Uuuu?

We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas tonight while we applied the finishing touches to our tree. Mady has 2 workbooks, which she worked on while we were decorating too. 1 is 5th grade and 1 6th grade, each for language arts, they just arrived (to appease her dear, biological, Dad, remember?) We were comparing the 2 workbooks. THEY WERE THE SAME! OMG! THEY ARE THE SAME!

They both began with nouns, then, plural nouns, pronouns, possessive nouns, singular possessive nouns...the exact same order! Why can't other people see PS is pretty weird? If you teach people something one time, and people get it, why do we continue to teach it to them year after year, after year? WAKE UP!

Cotton, noodles, and 71 picture day

Last night we played Blokus and then got everything ready to venture over to a local cotton farm. We were all pretty excited, I mean after all, we have never seen cotton actually being grown! We loaded up work gloves, lunch, and the new wagon for it's virgin outing and trekked over to the cotton farm. Many things happened to make this a difficult trip today, none the less, we made it, after going back to the house twice and 3 stops along way!

The strange part about this cotton farm was the fact it was right in the middle of the city. In fact the partial city block of cotton we were picking is the remainder of a 110 acre farm originally established in 1859 to grow cash crops as well as some livestock. The girls liked picking the cotton. The boys loved playing on the tractors, go figure. We live in the country so we are around animals a great deal and we live near farms, but we have never seen cotton growing in Texas, even on a small scale like this.

After our adventure to the cotton farm we ran over to see Aunt Jessie and sign some papers for her. The boys played with their dinner and the girls, along with a friend from our unschooling group, played on the computer. We tried to teach Jessie and Kaylee how to play SET, it took them a bit to catch on. It took me and Mady a bit to get it all too, but it is a fun little card game.

Hopefully the boys will learn to sit in chairs one day. They will not sit in highchairs-they must stand in them, which is far to scary for me. We did away with they highchairs a couple of months ago after trying them out again only to find Luke and Ezra still enjoy standing in them more than sitting.

I have a couple of pictures of Niki with a pantie liner on her eye I want to post. I am sure anyone reading this is wondering, what the hell is Niki doing with a pantie liner on her eye. Niki is our storyteller, very imaginative kiddo. She was in the bathroom when she found the liner and unwrapped it and stuck it on her arm, sticky side on her arm. She told me it felt like an arm massager. Then she went on to stick it on various parts of her body, one of which was her eye. Once the liner, er, I mean patch, was on her eye she was transformed into a pirate captain. Of course everyone in the room had to get in on the action and soon we were all pirates. It was a 71 picture day on my camera. Don't you just love watching your kids?

Niki and I are watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and trying to go to sleep early so we can get up early for the Stock Show!

Remember the movie Patch Adams?

We watch our fair share of movies around here. I think it is a pass time we ALL enjoy as a family, frequently. Tonight we watched Patch Adams. If you have never watched, the shortest summary I can give is the movie is about an aspiring medical student, Hunter "Patch" Adams, who dreams of changing the sanctimonious attitudes of doctors and the bureaucratic red tape of the health care system during the 70's. It is based on a true story. The movie is of course ended with a short paragraph or 2 about what was happening in the main character's life as the filming ended. Patch did complete his Ph.D and went on to found the Gesundheit Institute.

After clicking around the website I found Designing a Society. The entire organization sounds completely unschooly to me. I can only begin to imagine the kind of brainstorming that goes on in a place like Gesundheit.

This gives me an idea to talk with Mady and Niki about what their thoughts on a perfect society are. What would you have if you could have anything? Every idea would be different. One of the first things that comes to mind is how could everyone reach a consensus? Design my own society...this could be scary! I read The Giver by Lois Lowry and it is one of my favorite books from a unit we did in school on utopias. One of the most memorable portions of the plot for me has to do with twins. A good read, and easy for young readers too.

Happy almost Friday!