November.....

I am looking back on the month of November and trying to remember what we did, and basically it seems like it was school, Lego Robotics, School, School and School! I guess we didn't do much fun stuff in November though. We were kind of "on call" for some friends who were expecting a baby and needed us to watch the 3 year old, but that didn't happen until December.

I did spend a weekend with a friend's kids in November and had fun with that. In fact, I even took the little boy fishing, at his request. This is the first time in my life I have ever handled live fish...it was an experience to say the least! But, the fish was delicious, the pond was gorgeous, and I believe we will be going fishing with the boys this summer! I even learned, through the verbal instruction from W, how to gut and clean a fish....since he was too squeamish to actually do it! He was QUITE impressed that a mom would touch guts. (So was I)!


Here is a picture of the lake at Green Mountain Falls, where we went fishing. This is just a cell phone picture so it doesn't do justice to the gorgeous colors that were present, but it was truly a beautiful day! The reason Conner and Keenan didn't go with us to experience fishing is that they and Kevin were in Denver at a model train show with an older man that has really taken a shine to them. They got to see all kinds of model train setups, including, get this, a LEGO one! Of course they had a ball and Conner now has an idea for a hobby kicking around in his head....a hobby for when he is a grown up and has lots of space and money to spare, since it is apparently quite expensive!

On Thanksgiving, Kevin and the boys met up in La Junta with G'ma, G'pa, Aunt C and M&M. Aunt P and Uncle H were there too. They had a good day and it was pretty nice out so the kids hung out outside most of the day. I stayed home on baby watch, and had a deliriously relaxing mom day, all alone in the house!

During the month of November the Virtual Academy required each of the boys to formulate and submit a pretty extensive lab report and they did that, through much complaining! But it was good for them to have the experience....(at least that was what I told them)! It wasn't so much about the lab even, as just learning the formal, proper way to fill in a lab report. However, the grades that they got back from the teachers were less than stellar. When I contacted the teachers to see why, the answer I got was "Conner provided way more information that was necessary". Well SHAME ON HIM! I told him that for the purposes of the virtual academy we will do what is expected, but in the real world we know that doing prior research and going into an experiment with some concepts and ideas in place is NEVER a bad thing!

We are very fortunate to have the option of a virtual academy and have access to the K12 curriculum without paying for it, but sometimes the "requirements" from the school get a little tedious. We will, of course, continue to fulfill the requirements in order to have access to the education opportunity, but we definitely do a LOT of modification. Also, our expectations seem to be a LOT higher than the VA! Imagine that. For example, they expect that by May, the kids will have completed 80% of the curriculum in order to advance to the next grade level. Well, it is the end of January and they have completed 60% in everything right now! And I have told them that 80% isn't good enough and we will be completing 100% and probably still be done before May!

Virtual Academies, in states where they are permitted, are really a wonderful option, but the bottom line is that they are a public school, full of public school teachers, that must fulfill the requirements of public school...so there is still a lot of bureaucracy. However, we are grateful for the guidelines of the curriculum and we continue to modify it to fulfill our requirements and expectations of education and at least they will graduate with a high school diploma.

Lego Robotics

Last August, when we signed up to do an activity called Mind Storm First Lego League, we had no idea what we were getting in for! It seemed like a fun little Lego related activity....

Well, it was Lego related, some days were fun, but there was nothing little about this! For about 2 months it seemed to completely dominate our lives, leading up to the competition. I think they learned some things about being prepared, putting all of yourself into what you do (or the results of NOT putting all of yourself into what you do!) and the cost of doing something well. They had to create a project idea and present that to judges, program their robot to do certain tasks (and actually duplicate those for judges), do a teamwork competition and answer technical questions about their robot.

Here is our scared little bunch trying to act like it was "no big deal" on competition day.

The technical interview, AKA the only time the robot did everything it was supposed to that day!

The teamwork challenge. They were "judged" based on how they interacted, how the solved the problem and how tall their paper tower was.

Waiting for scores. They made friends with another home school team of all boys, in the blue costumes behind them. That team was one of the top placers of the day.

Running up to get their medals for the day.

The boys loved the robot and are looking forward to hopefully getting one of their own someday in the future, but they are not sure that they loved the competition part of it all. Since there are college scholarships associated with this, there are some teams that are VERY dedicated. So much so that according to Keenan "they are a little scary!" I think that next year we will order the kit and do the tasks at home, without the whole competition aspect of it.

Here is the video that I actually managed to capture of the only time the program worked in all the aspects the entire day! The robots are apparently pretty notorious for being inconsistent but they got it to work through all of its tasks on the first try in the technical interview. There are several possible tasks that the robot can be programmed to do but as a rookie team they didn't go too overboard, and if the robot performed properly they managed to get 4 tasks completed. Interestingly enough, the most consistent one throughout the day was the one that the programmed on the fly the day of the competition!

Happy New Year

And one of my resolutions...well, actually I only made two! One is to blog weekly, the other is to try to make school more FUN for the kids.

So, in light of the first one, blogging weekly, I am going to get started by backtracking a little bit to try to bring things up to date on this blog.



Art project from Keenan. They had to make a mask; so he made a "death mask".

The week after Bird City we went to visit mom and dad Lerwick in NE and had a great time with cousins...playing etc. We even got to see a soccer game that Kate was in and cheer her on. Then on the way home we had a field trip at the Aquarium in Denver. The kids got to take a "behind the scene's tour" that was really neat. They were able to see the tops of the tanks, what they do to keep the water healthy, where they prepare food for the animals etc. Then we even got to see the divers go in with the sharks!


Kate's Soccer Game

The Aquarium tour


Conner also had the privilege, through school, to do a WWII reenactment in the mountains near Colorado Springs. This was in October and he took his friend Alex along...they had a lot of fun but were not impressed by the MRE (actual meal ready to eat that the US Army gets fed) that they got to try out...in fact I think the term "cat food" may have been used to describe at least one of the dishes. They were "taken in" when they first got there and got their uniforms and paybooks. Then they had about 2.5 hours of education about uniforms, weapons, vehicles etc.
After that they ate their MREs and then it was off to the battlefield. They were divided into 3 groups, the Americans, Germans and Russians. About midway they all had to switch teams and play for the other side of the battle. No one was 100% sure who won these particular battles, but they got to throw smoke bombs, roll around on the ground and hide behind trees so it was all good!


Here are a few of the adults that had a lot of fun educating our kids!

After the "battle" which they thought was great fun