an "aha" moment that this would be a great way to do a writing assignment for school. 

Camden hates writing. Calen loves writing. So when I announced to the boys that they had to write a full page story while I was cleaning this house, Calen was like "YES!!" and Camden was like "UGH!". Calen rolled his dice and flopped on the floor and wrote not one but two pages worth of a wonderful story. Camden struggled to figure out how to get started....but once he did get started, he took off, and wrote a fantastic story about a pirate that sailed to a tropical island to sell shark fins and got attacked by a gigantic king crab and once defeated it, feasted on it. 

Well I'd count that as a success. This might become a weekly thing. 

Soccer Mom

 Something miraculous has happened this week.

Youth sports actually made a comeback. We had a youth sporting event. In public. With other people. 

Never, did I thought that anything like a youth sporting event would bring such excitement. But 2020 is full of surprises, isn't it?

The Coast Guard base here announced that they were "allowing" a youth soccer camp for just a handful of kids for four days. Signups were open and they were going to fill up fast of course, because the entire island is so starved of any type of organized sports. I was out the door and in the car to base faster than you can say "pandemic". When I came home excitedly announcing to both boys that they were going to play soccer for four days each, they both stared at me like I had announced that we were serving liver and broccoli for dinner.

".......soccer?" Camden asked in disgust. "That's not hockey."

To which I replied that six months of no organized sports and at only $10 per kid, I don't care if it's underwater potato golf, you're going to play it. And you'll like it!!

Besides, it counts as PE class.

Camden's age group was first. He got a shirt and his own soccer ball which was more than I expected. Of course it's 2020, and he had to get his temperature taken at sign in ("What's that for? This is weird.") and then asked all sorts of "have you had a fever"/"have you been around someone with a fever"/"Do you think you'll catch a fever today" questions before they're allowed on the field. But whatever, it's organized sports and we'll jump through whatever hoops necessary.

The soccer camp was great. They are separated into four "teams", and move about at four different stations learning skills. Then they do a little two team scrimmage at the end. Despite his grumbling before the first day of camp, Camden has been beaming over how FUN he was having at camp. He's not bad at it (his hockey skills transfer over easily to soccer) and how he couldn't wait for next week's camp. Over all, it was a runaway success. 

And how could it not be, when you're so starved for organized sports?! I've never been so excited to sit outside for two hours and watch a bunch of 9 year olds and chat with more than one adult at the same time in my life. 

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

 I'm writing yesterday's post today over a massive oversized mug of coffee because Mondays are hard, you guys. 

We started our second week in our homeschool adventure today. It's going well, though I'm missing my quiet mornings wrapped up in a blanket drinking coffee while I unceremoniously kick the boys out on the street to catch the school bus. Now I'm sitting on my dining chair drinking coffee while I unceremoniously kick the boys out on the street to run a mile before class starts, because exercise is good for the brain and all that, and also just get out of my face for ten minutes so that the coffee can kick in. 

The entire school year is based around the early Settlers and I like it. It's got all sorts of interesting little tidbits, like reading off and copying a few of George Washington's "rules" of his youth that are dumbfoundedly relevant to present day and especially my kids in the present day, like "pay attention when people speak" (*ahem* Camden) and "wait for the right time to add your comments (*ahem* CALEN!). 

I wonder if good ol' George will have a rule coming up that says "Limit your word count for each day", that Calen can take a hint on. Also maybe one about "Stop talking about Legend of Zelda 24 hours a day because I literally can't even, Camden". 

Anyways.

We were reading some book about a settler and during his travel he was eating something called "Johnnybread". I had never heard of this before so of course I run to Google to try and explain it better. And wouldn't you know that there was a Pinterest recipe for Johnnybread, that required only like 4 ingredients and no yeast? Also it was recommended to be accompanied by another traditional New England pioneer treat and fall favorite, apple butter?!

I'm in. Class is cancelled on pause. Let's bake something. 

The biscuits were so simple, I thought they might not taste good. Flour, sugar, water, baking powder, (or coconut milk, as these are now a popular Caribbean snack). You add it all together and knead dough into balls, and slap them on a cookie sheet and bake. They don't really rise, or change in color, or anything. In the book we had read, the boy wasn't really excited about Johnnycakes either. We'll see.

Meanwhile, we cut up some apples and cooked them on the stovetop, in which I died a little inside because apples are so expensive here that cooking any of them down is almost a cardinal sin. But we did it anyways, because screw it, it's fall. Then we blended the cooked apples up and poured them back into the saucepan, added a crapload of brown sugar, and stirred. And stirred, and stirred, and stirred, until it's a little thicker than applesauce.

RIP stupid expensive apples

Really, apple butter isn't butter at all! This surprised me, but I didn't know what I was expecting, like to churn the applesauce into butter or something.

