All on their own

I've been such a bad home schooling Mom lately. We've had sicknesses, birthday parties, a root canal for me (and a couple days of Codeine Mommy afterwards; she was fun), and of course the Thanksgiving holidays, and I feel like we haven't had our act together for weeks! "Having our act together" being relative, of course. For us that means we: get moving relatively quickly in the morning and get out of the house to do something (even if it's just playing in the yard), watch little television, and I make myself extra-available as a resource for the kids' learning play. Life has gotten a little bit in the way of those humble goals lately. And yet, I find that I still have many things to report.

Tex's reading gets better and better. Don't tell him I told you, because he hates reading and is determined that he's horrible at it, but he's really not half bad. The other night he and DaddyO read Pepito the Brave together as part of Tex's Wolf Scout requirements, and Tex needed very little help in sounding out the words he didn't recognize on sight. He still seems to think that reading should be effortless and is discouraged when he has to work at it, but I hope that as he practices more and more in his head he'll gain confidence and realize that reading is manageable.

Still, if he doesn't have room for reading in his brain, it's because it's so full of science! I was just now looking at a little science/transportation book we got from Sonic with our lunches the other day, and the first page was about airplanes. I started to read one of the little blurbs, regarding the forces that must be equalized, when Tex piped in with "I know this! The engines create thrust, which pushes against the drag, and then the wind creates lift, which pushes against gravity. That's from Newton." Well. Alrighty then, let's just keep reading, shall we? Here's a nice page explaining an experiment you can do yourself with a straw and a small paper ball, where you keep the ball floating in the air stream and observe what happens when you tilt the straw as you blow. Once again, Tex is ahead of the game: "that's just like at the Space & Rocket Center, where they have a beach ball and a vent, and did you know that the air isn't pushing on the bottom of the ball, it's actually splitting and going around it! And when it goes around [the ball] perfectly evenly, with gravity pushing down, there's nowhere for the ball to go. You have to tilt it SO far before gravity pushes the ball a lot, and makes the wind on the bottom thinner, and then the ball can break through the wind." And there you have Bernoulli's Principle as explained by a 7 1/2 year old. And I had to look it up in the Sonic science book to make sure I had the name right. (sigh)

What else has been doing around here, lately? Well, Noodle has moved on from creating zoos in Zoo Tycoon to creating whole cities in DaddyO's Sim City computer program. It's mostly an excuse to "drive" trains and plot the destruction of whole towns with robots and metal dinosaurs, but in the process he has to do little things like set up power plants or alternative energy sources (he likes the windmills), lay roads and train tracks, build businesses and homes, and other matters of city planning.

And oh, goodness, Noodle is starting to read, too!! He was looking at our coupons box the other day, and he all of the sudden stuck out his finger and started to read: "c-ah-up-onz. Mommy, does this say 'cop-ons'?" You could have knocked me down with a feather!! Of course I played it cool and let him know that in this case the "ou" makes the "ooooo" sound, so he wouldn't sense my excitement and immediately decide to stop reading altogether, but inside I was jumping up and down! And tonight when I made the boys a sign of what they needed to do before bed, he read "teeth" right away. The Noodle is on his way to reading, big time!

Both boys are also still interested in film-making (that sounds so much better than "they both still love abusing the camera"). Tex had asked me how filmmakers get things to move in movies without touching them, which led to a discussion of wires and fishing line, and Tex wondered if we could tie some fishing line to something an move it around. For instance, hmmm, oh hey, Mom, how about this thing I've been carrying around and pretending is a laser blaster gun, will that work? Sure! So we tied some fishing line to his blaster and I showed him how he could pull it without anyone seeing how. Well, Tex found that he could not waste such a wonderful opportunity, so he turned into Director Tex and got us all to play our parts: Tex as a Star Wars baddie, Noodle as Obi Wan Kenobi (the Ewan McGregor version, not Alec Guinness) injured and unable to reach his weapon, myself as the special effects coordinator (I pulled the string), and DaddyO as the cameraman. Tex put us all on our marks and we did at least three takes; it was a grueling 10-minute shoot. But I think that what they came away with was pretty darn cute.

Finally I should mention all the work Tex has been doing for his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts. He's so excited about all of this scouting stuff, and thank goodness he has DaddyO, Grandaddy, Papa, and even a Great Uncle who are all so generous with their time and experience to help him accomplish his tasks. This weekend he did some woodworking and used some basic tools to create a doorstop and cut a notch out of a plank of wood. He even got to use the circular saw under close supervision. There is no doubt about it, that boy is growing up. I hope he's more ready for it than I am. ;-)