Thoughts about rich/poor city/country dynamics.

I mentioned in a previous post about how we used to live in a big city, and then we moved to an even bigger city, and then we moved to a small town, and now we live in an even smaller, tiny village of 600 people.  Mostly in that post I wanted to hash out my own thoughts about why I preferred city living to rural living (and by rural I am including the predominantly agricultural based economies of the towns I have lived in, not just off-in-the-bush type living).  But actually there are other urban/rural dynamics that have occurred to me over the years that I think put me in a minority.  There are a lot of assumptions made about urban living or rural living that, just from a personal perspective, have not rung true for me.  One of these is...

image from The Graphics Fairy

The city is expensive.  The country is cheaper.

Now, in some ways, yes, the city is more expensive and the country is cheaper.  In some ways.  But a lot of it depends on your lifestyle and despite the fact that most of my opinion is anecdote based, I am still going to share it.

So, when we lived in the second Big City, a city of multiple-millions of people, we had a small, one bedroom apartment.  We were newly married, two cats, no children, and it worked for us.  The apartment, like all apartments, had positives and negatives.  It was small, and older, damp and not well lit, but it was in a great location in a shared house with the landlord who was lovely.  It had a good sized walk out to the back yard, which we also had access to whenever we wished.  The landlord was prompt and efficient, we didn't have a car but the apartment came with parking if we had guests over, we were close to public transit, and nearby were several grocery stores and so forth all within easy walking distance.  There were no laundry facilities on site, but there was a laundromat about 5 minutes away and without children to make it challenging we didn't mind going and sitting beside our washing for an hour with a book and a coffee from the local shop.  We walked to the library, which was big and well stocked, and to our church, both within a maximum of 20-30 minutes at a meandering stroll.  The apartment was not, don't get me wrong, a great apartment.  But it was an okay apartment in a great neighbourhood.  

We moved from the Great Big City to the first smaller town.  That town had approximately 4000 people.  We moved into, again, an apartment.  And again, this apartment had pluses and minuses.  It was better lit and it was bigger.  There were small windows around the house but the front living room window was nice and big.  All of the rooms were larger in size and there were more of them - there were two bedrooms in this apartment plus a third room used as storage.  This extra room was important for our family because this is the apartment we brought our first child home to.  It also had hook-ups for a washer and dryer, though we didn't have a dryer at that point.  From a negative view, though, the apartment didn't have a yard, it had a very awkward layout and also ancient carpeting and therefore a problem with mold.  Although the apartment was bigger, the neighbourhood was not as nice, the neighbours were not as nice, and the walk to access our church and grocery shopping was long.

What you may find interesting is that those two apartments were the same price.

The smaller apartment in the big city in a nice neighbourhood close to everything, and the bigger apartment in the small town in a not nice neighbourhood far from a lot of stuff.  For us, there was no price difference in our rent, although when it came to utilities, we did see a marked difference - the bigger apartment was heated with electric baseboard heating and the price to keep it warm was astronomical - several times the heating cost of the small, better insulated city apartment.

Image from The Graphics Fairy

The area where housing costs really seem to show a big disparity is if you are buying a house, which we haven't done anywhere we've lived.  In the areas we've lived in, in the country you can get a lot more house for your dollar than in the city.  That being said, some cities cost half a million just to break into the housing market, while others have houses half that price, and depending on where you look and what you want in a place, the country can often cost nearly what the city costs.  But I would say it's accurate to state that generally, in a set locale, the equivalent house in both the country and the city would show an increase in value in the city.  

In the two cities we've lived in, we've had access to public transit and not kept a car for that reason.  In the small town we lived in we didn't have a car either, and found it a challenge.  In the tiny village where we live now we have always had a car and frankly would have trouble surviving without one. 

I've heard people say that the cost of yearly public transit is close to the cost of maintaining a car but I can't possibly see how that could be true.  Once you factor in maintenance, gas, insurance, and any sort of upgrades, even if you do a lot of this yourself, it is significantly more to own a vehicle.  I took the opportunity to look up the prices of a year's worth of monthly unlimited ride passes in three Canadian cities.  Here you go:

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, an adult could have a monthly pass for $151.15.  The total for the year would be $1813.80.  

In Vancouver, the cost is $177.00 a month, or $2124.00 a year.

In Ottawa, $116.50 will get you unlimited monthly fares, or $1398.00 a year.

