05/17/2012

1.  Typical Thursday.  The boys and I had a great discussion during history.  They are using 3 different history texts this year:  Landmark History of the American People, The Story of the USA, and A History of US.  The Story of the USA is a series of 4 workbooks with short chapters followed by a couple of pages of comprehension questions.  This has been the boys' least favorite because it is not advanced enough for them.  Still, I have them read the chapters and answer the questions, mainly for the practice of reading, then going back and scanning the text to find the answers to the questions, and of course the actual physical writing itself.  Anyway, the last couple of chapters we have read have been egregiously left-biased.  When I pre-read them, at first I was inclined to have the boys skip them.  In fact, I wrote out SKIP across the pages of one of the chapters.  But then I thought better of it, and I'm glad I did.  It was a great chance to show them exactly what many kids in public schools are being taught as fact.  It was an opportunity to show how the author's personal bias showed through, and how to identify subjective opinion versus objective fact.  And, mostly, it was a chance to then vigorously refute some of the foolishness printed as "history."  I got a little animated, and the boys thought it was great fun.  :-)  Brigham, especially was loving it.  He is my little conservative tea-partier (well, sort of), and tends to get outraged at many things we read about in history, or that he hears about on the news.  I try to help him see some of the nuance in various issues, and to recognize the complicated aspects of historical figures.  I hope to teach him that very few people are all right or all wrong, all good, or all bad.  Except maybe Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and a few others who were pretty much pure evil.

2.  The kids went swimming in the afternoon for our art group, which I think is now mostly a swim and play group for the summer.  Sandy LOVES to swim, and she was in heaven with all those kids in the pool.  They'd jump in, she'd jump in after them, they'd throw sticks in the water, she'd splash after them and bring them back.  I guess it's good-- fewer dog baths to worry about!

3.  After cello lessons, Mosey and I stopped by a house in the neighborhood-- they were selling a few cello supplies-- a cello stand, folding music stand, and tuner/metronome.  Mosey was really excited about the metronome.  He got it out as soon as we were back in the car, examining the instructions to figure it out.  It has the ability to determine the frequency of a tone, and thereby assist with tuning.  Mosey thought it was really fun to make bizarre noises all the way back home, to see how they registered on the tuner.  Funny boy.  :-)

4.  When we got home, Mosey sweet-talked Ben into playing baseball with the boys outside while I finished making dinner.  I would love to get Mosey on a softball team because I think he would like it a lot.  I'm just not sure we'll be able to find ANY spare time for another practice during the week.  We'll see-- maybe over the summer.