09.19.07
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 2:07 pm by Meg
Before - 
That’s what one of our friends back in New Mexico called the ages from 11 to 15. The peacock stage is when they are trying different styles and effects as they develop a feeling of who they are.
Girl has wanted to dye her hair for a couple of years. I’ve always been really leery of doing it because of her skin problems due to her allergies.
Then a few months ago we talked to her hair dresser about it and she said that she could keep her roots natural and that would keep the bleach and dyes from actually sitting on her scalp.
I still wasn’t real keen about the idea, but Girl’s skin has been doing better lately and so the three of us talked and decided to give it a try.
Read the rest of this entry »
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09.17.07
Posted in Co-op class at 9:14 am by Meg
Some of the people in the group are discussing putting together a yearbook this year. (I will not volunteer, I will not volunteer) OTH, Boy likes the idea and is all gung ho to be involved with it. (I will not volunteer, I will not volunteer)
So, while he doesn’t participate in the co-op classes, he’s tagged along these first two weeks in order to get some pictures. And I thought I’d share a few.
The first class we are calling Apprentices. It’s really a preschool/kindergarten class. These kids have one teacher for the morning, though she has a bunch of helpers.
The next oldest class are the Pages. It’s all girls right now which makes for an interesting dynamic - very quiet.
Stirring and carving soap for crafts
Measuring their feet for math
Then come the Squires. This class is mostly boys and while very attentive, you have to watch for the hanging from the ceiling tendencies (No, they are very well behaved)
Making soap
Measuring feet
Discussing a medieval village and building a castle for it.
And the last class we are calling Knights. This is the largest group and can get the most rowdy with the interplay of some of the personalities. (Girl included) But they have fun doing the stuff and hanging out.
Crafts
Math
Building the castle and hanging out
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09.15.07
Posted in The creative side of life at 3:12 pm by Meg
My kids and I LOVE the IN-Home Conference up in Chicago. Last year I finally got the guts to put in a proposal to do a leatherworking workshop during the conference.
And they just contacted me and said it’s a GO!
At this point it’s only for the 4 to 7 year old age group, but she said they might change it as they follow up on other workshop proposals.
I’m so pysched!
BTW, the 2008 conference is March 7 and 8 and they moved it to Pheasant Run Resort.
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09.14.07
Posted in Co-op class, The nuts and bolts of it at 11:56 pm by Meg
You may have remembered me mentioning that our co-op is now doing a math and science club class. Well, yours truly is teaching it.
Last year Girl participated and I was a drop and run parent. Convenient, but I felt somewhat out of the loop. So this year I offered to do something. I first thought recorder because the family that was doing folk music had moved and I’ve always thought it would be fun a have a little group to teach to play. Then I saw this post and realized that it seemed right up my alley without stepping on anyone’s toes. I also considered some hands-on basic science stuff, but T had that on her list of possible classes.
So, last month we had an organizational meeting and there was no interest in music - oh well. Math got a lot of interest and so did science; so did the renaissance thinkers class that T really wanted to teach. So, I offered to do 6 weeks of math club followed by 6 weeks of science club. And the moms loved it.
oh shit. Now I had to actually come up with a game plan and make it work.
Needless to say, I’m flying by the seat of my pants. I’ve got 3 1 hour classes to fill every Friday and they are diverse enough to make each one different.
The pages are 6 to 8 years old; the squires are 9 to 11; and the knights are 12 to 17. The skill level in each class is all over the board and I think the worst are the knights. Girl at 13 is probably one of the most advanced (Boy doesn’t participate) and some of these kids have trouble doing multiplication without a calculator. And I’ve told the other moms that while I hope to teach them something, I’m not doing a ‘math class.’ These will be fun little activities. Go Meg!
Anyway, last Friday was the first week. I decided to start with a basic - ‘How we count and counting systems’ to get an idea of the kids and their skills. And it worked! and the kids seemed to have fun. I came home flying and Hubby suggested that I write up what we did, so I might keep track of the information.
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My first class was the pages, the littlest kids. Mentally I built their class around the beginning reader How Many Feet? How Many Tails? I had each kid bring in a stuffed or plastic toy for class. I figured that not only could we do a counting game that the book suggests, but that they would feel more secure coming with a ‘friend’ along.
I had seven in the class (though another join us shortly) and I started by using the ‘buddies’ to show primitive counting systems. We put the buddies into sets of two and I explained that they would count by 2+2+2+1, and that this would only work up to about 10. Then we changed our orientation and I pointed out the next step of counting by fours, and then grouping sets of fours.
Then we talked about why someone might count in sets of 5, 10 or 20 and I touched on counting systems of early cultures in the Western Hemisphere. Finger counting from the Great Plains, the Inca’s quipu system, and the Mayan dot and bar system (most of this is from Zaslavsky’s book Number Sense and Nonsense ).