This is just the most expensive, regular adult fare.  If you qualified for any other sort of discount - low income, senior, student, etc., then obviously your fare would be lower.  At least one of the cities also offered a discount in the monthly pass fare if you bought the year's worth of passes at one time.  Even in the most expensive of these cities (and these are three sizable Canadian cities, with populations of 2.93 million, 675,218, and 994,837 respectively), the cost of keeping a vehicle would drastically outweigh the cost of a year's worth of unlimited rides.  This is true right up through getting multiple unlimited ride passes, at least for us it would be.  Gas where we live is a lot more than in Southern Canadian cities, and our grocery store is a 90 minute round trip away.  If we travelled into the city 2.5 times in a week, we would need to refill the car, and at our local gas prices, that would be half the price of that monthly bus pass right there.

Now in terms of food and household supplies, I've found the price differences to be a mixed bag.  When we lived out on the East coast of Canada, the cost of 4L of milk was close to $8.  Here in central Canada, the cost of 4L of milk is under $4.  In fact, almost everything was more expensive out there!  I have found when buying stuff that the city is almost universally cheaper than the country and I assume the reason behind this is the simple fact of lower prices with increased competition.  If there is one store, that store costs more.  If there are two stores, suddenly there is a competition for your money.  Multiply that by a hundred and suddenly you have the stores in a city.

I've had people tell me that this sort of understanding wouldn't work for them.  That their work is in the country and therefore living in the city is more expensive, or that the price difference is drastically higher or lower than I have experienced.  Or that 'things have changed over the years' ( I find this one odd, since 1) my experiences spread over many years and 2) my experiences are Still Happening Now.  Not all in long ago reminiscences.).  I understand, not all people have the same experiences.  If you live in South Africa, maybe cities are different.  If you live in Hawaii, maybe houses are different.  If you live in the Yukon, maybe food is different.  Absolutely.  In MY experience, though, the arguments for urban/rural living from an economic perspective have been skewed; cities are often just as inexpensive, and very frequently MORE inexpensive in almost all categories, than rural living.

As long as you don't buy a house.  :-)

Learning Notes - Week 5 (Sept.23-28)

This week features guests, a conference, a lot of stress, and sickness, so let's see how it all plays out.

Monday

This is the only day that I forsee school happening without too much struggle.  I tried to make the best of it.  Also only 2 people were sick at this point.

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology, national anthem

Bible reading - Mark 1:29-31.  We read about Jesus going to Simon's house and healing his mother in law.

Christian Biography - 9yo read about Jan Hus.  7yo read about Selina, Countess of Huntington.

Memory work - We added Ezra to our OT books, 'forgive us our tresspasses' to The Lord's Prayer, Quebec to our list of Canadian provinces, and recited the months of the year to review.

History - We read the second half of our SOTW 2 Chapter - dealing with illuminated manuscripts.  We talked about vellum, and added the date 597 AD to our history wall - when Augustine arrived in England.  We looked at a picture in one of our secondary history books about scriptoriums in medieval monasteries.

After our first batch of blue dyed wool did not work out well, we started a second batch today using blueberries instead of cabbage leaves.  We let it sit overnight.

Individual Studies

9yo

30 minutes silent reading

30 minutes piano practice

R&S English 2 - Lesson 8: Making Sentences

Saxon 5/4 Math - Lesson 13: Number Lines

Astronomy - We watched an episode of the BBC Earth series The Planets.  This one was about the outer 'frozen giant' planets - Uranus and Neptune - with a mention of Pluto as well.

7yo

30 minutes silent reading

30 minutes piano practice

R&S Math 2 - Lesson 8 (finishing it up), Lesson 9 (starting it)

5yo
R&S Math 1 - Lessons 13, 14, 15, 16, and I had to eventually take the book away from her when she started lesson 17.

Tuesday

By Tuesday I was down with the gross fall cold that had made its unpleasant way through both younger children already.  Morning time did not happen.  Neither did art.  You know what happened?  Breakfast.  That's what happened.

Swimming Lessons - only for the 9yo and 5yo, the 7yo was too sick to get in the pool.
Piano at the Conservatory - for the 9yo, who did very very well on the testing and is going to spend the next week practicing octaves with the left hand.

Wednesday

By Wednesday the 9yo had joined the plague patrol making 4 out of the 5 of us in various stages of incapacitation.  Also we had company arriving.  We spent a lot of time huddled on various horizontal surfaces.  Except for the fact that I'm pretty sure I didn't have a temperature, I would have said it felt like the flu.

The 7yo and 5yo started doing math on their own today and I eventually stopped them.  When my eyes can focus I'll see how bad the mess is in the workbooks.

We also welcomed a guest today for the Women's Day Away retreat that I run on Saturday.

