Looking for homes

I listed the kittens on FreeCycle this morning. They are so adorable, I am sure they will find new homes quickly! There's one or two that I'd love to keep, but with six already, I guess I can't be picky if someone wants to give a home to any of them!

Here's a link to some pics, which will probably only work for a few weeks:
www.leapingfromthebox.com/kittens.html

I am slowly getting used to having it quieter here, although it doesn't seem like I've been home long enough to have to worry about it. I'd like a couple of more days like last Monday where I had four or five hours at home alone! I accomplished quite a bit that day!

I've just about completed updating my church school listings on my website:
www.leapingfromthebox.com/hs/alhschurchcover.html

There are only two or three listed that I do not have updated for this year. If I don't hear from them soon, I'll have to remove them from the listing. And I have some more to try to locate contact info for, but those are not listed on the site. Mainly I just wanted those on the site to have current information. And then it will be time to get working on the other sections of my website. Websites always need more work!

Watching Miss Munchkin Learn

Just this week on the Unschooling List (my very favorite e-mail list!) we were talking about "how children learn" and whether one can teach a child how to learn. The example given was that there are a few curricula available that say they teach a child how to learn. So that was on my mind Wednesday when I visited Kat and was able to watch Miss Munchkin in the process of learning. Of course, to the adult it would look like she was just playing, but she was hard at hard learning how to navigate this new and wonderful world of hers. And doing a fine job of it too!

Miss Munchkin spends a lot of time in her walker right now. Her feet just hit the floor, but she loves sitting in it, being able to sit up and look around, have her toys on the tray where she can drop them and pick them back up again as she wants. Last week Kat told me that Miss Munchkin had not really figured out how she was getting from here to there in the walker. She would have this look of surprise when she'd go from point A to B like she didn't know what had happened. Wednesday, though, it was obvious she has figured out that she is the one propelling the walker. Kat had pulled out a box of baby cereal, with it's nice shiny crinkly plastic wrapper still on it, and was looking at the box. Miss Munchkin, across the kitchen in her walker, saw that box and in two seconds flat was across the floor, hands outstretched trying to reach the box! I am pretty sure she has not had any lessons on how to work the walker! And yet she managed to figure it out.

You can certainly teach someone a particular skill, such as how to compose a nice essay or how to play the flute. It'll cut down on their trial and error time, prevent the "reinventing the wheel" process. But you are not teaching them how to learn. They are using their hardwired learning skills to pick up the skill you are showing them. Even teaching them to think more logically or how to use certain study skills, like listening better or taking notes of key words in a lecture, is not teaching them to learn. If they didn't already know how to learn, they would not be able to listen to you, observe what you want, absorb the lesson and integrate it into their behavior.

It sure is fun watching a little one figure these things out!

Miss Munchkin crawling, almost too fast to get a good picture!

Miss Munchkin in her walker with her ever-present teething ring.

David called

Well, he's alive and knows how to use the phone! David called yesterday and he was doing great! And he sounded like it was going great. It seems that his FlexPlan Menu card allows him to get food at the sub shop where they sell pizza and root beer. And it's just a short walk from his dorm. His Internet speed is about 100 times faster than our dial-up connection. And he and five other guys (one being his roommate) all went bowling, which David has always enjoyed. So life is good!

Classes began yesterday (Wednesday) and David was calling because he needed to buy some additional books. And so he needed to check his bank account online, which he didn't set up before he left home, even though mom had advised him to! Not only that, but he did not have his bank account number with him nor the pin number he needed to access his account online. Nice to have a mom who keeps things like that on file and knows where they are.

It was nice to hear, though, that he was doing so well and enjoying himself. Of course, his dad is worried that he'll enjoy himself too much! We shall see!

And yesterday while Charles was at karate, I went to visit Kat and play with Miss Munchkin. Took some pictures, which I have yet to look at. Watched her scoot around in her walker and crawl. She certainly is mobile! Tomorrow I will write more about Miss Munchkin.

The first day

Well, we survived D-Day! It was a long, long day Saturday.

We left home before noon on Friday, so we were in Evansville by 6 p.m. That gave us time to swim a bit, go eat supper and get a good night's sleep. Saturday we got to the college at 9 a.m., which was the earliest you could begin moving in. There were lots of fraternity guys there helping with the unloading, so I didn't have to carry anything, which was good because David's room is on the 4th floor. But there was some delay in the bed lofts arriving ... an outside company handles those and they were not very organized. We waited for bed parts from 10 till 2, with bits and pieces of it arriving throughout that time. So you had to wait in line to get your first pieces and then keep checking back to see if more had arrived. It certainly frazzled a lot of parents. So it was 3:30 before we finally left Evansville. And 9:30 by the time we got home.

David called Sunday noon ... I had told him to call me Sunday night. He was in line for lunch, so he couldn't talk long. But he sounded okay and said everything was going fine.

And so far I only see one thing he forgot to take ... the summer reading book he was assigned when he went to orientation in June. That was sitting in the chair next to him computer, hiding under a magazine. So I will have to ship that to him today.

It did seem a little weird yesterday without David around, but I am sure we will adjust. David was definitely ready to leave home, ready to be at Evansville, ready for us to leave him there. It made it a lot easier for me knowing that he wants to be there and that it seems like a good place for him. And it's only four weeks until the Parent Weekend!

