SIX

Six years ago today I wrote my first blog post. 

Can't believe J was only 8 then.  K was 11.  W was 3. 

We've come a helluva long way. 

December!

We are having a fantastic December.  W is getting so much reading, writing, and math done.  He decided that he wanted to try Spanish again, so while at Costco last week I found this knock-off, Rosetta-Stone-like program on sale for $18.  It comes with a bunch of CD Roms and you can record yourself saying the words.  It's fun and he likes it so far.   We're half-way through TT5 math now - right on track to finish it by the end of 4th grade in June (then we're doing TT7 from the beginning of 5th grade to the end of 6th grade).  I find that it's best for us to stretch out the math.  W retains it better that way as he isn't inundated with too many new math concepts each month.  We do math 3-4 times a week (sometimes once or twice a week - December slows us down a bit, lol).  The schedule that W made has been working well - actually better than anything I came up with. 

W had a party and awards ceremony at Cub Scouts this month, too.   He was presented with a bunch of patches and badges he's earned over the last half-year.   In addition to the patches in the picture below, his 4 activity badges were:  Citizen, Readyman, Outdoorsman, & Artist badges.  He got a patch, pocketknife pledge card, and badge for the Whittling Chip.  The badge states that W "has earned the right to carry a pocketknife to designated Cub Scout functions", because he demonstrated knowledge and skill in its use and completed the safety requirements and promises to abide by the Knives Are Not Toys guidelines.  He's proud of that one the most, I think.  We also got our Pinewood Derby car to build for the big race in a few months.   This is such a wonderful pack and troop of scouts.   

W's New Cub Scout Patches

 

We have also been going to the pool hall in the West Village every week.  I'm so glad it's that time of year again!  For a few hours W gets to play games with friends and moms get to relax and chat and listen to some good jazz music - usually being played by various bands who use the space to rehearse.  It's a dark, gritty, oh-so-cool atmosphere that just drips the essence of New York City out of its walls.  W and I really look forward to this every week.

W and Friend Playing Pool

As I mention every year, NYC is the most incredible place to be at Christmastime.  The kids and I decided to walk around the mall in the Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle.  This is where we were a few years ago when we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade go by.  For Christmas they have these beautiful hanging stars that light up to the beat of the Christmas carols being played.  The kids loved it.

Christmas Stars in the Time Warner Building

K, J, & W under the Christmas stars reflected in the window

A Tree in Columbus Circle

Ballet & Modern

Today, parents got to observe dance classes at LaGuardia High School.  I watched all 3 hours of J's classes and was in awe.  There are 33 kids in her dance class.  They started with an hour-and-a-half of ballet - first stretches, then exercises (at the barre and the floor), then combinations.  The next class was an hour-and-a-half of modern (Graham).  This was a bunch of different floor stretches and across the floor combinations.  It was just beautiful to watch.   Live music in the dance classes add so much to the whole atmosphere.  The dance teachers and piano players are really in tune with each other.  I don't know how they do it, but the timing is always spot on.  Sometimes they just play piano, others they'll have a bongo drum with it.
The children are so focused and determined and the teachers are so incredibly aware of each child.  I noticed eager hands up to answer questions and to volunteer a demonstration.  They are treated like professionals and in turn, they act as such.  What a wonderful treat to get to see this kind of training in action. 

Hairspray!

LaGuardia High School has their annual musical going on this month.  Hairspray opened Thursday and is scheduled for 8 shows - a longer run than usual.  The LaGuardia Concert Hall seats 1100 people.  Ticket pre-sales (online) filled up more than 90% of all 8 shows.  Add that to the amount of walk-in ticket-buyers and yes, all 8 shows will be sold-out.  We all went on Friday (the 5 of us and my mom).  I cannot even begin to tell you how impressed I was.  I have seen tons of Broadway shows and this was right up there with those.  The sets, and the acting, singing, and dancing were unbelievable.  Costumes and sets are all done by the tech and art majors.  The orchestra from the pit was fabulous as well.  I had tears in my eyes after every number, mostly because I was so grateful and proud that my J goes to this amazing school, but also because all this talent is coming from 15-17 year-olds.  This isn't like any high school play anyone has ever seen.  Wow.

Guess who's visited the school over the last few months:  Adrien Grenier, Madonna, Ellenore Scott, and a few famous classical musicians.

