Janet Horsman » zeke

The Mad Scientist…

Janet — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:46:57 +0000

…And the experiment gone awry.

Seriously, you should have seen the laboratory (a.k.a. my bathroom). Water and suds everywhere! Grrr…

BBFL

Janet — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:15:46 +0000

The Bethany Brothers Football League

I love being able to look out my patio door and see a bunch of boys playing a game of pick-up football. (If you look closely at the first photo, you can see our apartment in the background with flowers still stuck on the living room windows, leftover from Phoebe’s birthday party.)

Many hours so far this summer have been spent in fierce competition between all these brothers. For the most part they’re really all quite mature about handling defeat, although, occasionally an impending loss causes one team to storm off. It’s kinda fun to be an observer and just be able to watch kids handle conflict. In my opinion, it’s really good for them. I definitly lean more towards the “disorganized” side of childhood. I think nowadays kids are in too many organized activities and they aren’t able to have squabbles, and disagreements; they never get a chance to figure out “real life.” I’m immensely grateful to be living in a community where all this can happen!

Elijah and Zeke’s Piano Recital

Janet — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:37:07 +0000

Here are the budding pianists all dressed up and ready to play their hearts out. Handsome, aren’t they? They did so well! Not perfect…but I’m so proud of how they carried themselves under pressure. They’re awesome. Here is a link to a video of them performing.

And it was so special that Grammie Potter was here from Canada for their recital…

Elijah and Zeke Circa 2004

Janet — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:07:05 +0000

One of my all time favorite photos.

The Forgotten Hats

Janet — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:02:55 +0000

So! This past Saturday we had real family photos taken by the amazingly talented NoemiPhotography. It was loads of fun and so overdue; our last family photo was taken (excluding setting up our camera on a tripod) when Zeke was a baby at Sears Portrait studio! Wow. We can’t wait to see them and share them with you.

But you know what I did? I got so preoccupied with the girls’ hair that I forgot the boys’ hats. These hats…

Arg! I bought them especially for the photo shoot too. *sigh* So, to alleviate how bummed I feel about my forgetfulness, I had to capture their handsomeness in their hats myself.

Best Buddies

Janet — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:35:54 +0000

I love that every day is a playdate.

Taking the Mystery out of History… and Geography

Janet — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:02:07 +0000

It’s hard to believe, but tomorrow will be our last Classical Conversations gathering of the school year. (Also hard to believe is that my baby boy will be six tomorrow. SIX. Ack! How did this happen?) We will be having our closing program tomorrow evening, and all the kids will get to show off everything they’ve learned. I’m excited.

Yesterday, as we were reviewing our geography and history “grammar,” I grinned quietly to myself. It’s simply astounding how much they’ve learned about these subjects this year. They’ve far surpassed me! While I am loving learning everything right along with them, the fact is that I’m just not in the “grammar” stage anymore and memorization doesn’t come as easily to me. They are able to draw rivers and mountain ranges with precision across the continent of Europe (Europe was our focus this year). Pin-point European cities and locate tiny countries like Luxembourg, Cyprus and Portugal (which I seriously thought was in South America! *Hangs head in shame*) in a second.

History, though, is my favorite subject. We’ve memorized 24 history sentences this year and we had fun doing it too! Here is one of their favorite sentences…

World War II. Axis. Ally. I remember learning something about all that in high school. Probably just enough to pass a multiple choice test!

Another component to their history grammar is all about being able to grasp the scope and sequence of history, from Creation to modern times. At the beginning of the year, I, grudgingly, purchased this set of history timeline flash cards. NOT cheap! BUT…invaluable. By memorizing 10 cards a week, Elijah and Zeke know 180 events in history… in sequence. I took 30 cards out of the middle of the pack yesterday, shuffled them up and threw then on the floor. It took them a good 15 minutes…

But they were able to put them in order…

Love it! As a side note, I needed to refer to curriculum guide to check their work. Again, I’ve definitely grown out of the grammar stage! This history grammar, though, is repeated yearly. So I’m hopeful.

Correcting Their Math PACES…

Janet — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:27:17 +0000

Among the many things for which I am extremely thankful for is that Dave has taken on the math portion of homeschooling. We use Classical Conversations (I’ve blogged about CC before) for the bulk of our homeschooling, and while math “grammer” is part of the “grammar” stage, it’s all about memorization of multiplication tables (skip counting for the young’uns), geometric formulas, conversions and laws.

So, what math curriculum to use? we thought. It didn’t take long for us to settle on ACE PACES, since this is what Dave grew up with. They’re really enjoying it so far. They love that they get to correct their own work.

Fillingless

Janet — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 04:05:54 +0000

Well, thankfully, for now anyway, I have successfully avoided transferring my aversion to dentists onto my children. Zeke had his first tooth filled a few days ago and so not fazed about the whole thing. I snapped this picture of him just before he left to get his first filling and as you can see he’s a cool as a cucumber. And very cute. By the way, I took this picture not so much to commemorate his first filling, but rather to commemorate being able to see his eyes. I had just trimmed his bangs, you see, after a few weeks of needing to peer through them to make eye contact. Haircuts. They’re hard to keep up with. Especially since I’m such a scrooge about paying someone for them and my kids, I think, would rather sit in a dentists chair then Chez Mom’s chair.

P.S. It was a baby molar that he got filled. It cost us nothing, so we went ahead and had it filled, but Dave and I both wondered if getting baby teeth filled is even necessary? Any comments?

The Horsmen News Anchors

Janet — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 13:51:41 +0000

A trip to the Science Museum (this time to enjoy the King Tut exhibit and Omnitheater show, Secrets of the Pharaohs) is not complete without pretending to be a news anchor. We try to go on an “educational” field trip every Friday. Yay homeschooling!