Today

Jonathan and Benjamen and I did maths in the morning, and had fun doing it. Benjamen and I cut up apples and counted apple seeds. Jonathan and I talked about congruent line segments and drew scads of them in different colors.

Jonathan drew me a liger and we looked up photos of them online.

Benjamen and I looked at our nature book and talked about worms for about 15 minutes. We plan to make a worm house tomorrow. It's sort of an experiment to see how they're natural tillers of the soil and how they help plants grow by fertilizing (pooping!) and making tunnels that deliver air and water to plant roots.

Jonathan and I looked up information on the uvula after he started asking questions about it, out of the blue. Specifically, he asked, "Mom, what's the function of the uvula? It must have a function, because it's part of our anatomy, and all of our parts have a function, even if it's been lost through evolution." We found out that it closes off the sinuses when we swallow so that food doesn't go up into the sinuses, that it has a speech function in some languages like Arabic, that it makes snore noises, that non-human animals also have uvulae, and that it swells with sickness and heat (like hot beverages). I need to start keeping a list of stuff the boys teach me.

Benjamen and I read a book about James Towne and Jonathan pointed out that "it's spelled wrong" so we had a talk about different spellings in historical writings, how things were pronounced differently, and the as language evolves, letters and sounds are left off or added. We talked about taking a trip there soon, since it's nearby.

Jonathan and Benjamen and I did an experiment with Coke, filling up a balloon with carbon dioxide. Afterward, all three boys had an ice cold beverage.

Jonathan read a book called Terror on the Amazon and asked some questions about "cinnamon trees" so we looked up information online about where and how they grow. He was also fascinated with a boy his age in the book who had a huge bone piercing.

All three boys played outside until they got hot and sweaty (it wasn't a warm day today) and then came in for smoothies, mid-afternoon.

Jonathan played reporter, hiding behind the treadmill, watching me clean up the dining room and then writing a "newspaper article" about it.

Benjamen found Mystic Titan power rangers online and printed them out to add to his notebook.

Jonathan, who's been learning HTML on his own, redesigned one of his blogs that he created on a Bionicle forum.

Benjamen watched Howl's Moving Castle for the third time in as many days, as the bookends came in and out, watching snippets and making comments to me about it.

I listened to Nicholas, who's four, say very teenage things all day, like "Heh-YO! I was puh-yay-ing with that!" and "Wow, that's to-ta-yee awesome!" They've been watching cartoons online.

We all made plans for our Guy Fawkes celebration tomorrow (way, early, we know, but we were reading about it and the boys wanted to do it this week), when we'll have parkin, assemble a guy, and burn him in effigy on a raging bonfire in the yard. I'm a little conflicted about this, as it's a rather hateful thing to do, but the boys are all gung-ho and excited about it and I'm trying to make my mind innocent and care-free, like theirs, and not read too much into it. We'll also have a viewing of Pocahontas tomorrow, with popcorn, of course, to tie in with our readings about Jamestown, Powhatan, John Smith, and John Rolfe.

It's been a fun week.