Schedule

Today, W felt like creating a daily schedule.  We always just use the AO weekly one, doing whatever it is we feel like each day, as long as everything on the list gets checked off by the end of the week.  W wanted more structure with that, so he came up with a workable plan for each day. It's interesting that every time we tend to veer toward less structure, W is the one to turn that right around.  Hey, he likes a strict schedule, what can I say?


So, one day a week is for all the extras:  Artist, Composer, Nature, Foreign Language (right now it's Spanish), & Dictation.  Another day has 5 AO readings along with some Spelling workbook.  And the other 3 days of the week include:  Math, Spelling, 1 AO reading, 1 Free reading (we're doing Hans Christan Anderson stories now), Poetry, & Copywork. 

Almost all the AO readings go hand-in-hand with an oral narration.  We haven't started written ones yet, but we will soon.  And every day also includes a "read-to-me" time.  W's reading is so good now and I believe it's the daily practice that keeps him on track.  He alternates between an AO free reading and his own book to use as his read-aloud. 

Dictation is something he would like to do every day.  It's like the spelling "tests" we used to do - he loves that kind of a challenge.  The other day we decided that instead of a literature or poetry dictation exercise, we could do try it with states and capitals.  It was great!   I took 5 state flashcards and went over the capitals with him.  Then I gave him the 5 cards and told him he had 3 minutes to look them over.  Then I took the cards back and read the name of the state and the capital and he had to write them down with correct spelling and capitalization.  Learning the capitals of each state is not the point of this exercise, but it happens anyway.

I'm looking forward to finishing up Yr 2.  We'll finish by January, but maybe not til the end of January.  Not sure yet.  I really don't want to rush through the readings, so we're just going to continue taking our time and enjoying it.   The Year 2 readings are technically for 2nd-4th grades, but they seem way harder and more advanced than anything I've ever seen for 4th grade.  So, we'll shoot for Yr 3 starting January 31 (it's a Monday).  The curriculum is not season-based, so you can start any time of the year.

Holiday Season!

This year for Thanksgiving we went OUT to eat.  In my 40+ years on this earth, my family has never strayed from the big home-cooked Thanksgiving.  But my mom decided she did not want to spend hours preparing and cooking and cleaning.  She wanted to actually be able to sit and eat with no worries.  I was so happy about this.  We reserved seats at the East Wind Caterers Thanksgiving Day Buffet.  Definitely worth doing at least once in your life.


We got back to my Mom's house before 5.  She had stocked up on what she calls "pickins" - cheese, crackers, rolled cold cuts, hot chocolate, cookie dough to bake, etc.  And by about 7-8pm we were all a little hungry again.  We put some Christmas music on and went about putting together Mom's new tree.  (We always had real trees growing up, but when cousins of mine saw their house burn to the ground because their real tree caught fire, we've used artificial ones ever since.)    It was a pretty and pre-lit and about 6.5 feet tall.  Mom has lots of ornaments from when I was little and it's always so fun to put them on the tree.

We left at around 11am the following morning.  K went to work and, in the evening, hung out with her best friends on a main shopping strip here in Queens.  J went to the dance studio to start choreography on her new duet.  Dance was 2 hours and then she met up with a bunch of her homeschooled friends to go ice skating at the Pond at Bryant Park.  It's beautiful there at nighttime.  She had a lot of fun and then slept over her friend's house.

My tree is going up this week and I'm happy to report that about 90% of my Christmas shopping is done.

Weekly Recap & What's Coming Up

This past week was just focusing on academic stuff.  I'm still hoping we can get to AO Year3  by January.  It's looking pretty good.  W is still enjoying the work - and that's what matters.  He takes the lead.  I show him what's on the agenda for the week and he picks what he'd like to do each day.  He had a part in choosing the curriculum and he can choose what the mornings look like.  It's great.  I love that he owns his learning.  And because of that, he retains just about everything.  It's common sense, it works, and everyone's happy.

So in math, we're doing decimals involving money, using the cents and dollar signs, and adding/subtracting decimals.   W is resigned to only use the TT5 workbook.  The company isn't too keen on just selling the book by itself, so thankfully we already own TT7 (which we'll start next year for 5th grade).  After that, we'll see. We're almost finished with The Little Duke (he's already getting sad about it coming to an end, lol) and we're going strong with Wind in the Willows, An Island Story, Seabird, & Pagoo.  The Spelling Skills workbook is our favorite, still.  W just finished a cumulative review of the first 6 chapters and got everything right.  The activities and repetition in that book are just what he needs to build his reading vocabulary.  I already have the 5th grade one, too.  For $6.95 ($5.21 with educator discount!) it's amazing. 