David at Evansville under the "lazy tree." He's moved in and ready for Mom and Dad to leave!

Charles being lazy on the "lazy tree." He really liked this tree. It's called the lazy tree because so many of it's lower limbs are on the ground.

The picturesque main entrance.

David, taken the day before he left for Evansville (August 17, 2006). Also the day he passed his road test and received his driver's license!

Miss Munchkin is 5 months!

I can't believe Miss Munchkin is five months old already! I took pictures when she was four months old and it wasn't until yesterday that I even had a chance to go through them. So here are a couple of more up-to-date pictures of Miss Munchkin and family.

Miss Munchkin on her four month birthday with Mommy and Daddy!

And here is Miss Munchkin two weeks ago, July 27, 2006. It's getting very difficult to take good pictures of her because if she's awake, she's moving! Hence, blurry pictures! This one didn't turn out too badly.

Counting Down

Twelve days until D-Day. Delivery Day. Deliver David to College Day. And I don't feel like I'm coping very well. Bill says I've been micromanaging everything this summer and haven't let David do enough of the preparations. He's probably right. It's been easier to focus on the preparations, keeping busy with the minutiae, rather than dealing with the knowledge that life is going to change.

It is going to be a huge adjustment not having David around on a daily basis. Of our three children, David is the one most like me in disposition and attitude. I'm going to miss having that even keel, come-what-may-we-can-cope attitude around. Heck, I'm just going to miss having a live body here during the day. Even though Charles is still home, he spends so much time at karate that some days it's like he's not here at all.

It was a full year before I really adjusted to Kat's being gone when she moved out, but at least she did so with no warning. I didn't have time to obsess about it before hand. And the six months before she moved out she was gone a great deal of the time anyway, having a car and license. So I was more used to her absence. David has neither car nor license (although he is going to take his driver's test this week). This past year, especially, we've spent so much time together commuting to his college classes.

But I know David's ready to experience new things, ready for new challenges. I'm pretty sure that Evansville is going to be a good experience for him and he is excited about going. It's the anticipation, the waiting that is so hard for me to deal with. I always handle a fait accompli much better than the lead-up time to anything. There shouldn't be so much time between being accepted to college and actually going to college!

Lemonade

This is turning into a recipe blog rather than an unschooling blog! Anyway, I've been experimenting the last several weeks with making lemonade. So far, this recipe is the one that always gets finished off quickly, with children wanting to know when it will be cold enough to drink!

Lemonade - For 1 Quart

4 cups water

1/2 cups sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix water, sugar and salt in large saucepan. Boil 2 minutes. Chill.

When cooled, add:

1/3 cup lemon juice

sliced strawberries as desired.

Chill

I've discovered if I add the strawberries to the sugar water as it comes off the stove and begins to cool, that the lemonade has a much stronger strawberry flavor. I also add a lemon when I add the lemon juice, slicing it and squeezing some of the juice into the lemonade as I add the slices.

I made some Granola Bars yesterday that the boys loved. Unfortunately, they didn't hold together at all. They were great to eat and would be wonderful with yogurt or ice cream or even with milk and eat it like cereal, but as a bar they were a flop. I used spelt flour instead of wheat flour, so maybe that had something to do with the consistency. Or maybe I need to use more honey to hold them together. The pan will be empty by the end of today, so I'll be able to try again! At least it is one way to get Charles to eat more oats!

Book list(s)

Last night David downloaded the book list for his fall freshman semester at the University of Evansville. His World Cultures class does not have a list. I assume this is because they are reading several books over the semester (actually the whole year, since it's a full year requirement for all freshmen) and the teacher only wants them reading one book at a time. So he'll likely have to get those directly from the college bookstore. And it appears as though his Computer Science 101 class does not have a text. Wouldn't it be a novel idea for a computer science class to be all computerized? No textbook needed?

So, he has to purchase books for three classes: Japanese, Calculus and Chemistry. The full list price at the bookstore for all three classes totals $433.10. If he buys used from the bookstore (assuming they are still available used), it would cost $292. After spending an hour on E-bay and Amazon this morning, I can get several for less, although surprisingly the Japanese books are cheapest at the campus bookstore. If I buy some online and the Japanese at the campus bookstore, the total could be around $260, and most of those online were brand new. So that's a fair savings.

I would love to see the list of books that David will be using for his World Cultures class. He brought home from Orientation the first book for that class, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. I have had that book on my "too read" list for over a year. I've already read one of his books to the boys and have another here on my shelf to read next. I'm willing to bet that David's World Cultures class will be a very interesting one.

This morning someone posted on one of the high school homeschool e-mail lists a request for "the" book that we think each high school student should read. And also which book we read as a high school student had the most lasting impact. She wants to create a "must read" book list for her high school student.

If I had to name one book that made the most impact upon me as a high school student, it would have to be The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But if I had to name one author, it would be Leon Uris. I think his books did more for my understanding of history, especially history over the past 100-150 years, than any history class I ever took, and I did enjoy all my history classes.

As an adult, there is one book that I think all adults should read before they have children of their own or work with children in any capacity. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Maybe adults would view children differently, treat them differently, if this was required reading.

I've always thought book lists were fun. A list of books someone has read can tell you a lot about that person. So can the books they own. The first thing I do upon visiting someone is look over their bookshelves (hopefully they have some!). I think the books there, or the absence thereof, tells you a lot about the household.