Thursday

On Thursday the husband succumbed to the awful illness.  The first words he croaked to me in the morning were "it was too good to last".  I had to go to the city to get the rest of the stuff for the Women's Retreat on Saturday, so I left him with the kids.  He took them to the library and the 7yo and 5yo each did some math on their own.

Friday

Friday I attempted to rouse myself to some effort through the fog of sickness.  The 9yo and 7yo each read for 30 minutes, and the 9yo did a math lesson and an English lesson.  The 5yo did a phonics lesson.  Then we all collapsed.

Saturday

Today was the annual women's retreat, that I run.  I spent the day doing that.  I have no idea if the children did any school but I'm going to assume they did not.

We're all still very sick but David will preach today, we'll say goodbye to our guest who came for the retreat, and then we'll go back to bed.

Learning Notes - Week 4 (Sept. 16-21)

Monday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology, national anthem

Bible reading - Mark 1:26-27.  We discussed how Jesus handled the unclean spirit and the reaction of the crowds.

Christian biography study - The 9yo read to us about Jan Hus and the beauty of Prague.  The 7yo read about Selina, Countess of Huntington's childhood.

Memory work - The 5yo recited the days of the week and months of the year for us, without error.  We added 1 Kings and 2 Kings to our memorization of the OT books.  We added Manitoba to our list of Canadian provinces.  We added 'forgive us our tresspasses' to the Lord's Prayer.

History - It's history day!  We continued working on our medieval wool process.  We decided to dye our wool in thirds - one third blue, one third yellow and one third natural white.  For the yellow we used turmeric, which was present as a spice in Medieval cuisine but would never have been actually used to dye fabrics since it was so expensive.  But for our purposes (using a natural ingredient to make a dye and watching the fibre change colour) it sufficied.  We washed our wool out after and the colour was vibrant and autumnal.

Individual Studies

9yo
30 minutes silent reading
R&S English 2 - lesson 6 - starting sentences with a capital.
Copywork - All capital letters in cursive.
Saxon 5/4 math Lesson 9 - Adding money

7yo
30 minutes piano practice + piano lesson.
30 minutes silent reading

5yo
R&S Math 1 - Lessons 7 and 8 - the numbers 5 and 6.

Tuesday

Morning Time

Everything happened in the car, en route to piano and swimming lessons.  We recited:

Prayer, doxology, national anthem, the current portion of the Lord's Prayer, added Ontario to our list of provinces, reviewed the OT books and added 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles to the list, and reviewed days of the week and months of the year.

All three children had swimming lessons.  Then the 9yo had his piano lesson at the conservatory.  Afterwards we went to the library and bought books at the volunteer-run store.  The 9yo had saved enough money for a pair of night vision goggles, so we went to a store to buy those, as well.

The children spent the rest of the day reading their new books.

Wednesday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology, national anthem

Bible reading - we read Mark 1:28.  We discussed how news would have travelled in OT times.

Christian biography read-alouds - The 9yo read to us about the end-of-the-world scare in 1400AD.  The 7yo read to us about Selina witnessing a funeral.  We discussed the repetitive nature of end-of-the-world scares and what the Bible says about the end times.  We also defined 'mortality'.

Our memory work was The Lord's Prayer, to which we added the line 'as we forgive those who trespass against us', the OT books up to 2 Chronicles and 5 Canadian provinces.

We started Shakespeare studies.  I pulled out my Arden Complete Shakespeare and read a passage from a play to illustrate the language, and how difficult it would be to understand today.  Then I read part of The Tempest from this abridged version:

Image from Amazon

The language is still a little challenging for the children, but they were very excited.  There was a princess Miranda! And a sorcerer!

We listened to the poem Vagabond Song, by Bliss Carmen.  First we heard it read by, and I'm not exaggerating, possibly the worst reader of poetry that Youtube has to offer.  Then, because I was deeply aggravated by the slaughtering of one of my favourite poems, I read it myself.  And I did a much better job.  We discussed what we thought the poem was about and if we have ever had nature bring forth an emotional reaction in us.  The 9yo said the sound of rain made them tired, the 7yo thoughts birds in spring was a happy sound, the 5yo loved picking flowers for me.  I said that personally I love the sound of the wind.  We asked ourselves what emotions Bliss Carmen felt when he saw the changing leaves.

Indidvidual Studies

9yo
Geography - as of now, we're switching geography to individual studies.  I knew it would be a challenge for the younger two to sit and listen to any of this grade 4 level stuff, but I was optimistic.  Turns out that optimism was misplaced.  The 9yo and I reviewed the Earth's axis, tropics of capricorn and cancer, the polar circles, the five climate zones, the equator, the definitions of climate and weather, and learned the name of the sun.

