Learning in the Sunshine State

Dennis has been wanting to get this blog going for months now, but I just never got around to showing him how to post. After he finished a creation today, he decided it was time. It took a while to get the bugs out (thanks, Andrea), but Loads of Legos is now up and running. Yes, we know it’s officially Lego, not Legos, but he insisted that’s the name he wants.

He welcomes visitors and comments, but please be aware that I have comments set to moderated. I’ll view and approve comments as I get a chance.

Have a look at his first post on Loads of Legos

I noticed that you have to go pretty far back to find a homeschool post, and since this is supposed to be my homeschool blog, I thought I’d make today’s ten school related. Official schoolwork is taking a backseat right now, though I hope to get us back into a schedule by next week. In the meantime, learning doesn’t stop.

Ten Ways to Learn Without School

1. Go with Mom and Dad to Mom’s doctor appointment and see her x-rays. (science)

2. Go geocaching with your 4H club. (geography, team work)

3. Read the Harry Potter books now that you’ve seen all the movies (he’s on #3). Talk about the differences. (contemporary literature)

4. Use a search engine to look up (game) values and rarity of certain Pokemon cards. (research skills, a little math)

5. Sign up for the St. Jude’s Math-a-thon fundraiser and enjoy the math CD they send. (math, obviously)

6. Watch any or all of the following shows: How it’s Made, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Modern Marvels, Beyond Tomorrow, The Most Extreme. (mostly science, a little history)

7. Take care of the house as well as a 10 year old can; fix breakfast and lunch, while mom is recuperating. (home ec., aka life skills, aka making your future wife happy)

8. Draw pictures of Mom’s walking boot and Frankenstein-ish staples. (art)

9. Dig in the backyard for worms and bugs. Use a field guide to identify the bugs. (nature study)

10. Build with Lego. (always educational in a variety of ways)

Only the parent of a Lego lover wouldn’t think it’s weird to wish a happy birthday to a plastic building brick. It’s the 50th anniversary of the Lego Brick. Can any of us with Lego loving kids imagine life without Legos? Even people at “the Google” know it’s a special day. Thank you Mr. Christansen. You were brilliant.

I set up a Lego blog for Dennis here at HSJ at his request. He wants to use it to share pictures of and stories about his Lego creations. We never seem to get around to getting him started though, so I’m going to post a few of his creations in honor of the Lego brick’s birthday.

I’ll link to my Flickr page and the Lego set. I’m pretty sure I can embed a slide show here, but I don’t have enough time to play around. My leg hurts and is telling me I need to elevate it. Here are some of Dennis’ Lego creations.

Play Well

Update: If you’re reading this after Januay 28, the Google link might not make sense. On the Lego brick’s birthday, the word Google was “built” out of Lego bricks.

Not this woman. I write from my hospital room, having had surgery on my broken ankle this morning. It happened Monday afternoon…

I was walking out to the garage with several packages of meat to put in the freezer. Unknown to any of us, some mops had fallen over just on the other side of the door, and were lying on the floor. As I stepped into the garage I tripped over the mops, and down I went, chicken and all. I knew instantly that the pain was indicative of something serious, so I yelled for Bill. Thankfully he was home, because he was scheduled to work to second shift instead of his normal day. He called 911, and before long I was in an ambulance heading for the hospital. I honestly thought they’d tape my ankle, and send me home with instructions to take it easy.

Three hours after I arrived in ER, the doctor came in to tell me what he saw on the x-ray. I broke both my tibia and fibula, and would need surgery. I was admitted last night, and had surgery this morning. I can’t put weight on my foot for six weeks! After six weeks, I’ll still have to wear a boot, but will be able to take it off to drive short distances. No driving for six weeks. ARGH! I live in an area with no decent mass transit, so this means I’ll either have to depend on friends, or just stay home.

I always knew I belong to a great homeschool support group, but am finding out just how wonderful everyone is. (It’s really just confirming my belief that this is the best homeschool group ever, and that they’re friends who can be counted on not just in fair weather). I’ve had numerous offers for food, housecleaning help, rides to the store, and taking Dennis to some of our group activities.

