I hate snow!

I love this watch. It’s pretty and it makes me happy. It’s too pretty (and probably delicate) to take my normal everyday wear and tear, but it’s fun to wear and look at when I do wear it. It was quite the conversation piece last time I wore it to work. The women in my meeting really liked it and envied it. I just love shiny, sparkly, pretty things! They are absolutely pointless in the grand scheme of life, but I really enjoy them. I think everyone secretly does, though, even men. They just don’t freely admit to it. ;) I wouldn’t have purchased such a luxury item for myself. It was a very thoughtful xmas gift from my friend, Orinda . I admired the watch in a catalog we were looking at together, long before xmas, and apparently her steel-trap mind remembered it and got it for me.

Last night Allegrea stopped by to talk about our efforts to create a local feral cat program. As always, I was in the bathroom supervising bunny dates, so she had joined me in there. L. was intent on asking A. to draw a poster for her of a baby blue dragon that she saw in one of her books. She had asked her sister at dinner if she would draw it for her, and Dej told her she would if L. would pay her. She tried to tell her that she’s an artist and artists get paid for their work. L. told her forget it, that she would just ask A. So, she eagerly brought the dragon book into the bathroom to show A. what she wanted and ask her to do it. After a lengthy discussion, A. said she would take the book home and draw one that was completed and draw one for L. to color in on her own. L. was very happy and marched out of the bathroom to get ready for bed. A few minutes later, the door opened a crack, and L.’s little arm stuck in, tossed a $10 bill at A., said “Here, take this”, then the door closed. We were a bit confused by it, so I asked if Mark or Dej had sent L. in with money for A. It wouldn’t be unusual, because she’s like part of our family, so money tends to slide back and forth quite a bit between all of us. They both said they hadn’t and didn’t know anything about it. Then I realized what was going on. L. was paying A. for her artwork. A. wouldn’t take it of course, and left it with me to give back to L. in the morning. I asked her about it this morning. She said she wanted to pay A., because she’s an artist and should be paid for her work, AND because she didn’t ask for money. She elaborated that she likes to pay people for their work, but not when they ask for money like her sister did. She only pays people who don’t ask for money. What a girl!

On the homeschooling front, I’ve been digging around a lot lately trying to find a good math supplement for L. We are ready to start division, but for some reason, this is the one area of math that I am really drawing a blank on how to teach. I ended up finding a math curriculum that looks really good and has an intense focus on word problems. I was impressed by this, because I believe word problems to be vitally important to math of all levels. She really loves the word problems I write for her, as I tend to use our animals and little scenarios that make her laugh. I think I am going to try Singapore math though, at least for a while, to see how that goes. It looks like a very rigorous program (which I like), and I think she will enjoy it. Plus, it will free up some of the time I spend writing up lessons/worksheets every week. I’ve already picked out our Latin curriculum, Lively Latin, which we will be starting in the fall. We are both pretty excited about this. I also ran across a chemistry program, designed for kids. As chemistry really is the “mother science’, I agree that it should be introduced early on. We will be starting with the periodic table of elements, and will cover element 1, Hydrogen, this week. She likes stuff like that, and it will be a good refresher for my brain. It is really difficult to find good, rigorous, classic materials that are not religiously slanted, so I’m pretty thrilled with my discoveries so far!

Tonight I will go straight from work in Madison to my second class. I have a full class and obviously don’t really know the students yet, other than one, who I had last year in a class. It seems to be a good mix of tradition and non-trad students, and is going well so far. I’m looking forward to getting into the material tonight, now that the introductory stuff is done, and getting to know the students. I try to get everyone’s name down ASAP, and I always get nervous looking at a full classroom, wondering how I will learn all those new names/faces. I always feel so much better once I reach that point. I hate for the students to feel that I don’t know or care about them! We are supposed to get yet another snow dump tonight and tomorrow, so I’m just hoping I can make it home safely tonight. I will most likely work from home tomorrow, and Dej is hoping for another day off school.

Dej just called to tell me, very excitedly, that she got the highest score in the class on a pre-AP English test. She even got extra credit points on it. The way I understand it, it’s a real test that counts for a grade in the class, but it’s also an AP practice test. She’s really pumped about the AP test now, because her performance on this test indicates that she will do very well on the AP exam. We knew that she would, but it’s nice now that she has confidence that she will.