Fibber Island

Thanks to They Might Be Giants, today we are living on Fibber Island.
Here is our Fibber Island Poem, written by Leif:

Here on Fibber Island....
We walk on the ceiling,
Our toys stick to the floor.

We dip our heads in chocolate pools,
And we can't breath out of the water.

We have eggs for pets,
And dogs are wizards,
And wizards are bears.

We eat bananas filled with letters,
and letters are bananas,
so you can never write "Elephant".

All we ever say is
"Hello, Goodbye,
Please, Thank You
and You're Welcome."
And, we high five
With our feet.

I wish we really did live on Fibber Island.

- Leif Gordon (age 6)

 

Is it Friday yet? (Week 13)

Since starting to home school, we’ve had a lot of good weeks. This was not one of them. I woke up Monday feeling total despair. My back hurt and I had pain shooting down my leg. My mind was stuck on negative. I couldn’t believe it was only Monday, and I would have to wait until Friday to be alone. Why am I never alone? The house was cluttered and messy, and I felt hopeless about how much time I spend cleaning up and how easily it is undone. Discouraged.
And, it was raining outside so we were stuck inside.

"The Green Slicer"

I thought about going to the gym and just hiding for 2 hours while the kids playing in child care, but Leif is technically not supposed to go in the mornings now that he’s 6, so I figured we would start online lessons, and just go from there. Of course Leif picked a lesson that he required a lot of reading, so before even having my breakfast or coffee, I sat down with him to read his lessons. It was on Vikings, and it ended up being kind of fun. This lesson had an assignment for the student to give Viking names to 5 toys or things around the house, because the Vikings named their weapons. Owen had just mowed the lawn with Charles, so they named the lawn mower, “Lawn Mowery with green slicer power!”, which we shortened to “Green Slicer”. And of course, they named their nerf guns “Hole Maker” and “Fire Shooter”. We all enjoyed it, and that helped my mood a little.

Our matching stripy shirts for dancing.

I ate breakfast while Leif did his next lesson. At the end, one of the little animated creatures that was teaching the lesson did the moonwalk across the screen to celebrate. I mentioned the moonwalk, and both kids had no idea what I was talking about. So, of course, we had to look up Michael Jackson, and watch him do it. Then I looked up a tutorial, and talked the kids into trying to learn the moonwalk with me. I told them in order to dance, we had to clean up the room, and they helped me clean up. (this greatly improved my mood) We put Dubstep Radio on Pandora, and watched several tutorials on the moonwalk.
Leif and I got the movement, but not really the flow of the dance. Still, it was fun. I was pleasantly surprised that I pulled out of my funk, but Tuesday I woke up in pain again, and crabby.

We made it through Tuesday somehow, and Tuesday night I got to bed late, around midnight. Owen woke up at 3:15am and was up for an hour and a half. Wednesday seemed unbearable. Not only was I tired, but Owen was also exhausted and wept about EVERYTHING.

At the playground.

Thursday we had a play date scheduled for mid-day, so we focused on lessons and got out of the house early. I got to spend over 2 hours at the park with two other home school moms. One of the other moms showed up with red eyes because she had been crying in the car feeling like she was the worst mom ever. It was so healing for me to see someone else who didn’t have it all together. We talked about our times of discouragement, but even better than that, we just talked, sometimes not even about our kids. It was just what I needed.

Leif demonstrating the moonwalk.

Leif painted a piano for the Piano Tuner.

Leif's partially finished viking ship painting. Leif claims it is finished, and that there are no oars, and no sails because the vikings are eating breakfast. 

Charles and Owen working on a "Whirlpool" picture.

Owen was very proud of his picture.

Learning from our mistakes (week 12)

I love how mistakes, big or small, can lead to learning. Leif and I did a lesson on Vikings this week, and the text said something like this, "Although some Vikings were pirates (or something evil), some were explorers, traders, (some other good things) and shaped our world today..."
Leif hears this and says, "Aren't traitors bad, mom?"
Me, "Oh, no, traders are good! For example, say we had a garden full of corn, and our neighbors grew a garden of tomatoes (two of Leif's fav foods), we could trade them some corn for some tomatoes."
Leif, "Yes, but aren't SOME traitors bad?"
Me: "No, buddy, it's a really good thing. We even do it today with money. Daddy goes to work...."

You see how the conversation went and why both of us left it a little confused! I was telling Charles  about the viking lesson, and remembered this conversation. I still didn't figure out the mistake, but as soon as I said it out loud to Charles he said, "Were you talking about traitors or traders?" and spelled them to me. I laughed so hard. I can't believe I didn't figure it out while talking to Leif. BUT, it led to a great teaching/learning session on homophones. ("not to be confused with homophobes" - thanks so much, Wikipedia) Leif was especially delighted with I/eye/"Aye, my hearty!"

 Sometimes it's good to be able to laugh at our mistakes, and learn from them.