Saxon 5/4 Math - Lesson 10 - Adding with regrouping.  We used play money to illustrate the lesson.
30 minutes of piano practice.

7yo
Rod and Staff Math 2 - Lesson 6
30 minutes piano practice

5yo
Rod and Staff Math 1 - Lessons 7 & 8
100 Easy Lessons (Phonics) - Lesson 25

After our lessons for the day we went for a nature walk and discussed all the different topics that come up when you walk anywhere with little children.  Today it was the difference between convex and concave (brought on by mushroom caps), the history of slavery in North America, erosion of rocks by water, rock that exists in old vocanic tunnels, and probably other topics I can't remember right now.

We collected rocks and feathers for our nature tables.

Thursday

On Thursday we totally skipped morning time.  I had been up since 4am and the house needed to be cleaned and, well, we just didn't feel like it.  So that's that.

We went for a few walks and talked about convex and concave mushrooms, found interesting feathers, and then watched cartoons instead.

Then we dyed our next batch of wool!  We chopped up a purple cabbage and simmered it for about an hour, then removed the leaves, added a good amount of white vinegar, poured the whole mixture into a bucket, and added the wool.  It sat for a long, long time, trying to soak up the purple cabbage colour.  After a few hours of the wool really not taking the vinegar/cabbage water, (I had added the vinegar as a mordant - a way to get the dye to stick to the fibre) I discovered that a very small amount of vinegar turns the end dye result light pink.  The amount I put in likely wouldn't allow the purple cabbage dye to dye the wool anything noticeable.  But salt might help.  So I dumped in a bunch of salt as well and let that sit for a while longer.  When I pulled it out and rinsed it we discovered a very slightly light pink wool.  Nothing at all like the grey/blue/purple of a winter sunset we had imagined.  And we'd had such success with the turmeric!

Individual Studies

9yo
R&S English 2 - Today was the unit one test in the test booklet.  The 9yo got 33 out of 34 on the test.

And that was quite literally all the formal schooling that happened today.

Friday

Today was not a day when any school got done.  We ran errands and handled appointments, mainly.  The 9yo and I started watching a really interesting astronomy show called The Planets, on BBC Earth. We saw the episode on Mars and the one on Saturn.  I didn't know that Mars' soil was still 2% water, or that the rings of Saturn may have been caused by the tearing apart of a planet sized ice moon.  Here's a link to the show.

Saturday

Morning Time

We didn't get Morning Time done today. We had company instead.

Individual Studies

9yo
R&S English 2 - Lesson 7 - The beginnings and ends of various sentences.
Saxon 5/4 - Lessons 11 and 12
30 minutes silent reading

7yo
R&S Math 2 - Lessons 7 and 8
30 minutes silent reading
30 minutes piano practice
Patterns of Nature - Lesson 2 - Seeds

5yo
R&S Math 1 - Lessons 12 and 13
Patterns of Nature - Lesson 2 - Seeds

Tea

This past week my doctor informed me that I should stop drinking caffeine. 

And then we both laughed and laughed...no, we didn't.  He was serious.

He said this, I feel obliged to point out, while a large take-out cup of some hot beverage was On. His. Desk.

There is almost no chance of this happening but it is minorly possible that maybe I could manage it.  I mostly drink tea, and not coffee, and I don't really like herbal tea, is one of the main problems with this plan.  I have been known to refer to the taste of many herbal teas as being like "wet dust".  And I stick by that.  I do like some herbal teas, but usually those end up being very expensive ones and even then I rarely think of them when the part of my brain that lights up with 'Make a Cuppa' clicks on.

Some people are emotional eaters, and I am an emotional tea drinker.  My husband said recently "it isn't so much that you like to drink tea as you like to MAKE tea."  And actually that might be more accurate because a good 60% of my tea just gets poured, cold, down the drain.  I was very proud of myself a few years ago when, after trying for quite a long time, I managed to cut sugar out of my tea routine.  Now I just drink it with milk.  And to be fair I drink it with a LOT of milk, but I do still drink it three or four times a day.  It is the thing I do in the morning - put on the kettle for tea.  It is the first thing I think of when stressed.  I should make a cup of tea.  Come over for a cup of tea.  Oh, hello there, do you want to stay for tea?  I'm sorry, you seem really upset, come in and I'll make tea.  I wish we could sit and have some tea together because I miss you.  I'll call you in a second, let me just make a cup of tea.  Would you put the kettle on for me, dear?  

