I am so wrong for this...

DH was getting the girls ready for a weekend trip to Grandma's house. Becca was saying that she wanted to stay up there "for forever!" So I told her that would mean that I couldn't be her teacher and Grandma would have to drop her off at the public school kindergarten and she'd have to learn her letters all over again. She started making faces and saying, "Bo-ring!" I told her she wouldn't be able to learn about Crete or Egypt, or butterflies and elephants, or do "fancy writing" and learn Latin and while I was listing those things she said, "Fun! Exciting!"

Oh, I am just evil. I'm secretly tickled that she's enjoying her learning at home so much. Actually I have no idea what they're doing in public school K right now... I took a peek at what would have been her school's website and saw a list of suggestions for parents working with their kindergarteners. It involved saying the ABC's and counting up to 30 each night as well as practicing writing their name properly (not in all caps). Um.... Okay, it's early in the year, maybe they pick up the pace later. Have I mentioned that we're working on adding and subtracting numbers up to 20?

Hey, it's my blog and I'll brag if I want to!

More projects!

We did these simple step pyramids today. I followed the directions in the Story of the World activity guide, so we started with a 5x5 flat and built up with lots of (watery) glue. The sugar cubes we have aren't exact cubes, so that made things a little more complicated for Becca. Sylvia had lots of Mommy help in building her pyramid - she was more interested in painting lots of glue and adding some outbuildings!







Below are some sand clay pyramids. I got the instructions from a book called The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians. This was really just for my entertainment - I mixed up the clay and made the pyramids with a little help from DH, not the girls! They think the pyramids are pretty neat looking though.




These are our scarabs, instructions found in the same book as above. Becca and I made the molds and poured the plaster while Sylvia was at preschool, but Sylvia wanted to paint, so she added the gold "accent" to my scarab (on the left, Becca's on the right). You can also carve some hieroglyphics on the bottom of the scarabs, but we didn't do that part.


I am sad to report that our snails met a bad end.... When we ordered the kit, it came with water conditioner and we followed the directions perfectly, but the whole batch died within a day. We got a replacement shipment, and they died just as promptly. I found out from Carolina Supply that we probably had too high a copper content in our pipes, which caused the snails' demise. So unless you have brand new water pipes, if you want to raise pond snails, you might want to use some purified distilled water!

Hopefully our next science unit involving living things will work out better. At least Tommy and Rozy are still flippin'!

King Cluck

We started our chicken mummy on Wednesday (8/20), so this is day 3. He's looking pretty icky now, so be warned!

Put your gloves on, girls!
Sylvie adding salt to our "natron" mix
Becca adds the baking soda
The king in his temporary tomb (covered in the salt mixture)
Okay, we may never eat chicken again!

He's smelling a little funky now, but he's double bagged, so the smell is contained. We check on the salt and change it every day for about a week, then we'll just check it once a week for another 3 weeks or so. After that, we'll give him some royal oil and spices and wrap him up in cloth strips! Becca wants to give him a "whole nine yards" burial and kept asking me this morning, "Are we going to make him a burial mask?" "Are we going to make him three coffins that go inside each other?" "Can we make amulets too?" "We need to make a pyramid this high!"

Oh, I need more energy!

What really matters to a child...

We've been working on ancient Egypt with Becca (chicken mummy will begin tomorrow!). She just learned about King Narmer (Menes), who united Upper and Lower Egypt. We were talking about it with her in the car yesterday, and she described how Narmer took the red crown and wore it with the white crown. She said, "I bet the red crown king was sad because he lost his hat!"

Those crazy ancients - fighting over hats! LOL

By the way, I deserve a sticker or a blue ribbon, or a medal. Or something. Ladies and gentlemen... I finished Moby Dick. Yep. I read the whole darn thing! Now I can say I did it. *silence*

The Nile ISN'T just a river in Egypt...

It's also here on our front porch!

This is the model of the Nile river as suggested in Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World Activity Guide for the ancients (vol. 1). Okay, I did the actual model by myself, but the girls enjoy flooding it. It was a pleasant sight to see the grass seeds all sprout up. The rock you see is supposed to represent the mountains in Northeast Egypt, so we're actually looking at it from the east in the top pic and from the north in the lower pic.

I had a nice little pyramid fashioned and painted shiny gold, but I failed to realize that natural (air-dried) clay will reconstitute when it sits in a puddle of water..... So my pyramid melted.

Wordless Wednesday

Why is it?

I am ranting. If I don't rant here, I'm going to rant somewhere else, and that could cause a huge argument where I don't really want one. Sometimes the "other" point of view just needs a little airing.

Why is it not acceptable to talk about your child's accomplishments if they surpass the "average"? It's okay to be concerned if they're behind, but oh my gosh let one WHIFF of intelligence be caught and next thing you know you're a braggart.

Why is it that you're looked upon as a pushy parent or guilty of not "letting your kids be kids" if your children are developing ahead of the curve? Holy crap - my girls only need so much time to play in the mud, guys! What about (for example) learning to identify numbers precludes fun?

There seems to be a whole attitude that "learning" isn't enjoyable or that you have to force it on kids. Most kids are born with a love of learning - grownups are the ones who screw it up and turn it into something to be dreaded or endured.

Yes, I do understand that at some point kids are going to have to get through unpleasant things that are difficult, boring, etc. But THAT will come with time, and with a better attitude toward learning and education, our kids will be better equipped to deal with that when it comes.