Who Are You?

Emperor has been recruited to be on a homeschool chess team based out of St. Joseph, about an hour and 15 minutes away.  Of course we knew he'd encounter plenty of people he knows already, but there are about 50-odd people in this unfamiliar place.  One very pretty teen girl came by to say hello to Emperor.

PT:  Hi, Emperor!!

Emperor: (awkward silence) I am not sure who you are, but you know my name and so you must be familiar to me.

PT is bewildered.  Emperor has seen her a good plenty of times!  And he doesn't look too open to the hug she was about to give.

Me:  It's the hat.

PT:  (removes hat)  Do you know who I am?

Emperor:  Yes!  You are (Name).  I have played chess with you before!

PT: (puts hat on)  How about now.

Emperor:  I cannot tell it is you.

PT: (removes hat)

Emperor:  Now I know it is you again.

PT:  (puts hat on) YESSSS!  This is the perfect disguise!  (walks away)

Happy National Chess Day!

Greetings from West Des Moines, Iowa!  Emperor is at the hotel room right now taking a whirlpool bath and celebrating his victories.  He won first in the morning rounds and second in the afternoon rounds at the West Des Moines Youth tournament today.  He won all of his games except for the last in which he drew.  I have a new respect for Emperor as I entered the Parents and Friends tournament and lost. every. game.   I just don't have that long-range concentration and thinking ahead and dealing with spectators thing that Emperor has honed.  Imagine hanging onto board one all. day. long. and having people watch your every move from 9 am to 4 pm.  Ok, I can imagine it a bit better now and know it is beyond me.

Your Cell

***** Emperor takes you on a tour!

Braces Are On!

This is what is going on inside Emperor's mouth AFTER the tooth extraction.  Imagine a huge pair of teeth there with roots that go way up.  Ok, it's still a mess, isn't it?  I have a feeling poor Emperor is not going to be finished after his crossbite is alleviated.

But yay!  The braces are on and Emperor chose purple covers for his brackets.  He goes back at the end of the month for a tightening-up.

Woodjie got a vaccine.  He is very angry about it.  He said it hurt and "it not nice!" that they did that to him.

Rose can write part of her name!  This is an excerpt.  Note the typewriter-style lower case "a."  Emperor still writes like that.  I don't know why that isn't taught in schools but is mostly a teen girl thing.  To my mind, lower case "a" and "o" are too similar when printed by hand most of the time.

Seashells

Out and About With Emperor

We've finished our testing with the school district for Emperor!  I have only to turn some paperwork in and wait.  That's good to get all that out of the way before the snowy season.  I quizzed him about his latest speech test on the way to the grocery store.  "They asked about sayings and things like that," he told me.  "One was, 'All that glitters is not gold.'"

Ok, so what did you tell her it meant?  "I told her that it meant you had to get one of those people who knows whether things are gold or not to look at it because looks can be deceiving," he said.  (I'm wondering if he got credit for "knowing" this one.  Half-credit, maybe?)

So, what did she say? I asked him.  "She said, 'OK.'  Whether I get something right or wrong or even just don't know it she says, 'OK.' just like that."

Other sayings?  "Even the largest tree bends with the wind.  And I told her it meant it didn't matter how old you were, you would get in trouble sooner or later if your mom finds out."  (??)

"The only other one I remember was, 'What does grass and a blanket have in common?'  And I told her that they are both water-absorbent."  Here he paused.  "Although then I said it depended on the cloth.  Some material doesn't absorb water so well.  I'm not sure exactly why she asked that one."

That.  Is hilarious.  I'm thinking she meant they are both coverings, Emperor.  The grass covers the ground and a blanket covers a bed.  Emperor thought that was a very unique answer to the question and I informed him that actually? That was the answer they were looking for.  Probably.  (I start to doubt myself sometimes.) Emperor is not really sure about that, though it is a very clever answer that he never thought of. 

On to shopping, because there is no soy milk in the house.

"Just how many reindeer DOES Santa have?" asked Emperor incredulously as we were listening to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on the loudspeaker. "And how did everybody find out their names?  Don't say wikipedia."

Emperor and I picked out some fruit and some soy milk and browsed around for milk-free snacks.  It's not our usual store so we got lost a fair bit and heard ohh... at least three songs.  One was "Let it Snow."  Emperor was a bit miffed that the singer thinks he is "letting" it snow at all.  Even if he didn't want it to snow, you can't stop God from snowing on everything.  That's just... why is he singing about that?

"Is it just bad theology?" I asked him.  It's just bad logic, really... he told me.  He shook his head sadly at the silliness of it all and said,  "Well, that's music these days, I guess."