I plan on taking W on a lot more field trips soon.  I keep a list of over 80 museums in NYC.  I'd love to try and get to at least one a month.  There are so many we haven't seen yet.  I'll get fresh batteries for my camera and be sure to take lots of pictures. 

The girls are doing great.  K's birthday is in a few days and she's already starting the celebrations.  I can't believe she's almost 17.  On Friday night she went out with friends to a Mexican restaurant where they sing Happy Birthday in Spanish, lol.  She has work both weekend days and loves that it's a short school week.  We're in the process of getting college applications out.  She has a few ideas as to where she wants to go and seems on top of it all.  I'm so glad her college applications are a year after J's high school applications.  I would have went crazy if they were during the same year.  

J's still loving school.  Her grades have been wonderful and she's made dozens of friends.  I can already tell the difference in J's dancing since she's been at school.  15 hours a week of ballet and modern technique really does wonders.  Her solo for this season's competitions looks so great.  It's a lyrical/contemporary number from one of the studio's special choreographers from California.  She's so happy with it - more so than she's ever been with her solos.  She is also about to start choreography for a new duet.  She'll be doing this one with her bff and duet partner from last season.  It's going to be "fierce", as I'm hearing, lol.  Competition season is right around the corner.  Can't wait.

Dance News

J had a guest dance teacher at school yesterday.  Her name is Linda Sims and she dances with the Alvin Ailey Company.  It was great because they got to be with her for the whole 90 minutes when J normally has modern dance.  Then J had her 90 minutes of ballet.  On Thursday she was at the dance studio at 3:30pm working on her new solo for this season, then spent 4 hours on group choreography (not to mention the other 9 hours of dance at school and 3 hours of dance at the studio this week).  So much dance going on - and she'd have it no other way.

Academics and Broadway

Today W learned about decimals and converted them to fractions  (and reviewed perimeter, area, subtraction with regrouping, multiplication, and various word problems).  He zipped through the new lesson and did all 22 problems in less than 15 minutes.  I'm so glad he loves math.  I read Seabird to him and he read Pagoo to me.  Pagoo is great!  It's the perfect reading level for him - just challenging enough to learn from, but not so challenging that he'll get frustrated.  We'll try and do a chapter a week, one or 2 big paragraphs a day.  He did a proofreading exercise after learning 20 new spelling words and wrote out a poem in cursive for copywork.  We read more of Wind in the Willows and another chapter in An Island Story.

J had a school trip today to a Broadway show!  They went to see The Scottsboro Boys - a brand new Kander & Ebb musical directed by Susan Stroman.  It was a fully funded trip, which is amazing, since ticket prices range from about $40 to $250.  J loved it.  After the show, she hung around the Broadway area with friends for a bit, then took the subway back up to her school to meet up with a friend, then they took the train together to Queens where J went to the dance studio for 3 hours of new choreography.  She's a pro at the subway now, becoming confident and streetwise, but still careful.  Thank God for cell phones, though.  I cannot even imagine life without them now.

Book Attachment

So, W and I finished D'Aulaire's Abraham Lincoln and Holling's Tree in the Trail yesterday.  We have been reading a couple of pages a week from each of these for a long time.  W read to me almost every day from Lincoln.  Just this one read-to-me book has improved W's reading in so many ways.  He read the whole book to me, one slow page at a time.  And it was wonderful.  I read Tree in the Trail to him.  1 or 2 pages a week.  One of my favorite features of Ambleside Online is stretching out a book over months.  This is a great way to savor the classics.  W still remembers Viking Tales, Paddle to the Sea, and Aesop's Fables from Year 1 - and how much he loved those books.  He still won't let me resell them.  It's the same now with the ones we've just finished.   The first thing he said was, "I want to keep these.  Please don't give them to anybody".

