What to blog about?

I was reading about the International Food Blogger Convention. Wow, does that ever look fun? Food and blogging...two of my favorite combos. But really, I'd rather blog about education, because I have this:

Yippee, boxes of books...some of them new, some of them being recycled (hence the non-Sonlight box...that's core 2 that I pulled off the shelf...so easy thanks to the nice orange spine stickers SL provides :D)

So yes, I'm at work. I'd prefer not to have to save any lives today, because those books are speaking to me. Very soon they shall be in my hands, and then, woe to anyone who dares to interrupt me for something so trivial as...say...needing an ambulance ;-)

Japanese Tanka Poetry

DD11's language arts this week dealt with forms of Japanese poetry, and she was assigned to write a tanka, which is a traditional poetry form. It consists of 5 lines, with the syllables following this pattern: 5-7-5-7-7. In an effort to inspire her to work on her partially-complete tanka, I created one myself:

Maple trees in spring
Dull branches appearing dead
Hidden life within
Sweet sap, vital nutrients
Fire, thick syrup emerges

Reading Explosion

Yikes, watch out. DS5 is really taking off with his reading! He's determined to finish the 3rd and final I Can Read It reader from Sonlight language arts, and soon! Something about reading "real books" is his incentive. Yesterday he read an entire story by himself, even with a sore throat. Usually we alternate reading sentences, but last week he "stole" some of my sentences, so this week he decided to read it all. He also thinks that having good reading skills will get him promoted to the next class at church, and was reading every single thing he could lay hands on in his class, in hopes that someone would notice and promote him, LOL. The teacher that day was his great aunt, and grandma plays the piano, so they shared silent giggles over his very sincere efforts ;-) We're going to the library later today--I wonder how many books he'll check out for himself. Last week he was proud to get his own books to read, and even prouder that he read 5 of them on the way home!

5 year old in 5th grade!

Eeks! Well, ok, not quite. But ds5 sure thinks he should be included in the school of higher learning! So today, dd10 was doing some mapwork of Japan. Ds5 needed his own map, so I quick copied the map before she started writing on it. Then he wanted to know what to write! Thank goodness for answer keys, because I was working with HER and didn't have time to sit and spell out words for HIM to write. I just vaguely pointed in the direction of the map key in my notebook, and said "just write those words on your map!" Well, that kept him very busy and very quiet for quite some time. When he tired of writing words (little words like Hiroshima, and North Pacific Ocean, etc) I pointed out the symbols on the map and he drew those (triangles for mountains, anchors [which flummoxed him a bit, LOL] for seaports, and fireworks for Hiroshima and Nagasaki) plus filled in his map key. I dare say, his map looks almost as good as dd10's with the exception that his letters are bigger so he couldn't fit quite as much on ;-) Oh, and he also insisted that he needed to draw the Japanese flags. He was quite dismayed to find out that it was just a red circle, LOL, so he drew the rectangle around it "because sister's has a rectangle around it too, mommy" (that would be the box she was to draw the flag in on her worksheet, but hey, I'm not a stickler for detail ;-)

Anyway, in case you were worried LOL, he's just as cute and smart as ever!

So much for having a break!

Today is BOX DAY! Or it will be when Fedex shows up with our BOX! You know what this means if you're a homeschooler ;-) The BOX will contain Sonlight's core 5 and science 5 (lang arts 5 came 2 days ago). DD9 told me yesterday that she wished she had her new books so she could get started on them because "she's tired of being on break." ROFL, she's only been ON break for 12 days! And it's not like she's been sitting around twiddling her thumbs--we've been on the go a lot. But hey, who am I to say she can't start on those new books and be an official 5th grader???