I make the tea, and then there is perhaps a 30% chance I will forget about the steeping tea.  If I do remember, then I will add a lot of milk, and then I will sit somewhere with it and there is again a good 30% chance I will never finish it or will possibly not even start it, depending on how absent-minded I am.

But I make the tea.  I need to make the tea.  You don't understand, doctor, without the tea...what will I DO??  Don't, Do Not, tell me with your mug of something hot that I will bet good money is not, like, boiling water with a virtuous floating lemon slice, that you don't have something you do when you're stressed?  It's not like I spend a lot of money emotionally shopping or something.  I just...make cups of tea.  And leave them around the house, half consumed, because the sound of my beloved sighing is like unto music to my ears.

I thought about this today as I went to the cafe in town.  It's not a big town, but we have recently had a small, trendy, urban little cafe pop up and we're all feeling very ritzy about it.  And usually I order the same thing every time I go, and it is this:  A Twinings Earl Grey Tea In The Big Tiffany Blue Mug.  They know what mug I like.  They leave a lot of room for milk.  Twinings is my favourite Earl Grey.  The little yellow bags just...make me so happy inside.  But of course, who the heck is going to order an herbal tea in The Big Tiffany Blue Mug??  The Big Tiffany Blue Mug, darn it, was made for Twinings Earl Grey Tea.  Full stop.  I will not commit the sacrilege of sullying it with the likes of CHAMOMILE.  Which, seriously, who decided on that flower?  Let's just steep grass clippings and be done with it.

Anyway, I couldn't order it.  So I asked for something cold, and this is how I ended up with a chilled vanilla latte and when she asked if I wanted one or two shots of espresso I said with virtue, but also realizing fully that this WHOLE THING WAS MUCH WORSE THAN TEA, that I would just take the one shot, thanks.  And then I sat outside and drank it all on the patio and twitched.

Learning Notes - Week 3 (Sept. 9-14)

Monday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology

Bible reading - Mark 1:22.  We discussed who the 'Doctors of the Law' were, and what 'authority' and 'astounded' mean.

Christian biography - the 9yo continued reading about Jan Hus. We discussed idol worship and why some faiths use statues to represent holy figures.  The 7yo read about Anne Lawson's work in Tanzania - we talked about how her missionary work involved multiple facets.

Memory work - days of the week, months of the year, the Lord's Prayer up to 'On earth as it is in Hevaen', the books of the Bible up to Judges, and added on the province of British Columbia.

History - We discussed wool processing in Medieval times.  Firstly we looked at pictures of spinning and carding in these two books:

Image from Amazon

Image from Amazon

Then we watched portions of episode 2 of the BBC's Tudor Monastery Farm.  We saw the medieval washing and shearing of sheep, how the wool was sorted and weighed, and the carding process.

Then we took our very own bag of unwashed, dirtier 'second class' sheep wool (I specifically wanted dirty wool and not necessarily of the best quality to mimic what a farmwife of the era would have had to work with) and dumped it out on the porch to talk about.  Why does it smell?  What is all the hay doing in there?  Is that poo!!??  We looked at how the wool was all held together, how some little locks were flatter and some lovely and curly, and I introduced the word lanolin to everyone.  Then we filled up a bucket with cold water and washed our fleece, each getting a chance to plunge it up and down.  "I'm pretending to be a medieval woman!" shrieked the 5yo.  We let our fleece soak in cold water in the sun to soften any particularly hardy dirt, and got back to it in the afternoon.

After lunch we agitated the wool and rinsed over and over again until our water ran clean.  Then we laid it on a hot rock to dry in the sun.

Individual Lessons

9yo

R&S English - lesson 4: the asking sentence.

30 minutes silent reading

7yo

Piano lesson

R&S Math 2 - Lesson 4: numbers that add to 6 + review

Cursive practice A-C capitals, a-c lowercase, Aa, Bb, Cc combos.

5yo

100 Easy Lesson - lesson 23 review

R&S Math 1 - Lesson 4: The number 3

Tuesday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology

Bible reading was Mark 1:23.  We discussed what an 'unclean spirit' meant.

Read alouds - the 9yo read to us about Jan Hus' father's funeral.  The 7yo read to us about Anne Lawson's emergency flight in Tanzania.

Memory work - we reviewed days of the week, months of the year, the Lord's prayer up to 'On earth as it is in heaven', added Ruth to our books of the Bible.

Individual Studies

9yo
The 9yo had piano lessons at the conservatory.

7yo
Nothing formal got done.

5yo
Nothing formal got done.

Wednesday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology.

