General Update Post.

I've ripped up many of the workbooks the boys have been using over the last school year and placed some of the sheets in a three-ring binder. Then I threaded a bit of thin wire through the holes and twisted the ends to make a little booklet for our year's portfolio. That, our writing journal (fancy name for 50-cent notebook with Spelling work and journal exercises) and my plan book are bundled together with yarn, tied with a bow and tucked away. If I ever need my 2009-10 papers, the necessary ones are all together in the basement. We're still working plenty hard, but I'm not saving these papers. Doing this process makes me wonder yet again whatever happened to the acquaintence who called not too long ago and sent me into panic mode about her homeschool. I still haven't heard from the child welfare people, so I will assume at this point everyone is safe, especially since it is so close to the end of the public school year and she was enrolling there for next year anyway.

The pace is much more relaxed now at home, but we are working to finish English and Bible study. Elf and Emperor finally had to make the Great Wall of China on our front porch. I had about 50 of these milk jugs kicking around in my kitchen, but it kept raining outside and I was just tired of 'em. Lego people were inside, and the "barbarians" outside the walls were Playskool people.

I am including our Typing Instructor for Kids 4 in our lessons each day as well as math. Teaching Textbooks has a long unit on decimals before delving into a little elementary geometry. So we'll stick with that until the geometry part comes up before using Singapore 5A again.

We did get around to tie-dyeing t-shirts. You can see that the first step is wetting the shirt, pinching it in the middle and twisting round and round until you get the cinnamon-roll look you see here. Band it with rubber bands and put it in a soda ash solution, then apply dye and wait a day. Next time I will use more dye, but I didn't want the entire shirt gloppy, brown/grey and ruined. But for a first endeavour, not too bad.

Finally, I spent some time updating some of the profile pics you see on the sidebar. I had to take quite a few pictures to find one I liked as some of them SOMEHOW didn't turn out quite as I planned.