Tuesday, Nov 6th

This week, we're working on science to prepare for our trip to the beach. We're reading the following books:

• Take a Beach Walk
• One Small Square Coral Reefs
• One Small Square Seashore (I want to find this one)
• Encyclopedia of Animals
• World of Animals and God's Design
• Glow in the Dark Fish

We started by reading a section on oceans in the Encyclopedia of Animals and then read about the different types of worms: segmented, round and flat worms. They think parasitic worms are gross, but segmented and tube worms are pretty cool.

I'm hoping to mow through a three weeks of material this week so that we can have a good understanding of the ecosystem that is the beach. 

Here the kids are drawing giant tube worms that live around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. 

Image: Here

These are what we started with and you see what they are drawing. 

These are what we started with and you see what they are drawing. I love their creativity. We needed to accomplish a bit more than we did today, but they'll have Math and Language Arts at Granny's house. 

Photo by: Paul Sutherland, National Geographic

Emma did see these in the image list on Google and thought they were the coolest things (aside from a furry snail) that she'd ever seen. I think that is the origination of her spiral.

On the list for later this week: 

• Blog posts about Maine (from both kids) that we'll put on our Around the States blog
• Blog post from Emma about a topic of her choosing that she'll put on her blog, Emma's Learning Journey
• Blog post from Matthew about his latest Lego creations that he's worked so hard on these last few days. It will be posted on his blog, Matthew's Epic Journey Blog

Hopefully, we'll get it all done!

Make good choices ^_^

With little power comes crushing responsibility...

Anyone else feel like they're about to pop a vessel this week? No, it's just me? Well, I'm glad it's not everyone, that would be a whole lotta negative energy!

I am feeling like a failure, a poor excuse of: a mom, a teacher, a worker bee, and a human being. I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and as much as I'd love to give it all over to God and stop worrying about it, the last time I did that, he didn't edit the order packs the way Paul likes them. So it's back to me then. I don't feel like we're doing as good a job at schooling as I should. We're covering about 1/2 a week in history and science every week...ok, perfectly honest, we're covering 1/2 a week in science ever 2-3 weeks. There just aren't enough hours in the day right now.

We're at critical mass with the point of sale system at the store. It's still running in DOS. Nothing runs DOS anymore and we have killed another computer this week. I don't know what we're going to do to replace it at the moment. I think it's time to have a serious discord on replacing the whole system. The thought of that makes my stomach turn over...twice.

Then there are these kids. All they do is bicker and fight. They won't split up and they won't get along. I'm not sure what to do, their attitudes are terrible. Course, it all flows from the fount, doesn't it? My attitude could certainly use improvement, Mark's too.

Maybe we just need a vacation.....beach, sand, no phone, a good book, maybe that would fix it.