Rockin' and Rollin'

W is on a good track to finish AO Year 2 before January.  It would be nice to get to Year 3 while he's still in 4th grade.  Yesterday we spent almost 3 hours on:

• Wind in the Willows - Readaloud with narration
• Abraham Lincoln - W read a page to me
• Five Children & It - Readaloud, no narration
• Teaching Textbooks Quiz - W took another math quiz.  It had 25 questions which included fractions, area, perimeter, rounding to the thousands, subtraction with borrowing, 4-digit addition, and types of triangles.  He missed only one. 
• Copywork - W asked to do this.  He copied the first half of a poem into his notebook and used cursive.  He was so proud of how nice he writes, that he even signed it when he was done, lol. 
• An Island Story - 2 stories on King Edward.  We're in the Middle Ages - right around year 1200.
  
• Spelling Skills - This week he's doing words with the Long E sound (e.g. reason, between, scream, squeeze).  Today's exercise was to proofread a paragraph, circling spelling mistakes and adding missing punctuation and missing words.  He found all the mistakes.  I was so pleased to see that he can recognize misspelled words and know the correct spelling - except for 1 where he knew it was misspelled, but wasn't sure of the right spelling.  This kind of exercise is so difficult when you have issues with reading. 

His reading is improving every week.  I feel that the excellent books and slow reading schedule used in Ambleside Online, and what we do for spelling and writing has turned W into a capable, confident, fairly strong reader.  The strength of those 25 out of 26 dyslexia symptoms he exhibited about a year ago has decreased so dramatically and some have even disappeared.  It's almost shocking to see how far he's come. 

In other news, J is doing great in high school.  She loves it so much.  It's tough.  Her schedule is grueling.  She's still dancing at her studio and doing a work study there on Saturdays.  With all of that, she gets her homework, studying, and projects done without issue.  She's pulling top grades - she even has a 90 average in French.  It's been so wonderful for her.  Homeschooling allowed and nurtured so much of J's independence, self-sufficiency, self-esteem, and the confidence that she can accomplish and achieve anything.  Her amazing high school gives her the platform to use these skills.  It's working out better than I could have imagined.

Scout Camp

B took W camping this weekend with the scouts.  It turned out to be a beautiful few days with great weather.  The trees are starting to turn colors and it was just chilly enough to really enjoy the campfire.  W is a webelo scout now and he was so happy to finally earn his whittling chip.  This means he can now bring his pocketknife to all the scout camping trips.  He sailed through the whittling test with lots of kudos from the scoutmaster and few other kids.  W has been using a pocketknife for a while, though, carving and whittling any piece of wood he could find.

The rest of the weekend was filled with fun activities, games, and playing, which included:  pumpkin decorating, archery, target practice with a fire hose, running in and out of a big pirate ship, and hanging out in the cabins. 

Manga Drawing Workshop

I took W to a Manga drawing workshop today here in Queens.  As interested as he is in drawing and cartooning, it was the perfect outlet and learning opportunity for him.  Located in the Little Asia section of Flushing on Main Street, this workshop was held on the lower floor of an office building.  The instructor (Hojin) does this kind of cartooning for a living and was a featured artist at the NY Comic-Con being held this week at the Javitz Center in Manhattan.  W was completely rapt and gave his full attention for the 2 hour class.  W's drawings have mainly been very cartoonish - big round heads, round bodies, disproportionate limbs - but today he was taught to really visualize the human form.  Hojin explained you have to know how to draw people correctly before you can transform them into cartoon - "You have to know the rules before you can break the rules".  So, W worked on head shape, proportion, muscle placement, and most importantly - visualizing or coming up with a plan of action before drawing.  And a really helpful thing was learning how to create anything using only a few basic shapes. 

W couldn't get enough.  I knew this would spark a renewed interest in art.  He could have stayed another 2 hours.  They gave him lots of pencils, sketch pens, thick white erasers, and plenty of paper.  I was told he was very bright, very creative, and that he seems to love to draw. 

The funny thing is that this time slot didn't have anyone in it except W and 1 adult art student.  The one-on-one was great, but I realized something.  Schoolkids don't want to go to a class on their day off from school, and homeschoolers don't want to do a (public) class when schoolkids are off.  I am in the latter category, but now I think I'll try and find more of these types of classes.  Maybe they'll do a series of workshops just for us homeschoolers.  There's nothing like learning something from someone who is passionate about the work. 

UGH

Computer has been down for over a week.  This sucks twice as much since I work for the cable company.

New post coming on Monday. 

Thank goodness the girls have laptops or I'd be truly lost, lol.