Ahead of time I had taken some leather thongs and made myself a quipu necklace. After I explained the system, I had them try to read the numbers on each piece. To help them ’see’ the Mayan system I had made each kid a bag with a handful of pokemon tokens (for pebbles), toothpicks (sticks) and pennies (shell for zero). We then used the pieces to show their age, at which point I then drew the patterns on the white board and discussed how writing numbers developed from using pebbles and sticks.
While we were on pebbles, we shifted to Asia and I showed them an abacus and told them they were just pebbles strung on wires.
Lastly we shifted to Egyptian hieroglyphics and Roman numerals (just a light introduction) and I closed the ‘lesson’ part with discussing where our numbers come from.
For the last 10 mins. I read the book and then we lined up the buddies and tried to play the grouping game. The 7 and 8 year olds caught on pretty quickly, but we ran out of time for the younger kids to really get into it.
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My second class was the knights, the oldest group. I introduced the idea of counting by explaining that the term calculus comes from the Latin word for rocks and since we were modeling pebble counting systems, they were doing calculus today.
And, because I know this group will try to sidetrack whatever the ‘plan’ is, I told them that if we got through everything that I wanted to, they’d be making a computer before we were finished. It definitely got their attention.
We quickly touched on the base 2 counting systems and the quipus. With them I spent more time on the Mayan base 20 system. They not only wrote their ages (with the same baggies of pebbles, sticks and shells), but we also worked on the Mayan’s base 20 place value system and how to write larger numbers.
We then jumped to Asia, but before we talked about the abacus, we played with the Chinese rod numerals and they used the toothpicks to write different numbers. I then picked up a Chinese abacus and the Russia one I had borrowed and showed them the differences and we did some simple arithmetic.
From there we jumped to the Babylonian’s base 60 system and discussed ways in which we still use a base 60 system.
Lastly, we looked at Egyptian hieroglyphics for numbers up to 1000 and I talked about how the Romans modified that system to get the Roman numerals we know. And we discussed where Roman numerals are still used. We finished our discussion section by discussing where our numerals came from and how long it took the Europeans to accept them.
We then talked about computers.
I set it up by touching on the base 2 idea, explaining that that was all a computer really understood. And I mentioned base 16, since some of these kids are dabbling in coding and have seen the hex codes for specifying colors. But then I explained that what were really going to do is make an old fashioned grad. student computer, the sort of thing that was used as recently as WWII and designing the bomb.
You see the word ‘computer’ originally meant a group of people solving a problem assembly line fashion. It was actually a job title. And when you were doing a calculation you would have two groups working the same problem. Now in real life the computers would be doing major calculations, but for our sample I made it easy.
I split the class into 2 groups and then gave out cards with simple arithmetic operations. Each group got the same cards in the same order. Then I gave the first 2 people the same starter number and they did their step and passed the result on to the next person.
We got through it twice before we ran out of time and neither time did both groups get the same result.
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My last class is the squires and I’ll admit that I plan for the two extremes and then mix the squires’ class from the different activities.
For the squires I introduced the term calculus, we discussed counting by twos, and then all 3 counting systems from the Western Hemisphere. We did play with the Mayan pebbles and sticks. And while we did model a number over 20, we did not get any larger than that.
We also played with the Chinese rod numerals and modeled a couple of numbers and then discussed the abacus and how it was used.
From there we discussed Egyptian hieroglyphics and how they became Roman numerals. And I ended the discussion by explaining where our Indo-Arabic numerals come from and when they became the norm.
Our last 20 mins of class was spent with each kid making their own abacus. 
These are actually modeled on a Japanese abacus since that takes less beads. It’s half a form board with the holes prepunch by me. Each kid got a little more than a yard of plastic lace, 5 blue beads, and 20 white ones. They laced it up by zig-zagging back and forth and then we tied the two ends together.
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Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 8:08 pm by Meg
okay, I’ve been busy, but I certainly didn’t plan on leaving this sit for this long.
Part of the reason it’s sat is that, at hubby’s suggestion, I’m trying to pull posts together about what I’m doing for the co-op. I’ve got a half done post from last week’s class that I need to get back to, and now I had another class today.
And part of the reason is that our group’s fall calendar is now set and there was some logistic details that were taking up my computer time.
And part of the reason was a day spent at the children’s hospital in Indy for Boy.
OH, and we are trying to actually get some seatwork accomplished as well.
Anyway, I figured that it was time to share what’s going on with Boy. Last Monday he had his first treatment of the ‘miracle’ drug. No bad immediate reactions, Yeah! And the best of news, the seepage coming from his drainsite opening is waaay cut back. It hasn’t stopped yet, but I’m hoping that in a few days we can switch out the gauze for a normal bandaid.
And the best part is that he’s feeling great. One of the most significant effects that he’s noticed is the lack of photosensitivity. For the last 3ish years he’s been adamant about wearing sunglasses outside (or way overdoing the squinting). We just wrote it off to teenage ‘coolness,’ and never thought much more about it. Well, as the medications have started working (even some of the first ones he was on) the photosensitivity has diminished. He’s saying that he never wants to see another pair of sunglasses again.