Bible reading was Mark 1:24-25.  We discussed how the unclean spirit knew who Jesus was.

Read alouds - The 9yo read to us about Jan Hus asking the priest if his father was in heaven.  We defined purgatory.  The 7yo finished the story of Anne Lawson.  We talked about whether missionary work seemed glamourous and exciting or not.

Memory work - We have dropped the days of the week, but reviewed months of the year once.  We added 'Give us this day our daily bread' to the Lord's prayer and 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel to the list of OT books.  We added 'Alberta' to our list of provinces.

Geography - It's geography day!  The 7yo and 5yo listened in a bit but this is mainly for the 9yo.  We reviewed last week's lesson 1 when we defined Climate, Weather, Climate Zone, Equator, Tropic of Cancer and of Capricorn, the Arctic and Antarctic circles, the Northern and Southern Frigid Zones, the Northern and Southern Temperate Zones, the Tropical Zone, and what is a continent.  We worked for a bit with the globe and then went through the questions at the back of lesson one orally instead of writing anything down.

Independent Studies

9yo

30 minutes piano
30 minutes silent reading
R&S English 2 - Lesson 5: Review

7yo

30 minutes silent reading
30 minutes piano
R&S Math 2 - Lesson 5: Addends to 6

5yo

100 Easy Lessons - we are done previous lesson review and today did Lesson 24.
R&S Math 1 - The number 4

You'll notice we didn't get much done on Wednesday.  Sometimes thems the breaks.

Thursday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology

Bible reading was Mark 1:25.  We discussed why Jesus had the authority to tell the unclean spirit to leave the man.

Christian biography read-alouds - the 9yo read about Jan Hus leaving for university in Prague.  The 7yo started the biography of Selina, Countess of Huntington with an introduction to her family tree.

Memory work - we reviewed the Lord's Prayer up to 'give us this day our daily bread', the books of the OT up to 2 Samuel, and added Saskatchewan to the list of Canadian provinces and territories.

History - we read the chapter section on the monks who travelled with Augustine to Britain.  We looked at this book as we discussed monastic life:

Image from Amazon

Individual Studies

Everything sort of fell apart at this point.  I hadn't slept well, and there were a lot of dishes, and everyone was very, very cranky.  So instead of doing school work we made a solar oven!  We roughly used these instructions.  Then we put a bunch of apples in it to see what would happen, and went for a nature walk.  We saw a female mallard, and when we went to see her roost found some lovely feathers, including one with iridescent blue on it.  We also saw a blue heron, and collected all the interesting stuff we could find.  The 7yo discovered an oak leaf with a weird fuzzy orange thing stuck on it and we all debated what it could possibly be.  The 7yo thought it was a caterpillar, the 9yo thought it was a mold or moss, I was sticking with cocoon as my guess, and the 5yo thought it was fur of some kind stuck to the leaf.

Guess what it was!

An oak gall!  Read this interesting blog post about it.  Ours looked just like this.  It seems to be the gall from a Callirhytis furva wasp, which is quite tiny.

Other topics of conversation on the walk - identifying the parts of a mushroom, why seeds are often surrounded by fruit, examining the cocoons hidden along willow tree bark, crayfish, wild roses, whether or not we were going to make jam out of those rose hips (reader - we are not doing that, no.) and identifying a blue jay by his call.  A very satisfying walk, all round.

We got home and checked on our apples (they had gotten browner, at least) and then spread out our nature treasures and got out the art supplies and sketched them, with a review of the four pencil grips from last week's art lesson included.  We worked on blocking out our art in rough shapes before filling in details.

9yo

Science - Astronomy

Seemed like as good a day as any to start science with the 9yo.  We have planned to study astronomy!  We started by watching this video by National Geographic about two men who made a to-scale model of the solar system in the Nevada desert.  After that we used this package, from the Canadian Space Agency, to discuss the solar system and lay our our own (very much not to-scale) solar system model in the backyard.

Link

We read the fact sheet inside about the moon, which we were trying to focus on.  I mean, we're trying, but...we tend to fall down a lot of rabbit holes in this house.  We started reading this book

Image from Amazon

And read through page 7 - discussing the moon and light-seconds.  We discovered, thanks to G.ooglemaps, that one light second is equivalent to driving to Grandma's house 415 times in a second.  And then we started talking about satellites and ended up watching this video, a 20 minute documentary about the Voyageur spaceprobes...and then (you can see what I'm talking about with falling down rabbit holes here) we watched THIS video about the discovery of water on Mars.

Both the 9yo and the 7yo practiced the piano for 30 minutes.  And that was the sum of school today.  Some days the work gets done, and some days we just flop around a bunch.

