A Quiet Week

It was a fairly quiet, uneventful week here in BangsundLand, a blessing after the previous few weeks of flu.  School was fun this week as we continued reading Little House in the Big Woods.  Both boys are really enjoying the simplicity of the pioneer life.  Luke is working on a lapbook that has included a list of the weekly chores, how to make butter, and how to make bullets.  Don't worry.  The bullet making process was far less interesting than the butter!

In history we began studying the Mongol conquest of China.  Both boys were adequately impressed and appalled by Genghis Khan, although neither can remember his name properly.  "It starts with a G...Gugga Khan?"  Hilarious.  We also heard about Marco Polo and the fact that he tried ice cream in China for the first time at the age of nineteen.  WHAT?!?

Paul:  "That's crazy!  I'm only five and I've had TONS of ice cream!"

Yep.  This is what they will remember about Marco Polo.

Luke lost his second top front tooth this past week.  Here's the pic to prove it.

 BIG GAP!

Paul likes to read Marvin K Mooney, Will You Please Go Now?.  A line from this book talks about stamping yourself and going by mail.  Paul stamped the spot between his eyebrows in honor of this line.  Awesome.

 Big Gap Guy and Stamped Brow Boy - What a pair!

Paul likes maps.  Paul likes to make maps.  He made this map on his Magna Doodle this week.  It depicts his bedroom.  He labeled each item with its first letter.  The door is in the upper right corner.  Moving to the left, his diaper pail (garbage can), his cupboard, and then his dresser.  Center bottom is his bed and "me" which is my favorite part. :-)

And then there is this:

Paul wearing his unit blocks from Math U See on his fingers.

That's pretty much it.  Today my friend Liza is here.  She is scrapping.  I'm blogging because my scrapbook stuff is not available or interesting to me right now.  It's lovely to just sit here and do not much with a good friend.  :-)

Catching Up

We caught the flu.  All of us.  It started with me a week and a half ago.  I dropped with a high fever, body aches, and a bad cough on the first Tuesday of February.  It was ugly.  Erik took sick days while I laid in bed wanting to die.  Luke was the next one down, followed by Paul a few days later.  Erik was the last to succumb, holding out an entire week.  This has been a blessing because if we had both been hit at the same time, nobody would have eaten for a week.  As it stands, he made soup twice the week I was sick, and I've managed to make chili once and soup once since achieving vertical status. I love my crock pot.  And I love this recipe for soup.  It's warm and lemony and creamy without cream.  Yum.

Okay, so enough about illness.  Other things have been happening.  Let's see.  Perhaps I'll just throw some pictures in here and let them tell our stories.

 Here we see the Brothers Bangsund hard at work, creating a Super Mario Level using Lego.  Yes, the boys get to watch Daddy play a Super Mario game on the big screen about once a week.  They love it.  And I think it's pretty cute, too.

 Close up of the "level" - too technical for me to explain!

 So happy!

School has also been happening, although we all took a few days off to celebrate the February Flu together.  Dumb.  Before that, I snapped a picture of both boys working at the school table.  Luke is doing math while Paul works on handwriting.  I know some folks wonder how we handle multiple subjects and two different grades.  This is how we do it!  I get Paul working on something.  I get Luke working on something.  I sit in the middle and drink water, encouraging them to finish what they started.  It's actually pretty easy, much easier than trying to get 31 eighth graders to do anything simultaneously.

I have to brag a bit on Paul.  Handwriting has been optional for these first few months of kindergarten.  It's been my personal experience that most 5-year-old boys just don't have the manual dexterity for formalized handwriting instruction.  Paul mostly did handwriting because big brother does handwriting.  His September to December letters were all pretty wobbly and were anything but consistent.  Then he did this:

 A few wobbles, but overall pretty sweet!

 Happy Handwriting Student!

 More recently, in fact while I was in bed dying of the flu, Luke lost one of his top front teeth.  Check out the gap, people.

 Erik and I both find it beyond adorable.  And beware...that other front tooth is crazy loose!  I'll be sure to get a picture when it comes out.  I will warn you that Luke can keep a loose tooth in his head longer than most people keep tax records.  He is NOT a wiggler.  So he might not experience the Mega Gap at all.  We'll see.

Today was Friday.  We did school.  It went well.  As a side note, I've been trying to figure out the boys' reading levels.  I gave them each an assessment today, only to discover that I did not administer it correctly.  I didn't realize that these assessments were designed primarily to test vocabulary and comprehension.  I was supposed to sit with each boy and read the sentences for them, along with the four words that might fill in the blank.  Not realizing this, I gave each boy their test, instructing them to read each sentence and pick the correct word to fill each blank. Then I walked away.  When Paul finished and I graded his 100%, I looked a little more closely at his sentences.  Here are a few examples:

17. Why does knowledge of the weather _____ you?  A. dream  B. read  C. storm  D. help

20.  The dirt road twisted and ________ like a pretzel.  A. turned  B. fish  C. breeze  D. orange

23. Eagles eat small ________ up to the size of turkeys.  A. animals  B. careen  C. kicked  D. hitch

Did I mention that Paul finished in about fifteen minutes?  I don't know what reading level these questions are, but when done completely by the student, I'm fairly certain this isn't first grade stuff.  Back to the drawing board.

Speaking of drawing board, the weather here is gorgeous, almost 60 degrees, so out they went!  Paul found the sidewalk chalk in the garage and commenced his masterpiece, which he refers to as The Path.

Too busy drawing to actually look at the camera.

"S" for Start of course

That's about all the news from Bangsund Land for now.  We are looking forward to the return of good health for all family members sometime in the near future.