The Johnnybread actually is kind of delicious, in an overcooked biscuit sort of way. But I love bread the way Oprah loves bread, so it wouldn't take much for me to declare it delicious. And then slap a glob of freshly made, warm apple butter on top, and holey moley, it's a fall delicacy. And it counts for science class for the day thrown in with some history. Triple win here!

The boys declared it two thumbs up. The apple butter is extremely sweet so they preferred less of it with their bread, I on the other hand drowned my biscuit in it. 

Now they expect us to cook every day, which is totally not happening, except I found cranberry orange muffin mix at Walmart this evening, so maybe it is. 

It Tastes Like Joy

 So for his 11th birthday this year, Calen's "Grandma With Glasses" (my mom, as he's named her since he was 3) gave him a monthly kid's cooking subscription. Every month has a theme and comes with 3 recipes and a new cool kitchen tool, some of which Mom might have confiscated because they're so cool. 

This month's theme was....drumroll please....FALL! Because who doesn't love fall? And all fall things, especially fall eating things. 

No? Disagree? Well, haters gonna hate, and you should probably steer well clear of my house from September through like....December. 

Naturally we were all really excited about this month's kit. This morning we dove in and began making the recipe we were all waiting for, the cu de grau of fall harvest food....apple...cider...donuts. 

Ahhhhh, I can picture myself holding a steaming bag of them at a wooden stand in the middle of a pumpkin patch as we speak. 

The kit came with these neato silicone donut molds, so the kids (Camden couldn't help but involve himself in this one too) mixed up a double batch of donut batter and after they baked, had a "dip in butter and smother in cinnamon sugar" assembly line. 

And it somehow, magically, requested in this week's homeschool curriculum that we pick a US state that we've studied and choose a meal that originated from that state, preferably in the early settler period. We studied Massachusetts and Connecticut. Guess where apple cider donuts come from? Massachusetts. 

Oh look, it's now history class.

They tasted like heaven. Warm, sugary, appley, buttery heaven. 

Calen and I got the first ones. Camden had run outside and didn't come home at 5pm like we told him to, which means Calen and I get first dibs! As he and I ooze over the deliciousness in the kitchen, Calen says through a mouthful of donut:

"This reminds me of something. How do I say it? Joy. These donuts taste like joy."

You couldn't be more right, kiddo.

Joy, in the form of a donut

Calen's cooking adventures weren't over for the night, as he promised to make one of the other recipes for dinner tonight. On the menu: roasted chicken with fresh herbs!

Except, I couldn't find a whole chicken anywhere on this stupid island. Anywhere! Not Safeway, not anywhere. What's with the discrimination of whole chickens in Alaska? Alaska even has a TOWN named Chicken. Toss some on the barge and get them up here!

But I digress. 

So because Kodiak has some whole chicken shortage, we resorted to cornish game hens, which is just as well because they cost about the same and they're like little personal pizzas, except they're chickens. We named them Walter and Wallace, because little chickens need names, even when they're dinner.

Calen stuffed them with fresh rosemary and thyme and as they roasted in the oven it literally smelled like Thanksgiving. Not that we have chicken for Thanksgiving, but isn't it basically all the same anyways?

So we had a delicious dinner of roasted Wallace and Walter and donuts and watched the Incredibles 2. A perfect fall day!

And no, there are no donuts left. 

If It Fits, It Sits

Apparently my new tiny little table at my front door looks like a mailbox, because the USPS stuffed all my packages on it, regardless if they fit or not. 

My welcome bear looks concerned. Like..."Helllllp meeeeeeee."

Also, apparently, I have an online shopping problem. Listen, the internet is life when you life 400 miles from the nearest Target. 

Failure To Launch

 Today was the third time that our island's very own rocket launch port - Pacific Spaceport Complex - was preparing for the launch of an unmanned rocket. Since there's you know very little to do on this island outside of hiking and fishing, we jump at basically any other kind of adventure out there.

We drove out an entire hour away (which is the equivalent of a cross country road trip on an island with only 45 miles of paved road) with two other families and set up a little camp in the parking lot outside the Space Port. Camping chairs facing out over the launch site, a little firepit, and Lunchables. We were ready! Let's launch this sucker!



But even though the weather was perfect and I mean perfect, the launch was scrubbed. Again! We all kind of stood there like, "Well now what?".

But the kids (and it was a lot of kids - nine in all) were having a great time. They took off in the thick bushes like a pack of wild monkeys and disappeared for a time, we made s'mores, and the kids created their own type of relay race in the parking lot. 

Then the Spaceport fire trucks showed up with lights and horns blaring, and we thought "Crap, we're in trouble for this teeny tiny little fire that we have out here in the parking lot. They parked, approached me, and say "Hey, do all those kids want a tour?" Which he apparently had no idea what he was asking, because it was like stepping on a beehive as all the kids chased after him to their firetrucks. They got to climb in, honk the horn, turn on the sirens. Over and over and over. They ran from one truck to the next, and back again, and had the best time ever. 