An Oldie but a Goodie

You Know You're From New York City When...

You say "the city" and expect everyone to know that this means Manhattan.

You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.

You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Wisconsin on a map.

Hookers and the homeless are invisible.

The subway makes sense.

You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual.

You've considered stabbing someone just for saying "The Big Apple".

The most frequently used part of your car is the horn.

You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a yard.

You consider Westchester "upstate".

You think Central Park is "nature."

You see nothing odd about the speed of an auctioneer's speaking.

You're paying $1,200 for a studio the size of a walk-in closet and you think it’s a "steal."

You've been to New Jersey twice and got hopelessly lost both times.

You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the U.S. pay in rent.

You haven't seen more than twelve stars in the night sky since you went away to camp as a kid.

You go to dinner at 9 and head out to the clubs when most Americans are heading to bed.

Your closet is filled with black clothes.

You haven't heard the sound of true absolute silence since the 80s, and when you did, it terrified you.

You pay $5 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28 cents.

You take fashion seriously.

Being truly alone makes you nervous.

You have 27 different menus next to your telephone.

Going to Brooklyn is considered a "road trip."

America west of the Hudson is still theoretical to you.

You've gotten jaywalking down to an art form.

You take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise.

Your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes.

$50 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag.

You have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories.

You don't notice sirens anymore.

You live in a building with a larger population than most American towns.

Your doorman is Russian, your grocer is Korean your deli man is Israeli, your building super is Italian, your laundry guy is Chinese, your favorite bartender is Irish, your favorite diner owner is Greek, the watchseller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was Pakistani, your newsstand guy is Indian and your favorite falafel guy is Egyptian.

You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

You secretly envy cabbies for their driving skills.

You think $7.00 to cross a bridge is a fair price.

Your door has more than three locks.

Your favorite movie has DeNiro in it.

You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

You run when you see a flashing "Do Not Walk" sign at the intersection.

You're 35 years old and don't have a driver's license.

You ride in a subway car with no air conditioning just because there are seats available.

You're willing to take in strange people as roommates simply to help pay the rent.

There is no North and South. It's uptown or downtown.

When you're away from home, you miss "real" pizza and "real" bagels.

You know the differences between all the different Ray's Pizzas.

You're not in the least bit interested in going to Times Square on New Year's Eve.

Your internal clock is permanently set to know when Alternate Side of the Street parking regulations are in effect.

You know what a bodega is.

You know how to fold the New York Times in half, vertically, so that you can read it on the subway or bus without knocking off other passenger's hats.

Someone bumps into you, and you check for your wallet.....

You cringe at hearing people pronounce Houston St. like the city in Texas

Film crews on your block annoy you, not excite you.

You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from NYC.

East Village

St. Marks Place

 Beautiful day in the East Village here in NYC.  W's Lego Robotics class was Thursday and I took some pictures as we walked around outside.  Here is one of the blocks we walked down.  The East Village, known for the punk scene, art, jazz, hippies, beatniks, CBGBs, Andy Warhol, Japanese noodle shops, tattoo & piercing parlors, incredible nightlife, Blue Man Group, Stomp, the Strand Bookstore, Tompkins Square Park, and an insane amount of bars and restaurants, is just...wonderful. 

Right Off of 3rd Avenue

Second Floor Window Display

W and his Lego Car

And of course the Lego class was a big hit.  W paired up with his friend, F, and together they created a brand new 4-wheeled vehicle.  The trick is to create something that can actually move and turn with a wired control.  All the kids get very into it.  W puts so much thought and concentration into it.  The instructor was great again and had all the kids interested and eager.

Reading

I am so proud of W and his reading.  I still have him read out loud to me every day - just a page or so.  He recently finished Chanticleer & the Fox and now we're back to D'Aulaire's Abraham Lincoln.  These are some of the "free reading" choices for AO Yr2.  The goal is  to start Year 3 by January (although we are doing Yr3's poetry, nature, artist & composer schedules).  We're also making sure that spelling practice is done at least 3x a week.  We're not using a program or curriculum for spelling, we just use an inexpensive workbook from Flash Kids (Harcourt Family Publishing) called Spelling Skills Grade 4.  I have never based a good book, program, or curriculum based on the price.  Many times, the cheaper product worked better for us.  Basically it gives you about 20 words (usually sound related) and a few pages of exercises that use those words.  It's as basic as they come, but this is the type of thing that works so well with W.  There are fill in the sentence blanks, homophones, definitions, rhymes, analogies, antonyms, synonyms, proofreading, syllables, and parts of speech exercises.