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09.05.07
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 4:27 pm by Meg
When we started on our homeschooling journey. We got involved with the local group.
If was friendly (if strongly Mormon) and supportive. They meet twice a week. One day at the library, where they rotated between just hanging out (being supportive to each other) and having the kids do little presentations of whatever they were up to at the moment. And one day at the local LDS church for free gym time for the kids and the moms sat around and talked.
I remember that year very clearly because I had no idea of what I was doing and I didn’t do gym. Going to the Mormon church was not my idea of a good idea.
By the next year I knew the people better and while I have had the missionaries stop by (these days I tend to offer them milk and cookies and send them along) the group has always been openly willing to accept my religious views (and actually being around homeschoolers as a whole has helped clarify my own views) and be a great experience.
This post is not about the religious aspect of support groups, but about their function. Nine years ago our local group was a support group. We got together to talk, discuss what we were doing, let the kids play, have parties, and go on field trips. Only occasionally would families get together for anything educational, and when they did, it was for limited reasons.
Over the past 2 or 3 weeks the group has been getting ready to start back to meeting regularly. And it’s changed.
Back about 6 or 7 years ago a family moved into the area and the mom pushed and pushed to get something like a co-op going. She never got very far, it just wasn’t what the group was about. But she found some like minded people and they started getting together once a week and doing classes. And it’s grown and grown.
This year the co-op is bursting with 37 kids ranging from age 3 to 16. The moms who are organizing it are actually having to tell people no because they are concerned that we have out grown our space. The co-op meets one morning a week with a preschool kindergarten class for the littlest and then the rest of the kids rotate between 3 other classes. (This fall: renaissance thinkers, math and science club, and arts and crafts.)
And what hits me is the newbies that are joining our group. They are coming in and instead of just looking for some general companionship for themselves and their kids, they are looking at the activities and going ‘Where do I sign up?’ And in addition to the more formal co-op we have a mess of other ‘classes’ going on. Enough that if someone was to get involved with everything, They’d go nuts!
So now in addition to Friday afternoon ‘play time’ - gym, bowling, book discussion group at the library, and swimming. We have Friday morning co-op classes, and sometime else during the week: a high school government workshop, and possible language class (chinese maybe?), and a gardening group, and a cooking class. And I’ve said that we’ll do another Shakespearean play starting in November. Let alone the older kids are asking for a book discussion group focused on something by Homer or the like.
oh, and we’ll still do field trips and parties.
It’s a very different experience homeschooling now.
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09.03.07
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 5:01 pm by Meg
…at the emergency room. (this post does have some grossness)
Boy again.
When they pulled the drain last Tuesday they said that it should heal up by Thursday and he could switch to a small bandage if he needed to, and in the mean time we could just leave the gauze bandage that they sent him home with.
Yeah.
On Wednesday I had to change said gauze bandage because it was soaked. No puss or infection, just yellowish drainage.
On Thursday it was still coming, so I kept changing the bandage every 12 hours or so. No fever, but we were a little concerned.
On Friday I spoke to Dr. M. Explained it to her and she wasn’t too concern, but told me to watch for fever, puss, smell, or runny green drainage (the color of fecal matter in the small intestine).
Sunday night it turned dark brown….We called. The doctor on-call said to give it the night (we are nearly 90 mins away from the children’s hospital) and he’d call us in the morning with a ‘plan.’
I felt like a mom with a nursing infant, getting up during the night to check/change the bandage.
It was still brown this morning.
This morning the on-call dr. said not to worry, but maybe we’d move up getting him started on the new drug (it’s suppose to help with closing up Crohn’s Disease.) I said, no, I want someone who knows what they are looking at to check out the opening and look at the stuff coming out.
So off we ran to Indy. The resident in the ER, says that it’s healing up fine. No one could tell me exactly why the color changed ( they seemed to think it might be fecal matter, after saying a couple of times it wasn’t what Dr. M said and it didn’t smell. I gave up) And the color of the drainage seems to be getting lighter again.
Wasted trip? No, at least now I know that it’s healing, if slowly. With the cocktail of drugs he’s on, the slowness is not surprising.
Anyway, Boy is looking at two choices.
If he wants surgery (and Dr. M and C are not pushing it) they will be taking the last 18 inches of his small intestine out and the valve between it and his large intestine. Then he has a couple of choices of drugs to hopefully keep him from having another flare-up.
But he also has the option of trying a drug that may heal up the damage and essentially keep him from having flare-ups for an extended time, maybe long term. But, like all miracles, it comes with some nasty side effects including a seriously suppressed immune system. And they will need to check in about 2 months to see if surgery will still be needed.
At this point, he is leaning toward the drug. I feel like the decision is like walking on a knife edge.
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