We left that night completely forgetting that the launch had been called off, only remarking "Man, what a fun night!" And it was great.

The F Word

Disclaimer: Listen, I take everyone's health seriously. I am making fun of this situation, because why shouldn't you make fun of your own situation, regardless of where you stand politically or in your opinion of the severity of this disease. I try really specifically to NOT be politically charged in anything to do with this blog. I make light of my life, and it's absurdity, regardless of the situation. So leave your judgeyness at the door. Thanks!

It's the second day of this homeschool adventure and things have already gotten ridiculous.

For the past 3 days, Calen has had a cough, a face full of congestion, and a lowish grade fever.

*Gasp!!!* You said the "F" word of 2020! Fever?!? Call the National Guard! Call the CDC! Fever alert!!!!!

Anyways.

As taboo as it is having a fever in 2020, it's apparently a national disaster when made public knowledge. I finally decided we needed to take Calen in to the doc, just to make sure it isn't strep, or the flu, not even remotely worried about the C Word (COVID) because unless he licked something at Walmart (and taking off his mask in so doing), his chances of catching it here are basically nonexistent. 

So I called the doctor, and because he has the F Word, he had to go get a COVID test before even being allowed within 6 miles of the doctor's office (or something). I said "really?" and she said "Really." Okay then, so we drove across town to the drive-thru COVID testing center (Drive-Thru...like it's McDonald's or something). I texted Brad at work that Calen has a doc appt this afternoon, but has to get a COVID test and negative results first. 

And that apparently was like pulling out the fatal brick in a Jenga game, because then Brad says "Well shit, I'll have to go home until he comes back negative. I can't be at work." And so I had to pick him up from work before I took Calen to the Drive-Thru. 

So anyways, as we are sitting in the Drive-Thru waiting for our turn. Calen is watching (a little anxiously) at the people ahead of us in line getting their brains swabbed. He asks me "So, they can REALLY find out if I have COVID or not from inside my nose? Like my DNA is in there?"

I said "Yeah, well they can find out through your mucus. You know what mucus is right?"

Calen says "Uh...yeah...I have been picking it out of my nose my entire life!"

And then I lost what I was going to say, because of his hilarious snarky comment. Oh, 11 year olds.

So, Calen gets his brain swabbed ("the right nostril was fine but the left one was SO awful!!") and we drive home to finish school and await to see if we are "allowed" into the doctor's office or not. Meanwhile Calen's fever has magically disappeared, as it usually does once I finally decide to call the doctor. Is this some kind of Murphy's Law or something?

Calen's results come back....drumroll please.....NEGATIVE.

Good news for us, bad news for Brad who has to return to work like normal tomorrow. Ha.

We headed to Calen's doctor's appointment now that we had the all clear authorization. And then things got weird again.

First, the office door was locked, and you have to call to be allowed in. I've heard of this weirdness before, so I shrugged it off, and called the doctor's office. A guy answered, I told them we had an appointment at 5:30, and gave Calen's name and birth date. The guy says to me "Okay, I see he had a COVID test today, and it was negative." Yes, I said. Then he does a few "ummmmmmms" on the phone which left me slightly irritated, and then says "So, has anyone had a fever lately?" 

...to which I said "...YES. That's why we are here. A fever."

And then he goes back to "ummmmm"ing, and I'm getting super annoyed, because if he'd just open the damn door that would be great. And then he says to me, again: "Has he had a recent COVID test?"

Imagine, if you will, eyeballs popping out of my head, while I try to remain patient (as I am not a naturally patient person), and keep my composure as I repeat, again, "Yes. Three hours ago. Negative. As you saw on his record."

Some more "ummmmmsssss", and then he says someone will come and open the door soon, but "we will have to take your guys' temperatures before you are allowed in." Which is ridiculous, because I'm bringing in my kid with a known active fever. But I said "okay, you do you." 

Ten minutes later, someone finally comes out, whisks us into some sort of holding area, and whips out his forehead thermometer. And Calen, full of snark and excellent quips today, announces to the guy extremely matter of factly:

"You realize I have a fever, right?"

That's one of those moments where you wish you had a hidden camera recording, or something, to preserve that single moment of hilarious "kids say the darndest things at the exact right time" forever. 

In the end, Calen did not have a fever at that moment, we were allowed in, and Calen got very chatty with his nurse practitioner (Which as I sat back and observed, I realized that give it about 3 years and he is going to be a LADIES man, the way he throws on the genuine charm. Yikes). Calen in fact has nothing significant going on, just a good head cold with a touch of viral infection, and should be good by next week. 

What an odyssey just to go to the doctor, you guys. 