Tales for Young Men

"Grendel's plan, I think, will be
What it has been before, to invade this hall
And gorge his belly with our bodies.  If he can,
If he can.  And I think, if my time will have come,
There'll be nothing to mourn over, no corpse to
    prepare
For its grave:  Grendel will carry our bloody
Flesh to the moors, crunch on our bones
And smear torn scraps of our skin on the walls
Of his den.  No, I expect no Danes
Will fret about sewing our shrouds, if he wins. 
And if death does take me, send the hammered
Mail of my armor to Higlac, return
The inheritance I had from Hrethel, and he
From Wayland.  Fate will unwind as it must!"

(Beowulf, lines 442-455, translated by Burton Raffel, Signet Classic edition)

Emperor seems to read well enough.  It is not his favourite subject, but he likes Beowulf a lot.  "It's very pretty," he tells me. "I like writing that is beautiful and has a lot of adjectives in it.  This lets me know what is really going on." 

Yep.  There's really no mistake about what's happening in literature like this, and the character motivation doesn't seem to be so deep or introspective as many tales marketed to children seem to be.  It's understandable to Emperor in a way standard "kid" literature is NOT. He has a lot of trouble with your usual kid-fiction. 

Emperor is currently being tested by our school district to see if he needs any sort of special services.  Lately the tests they have been giving him are reported to be boring.  Emperor tells me they had him read and answer stories about some child and a dragon.  "But, the story had no taste to it."

No taste?  Surely my kid isn't getting all highbrow and pining for classic literature only?  I asked him a few questions about the readings he was supposed to do.  One is about a dragon and a small town, he told me, rolling his eyes.  Well what about it?  "Four letters," he said.  "L-A-M-E."

Stories about odd creatures such as dragons and Grendel and Orcs and what-have-you are usually very exciting! 

Ughhh... Emperor explained that this one is about a dragon that steals people away from the town.  Everyone was scared and didn't know what to do until some little kid went off to find out what the problem was.  "And ALL SHE NEEDED TO DEAL WITH THE DRAGON WAS A MAP AND SOME FOOD."

As if this weren't insulting enough to the reader's intelligence, Emperor reports that the kid brought along as her companion some fluffy thing called MISTER FEATHERS.  Here I got another good eyeroll from him at the stupidity of the story. 

"Mister Feathers and the girl find the dragon and then they just TALK with the dragon.  The dragon tells them he is picking up all the people to save them from the avalanche that will be destroying the town soon." He shook his head and put his hand up to his brow as though the whole ordeal were painful to recount.

"THE END."

"The story just sucked, Mom."

Well, maybe it did.  I don't fault the school for having sucky stories during the testing process because I'm thinking that it might be a test to see if the child is able to remain calm and polite under duress or something.  (I dunno.)  Usually these "tests" have a hidden objective and the thing you think you're getting tested on isn't the thing they're really measuring. 

But on the whole, I hear boys are "behind" on reading.  I wonder at us as parents for not having better literature choices than the Junie B. Jones series in our personal family libraries.  Sorry, I hate those.  They are just WRONG. 

Am I the only one with reading pet peeves?  Looks like I passed mine onto my children somehow.

At the Club

Emperor is not so happy about having his game interrupted by me. But Rose? Rose is THRILLED to be allowed to go to the Kansas City Chess Club for the first time. Not to mention, she LOVES having her photo taken. She did participate in most of the exercises (with help... lots of help). The only thing she wasn't even slightly interested in doing properly were the pencil and paper tactics exercises. In those, random chess pieces were circled and, instead of a line and arrow indicating the "best pin," she drew lines that would seem to indicate that they wandered off the page and went AWOL.

Fancy Plates...

Emperor chose the Blue Horizon plate set and is enjoying hot dogs on bread, fancy-style. Yep, I let him use his stuff early because why not. :)

Tornadoes.

In the summer, it's tornado season. A friend of mine had no idea about tornado sirens! I thought everyone had those, but maybe not. So I'm posting some pics of our closest one and chatting a little bit about our "season" so far.

When the siren goes off, it means to get into your basement or best cover right now. It could be the result of a county-wide warning, or it could be specific to where you are. Just get into the basement and tune in to your radio from there to see what's up.

 The siren goes off every Wednesday at the same time. Eeeven though it was a Wednesday yesterday, I knew it was a for real siren. It was turned super loud as if to tell everyone that people, this is not a drill. And it went on for I'm thinking an hour and a half or so.

Emperor was already freaked out about Joplin. He understands. He is very, very afraid. I distracted him by making him match my huuuuuge collection of single socks. I mean, why not. I told him I would give him a nickel for every pair he folded together. I'm tremendously bad about matching socks with this size of a family. PLUS, there is the fact that G has until recently only worn one sock at a time, being in a cast/boot and all. (BTW, he is still in a brace. So... not done yet.)

Emperor was very nervous and upset but the job helped a bit. When he was done it was eeeeerie quiet, odd whistly outside and he sat with me. Little tears in his eyes.