The reading every day and the spelling workbook have been so effective.  The more he reads and practices, the faster and easier he reads.  I just have to stay consistent with it.  It's strange to have a such a late reader.  I know I shouldn't compare kids, but J started sounding out words at 2yo, read easy readers and picture books at 3, chapter books at 4, and 3rd-4th grade stuff at 5.  K's reading took off at 4 and she's been a voracious reader ever since. The challenge with W is many-fold.  I've devoured dozens of books and websites for ideas on ways to help with his dyslexia.  I've been using a multi-sensoral approach to reading with him for over a year and that seems to work very well.  Things like clapping out syllables to using a dry-erase board to having a continuous word wall to making pancakes in the shape of "ight" make words come alive and it clicks and sticks.  I'm happy he reads on grade level (not above, not below).  I worry about the dyslexic "plateau", but I believe we can get through it.

Interestingly enough, he has no problems with math.  Math comes very easy to him and he enjoys it.  We're doing polygons and perimeter now, with multiplication review every day.  TT5 is certainly his favorite. I think it's a great program for 3rd & 4th grades.  Then we may use TT7 for 5th & 6th grades (I'm probably going to skip TT6 because it looks like a review of TT5 with a few new things at the end.  Besides, I already own TT7).  He uses only the workbook now, but may go back to the CDs one day.  We've fallen into a nice groove for the week:  3 AO readings a day with narrations, spelling, math, read-to-me, poetry, grammar, music, nature journal, etc - and of course our field trips and classes.  It's comfortable and doesn't feel stressful or rushed.  So far, so good, and it all feels right.  :)

LEGOs & Science

We kicked off the new school year with a few awesome classes.  On Thursday, W had a class on Lego Robotics with other kids ages 8-13.  It was in the East Village in a quaint old building on a beautiful city block.  I haven't really been in the East Village in a long time.  I used to shop with my friends there when I was in high school, but nothing too much as an adult.  Walking down Astor Place and St Marks Place was so fun.  There are tons of restaurants, jazz bars, and funky boutiques.  I forgot how much I love that neighborhood.  I called B right away and said we have to move here, lol.

In the class, W and his friend F worked on making a Lego car with some wires coming out of it and used a remote control to make it move.  This was a basic lesson on robotics and he loved it.  They also watched a video on how it's done.  The instructor is this great guy who is passionate about robot building and is really good with the kids.  I sat with a few other parents chatting away while the kids built their cars.  Afterward,  W and I grabbed a few slices of pizza with our friends.  I found a place that gives you 2 big slices and a can of soda for $2.75 (no tax).  How cool is that? 



On Fridays W is taking a series of classes at a science museum in Long Island.  The drive is only about 20 minutes from home, which I love.   The 6 weeks are focusing on Earth Science and the first class was all about rocks.  He's in with other 4th-6th graders.  They had buckets of different small rocks and had to match and glue them next to their descriptions.  They also made an edible craft.  W learned so much in that hour (and even told me about it!).  After the class he went and played with a bunch of other kids for over an hour.  He is looking forward to next week - and next Friday he starts his Cub Scout meetings again!  He's a Webelo this year!

"Fame Field Trip"

 I just found a video that was uploaded the other day on YouTube all about J's school.  It's great and shows what the school is really like.




J has a few of the teachers in the video.  I think it was made a few years ago, but the school is the same.  Every day she comes home raving about something wonderful that happened.  I am so proud of her.  I can't imagine a better way for J to spend the next 4 years.

Eminem and Art

K went to the Eminim/Jay-Z concert last night at Yankee Stadium.  She said it was the best concert ever.  Besides the 2 headliners, she saw:

Beyonce, Fifty Cent, B.O.B., Drake, Trey Songz, Rhianna, Nicki Minaj, & Kanye West.

She didn't get home til around 2am, but I wouldn't have let her miss this.

W and I went to a really great tour and workshop at an AC Moore store in Nassau.  We met up with some other homeschoolers and got some great ideas for new crafts.  I am inspired to try scrapbooking.  The kids finished the trip with some arts/crafts in the classroom.  They discussed daydreams and how you can create anything if you use your imagination.