Friday bullets - Jan. 28, 2022

In hardly breaking news, it's still cold.

• That above sentence could kind of sum up my existence. I carry water to the barn, I throw hay to the horses, I cancel lessons. It's been nice to have some snow, but now I'm done.
• As crazy as it seems, I need to start planning my spring and summer horse classes and retreats in the next couple of weeks. 
• Is anyone else a little preoccupied with all of the myriad of different pronunciations of the Ukrainian capital? Every NPR announcer seems to pronounce it differently.
• Our neurologist appointment went well this past Monday. She is pleased with the progress that both girls have made.
• Some crafts sound far better on paper than they do in reality. I'm afraid that the papier-mache globes may be one that list. We repaired, as best we could, the holes and splits which occurred due to the expansion of heated air inside the balloons. Today everyone attempted to draw the continents on their globes so we could begin to add the different biomes found around the world. Now, everyone has spent the past school year practicing drawing the continents of the world and they are pretty good at it... on a flat piece of paper. It seems drawing the continents on a round, three dimensional object is a little more tricky, even with a globe to look at.
• I wish there was a happy medium between non-fiction books aimed at mid-grade school readers and straight textbooks. We have covered most of what we are doing for geology, with me picking and choosing what to read in the college textbook we were using. For biomes, there is a lot more kind of popular science aimed at children which I thought would work. Well, I didn't read them too carefully (I was really paying more attention to content of what was covered) and the writing level is low. As in it is so low it is almost painful to read it out loud and as I read, I hear great sighs of impatience from my children. I ended up skimming a lot today because the intended audience was totally insulted and, frankly, bored by the books. I may have to punt in how we cover the material. Why can't there be good science books aimed at a higher level reader which are not textbooks?!
• L. has decided to start another novel. This time she is setting it in 19th century London. This also means that she needs to do research. She pestered me to get her to the library so she could begin. I had a sinking feeling that there were not going to dozens of books about 19th century London in the youth section and I was right. I stood in the library doing a quick book search so I could put books on hold for her to ward off impending frustration. Another hole in youth history books is the entire 19th century outside the American Civil War. I couldn't even find decent adult reference books. There were a couple which might work which I have requested, but good golly, according to American book publishers, children do not need to know about the Victorian era. (Even my favorite series, For Kids by Chicago Press has failed me. No general 19th century book. There is a book on the history of New York City, but ironically, no book about Chicago and certainly no book about London.)
• G.'s need for a continual stream of books about mythology (Greek, Roman, Norse) is much easier to fulfill.
• The art studio where I am taking the weaving class also has classes on making Viking Swords. G. and L. are extremely disappointed that the minimum age for the class is 18. I am not disappointed that the minimum age is 18. Can you imagine?
• Y. made the most amazing chocolate-chocolate chip cookies yesterday. The only problem with them is that three dozen cookies do not last very long around here. Sadly, there are not more left.
• Last week, L., G., and K. decided to build Rome out of blocks and the played in the loft for quite a while. The only difficulty was that no one wanted to be emperor, due to the high chance of being murdered, so there was quite a bit of negotiation which was happening. Head of the Praetorian Guard was the popular role for this particular game.
• A few days ago, I came in from the barn to find H. patiently teaching R. how to use her spirograph toy. It was very sweet and they worked together for over an hour. I'm not sure how much R. understood of what they were doing, but she was very happy to have H.'s attention.
• Y. has plowed through pretty much a book a day for the past several weeks. 
• Our co-op took January off but we start back up next week. My children are thrilled. Me? I've really enjoyed having two days during the week with nothing planned. It's going to take me some time to readjust.
• We have been learning about prepositions and prepositional phrases this week. L. seems to be personally affronted by prepositions and complains heartily about them. Personally, I think they are one of the easier things to learn in English grammar and don't quite understand what all the fuss is about. Plus, they look cool when diagrammed. Well, I think so. None of my children have ever found creating diagrams to be entertaining, but yet we do it anyway. Life is hard that way.

And with that I'll say good night. I have a new warp to put on my loom and need J.'s help to get it wound on, so that's what I'm going to do.