"Momma, if I live, you owe me 70 cents," he whispered as he got in my arms. I held him close and even Woodjie and Rose sat and were suddenly still next to me for a minute. They have no clue, but they were still a bit. I don't know what could have caused it because usually they don't stop and crouch like that even when there is shouting and upset in the house. They remained down a good ten minutes. Was it a tornado nearby? I still don't know.

After a long time, it didn't sound eerie or even angry outside any more and the sirens stopped. Emperor had a hard time being coaxed out of the basement. Poor guy.

There is some photographic evidence on a major news channel of a funnel cloud about a half a mile from our house yesterday. One neighbour of mine (who is not given to hysterical fits of exaggeration) reports that the tornado passed OVER our houses. Why she went outdoors to look, I could not in a million years tell you.

If you are interested,  here is a YouTube video of a tornado siren in action. Promise it is louder in real life.

St. James Chess Tournament

Emperor won in the grades 1-3 division of the St. James Chess Tournament today. Our piano now has more trophies than candles. It is now time to ask about sending Emperor in to play K-6 or even high schoolers next time, what do you think?

Elf Goes to School

I took about 50 pictures but since I got there early, I didn't hold up the dropoff line. ALL the pictures in which he is facing the camera wound up with his eyes squeezed tight, so I am posting the pic of what I saw as I was getting ready to drive away... *sniff*... Goodbye, Elf. He says he will miss me, but I don't think he will. Do you know who is very sad? Emperor. I've already played (and lost) two chess games and he's been online "battling" other players for a while now. I'm going to have to pull him away soon and tell him it's time for other lessons. He will have a hard time doing his schoolwork without his best friend. Thankfully for him, Elf will only go half days for a while, so math and science are done at home. And chess. DO NOT forget chess.

Yay, Emperor!

Emperor was undefeated in the K-4 division of the local chess league for the last six weeks, so he received this trophy! It is starting to look as though we are starting a collection. :)

Shopping With Elf and Emperor

I think the things they decided to buy at the convention reflected their interests and personalities. Elf selected a muffin tin very much like the cookie tray you see here near Emperor's apple baker. Stainless steel. Niiice. Threw out all my old gummed-up nasty stuff from Evil Mart and am happily using these as well as my new pizza pan. D says you could just about hang it on the wall, but I know it will get dinged and cut and scratched like anything else in our home. It won't leach into our food, tho'. That alone makes it, as Woodjie would say, "You-ee-full."

Emperor scouted all over the convention hall. You would think that with a zillion homeschoolers about, that there would be better chess books for sale. He was miffed that the nicest one with illustrations didn't get any more in-depth than explaining castling. He bought a magnetic chess set so he could play chess in the car (two hours each day on the computer is not enough) and some chess trinkets... the sort that he would be able to hang on his backpack... if he ever USED a backpack. Nice stuff, though. Elf had enough money for a little knight that is on his messenger bag for school next year.

Emperor was determined to get a set of history books from either My Father's World or Sonlight this year. His prime mission was to see which books were too soft, whether they were interesting, and "stuff about Rome."

First... the My Father's World booth. I thought from the catalogue that this set would actually be the best fit for his age and reading ability. Maybe just not the chess book that comes with it. It seems to be geared to a slightly younger set than the Sonlight core that includes Ancient Rome. He liked the books well enough, but NOT the worksheets. They were terrible, he told me. Umm... that's because they covered them in plastic sheeting so they wouldn't tear while everyone is looking through them? You can't just base your dislike for the program on that... Well, that and the disappointment in the chess book seemed to sour him a bit.

On to the Sonlight booth. The consultant tried to steer him to a younger core package that did NOT include Rome. Emperor was displeased. He came for Rome. Also displeasing was the fact that several of the books were absolutely identical in both programs. I don't know why he hadn't figured that out before, but perhaps the extreme amount of STUFF in the Sonlight curriculum especially blinded him to that fact.

I rather liked the look of the books in their core, though doggone it, they didn't bring them all! Emperor wanted to check for softness. The consultant musta thought we were crazy and kept showing us the PICTURES of the books on the back cover. In all honesty some of the Sonlight selections were a probably bit above him. Not a big deal if, as the consultant told us, we could stretch a core to last two years if we wanted. (Why not, and supplement with library stuff? Plus the fact that almost no teacher ever gets through everything, and every activity, in one school year.)

I was thinking this was a great idea, but I could tell Emperor wasn't happy. That's ok. He has lots of time to stroll around the convention hall and think about what to get. For that matter, we could always order something later if he couldn't decide that day. Eventually what he decided on was something in both his top contenders' packages: Story of the World. But I had no idea it had its own activity workbook and test book as well as they are not included as any sort of set I'd encountered before. Of course Emperor loved it for the same reasons I was hoping he'd buy a boxed curriculum set: lots of fun hands-on activities. Which of course means more teacher work. I will need to plan ahead... which... I am not that skilled at doing. Guess I have to give it my best shot, because I DID promise him he could pick out that one subject.

