Last week of August, 2011

We went canoeing, launching from some friends' dock into a river and using their canoe. At first, Madelyn did not want to go; the tipsy nature of the boat made her uneasy.

As we sat, ready to launch, she was chanting, "I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this." Her dad told her that canoes are always tipsy--just don't lean way over the side.

Then we started paddling and took turns spotting dark silhouettes ahead: "Is that a log or...something else?" It was a log several times, and once, a muskrat who was swimming parallel to us. Nate was concerned about the muskrat approaching.

When Moms collapse

I was so excited about history today. I found a few stream-able videos about China on Netflix. One is called "Wild China," about the various landscapes within this vast country. It has bitter cold, desert, rain forest, grass plains. So rather than blah-blah about this with text, I would put on a video and the kids would be entralled for the 50 minutes of episode 1.

Guess we should have told Computer about our plans. Yes, I'm personalizing it with a capital letter. After the way it behaved today, I'd like to call it out by its proper name and stomp its motherboarding circuits!

So it begins

We started using our full curriculum today. The kids had continued with math and reading through summer, but today was back to the array : math, handwriting practice, science, writing, and reading.

They did well for the first day. They had all but reading done by the time we had to leave at noon.
 Nate said, "It's good to be back to school."
(See my astonished face behind him?)