School Schtuff and Good Schtuff

Today is the last day of Enrichment classes for Hyrum and Gabba. We've had the fabulous fortune to be involved in an ultra-organized homeschool co-op this semester, and every Tuesday for the past twelve weeks, my two oldest students have spent six hours taking classes taught by homeschool parents, with other homeschool children.

It has been a great experience, with such classes as Fun With Foods, Advanced Chess, Beginning Social Dance, Basic Aid Training, Missouri Statehood...you get the idea. Lots of cool stuff. Gabba's favorite has been the Little House on the Prairie unit study class. Hyrum's favorite (interestingly enough) has been English from the Roots Up, where they have studied Greek and Roman, learning the alphabets and phrases and root words. Each week he has come home eager to share the new word families he has learned. I thought for sure he would rave about Chess or even Algebra (math brain that he is). Who knew?

Gabriella had a project due today - her first final project ever. She has known about it for eight weeks. I spent all last week reminding her to work on it. I set aside huge blocks of time yesterday to sit and work with her. All she could do was whimper and tell me she didn't want to have to make a presentation in front of her class. So yesterday ended and she had nothing beyond a vague idea of what she wanted to do.

This morning, I got her up early and put her to work. Of course, lack of preparation on the part of any of the children always constitutes an emergency on the part of the Mother, right? I stayed by her side, coaching and coaxing, and trying to get her to use her own brain (instead of wailing, "I don't know! You tell me!").

But George has been sick, so he was clingy. And everyone needed to eat breakfast. And my phone kept ringing. And the printer threw a royal, hissing fit. And, you know, I have five other children. The cumulative result was that we were anything but efficient or effective. Somehow, we pulled it off (me more pushing than pulling, to be sure). When it was all said and mostly done, I kindly and gently threatened her within an inch of her life if she ever pulled a similar stunt again.

Maybe she will remember. Probably not.

I do want to share something I found in the process. Gabriella decided to do a food chain pyramid of native Missouri animals. We build it out of color-coded paper blocks, with the Primary Consumer herbivores on the bottom, the Secondary Consumer omnivores in the middle, and the Tertiary (hee hee! I love using that word!) Consumer carnivores on the top. I searched online for an easy box pattern. We printed up 20, and there was a frenzy of cutting and taping.

Anyway, I found a glorious little website, Mirkwood Designs. They have dozens of free printable templates, to make any variety of boxes - all very cool, I found myself wanting to print up every single one and try them all! I didn't, however. I had just made twenty paper boxes in 45 minutes. I was a little tired of thinking inside the box, maybe? Or no longer in the mood for boxing? A-ha ha ha.

But go check it out! There is even a pattern for making a miniature chinese take-out box! And there are patterns and templates for envelopes and cards and baskets and fans and...oh just go have fun.