Emperor also wanted to buy Augustus Caesar's World and Famous Men of Rome from Memoria Press. The latter may be a bit ambitious on his part, but he says he can do anything. He can learn anything. By the way, he is starting to consistently beat the 1000-rated computer and most of the children who play online at chesskid. I signed up "HappyElfHomeschool" on chess.com and Emperor is now soundly getting his butt trounced by 1400-rated players. He was able to get his rating up to 1340, though. For a minute. I should have taken a picture. Honestly, the chess.com players are mostly adults and he's gonna feel the pain. Yowch.

Lead Bank State Championship

We had a LONG day playing chess at the Lead Bank State Championship at the KCI Expo Center. We got to see some old friends from a previous chess league and socialize during the times between games. This is J and B, who later tied for first place in the K-2 Division. Emperor was the top player in the third grade division (he would have been in third grade were he in public school). And The Happy Elf Homeschool placed as the *first* K-6 division school. I hadn't even realized we were playing as a school as well as individually. Elf and Emperor have greatly improved their game since last year. For Emperor especially, this is a grand victory. Remember his last tournament? This was his year to shine. :)

Sunday Selections

I thought about NOT posting this, but then... how could I NOT share this happy occasion with my bloggy friends? Do you see how happy these little fellows are? They've been presented with their very OWN Polish pottery. Elf very nearly launched into orbit from giddiness; he has his very own mug with handpainted stars. And Emperor has his very own apple baker, which is now on display in the middle of our homeschooling/ dining room table. For more Sunday Selections, see Kim's blog.

Theology of Rock Music

I have crossed over to the Dark Side. Elf and Emperor have now heard "We Are the Champions" by Queen and are singing, singing, singing the chorus. Especially the "no time for losers" part. They seemed so enraptured by this that I decided they could also listen to Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. I let them listen separately so that I could interview them to see what they thought.

Emperor thought that the "lady" in the song symbolized old church, trying to buy the stairway to heaven. (I think he means the Catholic sale of indulgences.) He is not sure about the middle verses. He thinks the "rock" at the end of the song symbolizes Jesus and the True Church, which does not "roll."

The "west" described in the song is, of course, indicative of the decline of society. All the cultures (like the Elves in Lord of the Rings) go west at the end of their age. Just as we Americans went west and just look at us now.

Ok. Thank youuu, Emperor. Now for Elf. What, Elf, did you think about this song?

"Well," he wanted to know, "what exactly did EMPEROR have to say about it? Let me know that and then? I will tell you my answer." Nope. Tell you what he said after you tell me YOUR interpretation.

Elf sat quietly and did that Vulcan "pensive" pose before singing, "Oooh, it makes me wonder..." and that he has really absolutely no idea. The song was in English but it made no sense to him.

I'm not sure I can explain all this rock music, either, but if Elf is going to school next year, he probably ought to have heard a few songs through first so that there isn't too much culture shock. The only other rock song they know is "Oops, I did it again. I pooped on the floor and I peed in my pants." And... just that part of the song. Did I mention that I pulled them out of school in kindergarten and first grade respectively? Wonder what the kids listen to now.

Happiness Is...

There is nothing like going outside on a school day in your jammies for a picnic lunch. In January. Enjoy it while you can. :)

Happy Christmas!

You wonder what Polish Pottery and martial arts have to do with one another until you realize that these are Christmas presents. Yep. G is not going to have anything but a sweatshirt to unwrap on Christmas (don't tell! It really is his only gift!) because he's getting Taekwondo lessons. In an extreme violation of my child's privacy, I have allowed his NAME to be boldly written on the blog in full. Yep. There it is in Korean on his uniform - have fun guessing. The instructor must STAND ON A CHAIR so that G can do his kicks properly... he is just that tall. My present is obviously the pottery. I think it goes well with the stuff in the middle I got at Goodwill... but not too matchy-matchy. Emperor looked at all the stuff from the company online and is sad that I did not get an apple baker. (Look at his blog! He's updated his pictures and clever sayings as well!) I had NO idea that he had apple-baking aspirations, or I would have thrown one into my online cart. He carefully researched how to bake the apples and everything. Dear readers, I hope you are having a lovely Christmas season and that next year brings you much happiness, joy and peace. :)

Star Trek Thoughts From Elf and Emperor

* Captain Kirk sure has a *problem* with women. But at least his problem is with women - that's good -right, Mom??

* I really, really want a tribble for Christmas. I will keep my room neat and feed it. They're so cute! Can I have one?

* The computer knows a lot of amazing things. I wish I could ask it some questions.

* How do all these new people show up in every episode? I thought they were in space and there were no people out in space.

* There are MORE episodes than these three? Can I see another?