Friday

 Annnnnnd it didn't get any more organized today, either!  Woohoo!  We left the house early for a dr. appointment and got back sometime just before supper, at which point I had the 9yo do two math lessons.  And that was essentially it. 

Saturday

Okay so IN MY DEFENSE it was not going to necessarily get better on a Saturday, for heaven's sake.  We reviewed a little bit of our memory work, and then we went and splashed around in the lake and found weird looking rocks and shells and such.  And picked apples.  And came home.  And...didn't do school.  The two oldest practiced the piano.

Reading Notes - From Sometime up Until the middle of September

I have no idea when I last posted my reading notes, and I'm not sure I've even done much in the way of reading, but there are a few books that are sticking in my mind, and I shall check my reading log.

Image from Amazon

The first of the Goldstone's books about their journey in the book collecting world.  This is a re-read for me.  It's pretty dated, but the way they portray the neurotic, weird world of collectors is spot on.

Image from Amazon

And Slightly Chipped is the follow up book by the Goldstones.  Again, a re-read for me.  Not as good as their first, but still excellent.

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Possibly the THIRD time I've read Furiously Happy, which is Jenny Lawson's second book - her first, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, is more of a memoir of her childhood.  This is more a series a really very humourous stories about a woman living with multiple physical and mental illnesses.  Think...think Nora Ephron meets David Sedaris.

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Okay, I don't think I'm a snob but then again the fact that I feel the need to explain why I read Forever, Interrupted makes me think that yes, maybe I am a snob.  I don't know.  What I do know is that I was taking the children to the park, and I had intended to read while I was sitting on the bench, and then I didn't end up bringing a book.  Not to worry, thought I, there's a free little library at the park and surely there will be something there to read.  There was...there was this.  I mean, there were also the usual romance novels and westerns, but this appealed the most to me.  

I didn't love it.  

I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to read it, honestly.  I'm not ruining anything by telling you that the plot is, essentially, as follows.  Newlywed husband gets instantly killed in head on collision with truck.  Newlywed wife falls apart.  This story happens in the first few paragraphs.  The rest of the book chronicles her falling apart and what happens after.  All the usual things you would imagine are covered.  There is a lot of swearing.  It isn't really an...ENJOYABLE read necessarily, although I could see why maybe someone would enjoy it if they like a lot of emotional scenes.  I suppose.  I started keeping the book in the bathroom so I would be forced to read a few pages every once in a while.  But I finished it.

Learning Notes - Week 2 (September 2-7)

Monday

It had been a hard weekend with nine hours either in or travelling to and from various emergency rooms on Sunday, but it was Monday, and Monday is school.  

Morning Time

Prayer, singing the doxology

Our reading was Mark 1:14,15.  We briefly discussed what Jesus was referring to when he said the Kingdom of God is upon you, and how that relates to Biblical prophecy of the coming of the Messiah.

The 9yo read to us about Augustine's writings and clarification of key Christian doctrines (see last week for book information).  The 7yo read another paragraph to us about Anne Lawson's childhood and boarding school days.  We talked about how it is so easy to get distracted from our spiritual work by the interesting and entertaining things of the world.  The 5yo mentioned sleeping as a distraction.  I said that, uh, wasn't exactly what I meant.

We reviewed our oral memory work: days of the week, months of the year, and added a third line to the Lord's Prayer.  The 9yo added the fifth book of the Old Testament to his memory list and also we explained how those books form the Pentateuch, and then there was a brief rabbit trail on the prefix Penta - meaning five.

We paused SOTW on Friday in order to start reading Beowulf and Grendel in Michael Morpurgo's translation (really nice, and accessible for kids.  But grusome - you might need to edit on the fly depending on the child).  We finished it today, looking at the pictures of the queen and the mead-hall.  Grendel is a weird looking monster and the illustration of him minus an arm  has him looking a bit sheepish.  Fantastic.

Individual Studies

9yo
30 minutes piano review in preparation for his lessons starting tomorrow.
30 minutes silent reading

7yo
30 minutes silent reading

At this point we had a second emergency so school stopped.  And when we returned the children watched the old BBC version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Tuesday

Tuesday was essentially a wash.  I had scheduled all sorts of things in the morning but then got derailed by life.  It's not been a great week.

In the afternoon the 9yo had his first piano lesson at the conservatory.  The beginning of a new journey.

Wednesday

Back into the swing of school!

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology.

Our Bible reading was Mark 1:16-18.  We discussed fishing, Hebrew names translated to English, and the lure of God's call.