We had to capture the insanity of the current times when we are sitting in the car waiting for our drive thru COVID test

Endnote: I feel like I need to reiterate, as I said in the beginning, I take health, and the precautions they put in place, seriously. I may, or may not, agree with every rule in place in the world right now, but in the end, it is what it is, life is crazy right now, and we can either be super cranky stiffs about it, or laugh a little at the situation. I choose to laugh.

 

All Aboard The Crazy Train

 You know, life is weird these days.

There's this pandemic floating around, and I don't mean the board game Pandemic (which we own and have been fittingly playing a lot of lately). I mean a world-shifting, school-closed-since-March pandemic. 

School.Closed.Since.MARCH.

I mean, I can't really complain. If you're going to live during a pandemic, living on a secluded island in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean is an ideal option. COVID cases are extremely low, and basically everything is open. 

Including school, officially, starting today.

But that's not to say that school is normal or anything. It's like normal with an asterisk - school is open** - with masks required all day, social distancing (a term I'm so tired of hearing), temperature taking, and all that. Which is fine(ish) and all, for now, until it isn't fine, we have a flareup or an outbreak or whatever you want to call it, and school is moved to virtual (inevitably). 

We did virtual school from March through May. It wasn't pretty. In fact, it was miserable. The boys hated virtual school almost as much as I did, especially when they had virtual class at the same time, then virtual small groups, virtual PE (that was actually a thing), and virtual Boy Scouts. 

That's a whole lot of virtual. 

And in the end, I virtually had two completely insane, grumpy, stir crazy, frustrated kids whose eyeballs melted out of their face whenever I mentioned the words "zoom meeting" or "Log in to Bluejeans."

And thus, we had to get creative for this upcoming school year and it's potential slew of "what if and when" questions. 

You know how you control things that are out of control? By taking control. If we can't control public school, it's rules, or the anxiety that both boys had about "if" school closes again, then we MAKE OUR OWN SCHOOL (enter mad scientist laugh here).

Honestly though, homeschool is a word I used to choke on when spoken out loud. It made me shutter and my eye twitch. But, life is weird these days, and like I said, living on a secluded island in Alaska, which has a massive homeschool community already, let alone the state funding and resources available for families, it became more and more like a good idea. When I asked the boys, they were both 100% on board with homeschool for this year.

All aboard the crazy train!

-----

When I started this blog eight YEARS ago (!!!), Calen was starting 3 year old preschool and looked like this:

Look at that BABY back when he had elbow rolls still

Baby Bam Bam Cam was 17 months old and was terrorizing the neighborhood like this:

Baby Bam Bam!

Things have sure changed since then. Today, Calen started 6th grade and Camden 4th. 

Are you kidding me?! I actually had to count on my fingers to make sure those were the right grades. 

And even though we are homeschooling and I'm mourning the loss of photos in front of their school, in their classroom, and getting off the bus, a lot of it was still the same today, sans Mom's cryfest in the car after driving away from school (that was nice to not have to endure). We dressed up in their best school clothes and new shiny shoes and took their traditional first day photos anyways. Fake it till you make it, I say.

Calen is so tall he could barely touch the board on the ground.

First stop on the Crazy Train tour is the dining room, which is the new official classroom and the table is their desk. In order to still, you know, have a functioning dining room table, I have bins for everything and also reorganized our bookshelf in there to hold all the school stuff, so at the end of the school day it can disappear like it never happened. 

I for one, am a huge fan of the cheesy 1st day of school stuff that the kids usually bring home. So I went to Pinterest and made our own!

Next stop: knowledge! Luckily, a friend a neighbor had an entire curriculum to lend to us, that covers BOTH 4th and 6th grade (writing and reading assignments are just adjusted to grade level), so I can teach both boys at the same time. It is also history based (US settlers history), and the boys LOVE history, plus it incorporates reading, writing, social studies, and even science into one lesson, so all I have to do outside of it is math. Pick me, I'm in. 

Rebel wanted to learn about the early Settlers too. Weirdo

After the shared lessons, we had to navigate the annoying and confusing maze of "teaching two different kids two different grades of math at the same time". In which, the Crazy Train almost completely derailed and rolled off a cliff into a fiery crash. So what's the solution? DON'T! I sent Camden off to do "Adventure Academy" (a learning game on the laptop) in another room while doing math with Calen, and then once Calen was done, sent Calen to the computer and did math with Cam.

How we do math: standing up on one leg *shrugs*

All in all, the crazy train was a runaway success. I only drank 3 cups of coffee, we somehow only had ONE snack break, and we got done by 12:30pm (starting at 7:45). 

Here's to tomorrow!

Endnote: It's a good thing we chose to keep the boys home, because Calen woke up with a fever in the middle of the night, and of course a fever is the most taboo thing to hit public school since....well since anything.