I’ll be counting on Dennis to help a lot too, and have faith in him that he’ll be good at it. He said yesterday that he’ll get out of doing school while I’m recuperating, but I pointed out that since we can’t go anywhere we’ll have plenty of time for extra school work. I was kidding of course.

The laptop is saving my sanity while I’m here in the hospital, and I suspect it will do the same at home. I do wish that if this had to happen, it would have happened in summer. This time of year is our most beautiful weather, and I’m going to miss out on a lot of great outdoor time. Oh, poor me.

I usually don’t do memes because, well I don’t know why. I just don’t. This one from Meg seemed easy enough though.

Two names you go by: Kathy, Kat (oh wait, does Mom count?)

Two things you are wearing right now: shorts and a tee shirt

Two of your favorite things to do: spend time with my family, read

Two things you want very badly: a minivan (sad, isn’t it?), a digital SLR camera

Two favorite pets you have had/have: I’ve had cats and/or dogs continuously since I was 7, and all were my favorite. I guess whatever pets I currently have are my favorites. Right now that’s our dog, Dingo and our cat, Simba.

Two people you think will fill this out: I have no idea

Two things you ate today: ruby red grapefruit from the backyard tree, roast chicken

Two people you last talked to today: Bill, Dennis

Two things you’re doing tomorrow: juicing some backyard oranges if my mom brings my juicer back; planning for the upcoming week

Two longest car rides: Florida to Dallas, TX in 1995, New Jersey to Hallandale, Florida when we first moved down here.

Two favorite holidays: Christmas, 4th of July

Two favorite beverages: Alcohol–Irish Cream, Non-alcohol - water

If you want to do this meme, consider yourself tagged. Just leave a comment if you will, so I can read your answers.

It’s been about 15 hours since our printer gave out, and I’ve already needed it about a half dozen times. We can’t complain. It was a cheap Canon i560 and it gave us 4 years of almost daily printing. These days I suppose that’s pretty good. We did a little research and settled on the Canon Pixma iP4500. It has what we need from a home printer, and the price is decent. The problem? No local stores carry it. We found it on sale on Amazon.com, and paid extra for expedited shipping, but even at that we won’t get it until Tuesday. I hope I make it that long.

I finally got new glasses. The ones I had are two years old, and I had them two years too long. I hate them for many reasons, the main one being they’re extremely uncomfortable. Also, I was too cheap to pay for the transition lenses, so I’ve had to carry around sunglass clips for the past two years. I can’t even remember how many pairs of clips I lost. I’ve worn glasses since fifth grade, and this pair ranks in the top 3 of my most hated glasses. So, anyway, it was time for an eye exam and time for new glasses. So far I like the new ones. They’re titanium; nice and light and comfortable. But the best part is I went back to transition lenses. So of course, we haven’t seen the sun since I picked them up at 8 am yesterday. It tried to come out a few times today, but each time I ran outside to test my glasses, it hid behind the clouds. My neighbors probably wonder what I’m doing.

Thirsty Squirrel

Most of the time these guys annoy the hell out of me. They eat all the birdseed, climb up the outside of the screen porch making little claw holes in the screening, and taunt our Sheltie, who continues to try and herd them. It was hard not to feel sorry for the little fella though. Yes, he shamed me into filling the birdbath, but not before I grabbed my camera.

Time to go now. The sun is out. Must find out how dark my glasses will get.

I’ve been following Project Spectrum for the past two years, but have been hesitant to join. Even though Project Spectrum is a no pressure event, I knew I’d put pressure on myself. This year, I decided to just jump in, and will participate in Project Spectrum 3. Who can resist the elements?

If you haven’t yet followed the link, you might be wondering what I’m talking about. Project Spectrum is a celebration of color and creativity. I first heard about it from prariepoppins. Project Spectrum associates certain colors with certain months, and the challenge is to create something unique using those colors. It’s about using colors to inspire you, and creating something that inspires others. This year, the colors also relate to the four elements of fire, earth, air, and water.