The 9yo finished the the story of Augustine of Hippo.  Whoop!  We reviewed his life story and wrapped it up.  The 7yo continued reading to us about Anne Lawson - we talked about falling away from your faith and the definition of evolution.

Our memory time was days of the week, months of the year, the first 4 lines of The Lord's Prayer, and the 9yo reviewed the first 5 books of the bible, the word Pentatuch and the meaning of 'penta', and added Joshua to his memorization list.

We started with our geography work for the year - The 9yo is working through Rod and Staff's Homelands Around The World Gr. 4 curriculum.

Lesson 1 discussed the difference between climate and weather and we pulled out our globe and talked about hemispheres and climate zones, the tropic of capricorn and the tropic of cancer, the equator and the arctic and antarctic circles, and the continents.

Individual Lessons

9yo 
15 minutes piano practice.
30 minutes of silent reading.
Saxon 5/4 math, lesson 3: Missing addend review, sequences.
R&S English, lesson 1: The sentence.

7yo
30 minutes silent reading.
R&S Math 2, lesson 1: Addition review.
Patterns of Nature, lesson 1: Seasons

5yo
Phonics (100 Easy Lessons), lessons 15 and 16 review
R&S Math 1, lesson 1: Drawing zero.
Patterns of Nature, lesson 1: Seasons (no written work)

Thursday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology

Bible reading was Mark 1:19,20.  We discussed the difference between the calling of Andrew and his brother Simon, and the calling of James and his brother John.  We also defined what was meant by 'hired men'.

The 9yo started the mini biography of Jan Hus.  The 7yo read us the next installment in the mini biography of Anne Lawson, when she decides to become a missionary with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship).  Then we watched this film about MAF's work in Angola.  We talked about the varied work of missionaries.

Our memory work was the days of the week, the months of the year, and added another line onto The Lord's Prayer.  We're now up to 'On Earth as it is in Heaven'.  The 9yo recited the first 6 books of the bible and remembered the word 'Pentateuch'.

SOTW 2 - we read part one of chapter 3 - Christianity Comes To Britain.  The section focused on the coming of Augustine.

Individual Studies

9yo
30 minutes silent reading
R&S Grade 2, lesson 2 - Differentiating between a sentence and a phrase
Saxon 5/4 Math, lesson 4 - Digits, review of sequences and missing addends.
Piano practice
Cursive practice - Alphabet capitals

7yo
30 minutes silent reading
R&S Math 2 - lesson 2
Cursive practice - letters A-J, capitals
Piano practice

5yo
100 Easy Lessons review lessons 17, 18, 19, and 20.
R&S Math 1 - Lesson 2 (Drawing the numeral 1)
Printing practice - lowercase a

Friday

Friday ended up being entirely filled with a doctor's appointment and then errands and grocery shopping.  School didn't really happen.

Saturday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology

Bible reading today was Mark 1:21.  We discussed Capernaum, the difference between the dates of the Jewish and Christian sabbaths, and what a synagogue is.

Memory work was the days of the week, months of the year, the Lord's Prayer up to 'on Earth as it is in Heaven', and the 9yo added Judges to his list of Old Testament books.

Christian biography study - the 9yo read to us about the childhood of Jan Hus and the 7yo read to us about Anne Lawson's work in Tanzania as an aircraft mechanic with MAF.

For history we finished the Usborne book of Celts - lots of pictures, very little text, just a brief overiew of a few key points that even the 5yo can handle.  Since this wraps up our overiew of the Celtic/Roman world before we move on to our focus of The Dark Ages, we also briefly reviewed everything we've talked about for the past two weeks.  And we looked at this book for some very nice pictures of roundhouses, excavations, pretty gold jewelry, etc.

Image from Amazon

Individual Studies

9yo
Saxon 5/4 math - we reviewed all the previous stuff and also did lesson 5: Place Value.
R&S English 2 - Lesson 3: The telling sentence.
15 minutes piano practice.
30 minutes silent reading.
Cursive practice - entire alphabet

7yo
R&S Math 2 - Lesson 3: numbers that add to 5.
30 minutes reading (aloud today, to the 5yo)
30 minutes piano practice.
Cursive practice letters K-Z

5yo
R&S Math 1 - printing the number 2 and review.
Phonics (100 Easy Lessons) - Review of lessons 21 and 22.

Group Studies

The children had their first art lesson today - we're using this book:

Image from Amazon

Today we worked on pencil grips.  Ideally this will be a Tuesday morning lesson but seeing as Tuesday sort of fell apart this week, it seemed like a good idea to at least introduce the book this week.