A Little Update

Not a whole lot is going on around here.

The biggest event was that Tom got his school package for 1st grade yesterday. He is so excited about it. We opened all the boxes and he found a slide whistle. You'd thought he had died and gone to heaven. He said "Oh I was hoping something like this would be in here!" and then walked around all afternoon blowing on it. I had to put a stop to it about 2 hours later though! HA! He doesn't start school until September 5th, but we should be able to get into the website and school event schedule soon. That is my favorite part. I am hoping there will be some sort of regular event nearby that Tom can meet some more friends.

Jake is stuck on XBox right now. He is the gaming master. Really he is so good at them all. And it is so hot, it is hard not to let him sit there and play as much as he wants to.

Dan is working on the backyard shed. It looks almost done. He also mowed the lawn this morning. That is another thing that gets neglected when it is hot like this. And it has been hot a lot lately!

Me? I'm doing laundry. But I quit because the dryer is making me hot! And I have a headache. I have also been "helping" Jake when he is playing Lego Star Wars because that is my favorite game!

That is about it around here. Pretty boring huh? I can't wait until summer is over and it starts to cool off. Yuck!

Craziness on the Southern California Coast!

Yesterday, it was so hot, I thought maybe the planet was getting closer to the sun and it was some kind of huge secret because there was no stopping it and we were all going to die a slow agonizing death. No, really, I mean it! It is one thing to be this hot in other parts of the country, but Anaheim does not get like this. Ok, maybe for a few days or a week in late summer early fall, but not like this. It has been hot, **** hot, since late May. 

Yesterday I drove to the book store at 3:30, looked at the thermometer on my truck, 103. I thought, well, it is 3:30 in the afternoon, so I doubt it will get any hotter than that. I came out of the book store at 4:30, jumped in the truck, 109! Then on the way to the grocery store it climbed to 111! Where are we, Arizona, for cryin’ out loud? When I got home, it was back down to 105. Hi! It was almost 6pm! We don’t have central air, just a wall air conditioner, which works pretty well to cool off the downstairs area. But how were we going to go to bed upstairs when it was still 90 at 10 o’clock at night!? So we camped out on the living room floor in front of the fan and air conditioner.

This morning we woke up to the sound of thunder. I’m thinking, sure, a little thunder, no big deal. The boys go out on the porch and watch for lighting. So do I, with my coffee. It is cool, not hot and not cold, but kinda sweaty like. HUGE LIGHTING AND THUNDER STORM! Then it starts to rain. Once again, I am pessimistic. Don’t go get dressed! You don't have time. Go play in the rain in your jammies. An hour later, it began pouring! The wind kicked up and I thought the house was coming down. I get all excited, run around opening windows and doors to let the cooler wind through the house. I say "cooler" because it is still 85 degrees. I took some pictures of it! I mean, seriously, how often does it do THAT around here?

But then it is over. I come inside and start writing this, then BANG! More lightning! So loud, Jake and I jumped out of our seats! I screamed. Jake looked at me like I was nuts. It sounded like a car was picked up and dropped outside our front door!

The excitement is over now, though. The sky is brighter, the thunder is farther away. The wind it still blowing cooler, but you can feel the heat coming up. Yuck! I can’t wait until this summer is over.

Sea World!

Yes, we went to Sea World again! I can't believe it. We haven't been in over 5 years and then we go twice in a month. My Grandma had tickets and wanted to meet us there for the day. She used to take me there when I was little and it was fun to do it again.

Here they are being silly with their Great-Grandma! It was her birthday and they did their best to show her a good time, including taking her on Journey to Atlantis for a good soaking wet roller coaster ride!

This was my favorite part. Sea World has a place where you can feed the sea lions little fishes (4 for $5 Ahhh!). But it was SO worth it. This one kept standing there with is face right next to the boys with his mouth open as if to say "Throw those fishes right here kid!".

Children's Museum of La Habra

This place is great! The temporary exhibit is a theater. They have a small stage set up. Backstage is a costume and makeup room, a scene shop, prop shop, ticket booth. Out in the house there is a sound booth with working buttons and a light booth with working switches for the stage lights. We spent a good hour in here!

The picture above makes me proud! While their friends were off getting their costumes on, here come my boys. This was completely not prompted. I was sitting in the audience and they went straight for the scene shop stuff. For those that don't know me, that is what I did in high school and college. Theater was my pre-mom career.

This is one of their permanent exhibits. There a whole bunch of real animals there that they are perfectly welcome to touch. This lion was a favorite!

LA Maritime Museum

I'd have to say this was $6 and gas well spent! It is a very small museum. There were lots of model ships, few "artifacts", but the kids liked it. They spent about an hour inside. Most impressive to them was this gun off a battleship that you could really sit on and turn around to aim at things.

 Right next door is an Acapulco's restaurant not to mention Ports of Call. If I had more money today I would have spent more time in San Pedro.

More about "A Thomas Jefferson Education"

So part of learning from the classics is to write about it and discuss. I can't really discuss right now because I'm still searching for a "mentor" myself, but I can write about what I am learning.
 

The part that struck me most today was this, "The stories we associate ourselves with, whether they be the Bible or Moby Dick, become powerful in our lives and when the time comes to make tough decisions we fall back on them in order to decide."

This made so much sense to me. Learning from the classics seemed so vague to me before this. I mean, what can you learn and apply to your life from a fictional novel? Are we only to read non-fiction and essays? But with this I have learned that when we read and discuss what we have read, write about it, and re-read it, we take into ourselves what has happened to people in the books we have read and use their decisions to help us make our decsions. It makes so much sense to me now.

Also, even if I don't like a book (or my sons don't like a book) discussing why I didn't like it and how I might make things different is part of education itself.

Whew, just writing that little bit was mentally exhausting! I really need to have more practice. I really wish there was a way for me to learn to write better. I need to research that out.

I'm Reading Another Book

This is one that I have been planning on reading since last years California Homeschool Network Expo! "A Thomas Jefferson Education for the Twenty-First Century" by Oliver Van DeMille

I heard him speak last year and loved his lecture so much. I bought the CD version of his book and I'm thinking I should have just bought the book. It is hard to listen and take notes for me. I'm constantly rewinding! But I got through the first of four CD's this afternoon.

Here is my favorite quote so far. What we have in the US is "widespread specialization complemented by arrogance, pride, and general ignorance. This is the legacy of Germany in the 1930's, a highly trained but under educated people easily swayed by Hitler."

The piece of information that I feel that will help me with educating myself and my children? "Structure time to study not learning." An example, set aside an hour each day to study math in general, not what math will be learned and mastered in that hour. There is no time table for learning. We all do not have to have learned how to add by the time we are 5 years and 6 months old. But we should be studying math at least 15 minutes a day by that age and more as we get older and our minds can concentrate for longer periods of time.