The schedule is:

February/March - fire - orange, red, pink

April/May - earth - green, brown, metallics

June/July - air - gray, white, yellow

August/September - water - blue, black, purple

I have several ideas for each, and depending on my time, will choose one or all of them.

It’s Nothing Day. Take advantage of it if you can.

Ten Great Things About Winter in Florida

1. Being able to go out to the backyard in the morning to pick an orange or grapefruit for breakfast.

2. If you don’t like the cold, just wait a day or two and it will be warm again. Cold weather comes in waves, and rarely lasts more than a few days.

3. Fresh strawberries — they’re a winter fruit here.

4. Snowbirds. Not tourists, real ones. We see such a variety of beautiful birds that have come here to winter.

5. Open windows. We have to run the air conditioning from May to October, and sometimes even in November. Being able to open the windows and let in fresh air is one of the things I most look forward to in winter.

6. Open curtains. I love bright, sunlit rooms. I can’t have them in summer since it gets too hot when you let the sun in. In winter one of the first things I do every morning is open blinds and curtains.

7. Gardening. It’s too hot and humid to spend time gardening in the summer. It’s not a good time for planting anyway, as not many can tolerate our summers. Late fall, winter, and early spring are the best times to garden, and our best growing seasons.

8. Soup. No matter what I’ve planned for dinners, if I hear of a cold front coming, I rearrange my menu to add soup.

9. Uncrowded theme parks. We’re not big on the theme parks, even though we live less than an hour from three biggies (Disney World, Sea World, Universal Orlando). However, when we do go, we like winter. Besides the fact that the weather is much nicer, the lines are also much shorter.

10. Manatees. They’re oddly beautiful and graceful. In colder weather they try to head for warmer waters. We never get tired of watching these gentle creatures.

Yes, Tuesday’s almost over, but I was determined to start this today, otherwise I’d be forced to wait a whole week. So I’ll start with something easy. Links. Everybody has too many, but you can still use more. These are in no particular order.

1. Kitten War A perfect time waster, and who doesn’t love kittens? It never ends. You have to stop yourself.

2. KidsGardening! Nice resource for parents, teachers, scout leaders, and anyone who might be involved in, well, kids’ gardening.

3. gauche! Left-handed site. If you’re a lefty, you might recognize some of your own struggles. If you’re the parent of a lefty, you can find information on how to help your lefty child navigate a righty society. For instance, did you know there’s a such thing as true left handed scissors?

4. Lego Digital Designer Make digital Lego creations. This one’s for Dennis. He loves to point Lego fans here. It’s a free download, and a nice little application. Sometimes Dennis builds digitally first, then IRL, but usually he uses it to work out design problems in something he’s already started to build. Yes, you can upload your creations and buy the bricks, but he just uses it for digital building.

5. Babble A most addicting online Boggle-type game. I highly recommend going Pro if you decide you like the game.

6. Fruits & Veggies Matter Here’s an easy way to keep track of whether you get enough fruits and vegetables. You can find out the right amount for each member of your family based on age, gender, and physical activity level. This one is thanks to a friend on a mom’s list.

7. Cute Overload If you hate cute animal pictures, don’t go here. The name says it all. On the other hand, if you like cute animal pics, this is the place to go when you want to smile.

8. Left Out Knitter Yet another lefty site, this one for left handed knitters. If like me, you knit truly left handed (not Continental but from the right needle to the left), you will find you’re not alone. I can’t comment on the dvd because mine hasn’t arrived yet. Maybe there will be a review post in the future.

9. Canon 3D Papercraft Fun papercraft items in several categories (Buildings of the world, transportation, toys, good luck charms, just to name a few). We’ve done some as school projects and others just for fun.

10. Good Thing: T-Shirt Bag from Martha Stewart. A unique way to use old tee shirts and end up with a reusable bag. Not sure how sturdy they’d be for groceries, but I’m planning to use mine as a beach bag. After Dennis saw mine, he wanted to make one, so he went and found a too small Star Wars tee shirt. This is an easy project for kids. Hat tip to bigdreamer at The Denim Jumper.

So there you have it. My first Tuesday’s Ten.